The great chance of emergence

In September 2019 I offered a feature to German ARD radio. The title was: “Searching for clues in Syria”.
  I wanted to report on the people in Syria who were coming home in droves from Jordan and Lebanon at the time. I had met families at the borders, including those who had been internally displaced for years in Rukban, a desert camp in the border triangle of Syria, Iraq and Jordan. They were surrounded by stragglers from the Islamic State on one side and US troops on the other. They had built an illegal military base there, Al Tanf.
  People wanted to go back to their Heimat (homeland). In the cities, entire residential areas lay in rubble and ashes. In emergency shelters, people hope for help. Half of the Christians have left the country.
  The Turkish army and the US army had divided Syria along the Euphrates and to the north.
  The Syrian government has been isolated from the EU and the US. Syria was only heard at the United Nations. Economic sanctions by the European Union and an oil embargo by the USA made it difficult to supply the population, and the necessary reconstruction was blocked. Internationally and regionally conflicting interests in the Middle East threatened to lead to a new war. The signs were not favourable, but people felt homesick. They wanted to go back.
  I travelled through Syria. From north to south, east to west and met a wide variety of people who were willing to talk about their wartime experiences. Some were seriously ill and came back to die at home. Women came to show their husbands who were left behind the children who had grown up abroad. They remembered their life before the war and what had happened to them. They talked about their hope for the future. No one could have imagined such a war and such destruction in their homeland.
  I submitted my exposé to the German radio. I listed the places and the people, I wanted to introduce, the “protagonists”:

The places

• Kasab, an Armenian town on the Turkish-Syrian border,
• Hambouche (village in Latakia province),
• Homs (Homs Province),
• Rastan (Homs province),
• Tadmur/Palmyra (Homs Province),
• Khan Sheikhun (Idlib Province),
• Deir Ez-Zor,
• Aleppo,
• Tell Rifaat (Aleppo Province),
• Damascus,
• Saida Zeyneb (Damascus),
• Sweida (Sweida Province),
• Nasib border crossing Syria-Jordan (province Deraa),
• Assal al Ward (Qalamoun).

The protagonists

• Sebouk Kurkjian, the mayor of Kasab: reports on the raid on Kasab in 2014 – fighters had come from Turkey and invaded their village, the churches were burned. Kasab is a well-known climatic health resort in northern Syria.
• Delal Darwish, a farmer from Hambouche: reports on the raid on her village in August 2014 when militants (insurgents) killed more than 200 people and abducted 106 women and children. She was held hostage by militants for 3.5 years. In the spring of 2018, she was released in exchange for captured fighters.
• Mashrour Sleiman, a taxi driver, Mheen (Homs province): lived with his family for four years in the Rukban camp in the border triangle of Iraq, Syria and Jordan. The only wealth they had left was the gold wedding ring on his wife’s hand.
• Anonymous, a pharmacist, (Tadmur/Palmyra): witnessed the 2015 ‘Islamic State’ raid on Tadmur.
• Abu Mohammed, Syrian Civil Defence Hama, Morek (Hama province): and his team are searching for anonymously buried soldiers and civilians in southern Idlib
• Anonymous, Syrian Army officer (Deir Ez-Zor): talks about his operations, his various injuries, what the war means to him.
• Anonymous, Syrian Army soldier (Jobar): Eight years in the army: Talks about his previous life, he was a chef in a restaurant in Aleppo. He talks about those who left Syria, his hope for the future.
• Ayman Diab, pharmacist (Mayadeen/Deir Ez-Zor): lived among various armed groups in Mayadeen, was able to flee to Deir Ez-Zor with his wife, where they lived surrounded by IS for three years.
• Kurdish displaced persons from Afrin (Tell Rifaat, Aleppo province): They were displaced from Afrin in early 2018 when the Turkish army and its allied combat groups invaded there. One of the men tells that his three children are living in Germany. During the audio recording, he greeted them, but then stopped because his voice failed.
• Delal and Louiza Issa, Damascus: two sisters (born 1940s): lawyer, gynaecologist.
• Nour Issa, Damascus: her grandniece from Hasakeh, who studied English literature in Damascus – and is now married in Sweden.
• Salim Sabbagh, Damascus: one of five friends I featured in 2016. Salim was the only one of the five still living in Syria at the time – last Christmas he sent me a message from the USA .
• Dr Maamoun Abdulkerim, Damascus: Professor of archaeology at the University of Damascus and former Head of the Syrian Antiquities Authority.
• Anonymous, archaeologist and curator of the renovated and newly opened Bimaristan Nur ad-Din, oldest hospital in Damascus (1154 AD).
• Displaced people from the towns of Kefraya and Al Fouah (Idlib province). They live and work today in Saida Zeynab, a suburb of Damascus, a place of pilgrimage where the shrine of Saida Zeynab, daughter of the Shia-revered Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, is buried.
• Abu Marwan, an engineer: on the Jordanian-Syrian border Nasib, he lives in the US as a successful engineer and has returned to see how he can help rebuild his country privately.

It was a “colourful” piece, as they say. I did something similar about Baghdad in 2005 for the radio. “Baghdad is still breathing” was the title. But there was no longer any interest in Syria in 2019. The radio refused. The editor wrote that no one in Germany really wanted to hear an officer or soldier of the Syrian army.

Building bridges

“Living behind the headlines” is the motto of my work. How do people live and how do they want to live? How do war and sanctions, interventions and paternalism affect their lives and everyday life?
  I wanted to build bridges with my reporting and contribute to understanding between different cultures. But I became a correspondent on wars. Today, I see much more clearly than I did then how the “war on terror” and the USA’s fight to assert itself as the “sole” and “indispensable world power” against other states changed my work – the journalistic work.
  It had been a long time coming, but I had probably not wanted to face it. The radio station’s cancellation of the 2019 feature was then a clear signal. There was no interest in the consequences of the wars, no interest in the people and their questions about how they could have a future in their homeland. Reporting was no longer oriented towards what was happening in the country, what people were saying there – unless they were speaking against the Syrian president. Radio and newspaper reports were oriented along political lines against the Syrian government. My offers to the public service broadcaster went – with two exceptions – unanswered.
  It is now clear why my reports from Syria were no longer wanted. They were probably classified internally as “untrustworthy” because – which is normal for foreign correspondents – I had journalistic accreditation in Syria, which is issued by the Ministry of Information.
  My work in Syria was classified as a legitimation of the “Assad regime” and as “journalistic sham objectivity” that contributes to the legitimacy of a dictator who “gasses his own people”.
  Nobody told me that, but when I read the statement from the German University of Media, Communication and Economics (HMKW) at the end of 2022, in which the former NDR [public radio and tv in Northern Germany] editor and lecturer Patrik Baab was fired pieces fell into place. He had reported on the referendum in Donetsk and thus legitimised Putin.
  Editors of the newspapers for which I had reported for more than twenty years no longer showed any interest. Some accused me of being “close to Assad”, although or perhaps because I hardly ever wrote about the Syrian President. Some criticised that I kept writing about the sanctions, which were rightly imposed for human rights violations.
  The proposal to interview UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan, who is investigating human rights violations by unilateral economic sanctions, was met with silence.
  Instead, reports written outside of Syria are being published about Syria today, emphasising certain positions against Syria:

• refugees cannot return because they are being arrested,
• Assad is stealing humanitarian aid,
• and the “Assad regime” is responsible for 98 percent of crimes in Syria.

I now spend a lot of time deciphering the overwhelming propaganda being circulated by Western media. Their aim is to prevent the local public from aligning itself with the people of Syria – or indeed other stigmatised countries. Human feelings, even humanity, are not supposed to arise towards the people there. The aim of the propaganda is that the official justification for the actions of Western governments and alliances is approved and supported. The complicated international geopolitical interests and power struggles have woven a web of propaganda across Syria and West Asia. Am I caught up in this?

The great chance of emergence

The change in international power relations can be seen particularly clearly in the Arab and African world. A few days ago, more than 60 countries took part in the summit meeting of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which took place in Johannesburg, South Africa. Numerous countries have applied for admission, six states have been admitted: Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
  The alliance is making a significant contribution to shaping the multipolar world order and, as BRICS Plus, will represent 46 percent of the world’s population, which accounts for more than 37 percent of global economic output. For the countries of the “Global South” there is an alternative to free themselves from the net of western paternalism and sanctions and to concentrate on their own development. They take their chance.
  People will leave because they know they deserve a better life.
  It won’t be a walk in the park, but they’re prepared.
  Universities, think tanks and new media have established themselves to accompany the new beginning. They will set up their own institutions, as we will see.
  We should learn from them.
  The countries that have so far claimed world leadership will have to reorient themselves. That’s going to take time. It will take time to realise that Brussels, Washington or London will no longer set the tone.
  The West will have to learn to listen, to communicate.
  There is a time for everything and now is the time for others. The time for giving orders is over.
  The Rand Corporation or the European Council on Foreign Relations can design simulation games that are no longer implemented because the countries that are to be subject to the plans will not participate.
  But it is not given that it will end well.
  Because if you consider yourself as superior and want to impose your own rules and values on the rest of the world, you won’t give up easily.
  New weapons and weapon systems are being developed. The public is brought into line. If you want to go your own way, the chains will be tightened even more. The Internet in Europe already does not offer free access to many other media. Content is already being deleted, pictures and videos removed.
  “This channel cannot be shown because it violates local laws” was yesterday on a Lebanese news portal. I then found the video in a roundabout way and it showed how children in north-eastern Syria blocked four US armoured vehicles from passing through their village of Hamou. They threw stones and tore down the US flags from the withdrawing vehicles, as can be seen in the video.
  The more a country from the Western alliance wanted to go its own way, the tighter the shackles that are supposed to hold the US-led bloc of NATO and the EU together.
  It is not certain that the rebalancing of the world will end well.
  The Western hemisphere relies on war. The rulers in the US and EU do not care about people, it is about control. It’s about access to raw materials and control of transport routes. In order to ensure that, people lie and cheat and stop at nothing. Responsibility is shifted to others. This is what we see with the war in Ukraine.
  This is shown by the history of the wars on terror, which for more than 20 years have left a trail of devastation from Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and the Sahel zone.
  Countries and societies that do not submit are stigmatised, punished and despised.
  Fields of wheat become battlefields. More than 7 million children under the age of 5 are malnourished in these countries. In English one speaks of “wasted” - dissipated, withered, not viable.
  Those who cling to their homeland lead a hand to mouth existence, without electricity or water. Instead of sovereignty and reconstruction, there are alms and war.

What to do?

As a journalist, I often thought about quitting work. The bridges I wanted to build never materialised because of repeated wars and crises. But not reporting anymore means giving way to the propaganda. That’s not an option. Reporting from these countries means holding up a mirror to the local public. Showing and saying what is and the context, creating the connection, offers the chance to understand the consequences of actions in the Western hemisphere.
  In the devastated, affected countries, people have long since lost confidence in the West and are turning away from the monster that promises democracy and freedom and yet only wants to plunder raw materials and riches.
  Fed up with war and destruction, the Global South is turning to new, more reliable partners.
  It is important to support that – not from a feeling of guilt, but with the conviction to do something for a good future.
  Today we are less and less able to participate in shaping the world. Not because we don’t try or make suggestions, but because governments steal good ideas, appropriate them and let the initiators get nowhere. Because the will and well-being of the population does not count.
  The new emergence of the countries in the South is a great opportunity for everyone who wants to put a stop to the destruction. Let’s be courageous, let’s join. Let’s learn from each other and with each other. Together we can succeed in correcting the mistakes and aberrations of the past.  •

(Translation Current Concerns)

* Karin Leukefeld is a freelance journalist born in Stuttgart in 1954. She studied ethnology, Islamic studies and political science and reported from the Near and Middle East for various daily and weekly newspapers as well as for ARD radio. Accredited in Syria since 2010, she travels to the country again and again and reports from the ground. Various book publications on the Middle East, especially on Syria.