A book on Syria – reread

When I listen to the news, I can hardly bear the reports of the suffering of thousands of people in the Middle East, but neither can I bear the way we report. Neighbourhoods are being wiped out, we are told of efforts to achieve a ceasefire, and Western governments continue to supply state-of-the-art weapons – all without comment. Admittedly, this is not with the consent of the majority of the world and many citizens. It is not easy to withstand the official silence in this country and stick to it: Without monstrous regional and international power interests, while respecting the simplest principles of humanity, peaceful coexistence would be possible.
  Karin Leukefeld reports quite differently from the Middle East. She is familiar with the centuries-old culture of tolerance in this region. Hardly anywhere else have I found such a humane view of people living together, integrated into their families, their community, history and culture – a view at eye level that always respects the dignity of the other person. This is precisely why I read her book “Syrien zwischen Schatten und Licht. Menschen erzählen von ihrem zerrissenen Land”, Zurich 2016 (Syria between shadow and light. People talk about their torn country) just now. In it, she reports on the history of the country for the last 100 years. Of course, the author does not use the correct wording of the mainstream media. She is committed to the truth of the people there. Karin Leukefeld is a regular visitor to Syria and Lebanon. She knows the “side roads” of these countries and visits many places and people there again and again. She learns from them how they stick together – under the most difficult circumstances – and try to cope with everyday life. Syria, 15 years ago an up-and-coming country with an increasingly modern infrastructure, one of the poorest countries in the world after the devastation of war, has now disappeared from the headlines, as has its “regime”, which is blamed for the devastation of the country and its cultural assets. A country that was once part of the “Fertile Crescent”, the cradle of human civilization and advanced civilizations.
  Karin Leukefeld’s basic concern of investigating the living conditions, goals and hopes of the various ethnic and religious groups in Syria and giving the people a voice leads to the book being divided into chapters, each of which contains a historical section and a second section portraying a personality or picking out a group. This history of the region, which struggles for self-determination and is constantly coming into the firing line of global power interests, is vividly portrayed against the backdrop of years of research. The author begins with the barbaric division of the country after the First World War, which caused all the subsequent unrest and violence.

The policy of the colonial powers

Karin Leukefeld begins by addressing the double game played by the colonial powers Great Britain and France, who after 1918 played the region’s ethnic and religious minorities striving for independence off against each other. They did not help to build a viable state of their own, as would have been their task as a mandate power.
  In the Sykes-Pikot secret agreement of 1916, England and France divided up the lands of the collapsing Ottoman Empire between them with a ruler. The events and their consequences are well known today. Karin Leukefeld focuses on the work of the King-Crane Commission of 1919, which was commissioned by US President Wilson to find out what the people of the region wanted for their future. The results of the survey were to be recorded in a report and presented at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 in the spirit of self-determination. What were the ideas? (p. 24)

1. “The Syrians will not accept a French mandate.
2. The Zionist programme can only be enforced by force.
3. The Arab national movement [...] is worth supporting.
4. The general will of the population is a united Syria.”

However, the Paris Peace Conference ignored the promise of an independent Arab state, the commission’s report went unnoticed and the region was partitioned. “…  centuries-old family, cultural and economic ties were severed”. (p. 25) This “peace treaty” in the spirit of the new mandate powers France and Great Britain ended peace in the region. The foreign armies only withdrew after the Second World War. With its policy of “divide and rule”, France had not promoted a path of joint reconstruction for the multicultural region. It had to be laboriously achieved.
  In addition to the informative presentation of the historical processes in Syria on the way to more independence, the main gift of this book to me is the depiction of the lives of representatives of various political or religious currents, e.g. the lawyer George Jabbour, member of the Baath Party and as a government advisor an ambassador of religious tolerance. “We all felt part of the Syrian fabric” (p. 103), is how he assesses his career. Another contemporary witness, Ali Boray, engineer, son of a Circassian immigrant family, was born on the Golan. “‘Fifteen percent of the people on the Golan Heights were Circassians, the others were Bedouins, Christians, Druze, Turkmen. We lived like one big family,’ recalls Ali Boray.” He knows what it is like to lose one’s homeland to war. (p. 135)
  One of Karin Leukefeld’s participatory conversations with people or groups of people should be singled out. On the situation from 2011 onwards, the author reports on a circle of friends of young Syrians (p. 280 ff.). For five friends, one woman and four young men, their different religious backgrounds did not matter; they were interested in dialogue, tolerance and respect:
  Amer, a Christian Syrian, had worked successfully as a professional translator.
  Jihad, the son of a Palestinian family, is a Muslim and has high hopes for education.
  Julia, a student, dressed in western clothes, is an Ismaili and belongs to a community of Shia Muslims known for their liberal attitudes.
  Salim, an actor in his spare time, lives in a Christian neighbourhood in Damascus.
  Safwan, an intellectual through and through, is a Druze. His father is a religious scholar who sets an example of tolerance.
  Their meetings were held to exchange ideas and assessments of the situation in Syria. “Everyone wants political change in Syria, everyone was against violence when we first met.” (p. 281). The author shares the lives and thoughts of the young people as a close observer of the situation, without judging their statements.

Beginning as a civil war

The interviews create a nuanced picture of society in which a wave of violence broke out following the unrest in Deraa in March 2011 which was initially accompanied by sympathy. At the beginning of the unrest, many took to the streets to express their solidarity with the young people of Deraa. President Assad tried to mediate, admitting he had made mistakes. But the violence spread. In Turkey, deserters from the Syrian armed forces founded a “Free Syrian Army”. Many Syrians warned of the escalating violence and growing foreign interference in the internal Syrian conflict. As a result of the fighting, projects initiated with Germany were cancelled. Thousands of Syrians lost their jobs. Amer was also affected; nobody needed his translations anymore. When bombs finally exploded in Damascus, the embassies closed. There were political reforms, but they were not far-reaching and many remained dissatisfied. After a brief ceasefire, armed groups attacked Damascus and Aleppo again and the army and security forces had to fight back. How did things look for the friends, one year after the beginning of the conflict?
  2012: Julia had lost her home and was internally displaced. She was not even allowed to clean out the flat she and her fiancé had furnished; the police station, now controlled by the “Free Syrian Army”, did not give permission, probably because they were Ismailis. Her family suffered a lot.
  The friends, affected by the account, had been sceptical about the violence from the outset, classifying the armed groups in Damascus as terrorists. Now there was fighting everywhere, the citizens no longer left their homes, shops closed, and many fled to Beirut. Everyone lived in a climate of fear, especially in the large Palestinian refugee camps near Damascus.
  The young people were still openly discussing their sometimes-differing points of view. The opposition was made up of very different groups, Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood were gaining influence. Amer feared a proxy war between regional and international forces. He was afraid that political Islam would prevail. 65 per cent of the population were Sunni Muslims and it was easy for the Islamists to mobilise them. The friends rejected the violence in Syria. “I will never take up arms, and I will defend a political solution to the end,” said Jihad (p. 290).

Escalation

The conflict escalated in summer 2012. The five friends did not remain inactive; they became involved in refugee aid, in reconciliation committees and in a newly founded cultural association. But the violence continued. The humanitarian activities of the young people, including their meetings, became very difficult. Julia wanted to get married soon. No one was sadder than her about the situation, but life had to go on.
  In 2013, after a long break, a meeting with Jihad took place. With his family, he had been forced to flee from the camp where he had grown up. 150,000 Palestinians and 700,000 Syrians had lived there. “It was a tragedy, and we re-lived what had happened in 1948, the diaspora.” (p. 293) Again, the family had lost everything and was torn apart. Jihad rarely saw his friends. All had lost the optimism of the beginning. The revolutionaries’ goal was power, not freedom and democracy. The Syrians had been used and incited from abroad. He wondered how people would be able to live together in future.
  Autumn 2013: What had become of the upheaval of the early days after a year and a half of war in the country? Did the demand for more freedom and political change still exist? Safwan explained, most Syrians were just watching, they could no longer do anything to improve the situation. The atmosphere was determined by the war. Safwan was still working in a reconciliation committee.
  In March 2014, the friends had lost sight of each other. Amer said that many had left the country. The future was bleak. In autumn, he also left for the Netherlands. He had been threatened and dared to make a new start in a foreign country. Jihad had also set off on the dangerous journey to Europe with his mother and sisters.
  The author’s report describes the lives of a generation in war. Initially, the friends actively help to make the consequences of the war more bearable. However, their hopes are not fulfilled, so that often the only option is to go abroad. These are descriptions that bring the reader very close to the events, always determined by the dialogue with the people who, as contemporary witnesses, take over the interpretation themselves.

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Following your own path

Karin Leukefeld’s report is highly topical. Syria, as a country that does not want to become a vassal and preserve its own culture, is paying a high price. Parts of the country are still occupied; the country is under sanctions and daily bombings do not provoke international protest. Nevertheless, there is still the will to follow its own path. In 2023, the Presidential Republic of Syria was readmitted as a member state of the Arab League – a glimmer of hope for the future.
  In this book, Karin Leukefeld shares her in-depth knowledge of the region, providing an insight into the background of the people’s current conditions of life. She had to switch from being a journalist who wanted to build bridges between cultures to her main activity today, war reporting. And yet, even today, she knows how to let the people of the region speak for themselves in their dignity, their humanity and their willingness to help and rebuild.¹ Who would not finally wish peace for the country and the personalities that Karin Leukefeld brings to our attention? •

¹ see the article by C. and J. Irsiegler on this book in  Current Concerns No 16 of 29 July 2016, regular reports on the horrible events today and their political and legal classification by Karin Leukefeld in Current Concerns, also at Global Bridge or Zeitgeschehen im Fokus

Deraa

rd. Deraa was the starting point of the first protests against the government of Bashar al-Assad and became the trigger for the violent unrest in Syria. In February 2011, 15 young people were arrested in Deraa and accused of having painted anti-government slogans on the school building. The parents of the young people reported that their children had been abused in prison. This led to protests in the area of the Al-Omari Mosque in March 2011 and the subsequent storming of the mosque by security forces. Several people were killed and injured. This triggered demonstrations throughout the country.