NADIA AL-BUKAI Just before we begin, I wanted to let you know that this podcast contains some descriptions of physical and psychological violence. Please use discretion.
It's been said that nations are built on stories. The tales pass through time from one generation to another. Stories that go beyond the official accounts of history, which we know don't often capture the realities of a nation's growth and evolution. Among these tales are accounts so powerful and influential the characters might even graduate to the status of legends. Some legends are mythical, like the gods of Olympus, Icarus, and King Arthur, and others are as real as life itself. They are stories about people, real people, doing extraordinary things in crucial moments of a country's history that change everything.
Today, I have a legend to tell about my country, a tale of true heroes. And where there are heroes, there are often also villains. In this case, that's my country's president, Bashar al-Assad.
BARBARA WALTERS Do you think that you forces crack down too hard?
BASHAR AL-ASSAD They are not my forces. They are military forces belong to the government.
BARBARA WALTERS Okay. But you [crosstalk].
BASHAR AL-ASSAD I don't own them. I'm president.
BARBARA WALTERS Okay.
BASHAR AL-ASSAD I don't own the country. So, they're not my forces.
BARBARA WALTERS No. But you have to give the order.
BASHAR AL-ASSAD No. No. No.
BARBARA WALTERS Not by your command?
BASHAR AL-ASSAD No. No. No. We don't have—. Nobody—. No one's command. There was no command to kill or to be brutal.
NADIA AL-BUKAI That clip is of Bashar al-Assad being interviewed by Barbara Walters in December 2011. Walters was confronting Assad's use of brutal force to crack down on peaceful protest that flooded Syrian streets in March 2011, which, throughout the decade, would lead to the death of hundreds of thousands by bombs or torture and the displacement of millions as a result of that violent response.
Inspired by the Arab Spring unfolding in Tunisia and Egypt, Syrians took to the streets in peaceful protest to demand freedom, rights, and a better life after decades of living under a brutal dictatorship.
Assad threw everything he had at the revolution. And Sednaya, along with other underground detention dungeons, became one of Assad's key weapons to crush this revolution. And to some degree, it worked. Whoever stood up against his rule would be brutally punished. Those who weren't killed by bombs or kidnapped, imprisoned, or forcibly disappeared and tortured had to flee their homes.
BASHAR AL-ASSAD We don't kill our people. Nobody kill—. No government in the world kill its people unless it's led by [crosstalk].
NADIA AL-BUKAI From Message Heard and The Syria Campaign, this is Behind the Sun. I'm Nadia al-Bukai.
During the Assad's family rule, before 2011, I always felt like there were two different versions of Syria, one for Assad and his loyalists and the other for us, the Syrian people. In ours, Assad and his men did their best to make our country feel like a giant prison.
In Walter's interview, Assad said he didn't own the country or the military. But I don't think he believes that. He acted then and still acts today as if he owns Syria. Before the revolution from his fortified palace that overlooks Damascus, Assad tasked his supporters to fill the air with false propaganda about this very idea. While his intelligence and security services were kidnapping and murdering whoever challenged the status quo, countless photographs of Assad and his father filled every corner in Syria.
All day long, on public TV and radio, Assad, whose name means "lion" in Arabic, had songs like the one you are hearing saying, "Syria is our country and Bashar is our lion." Catchy sounds repeating over and over everywhere to make sure that all Syrians always remember who he is and what he's meant to represent for the people.
And when you try to turn your country into a prison, as a consequence, you make your citizens prisoners. And Syrians wouldn't accept being held prisoner. In January 2011, the winds of change were coming fast for Assad and were set to shake his rule.
NEWS REPORTER 1 Massive protest over government corruption, political repression, rising food prices, and unemployment forced President Ben Ali to flee to [crosstalk].
NADIA AL-BUKAI After Tunisia's dictator was removed in January, another one was about to face the same destiny. Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for thirty years, was facing the knock-on effect of the Arab Spring as well.
NEWS REPORTER 2 The Egyptian military has promised not to harm protesters. But as we saw today in Liberation Square, this situation can turn violent very, very quickly.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Close friends, Diab and Riyad, were still in Sednaya during the early days of the Arab Spring in 2011.
DIAB SERRIH We started turning the radio on three times a day even though getting new batteries for the radio was so difficult. But we really wanted to listen. We really lived on the news moment by moment. We'd sleep awaiting what would happen the next day. Wake and ask, "Is there any news?"
NADIA AL-BUKAI In early February 2011, Mubarak's rule was coming to an end.
NEWS REPORTER 3 He is on the ground there in Cairo where, as you can see, the situation is absolutely electric. Dominic, if you're able to hear us, give us some sense of what it feels like there.
NEWS REPORTER 4 John, today was labelled a day of confrontation. And Hosni Mubarak could no longer stand up to three two hundred thousand people that are just roaring their victory cry. This is the sound of a popular victory, of people finally getting what they have been demanding for eighteen straight days.
DIAB SERRIH I was asleep, and Riyad was listening to the radio. Suddenly, people were waking up excitedly. "Get up. Get up."
"Guys, what's going on?"
"Hosni Mubarak fell."
My God. I was just waking up. It was just like a dream. Was it possible? I looked at them, and I saw radical Islamists hugging communists. Muslim brothers were celebrating. The detainees were cheering. "Hooray. It succeeded in Egypt. We won."
It was a state of joy beyond limits.
"Now. Tomorrow, Syria. By God, we will show you. You Syrian regime, you arseholes, your turn is next."
There was a constant state of anticipation.
NADIA AL-BUKAI In Syria, people were closely following what was happening in Egypt. Syrians were waiting for the spark to be made in their homeland.
DIAB SERRIH Riyad and I had an agreement that the uprising in Syria would come from a place that nobody expects. Nobody would imagine what shape it would take. We both thought about many scenarios—"This would work. That wouldn't."—until the March 18, 2011.
NADIA AL-BUKAI A few days before the 18th of March, graffiti appeared on a school wall at Deraa, in the south of the country. It read, "It's your turn, doctor."
Before ruling Syria, he attended post-graduate studies at the Western Eye Hospital in London. But when his brother, Bassel, died in a car accident in 1994, Bashar was recalled to Syria to take over Bassel's role as heir to his father, Hafez.
But back to 2011, like all other Syrians, Dr. Bashar was watching the news from Tunisia and Egypt as well and so was his security forces called the Mukhabarat. Their initial response was detecting their grip on the country and instruct their force not to allow any form of gathering anywhere.
But the graffiti was a huge act of defiance. Next to the anti-Assad phrase was another line reading: "To remember, with Bashir."
It was the kind of expression most of the children used to add their names on the walls and desks of their school just to leave their mark on the place, to say they were there. But the tension was high, and Mukhabarat wanted to make an example to crush any kind of discord before it began.
They arrested the two children whose names were on the wall, Bashir and Naief Abazid. Naief was a thirteen-year-old and in the seventh grade, four years older than I was at that time. He and Bashir didn't write the anti-Assad phrase on the wall. They had only written their names in 2009. Mukhabarat tortured them to confess that they had sketched the graffiti against Assad. And under that severe torture, the children confessed and have to turn in dozens of others as their accomplices.
That has always been how Mukhabarat worked, forcing people to name accomplices under torture, whether or not they committed a so-called crime.
But this time, when the news came out about what had happened to the children, people didn't stay silent. On the 18th of March 2011, the people of Deraa took to the streets, demanding the return of the children. That act was the spark, and it lit the country afire. Syria's turn in the Arab Spring was finally here.
DIAB SERRIH I remember those days. I remember that moment. Honestly, I was tearing up at that moment. I really cried. Every time I remember that, I remember how it happened. The dream, you know. The dream had come. I couldn't believe it. The revolution had started, and we would get out and get rid of the regime, like other regimes, like what happened in Egypt.
Too many ideas were running back and forth in my mind. I really don't know how to describe them. But I felt, "That's it. It is the beginning of the end of this era."
NADIA AL-BUKAI Hope was in the air. Everywhere in Syria, people raised their heads as they felt the possibility of a brighter future, freedom of speech, and living normal lives. A country that hadn't dare to hope in forty years was experiencing it for the first time. Even inside Sednaya, hope filled its dark hallways and cells.
RIYAD AVLAR The revolution was a dream for me. I was waiting all my times these revolutions, because I know I will not go out from this place if there will not be a revolution.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Riyad wasn't alone thinking that the revolution would finally set him free. Everyone inside Sednaya had the same hope. They were all political prisoners. And if the Assad regime fell, they would be free.
Even I thought this way. At that time, I was only nine years old, and watching the news wasn't my thing. I watched cartoons. But on those days, I had to watch the news with my family. In the beginning, when I followed what was happening, I got scared. I felt that we were in danger. But when my parents told me that we were putting the dictator in his place, that Syria would be a better place without him and the future would be mine, I jumped off my chair happily, saying, "I'm in. I'm with you." And these rumblings of change were shaking the core of the regime establishment.
In March 2011, the revolutionary sun was rising in Syria, and Assad was trying to block it with every tool at his disposal.
NEWS REPORTER 5 Elsewhere, the city of Deraa, in Southern Syria, was again a flashpoint today. President Assad's security forces trying to crush the latest democracy uprising.
NADIA AL-BUKAI But Assad's attempts didn't deter the people protesting in Deraa or those in dozens of other Syrian towns and cities who started taking to the streets.
GHUFRAN KHULANI We broke this kind of wall, because Assad in Syria like kind of dictator god. You cannot touch anything near him. So, you feel you break this fear and, finally, you can speak what you want. And like you are afraid inside, because you know what will happen after the demonstration. But you have hope and you can change. Finally, we can make one step toward changing.
NADIA AL-BUKAI This is Ghufran. She was a university student during the revolution. Ghufran comes from a family with a history of local civic activism.
GHUFRAN KHULANI Even in university, in class, and anywhere, you cannot say what you believe or what your ideas, only between very small groups that you trust them very much. And so, when you can speak, it was a nice moment to feel you can do.
NADIA AL-BUKAI On the same day, the 18th of March, fate was smiling at Diab, and he got good news. He was going to be released
DIAB SERRIH In the morning, they came and took me. It was a Friday. I remember that vividly. The intelligence patrols were always late on Fridays. So, they took me from the cell around noon. Of course, I bid farewell to my friends, especially Riyad. It was emotional. There was sadness and joy at the same time. I felt sad. I was leaving these people behind me. But I was happy to be finally getting out. After everything that had happened, somebody could get out.
RIYAD AVLAR I was sorry, because he will go. I don't know why. But something always inside me telling me, "Oh, he has to stay with me." I wish he stayed with me.
Ah, no. I – I was very happy, because he – he will be free now.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Diab didn't believe that he would be freed from Sednaya after what he had been through during the riots in the prison, but he had finished his sentence in full. He went home happy for two reasons: The first one was that he was freed from Sednaya, of course, and the second was that he would get to witness the Syrian revolution.
Riyad also was happy, because he knew that his best friend would help him from the outside.
RIYAD AVLAR I was happy, because he got out. Because he knew who is Riyad, who is this man. And I believe he will always talking about me.
NADIA AL-BUKAI For the first time, after five years of sleepless nights in detention, Diab would finally asleep well in a comfortable bed in his home.
DIAB SERRIH The first thing I remember, my first impression, was the softness of the mattress. The feeling that you are sleeping on a real soft thing, whether cotton or wool or whatever, other than the ground or the military blanket on the ground, which is very bad. You feel like you are king of the world.
The first day, I was like, "Wow, I'm sleeping on a real mattress. I'm covered by a clean blanket." I felt like a bear in a little nest, in his little house. "This is home. This is what I want." Like a bird returning to his house or his nest. That was my first impression.
NADIA AL-BUKAI In the streets, armed, plain-clothes regime supporters known to Syrians as shabiha, were assisting regime forces to suppress the revolution. Many demonstrators at that time witnessed violence and enforced disappearance.
DIAB SERRIH My family, my siblings tried their best to keep me from participating in any protests or in anything at all. "You paid the price. You were imprisoned for five years. You shouldn't participate."
My mum told me that she cried a lot for me. "So, just respect my tears and the pain I felt for you. Don't participate in any of these protests. I don't want you to be taken away from me again."
At first, I respected my mother's feelings. A mother who didn't see her son for five years and suffered all of this. I didn't want to hurt her again.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The tears of Diab's mother couldn't hold him for long. This was a historic moment for Syria. Syria was in a state of complete revolt.
DIAB SERRIH After a while, I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't be sitting and watching TV and seeing people in the streets, and I'm not joining them.
A friend of mine, a doctor who was active in the Barzeh and al-Qaboun neighbourhoods, used to joke with me. "In our area, the regime has already fallen. And in your neighbourhood, the regime is still here."
Then, once he visited me and told me, "The protest will start soon. Would you like me to take you?"
I said, "Let's go."
My mum saw us and asked us where we were going. We told her we were going to a café, to have coffee and get out of the house. I felt like she initially wanted to come with us. But at the same time, she didn't want to embarrass her son. She followed us to the gate and was begging my friend not to take me to the protest.
"Please come back here."
And we promised him that we would not go. But, of course, we immediately took a car to join the protest in Barzeh.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Despite the brutal response from Assad, in March 2011, many Syrians expected that he would go eventually. No matter what he did, they thought he wouldn't be able to kill the entire population, right? And so, peaceful protests continued in most Syrian cities.
GHUFRAN KHULANI My brother and his friend, they give the bottle of water and they stick a flower on it. And there is a small sign to say, "We and you in the same side. Why you kill us?"
And at that time, I see it as a dream. It's finally happening. And because all the time, we believed in these ideas, but we cannot do it. And finally, you can do it.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Ghufran's whole family, five brothers and two sisters, along with their mother, were involved in organising demonstrations in another city, Darayya, in south-western suburbs of Damascus. Darayya would become known as a school of nonviolent activism and, for a time, the beating heart of the Syrian revolution. But that also meant Darayya would be brutally punished by Assad in the months that followed. And one by one, every city that rose up against Assad would meet Darayya's fate.
Ghufran's youngest brother, Majed, was among the young people in Darayya who became very passionate about the revolution.
GHUFRAN KHULANI He leads a demonstration and also he speak in high voice in mic and, in kind of way, he leads a demonstration. And for the regime, this kind of person is important, so they want him by name. Because in Syria, first moment to start the demonstration is the most difficult one. And so, the person who will start it, regime always want him by name, because they know people will follow him.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Mukhabarat collaborators were working day and night trying to locate the leaders of the demonstrations in hopes of stopping them or at least diminishing their impact. They tried everything: random street arrests, house arrests, phone tapping. Everything.
GHUFRAN KHULANI They start searching for him. And at that time, he start not to sleep in our house. He sleep every day in different house to not make the regime catch him.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Like all the brave people in Darayya who marched together without fear of Assad's forces, they supported each other against the heavy hands of Mukhabarat.
GHUFRAN KHULANI We start a group of women to go also to visit families who have detainees and to support them, because my family has this situation of detention from 2003. So, we know how difficult it is. So, we start to go to that. To go to visit these families, to support them, to show them they are not alone.
NADIA AL-BUKAI When Sednaya detainees rebelled in March and July 2008, the regime was in its utmost power. But during the early days of the revolution, in 2011, Assad's men were floundering in their failure. They seemed to not know what the right move should be. Should the regime act as if it's listening or should it play on division? Or was their best course of action to increase violence?
The reality was the regime didn't have the luxury of time. Ben Ali of Tunisia fled his country after four weeks of protests. Mubarak of Egypt stepped down in eighteen days. Libya was on fire. Yemen was revolting. And Syrian tensions had been growing for weeks now. So, Assad started working through his playbook.
NEWS REPORTER 6 One refugee recently asked or CNN correspondent, Arwa Damon, "Why is our president?" They ask that daily in Syria. And daily, they were answered with lies and with gunfire and with torture.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Now, I've mentioned this before, but among Assad's lies was this act of fake listening. On the 21st of April 2011, Assad ended the state of emergency in Syria that had been imposed on the country since 1962. Consequently, he abolished the State Security Court, the same infamous court headed by Fayez al-Nouri, who sentenced Riyad and Diab to years in prison.
Assad wanted to create a new narrative, that he was serious about reforming the country and that he was listening. At the same time, Assad started to promote a counter narrative that protestors weren't peaceful, that they were paid by the West and other outside powers, that the scenes of violence against protestors were fabricated in the studios of Al-Jazeera in Qatar.
Spokespeople of the regime kept repeating these lies in the media, insisting that Syria was a victim of a universal conspiracy to bring it to its knees and that his forces were fighting armed protestors.
ABU EMAD I was living in al-Hajar al-Aswad, which is in Damascus area. And every Friday, there is the revolution protestors. After Jummah Salah, they are went out to say, "Allahu Akbar. [speaks in Arabic]."
You know what it is in – in English? No Bashar al-Assad. No Bashar regime anymore.
NADIA AL-BUKAI This is Abu Emad. He was a Syrian Army engineer at that time. He had been serving in the Syrian military since 1996.
ABU EMAD I see how the intelligence and the police and the army dealing with this kind of people, because I was living there in the same area, and my flat was the last of the flat. Okay? So, I can go to the roof and I see what is happening.
They choosing, the military or snipers. But from where these snipers, nobody knows. I saw them. I saw them on the other roofs. Snipers belonged to the government, to the regime, and they didn't shoot – for example, they didn't shoot anyone from the beirute stores who's carrying the – the labels or flag or is shouting. No. They choose one kid for ten or eleven years. They choose a big woman. They choose an very old man. They – they are shooting just to make the people very angry from the situation.
NADIA AL-BUKAI These actions were repeated everywhere in Syria. Eight days after abolishing the state of emergency, a child named Hamza Al-Khateeb, who was thirteen years old, was participating in a protest with his family in Deraa. In the chaos of the shooting, Hamza's family lost him between the panicking protestors. When things became quiet, they searched for his body in the streets, but didn't find anything. They searched for him at home, in the alleys. Everywhere. There was no trace of him. They later found out that the Air Force Intelligence had taken thirteen-year-old Hamza behind the sun. He was held inside a secret detention centre.
Weeks after his disappearance, Hamza's body emerged in the morgue, mutilated and showing horrible signs of torture, as well as bullet marks in the chest. Little Hamza became the first high-profile case of forced disappearance and death under torture in the Syrian revolution.
This horrendous crime showed the Syrians and the world that Assad lied about the reform. But he carried on anyway. On the 31st of May 2011, two and a half months after the start of the revolution, Assad announced his first presidential pardon after eleven years of presidency. He started to empty Sednaya of radical Islamists by reducing their sentences or pardoning them altogether.
Zahran Alloush, who would later command a jihadist legion called Jaysh al-Islam, was released.
Hassan Aboud, who would later lead another Jihadi militia coalition called Ahrar al-Sham, was released.
Issa al-Sheikh, who would later lead Suqour al-Sham Brigades, was released.
The three were known to some scholars as the Sednaya Company.
And dozens of other extremists, who would later join ISIS, were, like the previous names, all discharged from Sednaya and other distention centres on the same day, the 31st of May 2011. He was creating division in the country.
RIYAD AVLAR I was the last one in Sednaya with my few friends. They came and carry us to the Damascus Central Prison. It's like to carry somebody from the hell to the heaven. Yeah. I know it is a prison, but it was different. Sednaya was like – like a hell. Because I stayed after the riots. I stayed for three years in one cell. The door was closed. I didn't saw the sun at all—at all—for three years. Just in a place for seventy--five centimetres. For three years, I sat there, not moving.
After they carry me to the Centre Prison in Damascus, for the first time, I saw there, the sun. I looked up and I saw the sky. A blue sky. I was forgetting the sky itself, how it is.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Riyad wasn't freed from Sednaya like the radical Islamist detainees. He was sent to Damascus Central Prison, which is widely known as Adra.
RIYAD AVLAR There was a phone in Adra. I called him immediately. "Oh, Diab, I am now in the Adra Prison."
He said, "Oh, your God. Did you say the truth? You are in Adra Prison."
I said, "Okay. I am in Adra Prison. And they promised us to – they will let us out. Okay. We will be free, Diab."
He said, "Okay. I will come immediately."
DIAB SERRIH I wanted to go and see him. I mean, this is Riyad. I could not not go.
My dad heard me talking on the phone and insisted on coming, saying, "I won't let you go alone. I consider Riyad as much as son as you are." So, I accepted.
At that time, my dad knew a little bit about my activism in general. So, on the way to the prison, he asked me not to make a hero of myself with Riyad, saying, "Just shut up about it. Let's get through this safely."
When Riyad came, I saw him laughing. He was so happy about my father's visit. The happiness I saw in him meant a lot to me. The idea that you are not alone and never will be.
"I will not leave you alone. I'll keep coming until your deliverance."
I felt relieved that I was not abandoning my friend who remained in prison. I wouldn't leave him. Never ever.
RIYAD AVLAR I like his father. I like the old man. I wish my father came and visit me. But I was afraid my father to see me there.
DIAB SERRIH My father felt the same way. On top of the fact that he was a friend and like a son to him, he was also a foreigner in this country. It's not his country. It's not his homeland. And he was in a bad place. So, we couldn't leave him. And indeed, we kept visiting him.
I started to go alone sometimes without my father. I visited Riyad every month, once or twice. Sometimes, he would call me, telling me, "Bring me some books and come over."
NADIA AL-BUKAI Assad was emptying Sednaya to make room for other people. To collect them, his Mukhabarat started hunting. In the mind of Mukhabarat leaders, the existential threat to the regime has always been peaceful Syrian activists, and the regime wanted those people to be completely out of the equation.
GHUFRAN KHULANI He was in Damascus, not in Darayya. And when he arrived to Darayya, the demonstration now is finishing, and Assad was coming to Darayya to stop this demonstration. So, they start beating people. At that time, directly, he went to there, to demonstration.
This guy called [Islam], they beat him in the street. So, he went trying to help him. And they catch him with his car also, because he drove to this place to help up. Abdulsatar drove to this place to help. And they catch him, because he is helping.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Abdulsatar is Ghufran's older brother. The family called him Abd.
GHUFRAN KHULANI Abd was a person who, for me, the person who can I ask him for anything, and he can bring me what I want, because there is a, like, a gap age between me and him. But he's kind of brother who, like, spoiled you.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Four weeks after the enforced disappearance of Abd, his car was seen moving around their city. Abd wasn't the one behind the wheel, though. Every time the car passed by them, a different Assad thug, shabiha, or militia man was driving it. The family fear that Mukhabarat would punish Abd, because of his youngest brother, Majed, who was wanted by Assad intelligence for leading the protests.
GHUFRAN KHULANI We have this fear, and we hope but not to happen, but I think it's happened. Because when they took him, you don't know what happened after. Only you start research and collect information from people who saw what happened. Because not allow for any Syrian to ask about detainees, where he is, or what happened, or if we can see him.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Ghufran's family knew Abd was taken by the notorious Air Force Intelligence.
GHUFRAN KHULANI We start to go to the place where they catch him, and we ask people who saw the – what happening. To be sure what happened, we ask the person what did he see and if he can tell us something. And also, after that, we tried to help him, to know if we can help him. But after only when we are very sad and busy with Abd and what happening, another tragedy happened. That they catch Majed.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Majed hadn't been staying in the family house since he knew that Mukhabarat henchmen where after him. As I said before, he was very cautious. But caution wouldn't protect Majed for long.
GHUFRAN KHULANI They arrest Majed in – in following month, after detain Abd. Majed was forced to give himself as his friend had earlier been arrested by the Mukhabarat who had threatened to kill him unless my brother Majed give himself up.
NADIA AL-BUKAI In June 2011, three months after the beginning of the peaceful revolution, the regime's violence against protestors had reached new bloody levels, and Syrian army tanks filled the streets where protests were taking place.
NEWS REPORTER 7 After weeks of being ordered to fire into crowds, more and more soldiers don't want to shoot anymore. Many are defecting and fleeing.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Refusing orders to fire into their countrymen and women, some soldiers started defecting. Some would go to neighbouring Turkey while others would join the ranks of protesters, using the weapons they fled with to defend themselves from Assad's tanks and snipers. This phenomenon would later become known as the Free Syrian Army.
When the Syrian army began to show signs of disintegration, Assad turned to his axis of resistance allies, Iran and Hezbollah, for backup.
ABU EMAD I saw the Irani trainer coming to the military school, training the Assad militia how – how to defeat the protestors, how to kill the protestors using the motorcycle. Even I saw more than one hundred motorcycle in the military school, and they asked for a huge amount of ammunition to train them.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The war drums were rolling for Assad. He wanted an armed conflict from the beginning, and now he got it. A war that would blur the lines between right and wrong and allow him to look like a legitimate president defending his country from the insurgents.
Every chess piece was in place on Assad's war table. Armed rebels, radical Islamists, and jihadists and Iranian soldiers and Hezbollah militias.
Assad unleashed hell upon his people. He threw everything at them. Barrel bombs, air bombs, and plane machine guns. On the ground, his tanks and militia men burnt the streets to the ground.
The slogan, "Assad or we burn the country," which was chanted by Assad's loyalists and shabiha would later become a reality.
And away from the cameras and the eyes of the world, his Mukhabarat went on to wage a silent war on the people.
GHUFRAN KHULANI They brought Majed on the street of Darayya and they force Majed to call a lot of his friends. They tried to catch people the same way. But then, you knew it was that Majed catch.
So, there is – was kind of [speaks in Arabic] or code and a regular word. If you use it in some way, that means the regime with you or they catch you. And I know that from my brother. I called him directly, because I heard this news and I hope it's not correct. So, I was happy when his phone rang, because, usually, Mukhabarat make the phone not work. So, I said, "Oh, he is safe."
But when he answered hello and, second word, when he said [speaks in Arabic], I know that he's not – not this his voice.
And I said to him, "Are you safe?"
And he said yes. Even he said yes. I said, I know from his tone and from his personality, I know he's not safe.
NADIA AL-BUKAI This tactic of luring activists from hiding using phone calls from friends was used often by the intelligence forces at the time. A primary example in the city of Darayya itself was twenty-four-year-old Ghiyath Matar, one of the icons of the Syrian revolution.
Ghiyath Matar was a lead organiser of the protests during which roses and water bottles were handed out to soldiers that Assad sent to fire at protestors. His trailblazing peaceful activism earned him the nickname "Little Gandhi." But it also sealed his fate.
A brother of Ghiyath's friend was forced by Mukhabarat to call Ghiyath, asking for help. And even though he suspected it was a trap, Ghiyath went anyway. Days later, Ghiyath's dead body was returned to his family bearing signs of torture.
Assad's Mukhabarat went on to kidnap, disappear, and torture more, filling Sednaya and other detention centres with activists, politicians, defected soldiers and officers, and ordinary citizens whose only crime was being from an area that rose up against Assad. To them, every remaining non-violent activist, like Ghiyath and Majed, was a potential target. Forced disappearance became a weapon to instil fear in the hearts of Syrians.
BARBARA WALTERS Do you feel guilty?
BASHAR AL-ASSAD I – I did my best to protect the people. So, you cannot feel guilty when you do your best.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Assad laughed at the question. Of course, he didn't feel guilty, because he had done his best to protect his people. And by his people, he means his regime, his Mukhabarat, and his loyalists. Not us. He tried to eradicate us or remove us from existence. But as I said at the beginning of this episode, nations are built on stories.
When I tell the story of the Syrian revolution, I will always remember Diab and his father telling Riyad in prison that everything will be okay, soldiers and officers refusing to participate in the bloodshed, thousands of people like Ghufran and her family marching in the streets despite the disappearance and abduction of their loved ones—Majed, Abd, Hamza, Ghiyath, and thousands of peaceful protestors like them.
I will tell people about Kafranbel, the tiny town in northern Syria that became known around the world for the witty banners carried by sons and daughters on Friday protests.
I will talk about the White Helmets, ordinary men and women across Syria who rushed into the aftermath of bombs to pull civilians from under the rubble.
I will talk about the heroic doctors and nurses who, after the systemic, deliberate targeting of hospitals by the Syrian regime, moved hospitals underground into caves and basements to continue saving lives.
I will also remember my feeling when I was nine and was holding my father's hand in a demonstration in our village for the first time in our lives. I remember asking him if I could clap and chant with the people and him saying, "Of course." I remember how I screamed how it felt so good to be angry at Assad and his regime and exhaling his existence and fear off my chest. To say no aloud.
Some would say the Syrian revolution is like the legend of Icarus in Greek mythology. Icarus had wings made of wax and feathers to help him escape from imprisonment. He liked flying and kept going up, but he got so close, too close, to the sun. The bright star melted the wax that had kept his wings, and Icarus fell towards the water.
But our Icarus hasn't died yet. Despite the damage in his wings, he refuses to give up. He's trying to get back up again. Syria's Icarus hasn't ended his journey yet. And so, does Riyad, Diab, Ghufran, and Abu Emad. Their stories haven't ended yet.
Next week on Behind the Sun, we will continue with Ghufran and Abu Emad in the underground network of prisons run by Assad's Mukhabarat, and we will learn more about Riyad's health and Diab's luck that saved him from death.
Behind the Sun is a co-production between Message Heard and The Syria Campaign, in collaboration with the Association of Detainees and the Missing (ADMSP) and the Syrian Center for Justice and Accountability (SJAC) under its project, On the Margins No More.
This series is written and produced by Muhammad Farouk.
Thank you to Ranim, Ola, Sarah, Mais, and Ruairi from The Syria Campaign and Rahaf from ADMSP for helping put this series together.
Voiceover for Diab was presented by Mahmoud Nowara.
Editing, mixing, and sound design was done by Jarek Zaba and Ivan Easley.
Additional production support from Molly Freeman, Tom Biddle, and Lincoln Van der Westhuizen. Sandra Ferrari is the executive producer. The theme music is by Milo Evans.
My name is Nadia al-Bukai.
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