letter from

Welcome to Free Meeting the rebel government of an embattled country By Anand Gopal

bu Malek was pacing back and of Taftanaz. (Malek’s name and those contacts with the international com- forthA in the hospital parking lot, mut- of some of the people mentioned in munity. He was proud of the rebel tering to himself and firing off phone this article have been changed.) Soon councils—they were proof that Syria calls. “Don’t say did not need Presi- ‘How are you’ to dent Bashar al- me,” he told one Assad—but he wor- caller, “because I ried that the other am not fine, I am council members very, very, very, had been captured very bad.” The or killed. hospital was in the Malek agreed to Turkish town of help me get to Antakya, and the Taftanaz, but he staff was treating demanded inform- several rebels who ation in return: had been wound- “I want to know ed in the fighting if my family across the border survived—and I in Syria, about ten want to know if my miles away. The revolution was in survived.” the midst of a major offensive, raveling with sweeping through Tme from the Turk- one northern town ish border to Taf- after another with tanks and heavy after he learned that the army had tanaz was Wassim Omar, an acquain- artillery, trying to kill as many rebel surrounded Taftanaz, phone lines were tance of Malek’s whom I would see fighters as possible before April 12, cut, so he sent a friend to retrieve his several times during the week I spent when a ceasefire brokered by former family. The friend returned with the in Syria. He had access to a network U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan news that Malek’s mother was missing, of revolutionaries along the way, al- would go into effect. The revolution his cousins were missing, and his most all of them friends he had made had been grinding on for more than a house had been razed. during the uprising. Our driver avoid- year, and as many as 10,000 people The government had lost control of ed the highway and hopscotched had died already. Taftanaz near the start of the revolu- from village to village along back From Turkey, Malek had followed tion, and an intricate system of popu- roads; with the mobile-phone system events closely and stayed in contact larly elected councils called tansiqiyyat disabled, it was impossible to know with his family in the northern town had been created over the past year— about troop movements and the loca- “like miniparliaments, a government for tion of army checkpoints. Anand Gopal writes frequently about the Middle East and South Asia. His book us,” as Malek put it. He had been cho- Omar had been studying Arabic about the war in Afghanistan is forthcoming sen to represent Taftanaz in Turkey, literature at Aleppo University be- from Henry Holt. where he raised funds and cultivated fore the revolution began. Now he

Photograph of a man walking through the ruins of a school one week after the Syrian army’s April 3 and 4, 2012, assault on Taftanaz. All photographs by Victor J. Blue LETTER FROM TAFTANAZ 35

(35,38,41,42) Gopal Final4 REV2.indd_0626 35 6/26/12 10:25 AM traveled between Turkey and Syria involved in the rebel movement, and of olive trees stretch outward in ev- often, smuggling rebel propaganda they went from house to house hunting ery direction, although in recent and supplies. This was his first trip them. Because most of the townspeople years drought has browned patches back over the border since reports of had left, however, there were very few of them. The town is typical of the army’s campaign in Taftanaz had arrests or casualties. northern Syria; there are dozens like reached Antakya. On the outskirts of , I found one it nearby, an archipelago of villages The roads were empty, and in the of those who had stayed behind. Nizar known for their Babylonian cunei- tiny mountain towns the shops stood Abdo lived in a housing complex built form tablets and preserved sections shuttered and padlocked. The rebels around a central courtyard. When the of Roman road. Life there is slow, once maintained checkpoints openly in soldiers arrived, Abdo hid in a neighbor’s conservative, and pious. Since Hafez al- Assad took power in 1970, Syria has been ruled by an alliance between Assad’s mainly Alawite mili- tary and wealthy Sunni businessmen from the cities. The government provides food subsidies, jobs programs, and funds for rural develop- ment for the people of places like Taf- tanaz, but in return demands absolute fealty. Businesses fa- vored by the regime win no-bid and be- low-market con- tracts, creating what Syria scholar Bassam Haddad called “a crony capitalist state par excellence.” When Bashar al- Assad became pres- ident after his fa- ther’s death in daylight, but now they confined their house. He watched through the shutters 2000, he tried to liberalize the coun- activity to the nighttime. “If you could as a tank wheeled in front of his prop- try’s economy. The government eased have seen this place before the fighting,” erty, took aim, and fired. Afterward price controls on basic goods like fer- Omar told me. “It was alive.” soldiers bulldozed the remains. tilizer and animal feed. It reduced We had yet to come across any vil- Standing where his house had once subsidies to the oil sector, leading to lages touched by violence. But then, as been, Abdo admitted that he had at- a 42 percent jump in the price of fuel. we pulled into the town of Killi, about tended a few protests during the start Meanwhile, a vicious drought dried up ten miles south of the border, we saw a of the revolution. He said he had never the countryside, prompting thousands multistory granite house with a col- been political; more basic frustrations to flee to provincial towns like Homs lapsed roof, yawning holes in its façade, drove him: “You have to pay money to and , or to smaller communities and rubble everywhere. Omar gasped. get a job, otherwise the government like Taftanaz, which did not have the According to locals, Syrian aircraft won’t help. . . . You have to pay bribes.” capacity to absorb the influx. had circled overhead for days, taking Now homeless, he was unsure where “There were no jobs, and if you reconnaissance photos as almost all he would go. But, embittered as he found one, you had to see the civilians and rebels fled the village. was, he still tried to see an upside. mukhabarat,” the secret police, for Then, on April 6—four days before we “At least,” he said, “we permission to work, Omar said. “If arrived—tanks came and fired from aren’t Taftanaz.” you wanted to buy a house or travel close range at this house and more than outside the country, you needed to a dozen others. Soldiers had a list of he 15,000 residents of Taftanaz see them.” Office workers moonlight- those who had gone to protests or were areT mostly farmers and traders: rows ed as cab drivers. Farmers doubled as

36 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2012 Photograph of a demonstration after Friday prayers in Taftanaz, April 13, 2012

(35-42) Gopal Final4.indd_0625 36 6/25/12 9:17 AM scrap dealers. In every corner of soci- stay away from politics. When he the entire world to see on YouTube. ety, but especially in the countryside, left prison, he went straight These deserters joined what came to the social contract holding the to a demonstration. be known as the . Assad regime together (When I met some of them just after was failing. nlike in Egypt and Tunisia, the I crossed the border, they told me, USyrian elite remained glued together “Welcome to Free Syria.”) Awdeh, n March 6, 2011, a group of ad- in the face of the protests. But the with his aviator sunglasses and Dolce olescentO boys, inspired by the Egyp- conscript army started to buckle, and & Gabbana jeans, assumed command tian and Tunisian revolutions, painted some soldiers found they could not fire of a group of nearly a hundred fighters. antigovernment graffiti on walls in on their countrymen. I had met one of Many activists worried about the the desert town of Daraa. After word spread that the boys had been arrested, Daraa’s streets filled with protesters. In , a few miles down the highway from Taf- tanaz, Omar and his friends watched the news in amaze- ment. Later that week, fifteen of them gathered late at night at a mosque to plan a protest, making signs with anti-regime slogans. The following day, they stepped into the town’s main square for the first protest of their lives. Omar was terrified: he knew the price of his actions would be imprisonment, and that the regime could target his fam- ily. But, to his surprise, the people of them in Turkey, a twenty-seven-year- militarization of the conflict, which Binnish joined in. They came from all old named Abdullah Awdeh. He was pulled peaceful protesters into a over town, shouting, “Daraa, we are serving in the elite 11th Armored Di- confrontation with a powerful army with you! We in Binnish are with you!” vision, which put down protests that they could not defeat. But in By April 2011, demonstrations around the country, when one day he small towns like Taftanaz, where were popping up all across the was directed to confront demonstra- government soldiers had repeatedly country. The Syrian army tried to tors near Homs. Their commander put down demonstrations with gun- cut them down, firing on and kill- said that the protesters were armed fire and thrown activists in prison, ing scores of civilians, only to in- terrorists, but when Awdeh arrived he desperation trumped long-term spire further protests. The saw only men and women with their strategy. Abu Malek likened the ac- mukhabarat, meanwhile, targeted families: boys perched atop their fa- tions of the rebels to those of a the core activists in each town. thers’ shoulders, girls with their faces mother: “She may seem innocent, One afternoon, agents showed up at painted in the colors of the Syrian but try to take away her children Omar’s door. “They treated me like flag, mothers waving banners. He and how will she act? Like a crimi- a toy, throwing me here and there,” decided to desert. nal animal. That’s what we are be- he recalled. He said he was kept in By June 2011, there were hundreds ing reduced to, in order to defend captivity for two months, frequent- like him; nearly every day, another our families and our villages.” ly strapped to a gurney, electrocut- uniformed soldier faced a camera, held In Taftanaz, fighters from the FSA ed, and beaten. A general finally re- up his military identity card, and pro- started protecting demonstrations, leased Omar after he promised to fessed support for the revolution for quietly standing in the back and

Photograph of Ahmed Ahad, eighty-seven, standing in the home where Mustafa Ahmed Ahad, his sixty-seven-year-old son, was killed in the Syrian army’s assault on Taftanaz the week prior LETTER FROM TAFTANAZ 37

(35-42) Gopal Final4.indd_0625 37 6/25/12 9:17 AM watching for mukhabarat. For the first turned to Taftanaz, this time to end a hard stare. He had been a university time, the balance of power shifted in the insurgency there student, but “the revolution makes favor of the revolution, so much so once and for all. choices for you,” he said, and now he that government forces could no lon- was a rebel sniper. He described for me ger operate openly. Party officials and hen I reached Taftanaz on what had happened on April 3. secret agents vanished, leaving the AprilW 9, the air in the town stank of It began early in the morning, when town to govern itself. manure, hay, and gunpowder. The helicopters appeared above Taftanaz and This created new problems: smell of smoke grew more powerful fired into the town center. Then, around courts stopped working, trash piled near houses, and once inside you 7:00 a.m., the mortars started. (A farmer high on the streets, and the police found your eyes watering and your named Muhammad Abdul Haseeb was at home at the time. “I got all the children and women together and ran out,” he told me later. “One of the shells dropped really close by, but I couldn’t see where it hit. Later I learned that it killed my brother.”) Most of the resi- dents escaped. By around 9:00 a.m., tanks had arrived at the outskirts of town, and they shot at anything that moved. A plump forty-six-year-old man named Mas- sous had loaded doz- ens of relatives into his truck and was about to turn onto the main highway when he saw a tank about a thousand feet away. It fired and hit his truck, stayed home. To fill the vacuum, cit- throat burning. Many of the locals killing his father and mother and injur- izens came together to elect coun- who were left had taken to wearing ing his ten-year-old daughter. cils—farmers formed their own, as surgical masks. Around the same time, nearly a did merchants, laborers, teachers, Every fourth or fifth house was com- hundred men gathered inside a students, health-care workers, judg- pletely destroyed; many of those still house near the town’s center to de- es, engineers, and the unemployed. standing had black streaks climbing cide whether to retreat, as rebels In some cases, the councils merged outward from the window frames. Boys elsewhere had done, or stay and with pre-existing activist networks were scrubbing graffiti off the walls: fight. A few dozen chose the former, called local coordinating commit- assad, or the country burns, signed but most stayed. “We didn’t want to tees. They in turn chose delegates by the assad death brigade 76. end up like other cities, crawling to sit on a citywide council, which For three days I explored the gutted back after the army leaves,” Rami in Taftanaz and surrounding towns town, speaking to everyone I could said. “Our neighbors needed some- was the only form of government about the battle. I spent my nights in a thing to believe in.” the citizenry recognized. neighboring village—government sol- As the army shelled the town, the Syrian authorities repeatedly sent diers conducted raids in the evening— men spread throughout the warren of tanks in to Taftanaz and neighbor- but each day I returned to learn more. low-slung concrete buildings, onto roof- ing villages, targeting the new On the first day, I sought out Abu tops, into homes, and through alleyways. council members. After every intru- Malek’s relatives—almost everyone Rami went to the main road through sion, the rebels would reassemble. knew him—and found Abdullah Rami, town and helped bury I.E.D.’s, most of But on April 3, the Syrian forces re- a young man with sunken cheeks and them assembled in Turkey and smuggled

38 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2012 Photograph of a young man walking past burned cars, Taftanaz, April 12, 2012

(35,38,41,42) Gopal Final4 REV2.indd_0626 38 6/26/12 10:25 AM into the country, and rebels hid nearby his grandson Muhammad, a medical Mustafa Ahmed Ahad’s place, he went with the detonators. volunteer who had tended to wounded into the bathroom and locked the door. Around noon, a tank approached the fighters, his family decided to flee. But Soldiers ransacked the house and set it building where Rami was hiding. A the old man insisted on staying be- on fire. A few days later, Mustafa’s second pulled up alongside it and swung hind. He would mourn in his own way, eighty-seven-year-old father, Ahmed, its turret slowly around. Then Rami he said, in the home he had grown old returned to find his house a pile of black- heard a deafening boom and saw the in, in the town his grandson had died ened rubble and his son missing. Eventu- tank pop up in the air—an I.E.D. explo- for. And besides, he figured, the army ally he found Mustafa’s charred remains sion, which he had captured on video would have no interest in an eighty- buried under slabs of fallen concrete. and later showed off proudly. After a few two-year-old. “He was poor, he was a worker,” the elder minutes, the second tank was also struck as it tried to retreat. Across town, an- other rebel group was in a firefight, and Rami could hear the reports from their Kalash- nikovs. The rebels used civilian houses as cover and, at one point, trapped sol- diers in an alleyway and shot them all. By late afternoon, though, the advan- tage had shifted to the army. Soldiers left their tanks to cir- cumvent the I.E.D.’s and fought their way to the center of town. They surrounded a house full of rebels, a few of whom climbed to the roof to signal surrender. The troops responded with heavy fire, killing al- most everyone inside and out. On the morning of April 4, soldiers Ahad said. “He was a grandfather, he By sunset, soldiers returned to their from the 76th Armored Brigade re- didn’t go to demonstrations.” tanks or were billeted in homes (both turned to town. They came with officials A large number of women, the el- sides, lacking night-vision goggles, from the Military Intelligence Director- derly, and aid workers had taken refuge avoided fighting after dark). The rebels ate and armed Alawite civilians referred in the basement of Rahim Ghazal’s cen- regrouped in a house on the town’s to as shabeeha. When soldiers burst trally located home. “They broke into edge. There Rami learned that his through Saleh Ghazal’s front door, he the house and found the door to the brother had been killed. hid upstairs in his bedroom. They raced basement,” one of the women told me. A short while later, his mother sent from room to room, shouting out the “The gunmen ordered everyone upstairs word to him that soldiers had found the names of his family members, loudly and took the men with them for ques- shelter where Taftanaz’s women were enough for neighbors to hear. When tioning. They ordered us to go back hiding. They threatened to take revenge they found Ghazal, they shot him, then downstairs, and then we heard gunfire.” on the women if the fight continued. lit his corpse on fire. As it burned, they Government forces dragged nine Dejected and cornered, the men voted went downstairs and wrote a message on men and boys outside, lined them up to retreat. By sunrise, there the wall in silver paint: nobody con- against a wall, and executed them. The were no rebels left. trols syria except bashar. Then they soldiers came back to the basement doused the floors with gasoline and set and selected five additional men, then aleh Ghazal, a member of Taf- the place ablaze. took them to a nearby shop, where tanaz’sS large Ghazal clan, was a stub- The soldiers visited every house in they were lined up and executed. Two born man. After a sniper’s bullet struck the neighborhood. As they neared volunteers for the Red Crescent were

Photograph of a resident compiling a list of the dead several days after the assault on Taftanaz LETTER FROM TAFTANAZ 39

(35-42) Gopal Final4.indd_0625 39 6/25/12 9:17 AM shot in the yard outside Ghazal’s house. I went to Abu Malek’s home and was too dangerous to desert. When he By the time Syrian troops left that found that it, too, had been burned to finished his service, in November 2011, evening, there was not much left of the ground. After relatives cleared the he came home to a transformed Taf- Taftanaz. In each house, the story was rubble, they found a body too badly tanaz: ordinary people were running the same: any male who was found was disfigured to identify. They added it the town. “It was like a renaissance,” summarily executed, and his house and about thirty others to a mass grave he said, “a new look at life.” was burned. on the town’s edge. Many of the tomb- During the massacre, he fought At least forty-nine civilians were stones there mark the remains of alongside the rebels and then aban- killed in the massacre, and nearly 500 Malek’s relatives. At some point dur- doned the town at night. When he re- houses were destroyed. On my second ing the killing, locals watched as a turned to his scorched home, he headed straight for his prized library. “I saw the burned paper,” he told me, “and tears came to my eyes.” He had been studying for a master’s degree in English transla- tion and had main- tained the library for years, collecting books by Shake- speare, Arthur Mill- er, Samuel Beckett. “Some say Godot is God,” he said, “but I say he is hope. Our revolution is now waiting for Godot.” Matar brought me to a mosque that sits next to one of the mass graves. Inside, there were heaps of clothes, boxes of Turkish biscuits, and crates of bottled wa- ter. An old bald man with a walrus mus- tache studied a led- day in town, I saw a crowd of wailing Syrian soldier refused to carry out an ger with intensity while a group of old women surrounding a pickup truck. In order and was executed. They re- men around him argued about how the back, flies swarmed around a tar- trieved his body later and interred him much charity they could demand from black decomposing body. The missing in the mass grave, marking his tomb- Taftanaz’s rich to rebuild the town. This flesh above the mandibles exposed stone simply as soldier. was the public-affairs committee, one of what looked to be a set of gold teeth. A second mass grave sat on the the village’s revolutionary councils. The A group of men pushed a teenage girl opposite side of town, where more mustached man slammed his hands on toward the truck; upon seeing the corpses are buried, rebels alongside the floor and shouted, “This is a revolu- teeth, she crumpled with a shriek of civilians. Next to it, a large hole tion of the poor! The rich will have to recognition. It was Jamil Setoot, an had been dug. A little boy was play- accept that.” He turned to me and ex- office worker who had been heading to ing nearby, and when he saw me plained, “We’ve gone to every house in his job in Aleppo on the morning of peering into the hole, he pointed to town and determined what they April 3. As he waited by the highway it and said, “For when need”—he pointed at the ledger—“and for a taxi, soldiers were moving into they come back.” compared it with what donations come Taftanaz. They shot him and tossed in. Everything gets recorded and can be him into a field, then killed the cows brahim Matar served in the army seen by the public.” and sheep in the area for good mea- unitI that put down the early protests All around Taftanaz, amid the de- sure. When the property’s owner re- in Daraa. He didn’t believe the govern- struction, rebel councils like this were turned days later he found Setoot’s ment’s assertions that the protests were meeting—twenty-seven in all, and each body lying among the animal carcasses. organized by Al Qaeda, but he felt it of them had elected a delegate to sit on

40 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2012 Photograph of a home destroyed during the assault on Taftanaz

(35-42) Gopal Final4.indd_0625 40 6/25/12 9:17 AM the citywide council. They were a sign told me. He had joined the Taftanaz The SRGC sends representatives to of a deeper transformation that the student committee, the council that the , the ex- revolution had wrought in Syria: Bashar plans protests and distributes propa- patriate body based in Turkey that has al-Assad once subdued small towns like ganda, and before April 3 he had been Washington’s main interlocutor, these with an impressive apparatus of helped produce the town’s newspaper, but the relationship between the two secret police, party hacks, and yes-men; Revolutionary Words. Each week, coun- organizations is complicated, and now such control was impossible with- cil members laid out the text and pho- many in Taftanaz expressed their dis- out an occupation. The Syrian army, tos on old laptops, sneaked the files dain for the SNC. “Who are they?” however, lacked the numbers to con- into Turkey for printing, and smuggled Omar asked me. “What have they trol the hinterlands—it entered, the finished bundles back into Syria. done? They are busy talking to for- fought, and moved on to the next tar- get. There could be no return to the sta- tus quo, it seemed, even if the way for- ward was unclear. In the neighbor- ing town of Binnish, I visited the farmers’ council, a body of about a thousand members that set grain prices and ad- judicated land dis- putes. Its leader, an old man I’ll call Ab- dul Hakim, ex- plained to me that before the revolu- tion, farmers were forced to sell grain to the government at a price that barely cov- ered the cost of pro- duction. Following the uprising, the farmers tried to sell directly to the town at almost double the former rates. But locals balked and The newspaper featured everything eigners but they don’t know the situa- complained to the citywide council, from frontline reporting to disquisitions tion inside Syria.” which then mandated a return to the on revolutionary morality to histories I asked Elizabeth O’Bagy, an ana- old prices—which has the farmers dis- of the French Revolution. (“This is not lyst who studies the gruntled, but Hakim acknowledged an intellectual’s revolution,” Matar said. at the Institute for the Study of War, that in this revolution, “we have to give “This is a popular revolution. We need about the U.S. approach to these two to each as he needs.” to give people ideas, theory.”) different rebel organizations. She said It was a phrase I heard many times, Most opposition towns elect a dele- she doubted the usefulness of “sup- even from landowners and merchants gate to one of the fifty or so district-wide porting a group like the SNC, which who might otherwise bristle at the councils across the country. At the next on paper pays tribute to all the West- revolution’s egalitarian rhetoric—they level up is the Syrian Revolution Gen- ern ideals we hold dear but has abso- cannot ignore that many on the front eral Command, the closest thing to a lutely no legitimacy on the ground.” lines come from society’s bottom rungs. nationwide revolutionary institution. It Washington officials, however, At one point in March, the citywide claims to represent 70 percent of the have said they prefer to deal with council enforced price controls on rice district-wide councils. The SRGC coor- known quantities like the SNC rather and heating oil, undoing, locally, the dinates protests and occasionally gives than the grassroots opposition, which most unpopular economic reforms of the movement political direction: activ- operates deep inside the country and the previous decade. ists in Taftanaz told me that they some- whose leaders usually stay anonymous “We have to take from the rich in times followed its suggestions concern- to stay alive. To complicate matters, our village and give to the poor,” Matar ing their publications. some towns have competing councils.

Photograph of men and boys at a mass grave for victims of the Taftanaz massacre LETTER FROM TAFTANAZ 41

(35,38,41,42) Gopal Final4 REV2.indd_0626 41 6/26/12 10:25 AM The various bodies have only re- and leader Hassan Nasral- over armed rebel groups on the inside; cently begun to formalize their vi- lah. Omar had arranged for his com- each of the hundreds of insurgent bat- sion of a post-Assad society, even if rades to take me back to Turkey while talions operate autonomously, although their constituent elements are al- he stayed on in Binnish to prepare the they often coordinate their activities. ready carrying this vision next issue of Revolutionary Words. The ceasefire barely held up for a day, out in practice. Darkness had fallen, the army offensive and in June a U.N. official described the had given way to a shaky ceasefire, and conflict as a civil war. In Turkey, Malek he village of al-Fua runs right rebels thought they had the roads to continued to raise funds and buy weap- upT against Binnish. The two look al- themselves. But when we approached a ons for the Taftanaz rebels. Once, I went most indistinguishable—the same checkpoint, it wasn’t clear whether it with him to a tiny office in a working- shabby buildings, the same patches was controlled by rebels, by the army, class section of Antakya, where he of drying olive groves. But whereas or by the Alawite shabeeha. The driver haggled with a man over the price of Binnish is a town mobilized from top swerved abruptly onto the shoulder and roadside-bomb detonators, the use of to bottom in support of the revolu- sent one of the passengers into a nearby which Malek said he had learned from tion, al-Fua is a Shia village, a rarity village to fetch another vehicle, which “a friend in another country.” in the swath of Sunni countryside carried me onward via side roads while Some of the rebel groups had con- around Taftanaz, and its residents the first car headed through the check- tacts with the United States, which support Assad’s government. point as a decoy. was helping to coordinate the flow of Many Sunnis see the Shia and Shia We reached the border just after money from the governments of the Alawites as inseparable from the regime; dawn. I ran across a field with a Syrian Gulf states. Others were developing the Shia and Alawites, for their part, refugee family at my side, heading to- their own patrons, a sort of privatiza- fear Sunni reprisals. Revolutionaries in ward a barbed-wire fence. We found a tion of the armed movement similar to Binnish told me that their town had gap and crawled through what took place in Libya. Malek re- escaped the army’s northern offensive to Turkey. ceived a steady stream of visitors, most- because they promised to massacre al- ly wealthy businessmen, from the Gulf. Fua if they were touched. Even Matar, hen I handed Abu Malek my He knew that such pacts were danger- with his talk of the French Revolution notebookW filled with the names of the ous, but he believed the exigencies of and equality, told me, “I have relations Taftanaz dead, he fell silent. After a war demanded them. with everyone, with Christians, with while, he said, “I feel like I am about Still, in Taftanaz the revolt felt in- Druze, with all kinds of people—but not to burst.” He pointed to the names: tensely local. On my last afternoon with Shia.” “He was just a teacher; he had a small there, as the muezzin’s noon call to Liberal activists from Syria’s cities piece of land, that’s all; I had spoken prayer sounded, I walked through the are dismayed at this divide, but theirs to him just last week.” Nineteen mem- town’s central square. It was Friday, is a revolt so different from that of the bers of Malek’s family had been killed. the traditional day of protest in the conservative countryside that they Later that day, another relative from Muslim world. You could feel every- seem, at times, like two different upris- Taftanaz made it across the border to where the heavy atmosphere of defeat: ings stitched together. The revolution- report that seven more bodies had been the town had been reduced to heaps aries have failed to make significant found, some of them apparently execut- of rotting trash and broken concrete, headway in Damascus and Aleppo, ed in a lineup. “Before, I just wanted to and not much else. And yet after the Syria’s two largest cities, where, despite kill Bashar al-Assad,” Malek said. “But prayers were over, men and boys left a few recent bombings, the alliance of now I must kill all of his family.” the mosques and headed toward the the industrialist aristocracy and the Had it been wise for the guerrillas to square. Waving the old pre-Assad Syr- Assad security apparatus remains firm- try to defend Taftanaz rather than ian flag, they chanted, “God loves the ly in place, and where the well-heeled retreat, as they had in other towns? It martyr! God is the greatest!” see the countryside awash in chaos (a was a question that Malek said Riad al- The Syrian army’s helicopters buzzed Bloomberg headline from April read: Asaad, leader of the Free Syrian Army, overhead, watching. Protesters climbed “Syria Elite Dance to Dawn as Risk of had put to him at their headquarters in atop the ruined buildings surrounding Assad Collapse Fades”). a Turkish border camp. “I shouted at the square and waved their banners. Rebels in rural communities have him, ‘Who are you to ask me anything?’ ” This was the first demonstration since been pulled deep into asymmetric Malek recalled. “ ‘You sit here and eat the massacre. Here and there in the warfare, which has opened the upris- and sleep and talk to the media! We’re melee men burst into tears as they saw ing to more radical influences. Omar inside, we aren’t cowards like you.’ ” friends and relatives for the first time. told me that Salafis, ultraconservative Malek called the Free Syrian Army The protest was a ritual of survival, part Islamists who have operated under- a “fiction” meant to give Western gov- of a revolution that seemingly can’t be ground for years, have openly joined ernments an impression of unity. When won yet somehow refuses to be extin- the revolt in Binnish, although “they I asked Ibrahim Matar’s commander in guished. On a mound of twisted metal keep to themselves.” Taftanaz about the FSA leadership, he and concrete shards that had once been On the way back to the border, our answered, “If I ever see those dogs here a house, a group unfurled a banner that driver celebrated the Sunni fighters and I’ll shoot them myself.” The Turkey- read, even from the rubble, we will sang songs poking fun at the Shia, Iran, based commanders exert no control fight the regime. n

42 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2012

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