Zeit Online
"The father of all Syrians has left us." Those were the words used on Syrian national television to announce the death of Hafez Assad on June 10, 2000, a sweltering summer day in the Syrian capital of Damascus. I was just nine years old, but I knew this was something big – and I was terrified. I ran to my uncle's house across the street to find my cousin. She was on the first-floor balcony, so I called to her from the street: "He died, he died, Hafez Assad is dead!" My cousin, who was a little older than me, quickly ran downstairs to put her hand over my mouth. She didn’t believe me until I told her to turn on the TV and see for herself.
The only way to describe how we felt in that moment of uncertainty – after three decades of Hafez Assad as president – is that Syrians were afraid of what the future might bring. Hafez Assad had served as president of Syria since 1971 and was responsible for establishing an authoritarian government under the control of the Ba'ath Party. He had held many important positions in government – the last as minister of defense – before seizing power himself in 1970, when he toppled President Salah Jadid and appointed himself the undisputed leader of Syria.
Hafez locked Salah Jadid away in the Mezze Prison in Damascus, where Jadid remained until his death in 1993. To Syrians and the outside world, the coup seemed calm and bloodless and the only evidence of change was the disappearance of free newspapers, radio and television stations. After that, all media was controlled by the state.
Hanging on to power was his real achievement
Hafez Assad called his military coup "The Corrective Movement" and it is still celebrated as a national holiday known as 16 November Day, when the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party celebrates its so-called "accomplishments". Hafez Assads real achievement, though, was the lengths he was willing to go to hang on to power after the coup. One of the most notorious incidents took place in 1982 in Hama. The Muslim Brotherhood used mosque loudspeakers to urge people to take to the streets in protest against Hafez Assad and kill one of the leaders of the Ba’ath Party. In response, the dictator ordered his army to crush the movement, with troops ultimately demolishing half of Hama Province and killing more than 10,000 civilians.
Born in the 1990s, I did not experience this history that shaped today’s Syria. I grew up in Muadamiyat al-Sham, a suburb in the western part of Damascus, a community where people would talk about everything, but would change the subject immediately if politics came up. This was not only true for my family, but for every family who lived there.
Many people in this community have now left Syria in the wake of the revolution that began in 2011. It all started with peaceful demonstrations, but very soon the soldiers and militias of Bashar Assad began to brutally suppress these protests. They arrested and killed demonstrators and activists and shot at innocent people in the streets. As the conflict turned first into a civil war and then into a proxy war, many people had to flee to neighbouring countries. It had become too dangerous to stay in Syria.
I was also forced to leave at the end of 2013. I was about to be arrested, but was able to get out even as other members of my family were arrested by the Assad regime. After a long journey, I ultimately ended up in Berlin, where I now have the opportunity to help Syrian voices to be heard.
Shortly after Hafez Assads death, his 34-year-old son Bashar Assad took his place as the new president. The minimum age required by the Syrian constitution had been 40, but this was quickly amended to make way for our new, young and seemingly "open-minded" president. In the beginning, Syrians were optimistic that he would change things for the better. They figured that he, as a doctor who had lived in London, would be different.
All members of the Assad family were alike
Bashar Assad used his positive image to introduce minor reforms, such as a campaign against the corruption in the country. Notably, however, his fight against corruption didn’t include his cousin, the famous businessman Rami Makhlouf. Makhlouf was implicated in the Panama Papers, leaked in 2016, which detailed his control over Syria's national industries.
Bashar’s inaugural speech in 2000 was all about modernization, development and constructive criticism. People trusted what he said and many became politically active in the so-called "Damascus Spring," a period of intense political activity in salons or forums across Syria. Some people now believe that the Damascus Spring was just a trick used by Bashar’s government to make political activists more visible. It came to a halt in autumn 2001, when many of the activists were arrested.
The Damascus Spring showed that the Syrian people were trying to overcome what had happened under Hafez’s rule, says Samar Yazbek, a Syrian writer and journalist who now lives in Paris. In her mid-40s, Yazbek lived under the rule of both members of the Assad family. She says Syrians were hoping for a new start, but quickly realized that all members of the Assad family were alike. "Bashar Assad is not different, not better than his father. It’s the same system that has ruled Syria from the 1970s until today."
A Ballot Marked in Blood
Right after Hafez Assads death in 2000, an election was held to coronate the new president; Bashar Assad was the only name on the ballot. I went to the voting center with my mother and was shocked to see a huge man with a gun hidden under his jacket chatting with a man and woman behind the ballot box. He had his two sons with him and we immediately understood that he was either a member of the intelligence agency or of the military. Using a pin, he pricked his finger to vote for Assad using his own blood. He then pricked the fingers of his two children and made them do the same. You have to be 18 to vote in Syria, but that was his way of showing how extremely loyal his family was to the Assads.
He then looked at me with a big smile and said: "You too." I didn’t even have time to say no: In a flash, he had cut my finger before grabbing it roughly and making me stamp it on the paper in support of Assad. I was nine years old at the time and a bleeding finger was a big deal. I was extremely upset, but I was too scared to react.
Growing up, I learned that living in Syria was all about staying silent. As a child and young woman, I remember a lot of shushing in our house. I was the youngest member of the family and my mother frequently repeated the familiar rule that, "in Syria, even the walls have ears." Assad was president and you couldn't question the government – not even to yourself.
Hafez Assad was an untouchable figure
One afternoon in 1997, I was playing with my cousin in our living room. My cousin was jokingly pretending to be the president and was imitating the gestures we used to see Hafez Assad make on television – the way he stood and the way he waved to the crowd. Suddenly, my mother stormed into the room and shouted at my cousin: "Nobody can be president. Don’t you ever do that again!"
Just a Picture on the Wall
To the average Syrian, Hafez Assad was an untouchable figure – only a picture on the wall. His photo was everywhere, even on textbook covers and notebooks. Giath Taha, a Syrian photographer born in 1982 who lives now in a small town near Amsterdam, remembers having one of those notebooks. "I drew silly glasses and an enormous moustache on his picture and my mother bought a thick dark-blue cover so that nobody could see my dangerous sketching."
Taha was a child when he got to see Hafez in person in the 1990s. He was one of hundreds of schoolchildren who went to welcome French President Jacques Chirac at the Damascus airport during one of his trips to Syria. He recalls the boisterous atmosphere that day and students thrusting their fists into the air shouting: "With blood and with soul we sacrifice for you, Assad."
"The president was everywhere in Syria. He seemed almost unreal, existing only in the Syrian people's imagination, only in pictures, which were in almost every corner of our lives. As a child, I remember staring at his pictures everywhere and wondering how big his head was," Taha says. Ever the photographer, he adds: "When I got the chance to see him in person during Chirac’s visit, I thought to myself 'God, his head is even bigger in reality than in pictures.'"
Taha studied applied science and photography, going on to work as a photojournalist for several Syrian newspapers and visiting many different areas of Syria for his work. He covered local news until he left Damascus in 2011. Like many young people, Taha fled Syria once it became clear that the hoped-for democracy would not replace the Assad dictatorship anytime soon. Taha, who had never wanted to leave, fled to Turkey first, but then returned to anti-regime areas in the northern part of Syria, where he covered the war. He finally left for the Netherlands via the Balkan route in 2013.
A Movement With Roots in the Past
Rajaa Banout, an agricultural engineer and activist who is now based in Berlin, was 13 years old when Hafez Assad orchestrated his coup in 1970. "I remember how, on the first day of the military coup, teachers, students and workers took to the streets, demonstrating against the takeover," she says. But the protest didn't last long. "On the second day, the protesters were again out on the streets, but this time they were supporting Assad. They had been threatened."
The atmosphere in Damascus changed quickly, she says. There were suddenly armed men in the streets and bodyguards for government figures were everywhere. Within just five years of Hafez Assads coup, Syria had become a different place. "My uncle had been a minister in the previous government and he didn’t have any security guards. That is how it was before Assad-family rule," says Banout. Like her, many people look back in anger at changes that began the moment Assad came into power. Fear became widespread and people were scared to speak up.
My school teacher asked me to be her secret mole
Banout studied agronomy and dreamed of one day reforming agricultural development in Syria. In 1981, she was hired by the Union of Peasants, only to become shocked by the extent of corruption inside this government agency. She also realized that none of her colleagues had anything to do with agriculture. Instead, they were members of Syria's omnipresent intelligence system. She soon had to quit.
Samar Yazbek, the writer and activist, says that under the Hafez Assad regime, it was difficult to avoid transgressions. "They drew the red line for us at first, and later we relied on self-censorship," she says. "Beginning in childhood, we were even taught to tell on others who had crossed the red lines. I remember how awful it was when my elementary school teacher asked me to be her secret mole, to inform on my friends if they did anything when she wasn't around," Yazbek recalls. "It was really sad that even the school was pushing us to be like intelligence agents."
"There was simply nothing to do there"
Banout found a job at the Agricultural Research Centre, a government institution. During her first week of work, she went into the labs, where she found all the machines and tools still in their boxes. "They were covered with a thick layer of dust," she says. "Nobody was doing anything. There was simply nothing to do there."
There was no chance to be productive or to accomplish anything, Banout says. "They killed all the dreams that I had about doing agricultural work for Syria. As time passed, we started to lose respect for ourselves. They wanted us to be like this. This is how life looked under the rule of Hafez Assad."
Samar Yazbek's experience was no better. In secondary school, she took part in military education, as did most Syrians from her generation. "Our uniforms were dark green, similar to the real uniforms worn by military personnel in Syria. The teacher always looked scary, like an officer in the army, not like a teacher working with children."
"It was normal for our teacher to punish us"
Starting as early as the seventh grade, students learned how to shoot with real guns. They would practice monthly in a field outside the school. "It was normal for our teacher to punish us by making us crawl on the ground of the school courtyard over and over again until she told us to stop, Yazbek says.
When she was six, Yazbek won a writing competition. She was living in the city of Raqqa at the time and was taken to Damascus to compete at the national level after winning in her region. Ultimately, though, she didn't win because, she says, "they asked me a few questions – as a six-year-old child – about the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in Syria and of course I didn’t know the answers."
Ready to Explode
It was hard for journalists and activists not to question such Syrian realities. Much later, in 2011, photographer Giath Taha visited an extremely poor area in the suburbs of Damascus. He remembers the houses of the families, the lack of proper furniture and the absence of tiles on the floor. It was nothing but cement. The walls weren't plastered or painted and the place smelled bad, he recalls.
"We were able to see the sorrow and poverty in their faces and in how the children dressed," he says. Yet amid this misery was a picture of Bashar Assad hanging on the wall of what should have been the living room. "It was jarring to hear our host cursing the demonstrators marching against 'our savior Bashar Assad,' while I was staring at the miserable place they called home," Taha says. The host kept repeating: "Why do they want to overthrow the regime?" And Taha found himself wondering: Why would people in such a situation still support the government, the cause of their misery?
"Ready to Explode"
Rajaa Banout, the agricultural engineer, says Syrians didn’t really know each other before the revolution. "The country was a system of isolated groups. Members could socialize only within their own groups and the only place to gather was in a church or mosque." Banout believes that under Assad family rule, religious sects became more conservative and self-contained.
Banout remembers that earlier, in the 1970s, people in her hometown hadn't been particularly religious and barely went to church. The priest was always praying alone, she says. But in the 1980s and '90s, people started to feel more committed to their religion. "I think this is related to the sectarian way in which the Assad family ruled Syria and how they only put people in power from their sect, which pushed other sects to become more rigid."
Bashar Assad has stubbornly clung to power despite seven years of a bloody war that began with an uprising calling for his resignation. Samar Yazbek still remembers the first time Assad went on TV from Syrian parliament on March 30, 2011, saying he was ready to confront the "conspirators," as he called those taking part in the demonstrations. Some Syrians had expected Bashar to apologize for the brutal crackdown against the demonstrators, which had already resulted in the deaths of more than 100 protesters in the southern city of Deraa. Instead, he escalated the situation even more.
"Bashar will be toppled this week"
I witnessed the first demonstration in my hometown of Muadamiyat al-Sham on March 21, 2011. Hopes were extremely high early on and many Syrians were saying: "Bashar will be toppled this week or maybe next." Now, though, it has been seven years and all of our hopes have vanished. In Berlin, people often ask me: "Why are the Syrians killing each other?" There are many reasons, but what I know for sure is that many developments we are seeing today have their roots in Syrian history.
Or as the writer Samar Yazbek puts it: Only those who know very little about Syria think that the revolution is the cause of the current war. "The Assad regime worked for years to make Syria ready to explode the moment that Syrians thought about getting rid of the Assad family and their dictatorship."