Syrian Dust: Reporting from the Heart of the War

by Francesca Borri

  But above all, the Free Army has a hard time winning international support because it is estimated that between eight hundred and two thousand men, 5 percent of the total number according to various research institutions, may be traced back to Islamic fundamentalism. And in fact the battle here began with twin car bombs claimed by an Al Qaeda group. It was February 10, 2012. And one of Aleppo’s most active brigades today, the Ahrar al-Sham, the Free Men of the Levant, is aimed explicitly at forming an Islamic state. It is also one of the most recognizable brigades, whose fighters wear a black band on their foreheads reading: “There is no other God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.” In the streets under the rebels’ control, it is not uncommon to come across loyalists being dragged by the hair, drenched in blood, bearing the unmistakable signs of beatings and torture. “But Syria will be a democracy,” the rebels assure you. Until a mortar suddenly rains down. “We will respect everyone,” a second mortar, then a third. I dive into the first doorway I can find. Except those inside are all men and I’m not wearing a veil under my helmet. It will be a free and equitable Syria, they keep saying, but for now they leave me outside.

  They are Libyans, Iraqis, Chechens, Afghanis. Yet they are not the only foreigners in the Free Army. Because in reality that’s what Aleppo’s inhabitants consider the rebels: foreigners. Aleppo is the economic capital, the Milan of Syria. A wealthy city, with a mixed middle class, Christian and Muslim, Sunni and Shiite, not many differences—a city of industrialists and entrepreneurs, all focused on business. Its contribution has been marginal in the demonstrations of recent months; the war came from outside, when Turkey opened the border and Aleppo, for the rebels, was the first stop on the road. The Free Army here is not like it is farther south, not like in Homs, in Hama, where a young man, a father, defends his own neighborhood, the block his house is on. The rebels here are Syrians from the countryside, poor Syrians, who accuse the people of Aleppo of indifference, cynicism, opportunism. While the latter accuse them of destroying the city without having the slightest thought about the future—except for a future of sharia, moral law, in a country where Sunni Arabs, however, make up only 63 percent of the population. A week ago, three of the rebels ended up at al-Shifa hospital, not wounded by bullets, but by glass bottles. Not hit by snipers, but by irate citizens.

  The rebels have no anti-aircraft and the bombing is nonstop. But over Al Jazeera, Riad al-Assad urges them not to worry: the forecasts predict fog and rain for the next few days.

  aside from a Widows Brigade whose members are not further identified, apparently operating near Idlib, the only female rebel we have any definite information about is Thwaiba Kanafani. A forty-one-year-old architect with two children, she moved to Aleppo from Toronto, Canada, arriving in flawless makeup and high heels, ready to enlist in the Free Army. “No one suspects a woman,” she explained in dozens of interviews, “so I engage in spying—I’m here undercover,” she posted on Twitter. Complete with photographs.

  The delegates of the new National Council, elected this week, to whom the rebels are supposed to someday hand over power stripped from Assad, are all men. “But it’s not true that women do not have a role,” those at the Free Army’s press office inform me. “They too have responsibilities and duties,” Mohammed Noor tells me. “Her, for example”—and he points to a middle-aged woman holding a bucket and rag: “She’s head of the janitorial unit.”

  Mona and Ghofran are sisters, twenty-three and nineteen years old. We’re at the front, machine guns hammering a sniper’s nest across the street, sandbags, blood-soaked mud, a house in flames—a mortar has just exploded—and two black niqabs emerge through the dust like a hallucination. “You see?” Wahed, the interpreter, says to me, satisfied: “It’s not true that women are kept shut up in the house.” Actually, it’s the first time that Mona and Ghofran have ventured out in two months: they’ve run out of money, and they have a sick father. In the meantime, three chairs and three glasses of tea appear—in the middle of the street, amid the bullets. “And then you write that we don’t respect women,” Wahed says. And he hands me a biscuit. Mona and Ghofran have no idea what’s happening in Aleppo, they don’t have electricity. They have no television and no telephone. They want to get across the city and reach an uncle to ask him for a loan. “We have nothing, I’m sorry, not even a lira,” Wahed apologizes. Meanwhile he has my $300 daily fee in his pocket. Plus Giulio’s $300, and Javier’s $300, Zac’s $300. “You don’t need to interview me to understand,” Mona says. “Assad is a criminal, no one doubts that. Look around you.” All around, in fact, there is nothing but rubble. Remains of houses, remnants of walls. Among the tangled sheets of metal, a dog: in his teeth, a tibia bone. “We’ve taken part in dozens and dozens of demonstrations. But now, with the war, women are excluded from the revolution. Sure we have a role: being among the dead.”

  Osman al-Haj Osman, a surgeon at al-Shifa, the only hospital that’s still active, is frustrated. “The female doctors and nurses have all gone. They’re afraid. And we are forced to do triple shifts.” Because, it’s true, there are five doctors here, all men. But of the nineteen nurses, nine are women. “When the revolution began, I had just graduated,” says Zahra, twenty-four years old. “This is my internship.” Amid the thousands of mortars that have struck al-Shifa, she’s been wounded three times. “I keep telling myself that I’m here for the freedom of my people. But I know full well that even if Assad were to fall, for me freedom would still have to be won. I prevented an amputation for my father, who didn’t want me to go to university. I rolled up my sleeves so I wouldn’t infect his arm, and I sewed him back up, with everything vibrating from the explosions, all around, with a corpse beside us, and with my father protesting: ‘Cover yourself!’”

  Because the air in Aleppo is dense with gunpowder and testosterone. “The men claim we don’t have courage, that we are too emotional,” adds Bahia, she too twenty-four years old, she too wounded three times. She too still here. “But I’m not so sure that lack of feeling, in some cases, is a sign of rationality. Passing your time at the front in flip-flops and repeating that you’re protected by God: it doesn’t seem so normal to me. The only way not to be afraid is not to think. Which is, however, also the best way to ensure that this war will never end. And so true courage, in Aleppo, is not to get used to it. To be afraid: to think.” In Raqqa, a city to the east, toward Iraq, it was the women who offered themselves as human shields. Against the rebels, though: they asked them to spare the city. But general Riad al-Assad was adamant: “It is necessary that we liberate you,” he said.

  Meanwhile, at the entrance to the hospital, a car dumps a body. That’s how bystanders mowed down by snipers arrive. Picked up in the street and unloaded here in front by a car that races off, since al-Shifa is under constant artillery fire. At times, the body is hit by mortars even before it’s dragged inside. “And it disintegrates, literally,” Bahia says. “Dust. Dust amid dust. All of Aleppo, by now, is a monument to unknown citizens.”

  After twenty months, 35,000 victims, and 450,000 refugees, the map of Syria is appalling. The Free Army controls the area of Idlib, to the north, and little else. Some pockets in Aleppo, pockets along the road to Damascus. Pockets infested with snipers, however, and flattened by Assad’s bombings, hour after hour. “And on Syria’s ruins, they will plant the flag of fundamentalism,” Bahia accuses. She is a believer and practitioner who wears the veil. “But my Islam is not their Islam,” she explains. “Fundamentalism? What fundamentalism!” Osman interrupts her. “We are all doctors here, all equal: men and women alike.” His father was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. The whole family was forced into exile. Osman grew up in Saudi Arabia, and came to Syria for the first time three months ago. Every night he goes back to sleep in Azaz, on the border with Turkey. The first city to come under the authority of the rebels, and more specifically of its imam, as its self-proclaimed spiritual and political guide. “It’s up to you to participate, it’s
up to you to earn a place,” Osman says. “You are free to do anything. Even to perform surgery.”

  “Even to govern?” Bahia snaps back.

  “Even to govern.”

  “Even to fight?”

  “Even to fight, of course.” And everyone around laughs.

  The screech of brakes. A car spits out a black bag on the asphalt, and takes off again, tires squealing. Two eyes stand out, white, against a niqab, pupils upturned. It’s Mona’s body.

  in any case, people must have heard that there’s a war around here, they must have gotten one of those text messages from Save the Children, “A Euro for Syria,” because we’re back in Turkey, and in Kilis, on the border, everything is booked. Hotels, restaurants: all famous journalists.

  I got Jason Alison, from New Zealand television. This is how it works: they appear at breakfast one morning, and in addition to the assorted drivers and interpreters and hairdressers, they hire one of us freelancers as a guide. They pay your $300 and all expenses, and besides that you learn a little about the craft. Because Jason is New Zealand’s leading war correspondent. He has thirty years of experience, and for me, thirty years old, period, he’s a gold mine. Except that he’s an expert on Africa, especially Rwanda, he’s an expert on Rwanda and the Balkans, and he’s only been to the Middle East once, on vacation. And he bought a carpet, a carpet and a teapot, and so the first question he asked me was whether I could summarize who is opposed to whom and for what reasons. And I must have involuntarily given him a somewhat puzzled look, or astonished, or appalled, because he hastened to tell me that of course he knew where we were, we were in the midst of a civil war, Syrians against Syrians. Then he said: “Sunnis against Shiites,” and added: “The Shiites are the ones who follow Ali, right? That has to be explained, that they are the followers of Ali, otherwise my viewers will be confused.” And he made a note in his notebook: Check on Ali.

  His cameraman, a certain Mark, is also here to learn the craft. He’s twenty-seven years old, and this is his first trip outside of New Zealand. He even bought a Lonely Planet guidebook. He showed up in a bulletproof vest and Bermuda shorts. That’s how he arrived in Aleppo: in shorts.

  But they’re a gold mine, those veterans, so I keep quiet and listen, and try to learn. Because it may not seem so, but here everything is questionable. For example: the flak jacket. The word Press. Because journalists, it’s true, shouldn’t be a target. On the contrary. But since they killed the Japanese reporter Mika Yamamoto in August, aiming specifically at her, not a stray bullet, well—maybe it’s better to take off your press tag. Only many of us are in favor of it because of the insurance: if you don’t have the tag—if you look like a civilian and they shoot you—the insurance has a clause by which they won’t pay you. I think it’s Paragraph 22. And so we talked for two hours and sixteen minutes today, and after retracing all the conflicts of the last twenty years, in particular the theory and practice of the Hutus and Tutsis, we finally decided to consult one of the combatants at random about the tag. Who emphatically advised us: “Definitely. Use it. Always.” Then he asked: “What does press mean?”

  The second thing I learned is that I should not say “regime” when I’m talking about the Assad regime, because if I do I’m not being neutral and not respecting everyone’s views. I should say “the Damascus government”—even though, truthfully, it’s the government of Damascus that’s pounding us, and it’s not that I don’t want to respect the opinions of others, but I would also like to respect international law sometimes. And as far as international law goes, I’m afraid the government of Damascus is a regime. In any case, the third thing I learned is that you have to go searching among the dead to find interesting stories. The dead and the wounded, and possibly women and children, because otherwise the viewers won’t identify and they’ll change the channel. And it’s honestly not clear to me why a New Zealander should identify with a Syrian woman with seven children, only one arm, and a husband in Al Qaeda, but anyway: Jason has thirty years of experience. And so we roam around all day looking for the dead and wounded, and my role, specifically, is to ask Khaled, who is the interpreter, and for whom I translate from English to English, that is, from Jason’s native speaker’s English to an English that is understandable, things like: I need a mutilated orphan. Or: I’m missing a child hit by a sniper in school. And of course: a boy soldier, possibly drunk—“There were some in Sierra Leone, there were some in Chad,” Jason protested yesterday, threatening to fire Khaled, “You can’t tell me there aren’t any here.”

  And so, in search of what we call “real life,” and what the editorial and cutting room staff call “a little color,” we spend hours and hours at al-Shifa, because the regime, that is, the government of Damascus, is always there, doggedly trying to demolish it. Grenades, bombs, mortars. Whatever. Casualties arrive every minute at al-Shifa. All torn up, all dust and blood, tatters of flesh, relatives around them screaming desperately, fainting, beating their heads against the walls, bodies on the ground, among them one or two still breathing, amputated hands, limbs that someone carried here so that they might be reattached, only now no one remembers who they belong to. And in the middle of it all, as always, these young kids in white coats: because everyone has to help as best he can in Aleppo, even children. Mohamed Asaf is twelve years old, Yussef Mohammed is eleven. They are on duty from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. They disinfect, bandage, suture. They console. They extract shards, inject morphine. Sometimes you go in at five in the morning and they’re still there, among the decapitated bodies, a leg on a stretcher, some fingers on a chair. But they’re still there, mopping the floor in the light of dawn, when even the last of the dying dies, like when you walk through a deserted city, and people are washing the sidewalk in front of shops that are still closed, early in the morning, and the pavement, outside, is all water and soapsuds. Mohamed and Yussef mop the floor like that, in that same silence of a spent day that is already beginning again, the pavement all water and blood.

  And I honestly wonder: What’s the point? At night, when I’m there watching the New Zealand news broadcast, and all I see are dead bodies, bodies and grief, despairing mothers, and maybe it’s Syria, maybe Iraq, maybe it’s another war, I couldn’t say: all I see are dead bodies. And I wonder. I think of Cassese—since our feature today was called “The Failure of Aleppo.” Cassese was my professor of international law. He was also president of the Hague Tribunal, the tribunal for former Yugoslavia, and he always talked about the BBC, about the time the Serbs seized six UN trucks and the BBC explained that the distribution of humanitarian aid in Bosnia was blocked by the collapse of law and order. And Cassese would say: “Have you ever seen a truck blocked by a failure?” “Verbs,” he said, “have a subject. Actions have responsibilities.”

  Actually another story aired tonight, because the production editors noticed a couple of bullets whizzing by: a sniper. And so the news tonight was us—the attack on a New Zealand television crew—even though we hadn’t even heard the bullets. And even though the death count here today was 137. There was bombing at some point, we ran into a basement, there wasn’t one free inch of space. A man saw the TV camera and said to me, “Your life is more important than mine,” and he gave me his spot. He went outside. Amid the mortars, gunfire, choppers, and all the rest, he gave me his place, explaining: “So the world will know.”

  to his companions he is simply Qannaas, the Sniper. A sharpshooter who, in February, decided to desert and joined the Free Army. No one knows his real name. He comes from a military family, from a town near Damascus, and his uncle is still a general in the service of Assad. His brothers, cousins: they’re all high-ranking officers. And all of them, except his parents, think he is dead. Qannaas prefers it that way—partly because he really is a little dead.

  He has short black hair, a beard, and he’s twenty-one years old; he’s a skinny guy, with a stare that’s both intense and inexpressive as he waits in steely silence, mot
ionless, for hours, finger on the trigger, eyes on the gun-sight. He calmly picks off anyone who steps in front of him. A clean hit, short and sweet, not so much as a twitch afterward. Only a cough. Eyes again on the viewfinder. He only gets irritable when he talks about the war. Because the war, he says, is changing. “Many aren’t here to overthrow Assad, but to acquire fame, notoriety. A reputation. To have power when the war is over.” And he’s not the only one in Aleppo who thinks that. Many tell you that the war will continue once Assad falls. They say that if Assad falls, fighting will begin between secularists and Islamists, or between Sunnis and Shiites. Muslims and Christians. Or, more simply, between the various armed groups: purely over control of territory. Purely for power. “But Syria will not become like Somalia,” Qannaas says. “Worse, we will have a Somalia in every province.” The war is now unrecognizable, he says. Then he takes a breath. A deep one. “By now, we are unrecognizable.”

  It all started with peaceful demonstrations. In March 2011, when dozens, hundreds, then thousands of Syrians took to the streets demanding political and economic reforms. Liberty and dignity. They didn’t even want to overthrow Assad at the beginning. They just wanted reforms. But Assad responded with violence. Immediately. He said it was an American conspiracy. That the demonstrations weren’t genuine. He claimed that they were filmed in a studio. That it was a set of Al Jazeera in Qatar. And he reacted with growing violence. And in July 2011, in the wake of Libya, the Free Army appeared, proposing to serve as a frame of reference for a transition to democracy, and hoping to convince the West to intervene. Only something went wrong—basically because Gaddafi had no one anymore. He had no more allies, only business associates for his oil, only buyers, while Assad had Iran and Russia. And most importantly, of course, Assad didn’t have oil. But all in all, things did not go as the rebels expected, no one intervened, and now here they are making catapults from street signs and explosives out of ammonium nitrate from plant fertilizer and tinfoil, like pages out of the Junior Woodchucks manual. Increasingly forgotten with each passing day, increasingly on their own, they scavenge for resources as best they can, and in particular wherever they can, namely outside of Syria, from nations or private citizens. They do it, naturally, by promising loyalty to their patrons in tomorrow’s Syria. “But all they buy is our temporary gratitude,” Qannaas points out. And ultimately Syria becomes more entangled with each passing day here, because not only do the weapons increase, but also the objectives for which they are used.