But in that moment, when I was, in 2005, face-to-face with Assef Shawkat, the brother-in-law of the president, basically, and it was very obvious that we are not, you know, you know, that the threat of basically getting killed was pretty open and pretty clear. And I defied him okay and showed no fear. But then I realized okay, now it gotten to this point. Now I´m being said if I continue down that road, I´m gonna end up dead.
I have a wife and I have two children. Now, the wife and two children are not– were new to me. I got married in 2002. My two kids are not actually mine. They are not my biological children. They are my wife´s from a previous marriage. Their father died in 1992 of cancer. And when I became part of the family, I became their father.
And they, within months, I mean, it was an, I don´t know, a marriage made in heaven, you can say. Because frankly, we loved each other so much and they started calling me, you know, father within weeks, you know? That was how close we really felt. And I felt that if I stopped– did not stop for a second and say, okay, is there a way out of this? And started to go that course full steam ahead, they will be orphaned again in a sense.
How I will do that again? Can I afford to be that heartless? You know, at one point in my life I decided, okay, as I said, I´m gonna be selfish and I´m going to go ahead and behave completely free and not care about the consequences. But once I got married and once I was in this position and then at that particular moment I realized I have a responsibility I´ve never had before.
Perhaps if they were my kids, perhaps if there was no such experience before I would not have cared. And I would have said okay, they´ll be happy. Their father is a martyr, or whatever, you know? My mom and my in-laws will care about them, no problem. But here there was this question of I chose to be part of a family, knowing the history. Knowing the suffering they´ve had. And now I´m gonna impose on them a further layer of suffering. The same kind.
In a sense that is cruel. I couldn´t– I couldn´t. So when– when I was talking to– to Assef Shawkat and I told him, “Look, I cannot work for you. And I´m not really afraid of dying. But if you wanted to kill me you would´ve done it already. Obviously you´re trying to give me a choice. But instead of making that choice between working for you or dying, why not leaving?
I´m not saying when I´m outside I´m not gonna be an equally active troublemaker, because that would be a lie. And I´m not gonna lie to you. But at least I won´t be here. I won´t be right there in your face every day. Will that be something that´s acceptable?” And he smiled and he said, “Yeah, that´s a perfect solution.” And we drank the rest of our tea and as I said, at the end of the meeting, give me that hug. And a sendoff.
So, but yeah, that was the first probably moment in my life when I actually, you know, I did the retraction. I consider still my departure of Syria to be a form of running away, whether I like it or not. There is no way to sugarcoat it. But I guess it was also a good decision nonetheless.
Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian human rights activist who in 2003 founded the Tharwa Foundation, a grassroots organization that enlists local activists and citizen journalists to document conditions in Syria. In response to his activities, the Syrian government subjected Abdulhamid to repeat interrogation and threats. In September 2005, he and his family were forced into exile in the United States. From his home in Maryland, Abdulhamid remains one of the leading bloggers and commentators on events in Syria through the Syrian Revolution Digest.
Follow Ammar Ahbdulhamid on Twitter @Tharwacolamus and on his blog, Syrian Revolution Digest.
The Syrian Arab Republic originated as a secular, socialist state dominated by the Ba’ath party, an Arab nationalist movement. The state has since evolved into an autocracy headed by a single family and dominated by members of the minority Alawite sect, a branch of Shia Islam.
The Ba’ath Party took power in Syria in a series of coups d’état in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the leaders of those coups, Hafez al-Assad, became president in 1971 and led the country until his death in 2000. Under Assad, Alawites assumed control over the state security forces. In 1982, Assad’s forces stormed the city of Hama to brutally suppress a Sunni rebellion, killing thousands of civilians.
Following the death of Hafez al-Assad, his son, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president by a referendum in which he ran unopposed, officially garnering 97 percent of the vote. He was reelected in 2007, again with 97 percent of the vote.
The Syrian government is one of the world’s most brutal and restrictive. From 1963 to 2011, the government operated under an “Emergency Law,” which suspended many constitutional protections of civil liberties. The government continues to use arbitrary detention and torture against political opponents, and operates through an extensive internal security apparatus, including secret police. The government controls most of the country’s media outlets, and access to the Internet is permitted only through state-operated servers. The minority Kurdish population has been continually discriminated against and repressed.
Influenced by movements in Egypt and Tunisia, large opposition protests took place across Syria in 2011. The government responded with a harsh crackdown. Security forces fired on protestors, killing thousands. The crackdown led the Arab League to suspend Syria’s membership. The Assad regime attempted to appease dissenters through a series of low-level and largely inconsequential reforms in 2011 and 2012. However, the conflict has escalated into full-fledged civil war with both liberal and Islamic militias being formed to fight against the Assad regime. The Assad regime has continued to attempt to defeat the opposition using air strikes and heavy artillery to attack rebel-held neighborhoods. Freedoms of association, assembly, and the press were restricted even further as the government attempted to quell the uprising. Over a million people have been either internally displaced or fled the country as refugees.
In the summer of 2013, it was confirmed that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons to attack civilians. Over 600 people were killed in one such attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus using a nerve agent confirmed to be sarin. The Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons drew international attention and resulted in a renewed international focus on the nation and its civil conflict.
Freedom House rates Syria as “not free” noting that conditions even prior to the 2011 uprising and subsequent civil war were, at best, abysmal. It earned the worst possible ratings of seven in both the political rights and civil liberties categories. Conditions since the 2011 uprising have only deteriorated, and civil freedoms are restricted under the fear of violence. Freedom House has also expressed concern over rising sectarian tensions and massive displacement.