Egypt Independent: World features

Free Syrian Army fighters recount falling in love during war

Virginie Nguyen — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 08:54:00 +0000

ALEPPO — While being a landscape of warfare and death for the last two years, love and romance has not been killed by Syria’s ongoing revolution.

Mahmoud Abu Jafaar, 29, used to be a driver, while Nour, 22, worked as a hairdresser. Now they are fighting together in the Sheikh Saeed Front in north Syria, where the Free Syrian Army has been battling President Bashar al-Assad’s troops for the road to Aleppo International Airport.

Mahmoud comes from the village of Safita, near Tartus on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. There, he learned how to paint and sculpt, and has been practicing his passion since his childhood.

He used to work as a driver for a minister’s wife, but got fired in 2010 after being accused of falling in love with her daughter. He was imprisoned for six months and tortured, then forced to leave Syria.

He took refuge in Libya, where he worked as a sculptor. But when the revolution started in 2011 against President Muammar Qadhafi, he decided to take arms and join the battle.

“I took part in their battle, and that’s where I gained most of my fighting skills,” he says.

There, he met another Syrian, and they became friends. The man was part of the Tenskia organization, which organizes protests against Assad.

“I kept in contact with him, joined the organization and got back to Syria illegally at the very beginning of the revolution,” he recounts, while seated in his living room next to his Kalashnikov.

As violence spread, Mahmoud decided to join the FSA in Aleppo and share his Libya warfare skills on Syria’s battlefield.

As for Nour, she is the daughter of a senior official of the regime’s Baath Party. Before the war started, she was a hairdresser in the center of Aleppo.

She has a 5-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, which she is discreet about. When the revolution began, she took part in the demonstrations and was active publicizing and mobilizing for them on social media.

But her mostly pro-Assad family didn’t appreciate her activism, and tried to incarcerate her at home.

It wasn’t until June 2011 that the revolution took both their lives in an entirely different direction. Mahmoud was part of a mission to chase pro-Assad militiamen, otherwise known as Shabiha, and hurriedly got into a taxi, not seeing that Nour was already inside. They started talking to each other about the revolution, and found they agreed on many issues. They exchanged contact information and kept in touch.

Nour recalls that she was living on the side of Aleppo where Assad’s troops were still in control.

“I didn’t want to stay there and wanted to join Mahmoud on the other side of Aleppo,” she says. “Of course, my father prevented me.”

One day, she left to join a protest. My dad called the police in order to chase me and arrest me, which they did,” Nour recalls.

On that day, Nour’s friend alerted Mahmoud, who was furious, knowing what the fate of a woman under Assad’s men’s custody can be.

“I decided to rescue her; I knew where she was, as I had contacts in that part of Aleppo. As I had to cross an area under the control of Bashar’s troops, I disguised myself as a woman with a niqab to pass the checkpoint,” Mahmoud says. “It went well, and when I arrived at the house where she was arrested I stormed the place, killed two police officers and took her out. My battalion was waiting for me in a car a bit beyond the checkpoint.”

Since that day, Nour never returned to her family, and stayed on to liberate Aleppo with the FSA. She and Mahmoud got married and moved in together in September.

Their apartment is in the top floor of a building that serves as a meeting point for Mahmoud’s battalion. While serving as a war base, it is also visibly a space of love and fun.

When it’s not Nour’s little daughter running around, it’s Nour and Mahmoud chasing and teasing each other, like two teenagers in love, except that their love blossomed amidst fierce warfare. Elements of this war made it to the inside of their flat, where Kalashnikovs, pistols and knives decorate the place. They belong to the both of them.

Mahmoud says he taught Nour how to use guns so she can protect herself and her child when he’s not at home.

“I trained her for two months on how to be a good fighter,” he says. “At first, I trained her at home, then I brought her to the front line.”

But once Nour could use a gun, she wanted to join the fighters for real, and not just use it for self-defense.

“We had some fights because sometimes I would just sneak out to join the front line. I was fighting with men at first. Then, when other women heard about me, they asked if they could also join the FSA,” Nour says.

At that time, Mahmoud decided to create a women’s battalion that fights at the Sheikh Saeed front line. Nour became the commander of the battalion, which now has nine female fighters.

They called it Nazel al-Abed Battalion, in memory of a famous Syrian female fighter during the armed resistance against the French occupation.

“We are not against women fighters. On the contrary, they are very efficient and useful,” says Mahmoud. “Although they are not fighting on the front line, they are very good at sniping on the third line.”

The female fighters are also responsible for special missions such as passing checkpoints controlled by Assad’s troops or killing Shabiha fighters.

“Since she started, Nour has killed six Shabiha,” Mahmoud says proudly.

Unlike men, women are not fighting every day. They alternate between training, missions and their lives at home.

When not on a mission, Nour spends her time taking care of her house and daughter, and managing their family’s finances, which largely depend on Mahmoud’s savings from his time in Libya.

“Once Aleppo is totally liberated, I will move and fight somewhere else,” says Mahmoud, and within a second, Nour adds that she would follow him. “I think that I will move to Damascus. In Aleppo, the situation is very bad, as the FSA is not united anymore. Some brigades are working alone without a unified organization.”

Mahmoud and Nour long for the day when Assad is gone, but are also unsure that it would immediately be a happy ending, especially with ongoing troubles between different brigades and battalions of the FSA.

“In that case, we’ll go to Egypt and get back to a normal life,” says Mahmoud, before going back to chasing his wife around the room.

Above them, on their wall, hangs a picture of them together, next to their weapons.

This piece was originally published in Egypt Independent's weekly print edition.

Fleeing Syria, Palestinians find haven and hardships in Egypt

Miriam Berger — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:37:00 +0000

Rula Deeb, 26, was born in Damascus and calls Syria her home. But after months of government bombings, indiscriminate violence and rising scarcity of basic goods, Deeb, whose grandparents fled Gaza for Syria in 1948, felt she could no longer safely stay.

As a Syrian with Palestinian refugee documents, however, Deeb faced a particular predicament: Where could she go?

“I came to Egypt because, as a Palestinian, it is the only country that welcomes us,” Deeb says, explaining her relocation to Cairo in October.

For Deeb, Jordan and Lebanon — where many Palestinian-Syrians flee — were not options because of the countries’ travel restrictions, poor living conditions and other restrictive policies against Palestinian Syrians.

In comparison, Egypt had fewer initial barriers to entry. Unlike others in her situation, she could afford the airplane ticket from Damascus to Cairo, and, as a woman, she did not have to first apply for a visa.

Once in this country, however, Deeb and the estimated thousands of Palestinian-Syrian refugees here face a new kind of hardship: lack of access to humanitarian services.

Left in a legal limbo in Egypt, Palestinians are ineligible for assistance such as financial, social and health services that are available to other refugees, including Syrians, registered with the United Nations.

Whose mandate?

Decades after the Arab-Israeli wars displaced her family, Deeb had to grapple with the notion of being a Palestinian refugee.

Under international law, Palestinian refugees are descendants of Palestinians born in Mandate Palestine and displaced by the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars. In 1949, a specific United Nations agency, the UN Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA), was established to register and protect Palestinian refugees living in five places: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank.

Before the war in Syria, the 500,000 Palestinian-Syrians living there had nearly equal rights to other nationals. But as they were registered with UNRWA, they were never allowed a Syrian passport.

Instead, they had a temporary Syrian residency card designed specifically for Palestinian refugees — and which many governments do not accept at borders.

Egypt, according to UNRWA’s mandate, is not one of the five Middle Eastern countries in which the agency is authorized to operate. Technically, that would make the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, responsible for assisting Palestinian-Syrians refugees in Egypt.

Karmen Sakhr, senior protection officer at UNHCR, says the government pledged to treat Syrians with Palestinian travel documents the same as other Syrian refugees. However, this has not been the case in practice.

Sakhr says the Foreign Ministry has asked UNHCR not to register Palestinian-Syrians. According to Sakhs, the ministry maintains that UNHCR should not register Palestinians because UNRWA is the responsible agency — even though UNRWA’s mandate officially does not extend to Egypt.

The difficulty of granting Palestinians’ citizenship rights locally and other Arab countries relates to the preservation of their right of return.

But this has also led to discriminatory domestic policies toward Palestinians by Arab countries, including Egypt. Critics say these countries fear that if the country makes life too comfortable for refugees, Palestinians will have more of an incentive to settle.

The issue is further complicated by the government’s treatment of Palestinian refugees who came to Egypt after the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars.

Perla Issa, a researcher on Palestinians in Egypt, says Palestinians born here face many barriers, including no permanent residency, restrictions on travel abroad and limited work opportunities. They are also not under the jurisdiction of either UNRWA or UNHCR, falling into a similar legal loophole removed from the limelight.

Following the first Gulf war and expulsion of Palestinian refugees from Kuwait, Egypt barred Palestinians from entering the country. In the mid-2000s, as a result of escalating violence toward Palestinians in Iraq, many Palestinians from there also came to this country.

Issa says they were able to register with UNHCR because UNHCR worked with Palestinians in Iraq, unlike the case with Palestinian-Syrians.

Coming to Egypt

Since the start of the Syrian conflict two years ago, an estimated 150,000 refugees have fled to Egypt, and about 500,000 more to neighboring countries — mainly Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. In Egypt, they live largely in Cairo and other major cities, considered preferable to the refugee camps of Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.

Palestinians, intentionally and not, are often caught up in regional politics. Initially, Palestinian Syrian communities primarily stayed out of the conflict, in part because of complicated political alliances and the image that the regime had been good for Palestinians.

But in December, the conflict came to the doorsteps of the 150,000 residents of Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Intense fighting broke out between regime supporters, mainly the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and opposition Syrian and Palestinian factions.

Coupled with a barrage of government bombings, the fighting led to more than 700 deaths and a mass exodus from the camps.

There is no clear documentation regarding the number of Palestinian-Syrians in the country. Estimates place it somewhere in the low thousands, but predict it will rise as conditions in the nine official and three unofficial Palestinian refugee camps in Syria worsen.

Ahmed Abughazalah, public information associate at UNHCR, says that, as of February, 192 families and 458 individuals have asked to register at UNHCR. The agency, complying with the government’s request, refused.

While some Syrian families spent months debating their departures, for Alaa Hamzah, a Syrian-Palestinian whose grandparents came from Haifa, her family acted on impulse. In early October, she says, Syrian soldiers kidnapped her 25-year-old brother at a checkpoint and held him for ransom.

He managed to escape, and two days later, the family fled to Cairo. They now live in 6th of October City, relying on her father’s savings.

“My brother survived so many of the bad bombings in the camps, only to be kidnapped,” she recalls.

She considers herself and her family among the lucky ones.

Syrians are generally able to enter the country via plane or a neighboring border, where they can receive a three-month tourist visa and then apply for temporary residency and register with UNHCR.

Palestinian-Syrians, however, must come straight from Syria and, because of the specifics of their travel documents, cannot enter Egypt through a second country.

Sakhr of UNHCR says all males between the ages of 18 and 40 must attain a visa prior to their flight and fly directly from Damascus to Cairo. However, the Egyptian Embassy in Damascus is currently closed, making it nearly impossible to attain a visa prior to travel.

Palestinian-Syrian families, all males under 18 and females of all ages can enter the country without a visa, but generally receive only a two-week to one-month visa, rather than the three months granted to other Syrians.

Once the visa expires, Palestinian-Syrians can apply for residency or try to extend the visa. But as they cannot register with UNHCR or UNRWA, they are left without a means to access basic legal, social and financial services.

In January, the government threatened to deport a Palestinian-Syrian man and his son after they tried to travel to Turkey from Egypt on forged documents. Human Rights Watch and other groups raised objections, arguing that this violated international agreements, given the dangers of returning to Syria. The boy and his father have reportedly since returned to Syria.

Meanwhile, according to refugee advocates, the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled government — caught up in its own internal transitions and unprepared for the spillover from Syria — has for now largely ignored addressing the legal status of the Palestinian-Syrian refugees and its regional ramifications.

In conversations with refugees, many say that, on the one hand, the Egyptian government’s negligence has been to their benefit — those here illegally do not face the threat of immediate deportation. But at the same time, the absence of social, legal and financial services is taking an increasingly harsh toll on their financial and psychological health.

Basela Abu Hamed, for example, came from Damascus to Cairo in October. A mother of two and a teacher back in Syria, she has been struggling to find consistent work in 6th of October.

As the violence in Syria continues to worsen, Abu Hamed says she worries about how she will provide for her family’s financial and physical well-being without help from humanitarian services. She does not think too much farther into the future.

Because they are not registered, her daughter, 16, cannot enroll in school. She also worries about her daughter because of the harassment on the streets.

After the fighting intensified in December, Abu Hamed’s father decided, after much persuasion, that he would leave his bombed-out house. She is awaiting his arrival in Egypt.

In early February, about 35 Palestinian-Syrian refugees gathered in 6th of October to establish a humanitarian network of Palestinians in the diaspora to support those still living in Syria’s refugee camps.

Fayed Shihabi, one of the network’s organizers, says part of the problem is that Palestinian-Syrians have not tried to unify and advocate for themselves in the absence of another body to do so.

“It is like another Nakba,” Shihabi says, comparing the loss of Palestinian land now to the displacement following the 1948 Arab-Israel war, deemed the Nakba, or catastrophe in Arabic.

Milad, 21, heard about the event through the Internet and came that day from Mansoura, where he lives with his family because of the lower cost of living.

“I came [to the event] because working together as Palestinians is better than alone,” he says, despite his hesitation about what the network can accomplish.

Back in Damascus, Milad had studied sculpture and participated in a few protests against the regime organized through Facebook.

He had never thought of leaving Syria until the bloodshed started and several friends died. Now in Egypt, he waits, unemployed, to return to Syria.

This piece was originally published in Egypt Independent's weekly print edition.

On Libyan revolution’s anniversary, reminders of a long road ahead

Maggie Fick — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:55:00 +0000

TRIPOLI— Two years after Libyans in the eastern city of Benghazi began rising up against Muammar Qadhafi, citizens in the capital held raucous celebrations to commemorate the uprising-turned-civil war that ultimately ousted the dictator.

Some might interpret the joyful mood among Tripoli residents during the recent celebrations as a sign that Libyans are pleased with their country’s path in the wake of Qadhafi’s death. Another interpretation is that the revolution anniversary is viewed as a time when those who died fighting for the new Libya must be honored, instead of an opportunity to voice anger about the pace of the political transition.

There are likely truths in both views, but in either case, the intensity of the festivities showed how the revolution still looms large in the Libyan conscience. The date “17 February” is scrawled on walls all over the city. Posters and billboards recognize the martyrs and the missing from the nine-month conflict.

Neighborhoods are known for the specific roles their residents played in the revolution; Fashloom is known as the “spark” of the revolt against Qadhafi in Tripoli, while other areas are derided by some for being slow to side with the rebels during the liberation of Tripoli, as it is widely referred to in Arabic, in late August 2011.

Two years on, Libya is still defining its new identity, after 42 years in which the name of the country was synonymous abroad with a leader who many Libyans secretly loathed but were forced to pledge allegiance to.

As a result, Libya is grappling not only with the huge task of building basic institutions like an army and government ministries from scratch, but also with the divisions that came to the surface in the armed conflict that pitted communities against each other. In the time since Qadhafi’s death, a mentality has emerged that clearly identifies those who fought in revolutionary brigades as heroes, and condemns Libyans who fought for Qadhafi as traitors who do not deserve to reap the benefits of freedom in the new Libya.

The latter group includes communities such as the Tawerghans and the Mishasha, minority groups who now live in fear of attack from powerful militias from the cities of Misrata and Zintan, which continue to play a role in providing security in the absence of functioning army and police forces.

In stark contrast to Egypt, where the revolution did not result in the dismantling of the historically strong military institution, Libya’s decentralized revolution essentially wiped out the national army, which had long been a weak collection of brigades controlled by Qadhafi’s sons.

“Libya is awakening not just from 42 years of oppression but it is also now in a post-conflict situation,” says Hanan Salah, Libya researcher for Human Rights Watch, who witnessed much of the revolution while working for the International Committee for the Red Cross.

“They have to deal with thousands of militias,” Salah tells Egypt Independent. “No serious demobilization has happened, there is arms proliferation throughout the country, [and] there are great political divisions ... all of these differences now have to be reconciled. There are fundamental identity questions.”

Part of this discussion revolves around which citizens have the right to participate in leading Libya’s transition.

Members of the General National Congress elected last July to replace the initial transitional government are debating a draft bill known as the Political Isolation Law. This bill specifies which members of the former regime would be disqualified for competing for political office in elections to be held after Libya drafts and adopts a new constitution.

The current draft has been criticized by some Libyan activists as unduly far-reaching. It would bar many Libyans who held posts in the Qadhafi government from contributing their expertise as parliamentarians or as ministry officials.

“The criteria on which isolation is based are very sweeping and general,” says Elham Saudi, director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya, who argues that participation in the new government should be based on perceived affiliations of some Libyans who had no choice but to serve in Qadhafi’s regime.

Some lawmakers see the issue differently.

“The main idea is: ‘You will be with us, but don’t lead us,’” says National Congress member Mohamed Sammud, who approves of the Political Isolation Law in its current form.

Sammud says it is “unacceptable” for the new Libya to be led by the “same group” that many Libyans sacrificed their lives to overthrow.

“At the same time, as a Libyan, you are welcome to live in your own country,” he reasons.

Sammud’s colleague acknowledged that some Libyans, including the Tawerghan people and those who fled the country due to fears that they would face retribution for their past loyalties to Qadhafi, are bearing the brunt of the new order.

“We have tried to encourage them to come back [to Libya],” says National Congress member Mustafa Gebril. “Especially the wives and children — why do they have to suffer? They are innocent, they shouldn’t be blamed because their father was in the regime.”

But besides dismantling what’s left of the old regime, there is a big task of rebuilding still ahead.

Ahmed Kamess, a young member of the recently founded Taghyeer Party, tells Egypt Independent that his organization is struggling to gain legitimacy among Libyans who are unaccustomed to party politics and to civil society organizations advocating for citizens’ rights.

“We are working to build this infrastructure,” says Kamess. “We want to change the spirit of people, to focus on encouraging participation in the drafting of our constitution.”

Kamess says he expects this process to take time.

Meanwhile, there is little evidence of progress by the transitional government in achieving its promises to secure the large country and its long borders from militias, who still guard checkpoints in major cities and often enjoy more legitimacy from local populations than soldiers who form the shell of the army.

“The government is trying to reform, but the weight of Qadhafi’s 42-year rule is overwhelming,” Frederic Wehrey of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace tells Egypt Independent.

Wehrey argues that “idea of Libya exists and is widespread,” explaining that Libya does not suffer from “the rampant tribalism of Somalia or the sectarian enclaves of Lebanon.”

“There are a lot of familial linkages that temper regional identities,” he says.

With an estimated population of just 6.4 million people, Libyans do enjoy close communal ties that could provide a buffer against the threats of “victor’s justice” and an incomplete national reconciliation process.

Amal Haddad, a housewife with her husband and three daughters who came to Martyrs Square in central Tripoli to mark the revolution anniversary, was optimistic about her country’s future.

“It’s normal that we are going to face differences of opinions as we build our new country,” she said. “As long as we resolve to address these differences without violence, we will continue to enjoy life without Qadhafi.”

This piece was originally published in Egypt Independent's weekly print edition.

Syrian civilians form local police force to combat rising crime

Virginie Nguyen — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 14:29:00 +0000

ALEPPO — The atmosphere was tense in Bustan al-Qasr after a Friday protest turned into a fight between two groups, one calling for an Islamic state after President Bashar al-Assad’s fall and another demanding a free and liberal future for Syria.

The shabiha, defined by residents as pro-government militias or spies in civilian clothing, were spotted at the demonstration, which only served to heighten tensions among protesters.

In one of the small streets around Bustan, some of those who had taken part in the protest gathered in front of a primary school that had been closed for a while. Its classes were being used as an office and a prison run by the local civilian police.

At the back of the courtyard was a room with a Free Syria flag hanging above the desk. Inside sat a young man with a Kalashnikov, waiting.

Khaled is 20 years old. He defected from Assad’s official army in central Aleppo to join the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and become part of a group called the Security Revolution.

“I want to hunt shabiha,” says Khaled.

Citizen patrol

The Security Revolution in central Aleppo is led by local civilians policing the area. Facing an increase in crime levels, Ryhan, acting as chief of the police station, decided with 20 other Bustan residents to tackle the increasing security vacuum by forming a unit of civilian police.

“There were too many robberies and people being kidnapped in the streets. We had to do something so people could feel more secure. We are not the FSA; we are just civilians who want to protect our goods and our people,” says Ryhan.

He says they asked some FSA members to join them because they have weapons.

“After six months, our team is now made up of 35 people,” he says. “It was created by the civilian council that organizes activities in the area, and some of the members are soldiers who defected from Bashar’s army.”

Rebels have been fighting against Assad’s regime for more than 20 months now, and the conflict has undoubtedly changed the face of daily life for citizens all over the country.

This past week, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the death toll may have reached 90,000, citing figures given to him by his Saudi counterpart, Prince Saud al-Faisal, according to AFP. That figure is higher than United Nations estimates, which put the toll at about 70,000.

The UN estimates more than 750,000 people have fled the country, while a further 2.5 million are internally displaced.

Amid the chaos, the shortage of basic supplies, the displaced families and the constant threat of being caught in the crossfire, the daily lives of citizens are further stressed by the lack of a proper security apparatus. As both sides fight each other, security in residential areas is sparse, and the void is infested with increasing levels of crime.

To fill this gaping security vacuum, concerned citizens in these areas have taken up the daunting task themselves, organizing to form a civilian police force that is now quite formal in structure, despite being haphazard at first.

The Bustan security forces are not the only civilian police in Aleppo. There are five main offices, all of which share information and collaborate in their policing efforts.

At first, the main crime they fought was a number of robberies of local shops, but this is minor compared to the issues Ryhan has been facing in the past few months.

“We now have serious complaints about members of the Free Syrian Army. Some of them are stealing cars to move around. Other groups are ejecting families from their homes in order to be closer to the front,” says Ryhan. “I’m paying close attention to this because people are losing trust in them.”

Their efforts are welcomed by local residents who have grown tired of some FSA members having free reign to do whatever they want.

“If we catch an FSA member stealing, he gets the same treatment as anyone else, except that first I organize a meeting with the leader of his battalion to inform him of the situation and also to make sure the stolen goods are returned to the owner,” he explains.

He was once asked to join an FSA battalion for US$150 a month, but refused.

“I don’t have anything against the FSA, but we are living with seven different battalions in this area, and some of the fighters are doing bad things to civilians, who get so fed up sometimes that they report [FSA members] to the shabiha,”he says.

When someone is arrested, Ryhan and his team write out a report as you would in a formal police station. They are now looking at working with lawyers to investigate cases and determine proper sentencing.

Several checkpoints are set up around Bustan as civilian police officers walk the streets to deal with any problems that arise. At night, two cars roam around and question anyone who seems suspicious.

“We are also responsible for helping residents in case of sudden shelling, and we help transport the injured and bodies from the ruins,” he says.

The shabiha

One of the revolution’s main goals is to catch shabiha, who are seen as thugs and are accused of killing and beating people who attend protests. They also reportedly carry out campaigns of intimidation that involve executions, drive-by shootings and sectarian attacks.

Shabiha are known as pro-regime militiamen hailing from Assad’s minority Alawi sect, which dominates the government and security apparatuses, as well as the military.

Ryhan says the shabiha attack people during protests and spy on members of the FSA. Most of the time, people will call out the shabiha during protests, and then they are arrested by local security forces.

But for Ryhan, the accusations need to be backed by proof.

“When someone is being accused [of being a shabiha member], we try to have videos or pictures of the reported incident or have eyewitnesses,” says Ryhan.

Since they can’t level charges against every single person possessing a gun, Security Revolution members check to make sure the person has a license to carry a weapon.

“Anyone who has a new gun has to declare it to the Security Revolution to get a document stating so, and avoid any trouble in the future. People who owned a gun before the revolution would normally already have a license for it. Anyone in possession of a gun that doesn’t have one of the two [documents] is considered a shabiha,” Ryhan says.

On the other side of Ryhan’s office, a small room is kept closed. Inside are 10 men aged between 16 and 40. All of them have been charged with different crimes and are waiting for lawyers and the Security Revolution to look into their cases.

Among them is 16-year-old Mohamed Abdel Wahba, who has been accused of spying on the FSA in central Aleppo.

“I would walk around in the public garden in central Aleppo and observe what FSA members were doing. After, I would go to Jab al-Jabria area, where the regime is in control and report what I’ve seen and heard,” he says.

At first, he claims to have done this for a small fee he received from the regime. A few minutes later, however, he tells Egypt Independent that in fact, one of his friends was captured by the regime, and the soldier threatened to kill him if Abdel Wahba did not spy on the FSA.

“I’ve been in custody for 10 days. My family comes to visit me sometimes, but now I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says.

Ryhan says his young age will be taken into consideration during investigations.

Italian Five Star Movement surprises everyone with elections results, including itself

Laura Cugusi — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 10:06:00 +0000

Italy went through a tumultuous poll this week amid politicians’ banking scandals, the pope stepping down, the revival of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s political career, and former President Mario Monti’s choice to run for the post after months of firm denial of any such intention.

The center-left coalition led by Pierluigi Bersani won the Chamber of Deputies of the bicameral parliament, where laws must first be passed before moving on to the Senate, with 29.5 percent of the votes.

Berlusconi’s center-right coalition won 30.7 percent of the votes for the Senate, which brought the coalition 117 seats — only three less than Bersani’s coalition.

With no majority victory in both houses of parliament, passing laws becomes a challenge for both coalitions.

Meanwhile, like a tsunami, famous comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement swept away competitors, becoming the first political force running outside a coalition in the Chamber of Deputies, and winning 25.5 percent of the votes. The results suggest a new third way in Italy’s traditional center-right/center-left binary.

Ahead of the polls, Grillo’s electoral tour had been taking over Italy’s squares one by one, with three speeches a day and tens of thousands of YouTube hits. Last week, in Milan’s Piazza del Duomo, thousands gathered to hear Grillo’s political show, where literature Nobel Prize laureate Dario Fo enthusiastically declared on stage, “It’s like at the end of World War II, when there was a lot of joy among people who wanted to see change and build a new society.”

Mainstream politicians often referred to the movement as “anti-politics.” While both left and right-wing parties generally disregarded it as irrelevant, after its strong electoral performance, they increasingly slam it as a danger to democracy. The media largely dismissed the movement, mentioning it only in reference to Grillo’s famous stunts.

But for its sympathizers, the movement provides an appealing alternative political model.

The Five Star Movement has been growing exponentially since it began in 2006 as an online community based around Grillo’s blog, the most popular in Italy, as well as social networks. Sympathizers later organized meet-ups to discuss issues ranging from green economics and technology to local development, economic sovereignty and access to knowledge.

In 2007, Grillo organized the first V-day, standing both for the Italian swear word “vaffanculo,” and vendetta. He also launched the “Clean Parliament” initiative to ban politicians with criminal records from being elected.

He collected more than 350,000 signatures in one day. Nevertheless, the initiative was not discussed in parliament.

In 2009, the Five Star Movement launched its political platform around five public priorities: access to water, a sustainable transportation system, connectivity, local development and environmental protection. In 2010, the decision to participate in electoral politics and run as independents for local councils yielded remarkable results in several cities.

For example, the movement’s candidate won the mayoral seat in the important city of Parma in 2012.

Today, its key points are oriented toward issues of social justice and equality, such as a living wage for the unemployed, free Internet, opposing the privatization of water and basic services, and limiting and monitoring war and military expenditure. It also includes fiscal benefits for social enterprises to improve the stagnating economy.

Analysts say the movement’s rise has absorbed those who had grown increasingly disenchanted by the failure of democratic institutions, and who would have otherwise opted for more radical choices, such as the extreme right.

Members describe it as a viable alternative to Berlusconi’s controversial right-wing politics and the left, criticized for making compromises to avoid losing political perks, such as high wages and retirement bonuses. They believe the movement is finally tackling the political ills long ignored by the prevalent forces, particularly political parties and mainstream media.

“If Italy was a normal country, the Five Star Movement wouldn’t exist,” says Dafni Ruscetta, an activist from Cagliari. “The failure of the current political and economic model is due to corruption, a consolidated system of lobbies and clientelism. The mafia is not simply crime and godfathers, but rather a mentality rooted in our culture.”

Paola Pinna, a candidate for the lower house, says the movement is looking for inspiration in other movements worldwide.

“We don’t follow existing models, but of course we have looked at civil society movements here and abroad, and we share with them a bottom-up approach and a strong motivation to take part in politics directly,” Pinna says. “So Grillo represents a lifeline — a last chance to show the political class that the people will not accept that it operates in the public interest.”

Crowds roaring “Let’s send them all back home,” or “Surrender, you have been surrounded,” addressing mainstream politicians, are a common sight at Grillo’s gatherings. But as much as it is celebrated as a new stream of politics, some are skeptical about a certain self-righteousness within the movement.

“One of the critical and potentially dangerous attitudes of Grillo’s supporters is their assumption that they’re voicing the ‘real needs’ of society, accusing those who do not understand or support the movement’s battles of being naive and ill-informed,” says Enrico De Angelis, a researcher in political communication and new media.

The movement is also often criticized for the inexperience of its candidates, many of them new to politics. But the group precisely tries to promote the idea that politics belong to everyone.

“If you accept the principle that one is worth one, like our Constitution says, you have to accept that theoretically everybody can run for politics, not only renowned professors, lawyers, doctors, or the alleged experts and showgirls that live completely disconnected from reality,” Ruscetta says. “We want citizens who have had nothing to do with politics so far, so they can better represent the majority of Italians.”

Movement members say this is their chance to contribute their knowledge.

“I studied economic laws concerning balancing public budgets and I realized nobody has been taking them into account,” Laura Castelli, a 26-year old candidate in the Piedmont region, says. “This is what I can do, and I want to contribute my experience to governing my region. The administration of public affairs must be efficient.”

Grillo himself often refers to the movement as “an army of citizens with the helmet,” and admits he is unable to lead it. “We cannot keep delegating politics to others. We have to do it collectively, as citizens are the ones who know their country and its problems,” he has said.

With this in mind, the movement is striving to return some trust in the political process.

Federico Pizzarotti, Parma’s mayor, who was elected with the movement, says that voters are much more demanding now the movement is in power, “even though nobody ever cared about the experience and capability of politicians.”

“Despite their fame and their CVs, politicians have brought us to the disaster we are in now. So not being experienced is a guarantee,” he says.

But Angelis describes a danger in the movement’s discourse of “externalizing conflicts.” While Grillo successfully mobilized public anger, Angelis says, the problem is that he is fixated on a message that “all the problems we are facing now are others’ faults, not ours.”

This makes it less solution-oriented, he says. “It is an excessive simplification of very complex issues, which is typical of the Internet and social networks, where he who shouts louder gets more attention and more weight.”

But the movement has detailed several propositions — particularly in response to what they describe as rampant corruption.

“First of all, we are going to take back all the money that has been stolen by the political caste that costs billions of euros per year. That’s a start,” Grillo said during one of his public gatherings.

“Politics is not done with public money to buy billboards,” he continued. “Politics is done among the people, in the squares. Politicians appear in public surrounded by bodyguards and police, their opponents stopped and questioned. You are my bodyguards, the citizens.”

The movement also firmly refuses to rake in any public funding for its political activity, relying on volunteers and donations instead. For its elections campaign, it collected more than 500,000 euros from 20,000 small donors.

After the movement’s success in regional elections, it immediately gave back 1.7 million euros of public funding, and implemented a 70 percent reduction on salaries to be allocated to micro credit initiatives for startups.

Critics also say the movement is heavily based on the charisma of Grillo alone. Meanwhile, cynics say it is dangerous to call it a bottom-up civil society movement speaking on behalf of the people, but rather a powerful organization relying on the best tools and expertise in the fields of technology and networking.

The movement’s unexpected success poses a challenge, as it will have to negotiate with a largely conservative political and economic system. It claims a plan to destabilize the political establishment by introducing new practices involving the permanent control and monitoring of institutions.

“If I get elected, I will go every day to parliament with a webcam around my neck,” Castelli promised, in an interview prior to the polls.

It’s another version of Grillo’s famous slogan, “We will open the parliament like a tuna can.”

Remembering the day Qadhafi died

Morgane Taquet — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 14:38:00 +0000

Following months of fighting, Libyan rebels on 20 October 2011 found and killed the country’s longtime leader, Muammar Qadhafi.

As the news exploded, images of the blood-stained colonel spread all over the world. In Libya still, there is a sense of “before” and “after” Qadhafi. The joy, the tears and the shock was such that many remember exactly what they were doing when they heard the news.

But Libyans experienced Qadhafi’s fall in many different ways. A year after the colonel’s death, a series of portraits of Libyans spanning all social classes allows us to map out the country’s new generation.

How are the people of Libya living today? What expectations do they hold for the newly appointed government? Five portraits, three questions and one guiding principle: their country.

KHADIJA TARHOUNI, 42, refugee of Bab al-Azizia

I don’t accept foreign forces bombing my country. The West had no right involving themselves in our business

What were you doing on the day of Qadhafi’s death?

On that day, I was at my brother’s house in Tripoli getting ready for my nephew’s wedding. I was busy baking cakes.

The television was always on, as we were following the fighting, so I quickly learned of the colonel’s death. For the first few minutes, I didn’t know that this man, who governed our country for over 40 years, was dead.

Then I felt terribly sad that he had been treated this way: dragged along, held up for all to see. I was disgusted. I would have preferred him to be arrested and made to stand trial.

After hearing the news, I couldn’t concentrate on the cakes anymore.

More than a year has passed. What are your views on the revolution?

If the revolutionaries truly respected Libya, they would not have destroyed Bab al-Azizia, a valuable part of our country’s heritage.

The buildings would have been much more useful left standing; it’s such a waste. Now, the whole country is armed and I don’t feel safe. I’m scared of being hit by a stray bullet, and my husband never gets in his car without a gun for self-defense.

The only thing we’ve won is freedom of speech and information. It’s one year on, but we can’t talk of victory.

How do you envisage Libya’s future?

I can’t give an opinion about a regime that doesn’t even exist. If I compare the two revolutions: the coup d’etat led by Qadhafi in 1969 [against King Idris] and what has just occurred, at least the former was peaceful.

Qadhafi stabilized the country and brought our status up in the eyes of the rest of the world. Now I worry about the fate of women. Qadhafi did a great deal for women’s rights.

Women could become pilots, army generals and judges — posts that were previously held exclusively by men. In a tribal society such as ours, that is a real achievement.

To return to outdated principles establishing polygamy is a terrible setback and a bad omen for the future.

OUSSAMA BOUGHRARA, 37, fisherman

It was our duty to take up arms and protect the harbor

What were you doing on the day of Qadhafi’s death?

I had a meeting with the head of security at [the National Transition Council] in Benghazi. I was with some colleagues when a man came running up to tell us that Qadhafi was dead.

Straight after, a different man came over to tell us that it wasn’t true. We started getting calls confirming the rumors, and I was completely, crazily happy.

That being said, I would have preferred to see him stand trial. Qadhafi had so many secrets to tell, specifically about his dealings with the West.

How has your life changed since the revolution?

In the eight months following the revolution, the fishing trade slowed down considerably, and so we were focused exclusively on protecting the fishing harbor. I gathered together young men from nearby neighborhoods and formed an armed group of about 40.

Our main goal was to protect the merchandise from theft in the absence of the police, and we never hesitated, as it was our duty as citizens.

Strategically, Benghazi was important during the revolution. We helped many thousands of Chinese workers escape via the port, which was also the point of passage for sending weapons and other supplies to Misrata. We also helped to moor cargo ships that were transporting petrol to pro-Qadhafi zones.

Since the country’s liberation, I’m in charge of about 300 men who are paid to ensure the protection of Benghazi’s harbor and customs control under the authority of the Defense Ministry. It’s all quite ironic considering that before the revolution, I refused to carry out my military service.

Is Libya now a free country?

Libya is free, but there still remains the problem of centralization. I really hope that Benghazi will have its own administration so that life is made easier for the city’s people.

Currently, even our salaries come from Tripoli. Oil profits should also be shared according to demographics.

It’s not about revenge, but Qadhafi treated east Libya badly for years for the profit of the West. I just want all Libyans to be treated fairly.

AHMED FERNANA, 30, military officer

I still remember the smell of the Bab al-Azizia compound hitting me: sulphur and the stench of bodies. I’ll never forget that moment

What were you doing on the day of Qadhafi’s death?

The night before, I had been out with friends in Tripoli. I stayed at their place, and we woke up late, around midday.

When we turned on the TV and saw the banners announcing Qadhafi’s death, we couldn’t believe our eyes. We went straight out to La Place des Martyrs [Martyrs Square] to join the crowds.

To see Qadhafi killed on Libyan soil was something we had never dared to dream of; we thought he had fled to Algeria or elsewhere. On that day, I remember completely losing control: jumping around, screaming and firing my AK-47.

We screamed so much that three days later, my friends were still voiceless.

A year after the revolution, how has your life changed?

Before the revolution, I was a professional footballer for a premier division club. Starting in November 2011, I fought for the freedom of Beni Walid, one of the last Kabbalah strongholds.

Today, I signed a yearlong contract with the Defense Ministry to be operating chief of protection groups for ministers and official delegations of the Sawak barracks.

Though it’s not something that I want to do forever, it is a job that I enjoy. I feel as though the revolution changed my identity.

I’ve always loved Libya, but now I’m proud to be from this country. I want to study and build a family here. Even though my football career is over, I’ve found new hope.

How do you envisage Libya’s future?

It takes time for a country to find its political footing. It is especially difficult to judge the representatives in office when the majority are unknown to us.

But I trust the Libyan people: They freed the country and they know what is best. However, Libya must become a country based on rights.

The first thing that must be done is to find a solution for those who were chased out of their homes by Qadhafi’s supporters due to their political beliefs.

RYAN AL-AZZABI, 20, breakdancer

During the revolution, there was no water, electricity or phone signal in my house. All I did was dance; it was the only thing I could do

What were you doing on the day of Qadhafi’s death?

At the time, I was working as a freelance cartoonist for the Libya Times, a cultural and political magazine published in English. The rumors began to spread in the morning; we even pretended to kill Qadhafi while playing PlayStation games. ... Then a colleague found the video online.

All around, people began to cry with joy. I thought to myself that finally, the world would be able to see the true Libya. Also, we’d be able to travel to competitions.

A year after the revolution, how has your life changed?

Breakdancing was never allowed, and practicing in the street was almost impossible; I can’t count the number of times we were chased away from where we were dancing. Breakdancing was not considered compatible with our culture and traditions, and when we invited B-boys to Libya, they were not allowed to enter the country.

Ever since the revolution, we feel free to practice, and for the first time we’ve organized a national competition to take place in Tripoli at the end of November. So far, 38 dancers have signed up, and we are hoping for an audience of about 200.

This is a great opportunity to see Libya’s finest B-boys. We would never have been able to organize this kind of event under the old regime.

How do you envisage Libya’s future?

One thing’s for sure: We finally have freedom of speech. However, it takes a lot longer to change people’s attitudes. Those who have lived under Qadhafi’s rule for 42 years will not be completely freed in the blink of an eye.

I think the people of Libya are only just seeing young people dancing in the streets. It will take some time for them to understand exactly what we do.

RIMA SALEM, 25, NGO worker

Death was the only justice for Qadhafi

What were you doing on the day of Qadhafi’s death?

I was in the kitchen and turned on the TV as I do every day. All of the channels were talking about it, but there were no images, so I didn’t believe them.

I thought that capturing him was impossible. Several hours passed and then the photos began to surface, but he really wasn’t recognizable and so I still didn’t believe it.

I was glued to the news for the whole day, only finally believing when we saw the video at the end of the day. Obviously, I’d have loved it if he’d have given up all of his secrets, but for Qadhafi, the only justice was death.

A year after the revolution, how has your life changed?

Before the revolution, I was studying microbiology at the University of Tripoli and working part time as a translator. I stopped when the university closed because of the revolution.

Nothing happened, so I started to look for work. I did odd jobs, but nothing that I was really interested in.

Working for the [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] is a way of reaching out to refugees and those who were displaced. By talking to these people, I can establish what they need, whether it be financial aid, medical assistance, etc.

Now I would prefer to continue my studies abroad, in an Anglophone country, if possible.

How do you envisage Libya’s future?

Before, we didn’t have freedom, so the situation has vastly improved, but since the revolution religion has taken up too much space. Islamic religious leaders are heavily involved with the media, and their opinions hold more weight than before.

No one should tell me how to practice my faith. I would like to see the separation of state and religion. Without this, we will never live in a true democracy.

UN adviser shares thoughts on Libya’s post-war stability

Christopher Reeve — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 10:37:00 +0000

Unlike in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, it took a civil war to ultimately bring leadership change in Libya. In the post-war environment, the question of security has been at the top of the agenda for Libya’s new leaders and, in the aftermath of the 11 September attack on US diplomatic personnel in Benghazi, a primary concern for the international community.

The United Nations in March resolved to assist Libyans in developing their country after 42 years of autocratic rule. Michael Smith, who has prior experience in East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Kashmir and Cambodia, is the security sector adviser for the UN Support Mission in Libya. Smith met with Egypt Independent last month in Tripoli to discuss Libya’s post-conflict security situation.

Egypt Independent: How important is it to take weapons off the streets and out of unofficial hands?

Michael Smith: The issue is not so much the weapons that exist. It’s actually the armed groups that exist. The key issue is: The revolution was actually done by armed groups of Libyan citizens.

These people in the groups still exist. They exist because the state does not yet have a new army or a new police force. It has remnants of the old.

I have spoken to quite a number of commanders of these different brigades. They are the ones that are called on to help maintain security. In some situations, these are the ones that are actually contracted by the state for specific operations.

EI: Is this model of the state contracting militias sustainable?

Smith: That is not the intention of the government. The intention of the government is to have security forces under state control. So this is a phase.

There is certainly an option to take the ones that they’re contracting and bring them into the army as a special part of the army. For example, in many countries they have an army reserve. In [the US], they have a National Guard. So there are different possible options.

EI: Does Libya have a disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) plan for former fighters?

Smith: Under the first transitional government, the [National Transitional Council], there was quite a lot of planning done by an organization called the Warriors’ Affairs Commission for the whole DDR program. They did a lot of good work in terms of recording the numbers of thowar [revolutionaries] that needed to be integrated.

They had plans: basically, a process for those that wanted to go into the military or the police to be vetted. They did a lot of baseline work that hasn’t been implemented.

Some of the issues have been implemented, but as [for] a comprehensive overall DDR strategy and plan, there hasn’t been one. This is obviously a key priority for the incoming government now to address.

EI: What about people who fought for the other side?

Smith: The pro-Qadhafi militias don’t really exist as such now. Or if they do, they have gone underground.

So I wouldn’t put them in the same category as the recognized thowar. If they’ve gone underground, they’re basically illegal groups. I don’t think they are a big category, by the way.

The concern about pro-Qadhafi people is the revolutionary brigades’ perception of some people still serving in the army that might be pro-Qadhafi.

EI: How does that get dealt with?

Smith: By negotiation and by time. The revolutionaries’ position is very clear: there are three categories of people.

The first category are those who were in the services who defected at the start of the revolution and fought on the side of the revolution. That’s quite clear-cut: They should go back into the army if they want to go back into the army.

There’s this other quite large category of those who didn’t defect, but they didn’t fight for Qadhafi either. They just stayed at home.

Those people, the revolutionary commanders would say, are generally OK. They’re just victims of circumstance. They happened to be in a military unit under Qadhafi. They weren’t pro-Qadhafi. Those people just need to be vetted. Once they’re vetted, they can probably reclaim their status.

And then there’s the third category of those who they believe were senior officers who didn’t necessarily fight for Qadhafi, but they were Qadhafi sympathizers for a long period of time. And you would probably find their names amongst those being knocked off in Benghazi.

EI: That last group, what do you see happening to them?

Smith: It’s hard for me to give a categorical answer on that. There needs to be more done in relation to reconciliation in this country. It’s a huge issue.

EI: Regarding people requesting assistance who didn’t fight, how does one prove who fought and who didn’t fight?

Smith: That’s a good question [related to] some of the katebas [militias] and the Supreme Security Committee, which has been linked with the Ministry of Interior. The idea was that [the SSC] would be people from the katebas who fought.

But actually, a lot of post-revolutionary people have joined it. And even some of the katebas around the country — because of the unemployment situation — have accepted some recruits themselves, basically to keep them off the streets and keep them disciplined and all of that sort of thing.

One area that we haven’t spoken about in terms of the lawlessness situation is the criminal activity. When you get a post-conflict situation, there’s always this window that opens up for criminal activity because state security institutions are weak.

Now these criminal activities, again, not unique to Libya, have definitely started. And something that causes insecurity in the country, you may be aware, is the fact that Qadhafi let out of jail 16,000 people, some of whom were hardcore criminals.

EI: And the organizations most capable of fighting this element would be katebas?

Smith: Yes. Exactly. For the time being.

EI: Thinking about the Benghazi attack on the US consulate, news reports seem to indicate that there is no apparent attempt by the government or militias to hold anyone responsible. How would you assess the will and ability of the government to reign in the violence?

Smith: It’ll take time. The fact that all of this happened around the same time that the transitional government was going out after the elections, the new government was coming in, a new General National Congress formed — all of these things take time to settle.

There have been a number of assassinations of Libyans in Benghazi, and another number of attempted assassinations. And to my knowledge, nobody has been arrested for any of these, which tends to suggest that there are forces at play in the Benghazi community that are quite powerful in one way or another.

It’s the unpredictable nature of what is happening there that is the cautionary tale.

EI: If Libya moves into some type of federal system, will there be differences in the future security structures in terms of east and west?

Smith: They’ve got important questions they need to ask and resolve. There is a regionalism issue here, which has been historic: the east, the west and the south.

A lot of the resentment in the east at the moment — and there is resentment — is because they were neglected for 42 years by the previous regime. Nobody denies that. They’re really hurt.

The revolution began in the east. And people in the east feel that without them the revolution wouldn’t have happened. They have a perception — and I want to stress the word “perception” — that they still haven’t been paid their dues, that Tripoli is [still] the center of the universe in Libya. And that feeds into the federalists’ agenda.

That is what they obviously capitalize on. So the whole issue of a federated system has to be worked out. I think it’s very fair to say that with the elections in the GNC, representation in the GNC, and the new government’s appointment of ministers, there has been a definite recognition that the east and the south are represented.

There will always be differences, just like there are between California and New York. The real question, I think, is: To what extent does everybody want to be a Libyan, or not?

And it’s not just east versus west, or east, west and south. If you then go into each of those areas, you will find there are tribal differences as well. I think the recent conflict in Beni Walid shows that.

You find the same thing down in the south between some of the ethnic minorities.

I’d sum it up by saying the future of Libya is almost solidly going to be determined by the Libyans themselves. There are external influences on them because they border on six countries and they are part of a globalized world.

But fundamentally, the future of the country is in their hands. And for us in the UN, we see it as a great privilege to be asked to assist them where we can — not to tell them, not to do it for them — literally to assist them. But it’s their show, and they want it to be their show.

This piece was originally published in Egypt Independent's print edition.

Palestinians at Yarmouk camp are forced to take sides in the Syrian conflict

Dunia Manzar — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:59:00 +0000

DAMASCUS — The Palestinian camps of Yarmouk, Tadamon and Falesteen lie on the southwest outskirts of Damascus. Mountains of piled stones and trash surrounding the military checkpoints prevent cars and civilians from entering. Snipers strike from surrounding rooftops. A man lies on the ground, shot dead at the entrance of the camp.

With no place to go, women continue to walk back to the camps despite the shootings, carrying bags on their head, trying to reach their homes. Only those living near Yarmouk’s entrance would find their houses still standing.

Inside Tadamon and Falesteen, some civilians remain trapped under sniper fire and rely on three local associations whose members risk their lives to distribute food and diesel.

The south strip of the camp is still under the control of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Meanwhile, President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army continues to gain ground on the northern side.

As with any attack in Syria, testimonies give rise to differing stories blaming one side or the other.

Among a puzzle of eyewitnesses, Yannan sums up the most plausible version of the attack.

“Thousands of FSA men flooded into the camps urging us to leave. Then planes appeared and bombed Al-Husseiny Mosque and a nearby school full of refugees. Everything became chaotic, a lot of shouting, and people rushed into the streets.”

As for the logistics of the operation, Mazen, a member of the Palestinian Local Coordination Committee, expresses his disappointment with the FSA.

“They did not coordinate the operation with us, nor did they inform us about it, which put civilians at risk and hindered the success of the whole operation,” he says.

The attack on Yarmouk on 16 December left 25 civilians dead and forced almost 100,000 Palestinians to flee either to Damascus or to other Palestinian camps in neighboring Lebanon.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees estimates that as many as 20,000 Palestinians have fled to Lebanon since the beginning of the war. Half of them arrived at Ein al-Helwe, in south Lebanon, where 75,000 refugees already live and have to scrape by in the space of two square kilometers.

Ein al-Helwe received the first wave of refugees from Syria last August when Yarmouk was first attacked. Nevertheless, those refugees were able to return to Syria unlike those who fled in December and have no home to return to.

Yannan’s elderly mother recounts the attack on the camps as her latest among a long list of escapes. In 1948, she fled what was then Palestine when she was 15, with a 9-month-old who had already lost his father.

In seven years, she moved from Iraq to Jordan to Deraa in south Syria before settling in Yarmouk. Now, her son-in-law has decided to move the family to Ein al-Helwe camp where they will be more secure.

With the arrival of thousands of refugees from Syria, Ein al-Helwe represents the sores of the Syrian conflict. A few days after Yannan’s family arrival, a 30-year-old Syrian refugee and father-of-four committed suicide by hanging himself.

An indiscriminate attack on Palestinian camps by the Syrian regime, an ally of the Palestinian political elite, does not make sense. Compared to the Palestinian camps in Jordan and Lebanon, the half a million Palestinians in Syria are far more integrated into society.

Choosing sides

Amid war, Palestinians have to choose between two polarized sides even if this entails division among them. The Palestinian faction Qiada al-Ama, or General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril, is one of the most fervent supporters of Assad’s regime.

Jibril has armed young Palestinians forming popular committees within the camps and fighting alongside the Syrian army. A high-ranking official from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine condemns Jibril’s move.

“There was an attempt to assassinate Jibril at the beginning of the uprising, but he managed to escape and leave the camps to later return with his armed men,” the official says. “Now there are 6,500 armed men fighting in Yarmouk.”

Jibril was the first to push Palestinians to take sides in the Syrian war. On 5 June 2011, and with the support of the Syrian regime, he orchestrated a demonstration along the Golan border against Israel. The Israeli army killed 23 of the demonstrators.

The next day, thousands of Palestinians demonstrated in front of Jibril’s headquarters in Yarmouk, accusing him and the Palestinian factions of manipulating young Palestinians to side with the regime’s interests.

Omar, a member of the Palestinian Local Coordination Committee in Yarmouk, estimates that Jibril now has only several hundred armed men under his command.

“There were around 2,000 armed men in charge of protecting Yarmouk, fighting for the sake of civilians against both rebels and the Syrian army. When Jibril openly took part in the Syrian conflict, many defected from Qiada al-Ama and joined the rebels,” recounts Omar.

Most of the Palestinian refugees complain about looting and brutality from by both sides and, as with displaced Syrians, they only seek a safe haven.

Mazen conceives Palestinians and Syrians living in Syria as one people, but mentions how Palestinians can benefit from the Syrian revolution.

“We are trapped among many sides: Jibril, the Palestinian factions, the Syrian regime, the FSA and the Syrian army. Among the FSA in Yarmouk, there are professionals, but radicals as well as Shabiha [pro-regime paramilitaries].”

“Once the regime falls, Syria will be free, and, as Palestinians, we will be able to get rid of Palestinian factions. Palestinian political elites are no more than an empty shell, corrupt and without supporters. As for the Syrian regime, it never helped Palestinians other than rhetorically.”

“The most chanted slogan in Palestinian demonstrations remains: ‘Sons of the haram, selling the Golan’ [in reference to the Syrian regime],” Mazen says.

Nevertheless, the Palestinian Local Coordination Committee opposes Palestinians wielding weapons against either Syrians or Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Palestinian supporters of Hamas have decided to fight against the Syrian army alongside the Islamist groups among the rebels. With different Palestinian factions aligning on opposite sides of the Syrian divide, they at times find themselves firing at each other amid clashes between the rebels and the Syrian army.

After several days of negotiations, and with most of Tadamon and Falesteen having been destroyed, the army, rebels and Palestinians reached an agreement whereby the rebels would withdraw toward Yelda, south of Yarmouk. No document was signed.

For a young rebel fighter who prefers to remain anonymous, this agreement is bound to fail: “We are trying to reach Damascus and we cannot do it from the north where the army is very present and mountains hinder the path. We must do it from the south of the city, from east to west: from Joubar to Kafer Soussa.

“Yarmouk is the last piece of the south and the best entrance to the city because, contrary to the rest, it is not separated by the highway but offers direct access to Damascus and to bystreets where fighters can overcome their inferiority in number and weaponry.”

“It is a key entry for the rebels’ strategy,” the rebel figher says.

This strategic reality explains why the Syrian army reacted so furiously — cutting the rebels’ advance by bombing the camps.

Regional events also play a role. Some Palestinian youth see the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas in Gaza as a sign that they could recover Palestine by armed means.

Many youth are joining them with this dream in view. Small groups of the young men from Ein al-Helwe are taking part in the fight in Syria alongside Islamist rebels. At least three funerals have already taken place in Ein al-Helwe for the bodies returned to the camp as martyrs, including Jamal Suleiman, the nephew of a leading member of the Islamist Usbat Al-Ansar.

Libya’s forgotten fighters: After victory, rebels find reintegration difficult

Christopher Reeve — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 09:40:00 +0000

He is no longer in battle, but Ayoub Jalgham wears desert fatigues when he visits downtown Tripoli. His build, scruffy facial hair and air of confidence all tell passers-by that this 19-year-old fought against the regime of Muammar Qadhafi, Libya’s leader of 42 years.

More than a year since Libya’s civil war ended with rebel victory, hanging out is about all Jalgham does now after trying, but failing, to find work.

Six months ago, Jalgham interviewed with the Libyan government’s Warrior Affairs Commission, or WAC, established by the National Transitional Council to meet the needs of, and reintegrate, former rebels.

At his interview, Jalgham requested to study abroad, but has yet to receive a response from WAC.

“I want to complete my studies ... to teach English or work as a translator in an embassy around the world,” he says.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to post-conflict Libya is the reintegration of the men who fought in last year’s conflict. That began with demonstrations and ended in a civil war involving NATO forces, leading to the killing of strongman Qadhafi and an unprecedented political opening in Libya.

While those who fought on the side of Qadhafi have left the country, gone into hiding, been killed or are facing legal prosecution, those who joined the rebellion expect to be active participants in the new Libya.

Following the killing of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and recent attacks on security forces in Benghazi, including the assassination of the city’s security chief, a proliferation of weapons and an increase in criminality throughout the country, turning former rebels into either productive civilians or security officials under the control of the government is crucial to stability and post-conflict development in Libya.

The Libyan government, which last month experienced a change in leadership when Ali Zeidan replaced Abdurrahim al-Keib as prime minister, has not demonstrated a unified vision for dealing with former fighters. The government’s lack of consensus translated into a year of inaction in supporting former rebels help to return to civilian life.

About 85 percent of those who registered with WAC are men like Jalgham. They want to work outside the security sector, to become students, businessmen, electricians, bankers and the like. WAC conducted some 140,000 interviews from April to July last year to determine their needs and aspirations, and offer vocational training and employment at Libya’s various ministries. But support has not come.

Although Jalgham spends most of his time with family and friends, he and many men who fought in the revolution are currently idle, armed and without income — a potentially dangerous combination.

Nizar Sarieldin, head of WAC’s media office, says the problem Libya faces is a result of the previous government’s failure to support WAC’s mission.

“Keib had no vision. This kept us inactive for a year,” Sarieldin says. “He’s not a thief. He’s very kind, but he not competent enough to be prime minister at this very critical time.”

Although the Keib government did not provide funding for WAC initiatives, like support for small- and medium-sized business development and study abroad for former rebels, it expanded what had become the major route for those who wanted to work in Libya’s security sector.

The National Transitional Council created — and Keib’s interior minister, Fawzi Abdelal, expanded — the Supreme Security Committee, which would be a security force under the control of the new interior ministry.

Men like Jalgham, though, would have to fend for themselves. “The government wanted revolutionaries to go back to their lives. That was the main reason the program was on hold,” Sarieldin says.

Jalgham’s involvement in the revolution began with his work in arms transport. He manned checkpoints with pro-Qadhafi militias in Tripoli, all the while purchasing arms from a rogue soldier for anti-Qadhafi militias.

“By being undercover, I was protecting my family,” he says, “keeping the Qadhafi militias away.”

As the conflict progressed, Jalgham joined the Souq al-Jomaa Freedom Militia and picked up arms. He shows a scar on his upper-right thigh from shrapnel. He fought in Beni Walid at one of the conflict’s decisive battles.

But his major memory in the war was losing his best friend. Jalgham looks away as he tells of being in an antiaircraft vehicle with Mohamed, who was 21.

“I saw a rocket. It was following the car by heat,” he recounts. “I jumped from the car and shouted to my friend, ‘Get out!’ He couldn’t and so he died in the blast.”

Jalgham says he suffered shock, anger and depression. His cousin, Ahmed Gheryani, 25, says that after Mohamed’s death, Jalgham couldn’t sleep for months.

Besides employment support, another of WAC’s mandates is to offer psychosocial services to former fighters.

WAC’s Facebook page has three phone numbers for men interested in such support, and the organization is, Sarieldin says, in the process of training Libyan doctors to treat men like Jalgham. Sarieldin says some 20,000 former rebels and counting have expressed interest in receiving services for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I know a lot of people who went crazy,” Jalgham says. “I know people who were injured, healed and became mentally unstable.”

Another Tripoli native, 34-year-old Nader Alkhafi, says he experienced anxiety and insomnia after the revolution. But his major concern, like Jalgham, is employment.

Alkhafi, who memorized the Quran at the age of 13, faces Mecca to pray before and after the interview. He shares his story of defecting from Qadhafi’s army reserves, fleeing to Tunisia, re-entering Libya to join the rebellion and fighting in the major battles of western Libya with the Tripoli Revolutionaries’ Militia.

“We had to hide in the trees. You heard whistles in your ears from the snipers’ bullets,” he says poetically.

Alkhafi has a bachelor’s degree in media but has never worked in the field. He interviewed with WAC eight months ago but has yet to receive a response to his request for assistance in landing a civilian job in media.

One area in which the various factions of the Libyan government have found success is in offering medical treatment to wounded warriors.

Hassan Azuz, 27, of Tripoli, made weapons and fought with the Amaten Martyrs Militia. He was involved in the revolution’s final battles at Beni Walid and Sirte. While saving a family in Sirte, he was shot in the hip. After receiving treatment in Misrata, the Souq al-Jomaa Council sent him to Turkey in April for further care.

However, he missed his interview with WAC because he was receiving medical treatment in Istanbul. His plan was to work in Libya’s developing security sector, perhaps in a ministry — “anything to protect the nation.”

Azuz wasn’t even able to claim the 2,400 Libyan dinars former rebels were paid as a token for their contribution to the revolution. Upon his return from Turkey, he contacted WAC to explain why he missed the interview, to which they replied, “We are closed. You will have to wait for another announcement,” he says.

He has not heard from them since.

His twin brother, Hussein, who also fought in the revolution, interviewed with WAC and managed to receive the 2,400 dinars, and also landed a job with the interior ministry.

Sarieldin says WAC has had success in getting former rebels employed at Libya’s new interior and defense ministries.

For now, Azuz has gone back to being a fisherman, but remains hopeful that WAC will help him find a job.

“It is my right to be employed in one of the ministries. I fought for the country,” he says.

Although WAC has little to show for its one-year existence, Sarieldin is optimistic that under the new leadership of Zeidan, the organization will be able to fulfill its mandate.

WAC’s most recent initiative, he says, is now “highly likely” to receive support and funding, including 500 million dinars to support small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as vocational and leadership training for former rebels.

Although the initiative includes a plan to send 5,000 former fighters overseas for study, only those with at least a bachelor’s degree would be eligible. Jalgham has a high school diploma.

Enas al-Drsey, 25, is a volunteer youth trainer who documented events alongside militias around Benghazi during the revolution. With the sound of gunfire intermittently interrupting our conversation, Drsey speaks about the group of young men we see loitering in the Italian-style courtyard below her balcony near Benghazi’s seawall.

“They were on the front lines. They lost friends. One lost a brother,” she says. “Now, with no education, they wash cars and sell hash. They are forgotten.”

Drsey says some former revolutionaries she knows took another path after the war’s end.

“A lot of people are now with Al-Qaeda,” she says.

Sarieldin says WAC reached out to former fighters with an Islamist bent and “managed to convince those people to believe in the state.” But with the government not implementing WAC’s support and reintegration initiatives, “they started to talk about Khalafa [the Islamic Caliphate] as better.”

Some revolutionaries went to Syria to join the fight against Bashar al-Assad, Sarieldin says. Others are in Benghazi at the moment, contributing to the city’s insecurity.

“They lost hope in the future of the country,” says Sarieldin.

While speaking with Sarieldin at WAC’s Benghazi office, a battle ensued at the nearby security directorate over the fate of detainees connected to prior attacks on security facilities. The sound of gunshots increased in frequency.

After the interview and in front of the office, dust flying from a concrete slab after it was hit by a bullet just a few feet from this reporter served as a timely reminder that bringing all former fighters to believe in the new Libya is crucial to the state’s viability.

This piece was originally published in Egypt Independent's weekly print edition.

An ambitious project unearths memories of Turkey’s Kurdish youth

Jenna Krajeski — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 13:55:00 +0000

Remzi, a 26-year-old Kurd from southeast Turkey, has a pretty typical life story for someone like him. A child during the brutal 1990s, when paranoia and military violence ravaged Turkey, Remzi and his family were forced to leave their village for urban shantytowns. Their village was later burned to the ground.

Unable to afford to raise their children in the city, Remzi’s parents shipped him and his siblings to the nearest state-run boarding school, a cluster of drab buildings surrounded by barbed wire and military guards, where Remzi would live until his high school graduation. The harsh discipline and daily violence inside the school, coupled with the shadowy decade that catapulted him into its walls, form the core of Remzi’s identity as a young Kurd in Turkey.

“We are born among the stones,” Remzi says. “Our toys are stones, trees, sticks.”

Remzi is one of dozens of youth in Turkey interviewed for “Between Imaginaries and Encounters: Young People from Diyarbakir and Mugla Speak,” a project collecting two years worth of oral histories from both Turkish and Kurdish youth. The results, which were displayed in Istanbul’s Matzo Factory gallery and will soon be published in a book, are a teetering, sky-high stack of Russian dolls, each encounter revealing another and another inside that.

The story of the youth of Turkey is also the story of a young nation. Turkey, after all, is not even 100 years old and while these young people struggle to define their identities and hopes and fears, the country they live in likewise copes with its own small and massive metamorphoses, its own schizophrenia and its responsibilities, and its own adolescence.

On the forefront — more important than Syria, the European Union and the Arab Spring — there is Turkey’s relationship with its Kurdish minority, an oppression that has grown into a seemingly endless civil war, and whose collateral damage Remzi and millions like him so poignantly embody.

In the Matzo Factory, their words — compiled on large posters and small sheets that patrons could tear off the wall and take with them, as well as looping video interviews — gave testimony to the everyday lives of Kurds and Turks living in the changing nation. The display was also an education; a small room served as a library, offering companion books and articles to the interviews. For this particular academic project, a gallery was an apt home. The lives are art.

“The stories are like set pieces,” Leyla Neyzi, a professor at Istanbul’s Sabanci University who oversaw the project, says. “The Kurdish young people have performances, they all have the same story. It starts, ‘My first day at boarding school, I didn’t speak Turkish. They beat me for not speaking Turkish.’ It is a very violent story.”

In Turkey, there are two realities. The first touts a strong Turkish army determined to fight the terrorist Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, who threaten Turks from their remote headquarters in Iraq’s Qandil mountains. The second attributes terrorism not to the PKK but to the Turkish state, whose warplanes fly daily over Kurdish villages on their way to Qandil; in this narrative, the PKK leads a Kurdish revolution.

In the first narrative, the Turkish youth want what Egyptian youth want when they occupy Tahrir Square: economic prosperity free from fear. In the second, it’s the Kurdish youth who want what Egyptian youth want: freedom from tyranny. Both populations dislike the current government, but, as the project shows, a solidarity capable of challenging that government is a long way off.

Neyzi, a trained anthropologist, began the project as a way to explore the recessed memories of the 1990s, a decade following a military coup in which the country was violently reshuffled and its opposition silenced by a strong-armed and paranoid military. It’s an era which Turks — whose attachment to an infallible and pure Turkish identity is fundamental to a functional country — would prefer to forget, and which Kurds feel they cannot afford to let go of.

“How do we remember the history of our republic? What does it mean to be a Turk? What does it mean to be an ‘other’?” are the questions Neyzi hoped to chip away at by moving herself and her crew of social science students to Diyarbakir in the Kurdish southeast and Mugla in the Turkish west, befriending the local youth and the conducting hours-long interviews she likens to psychoanalysis.

Like a good analyst, Neyzi unearthed history. Sometimes memories, like Remzi’s, were bubbling on the surface, evidence of a long-simmering pot. Other times, they were vague and buried sensations pieced together by interviewees the way a blind-folded taster can identify each ingredient in a stew and, only at the end, recognize it as food.

“One young woman I interviewed burst into tears before anything could happen,” Neyzi says. “She told me a story from her childhood which she hadn’t told anyone else and couldn’t share with her family. She was 4 or 5 years old, and she remembers sounds mostly, the sound of fighting at night, very, very loud noises, followed by the wailing of women toward morning. When she asked her parents about this, they said the army went around with taped noises to frighten the population. Or they said she was exaggerating. To this day she wasn’t sure whether it happened or whether she invented it.”

“Sense memory,” Neyzi continues, “are the things we don’t understand but that stay with us. The woman told me her parents don’t know who she is. Whenever the violence is brought up, they are silent. Then she said, ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’”

What separates Neyzi’s interviewees from their parents is crucial to understanding Kurdish youth in Turkey today; it’s the difference between those old enough to have withstood and rejected grand violence, and those who are obsessed with a violence they narrowly avoided.

The Kurdish youth Neyzi’s team interviewed are activists. They are politicized, alienated, and as deeply concerned with their identity as Kurds as they are resentful of their parents for assimilating. They rebel against those submissions, but also, Neyzi says, against the traditions of those only marginally older than them — aunts, uncles, older siblings — whose radical politics often led them to join the ranks of the PKK in the mountains and die. Instead, the Kurdish youth want to bring their fight to the halls of universities and the floor of parliament.

Further west, in the other Turkey, the youth of Mugla struggle with different issues, primarily economic ones.

“In Mugla, being young means something very different,” Neyzi says. “You have a completely different relationship with time. Kurdish young people aren’t young, they are very old. They have the burden of collective memory. Their stories are like they have lived several lives. In Mugla, they fit much more our conception of youth culture. They’re not sure why they are interesting. They’re more focused on their every day lives and their plans for the future.”

Diyarbakir is a city dominated by the political lives of the Kurds who live there. Mugla, on the other hand, is molded by tourism and the jobs and migration inspired by that industry.

The youth in Mugla were also preoccupied by the Kurdish issue, but their discussion of it was condemning, bitter and exactly like their parent’s generation. Their racism, Neyzi says, was overt and unapologetic.

“That’s what’s really terrifying,” she says. “They’re not ashamed of what they’re saying.”

Neyzi was disturbed by the responses, but not shocked. The Kurdish issue — particularly with regard to the 1990s — has mostly been steeped in silence and taboo. Part of the impetus behind the project was to give voice to the ignored or maligned youth of Turkey.

But with the violent Kurdish struggle continuing in spite of new dialogue, and the Turkish judicial system gaining momentum in a massive court case designed to imprison activists and politicians, precisely those change-makers Neyzi’s subjects aspire to be, the voices of these youth and the power individual stories can have in at least slowing down oppression, may have come much too late.

“Once I conducted an interview with a young Kurdish man in a very small room. He had a water bottle with him, which I later learned was vodka, and he was drinking it in the morning. This guy was really self-destructive,” Neyzi says. “He sat down and said immediately, ‘Before you say anything, let me say something to you. Where were you in the 1990s?’ His voice was very accusatory.”

She sits back in her chair, remembering the young man’s agitation, how valid she still feels it was.

“The implication was that Kurds experienced this terrible violence in the 1990s and it took 20 years for Turkish social scientists to wake up,” she says. “I sat in silence for a bit. I use silence a lot in my interviews, and I didn’t want to seem defensive. And then I said, ‘You are right. You are absolutely right.’ And then we started the interview.”

This piece was originally published in Egypt Independent's weekly print edition.