The revolutionary: campaigning against the culling of people

First published on February 9th, 2012.

The young man was wary. He was meeting foreigners and talking about revolution in his own country. He was in a place where he didn’t feel comfortable, surrounded by men and families he was convinced were supporters of the President and of the regime he has come to hate. He spoke quietly and when anyone approached us he suddenly stopped talking.

He is what we now call an activist. It sounds easy. In Britain, activists campaign against by-passes or badger culling. Here in Syria they campaign against people culling. And this pits them against a brutal regime which would be very happy to get rid of them for good.

He is wanted. But he told me, touchingly, not to worry about him. He has multiple identities. If he is stopped by the police, the army or militias, he can show one of the identity cards he knows has a clean record. He just needs to remember the right name and date of birth.

But if they catch him, the real him, he knows he is in deep trouble. He came home to Syria from abroad eleven months ago when the revolution started and he has been in the thick of it ever since: in Douma, in Homs and in the other cities that are now bywords for slaughter.

One thing is really bothering him, though. His father was arrested four days ago and no-one has heard from him since. I ask him how worried he is. His face clouds over. “Very worried,” he says. “My father was a protest leader.”

He’s not even sure if his father was properly arrested or just taken away by a militia. Either way, it’s not good news. A militia group was reported to have killed three entire families in one area this week in a deepening of the sectarian strife that forms one layer of this complex conflict.

He couldn’t get through on the telephone to his family. Many of them are in Homs. In the thick of the trouble, in an area that the Syrian army is constantly shelling. He can’t communicate with other activists. It’s too dangerous. Most are in hiding. He can’t promise to help us. He could drive us close to the fighting but the roads are filled with checkpoints. “You don’t look very Syrian”, he tells me with a wry smile. “They will arrest you straightaway. And me. You will be asked to leave the country. I will not leave the jail.”

He described the frustration of being an activist in Homs. “First,” he said, “we thought we could use social media to show the outside world what was happening and to help topple the regime. But our videos and our photographs just showed our suffering and nothing changed. Then we thought the Arab League would help. But they didn’t. Then we thought the UN would help. But they couldn’t. Now we are on our own.”

“Will you stop?” I asked him. “No,” he said firmly. “Six thousand people have died. To stop now would be to dishonour their sacrifice. We will go on. We will not stop until we have got rid of this regime.”

As we got up to leave, we both looked around us, checking if anyone was paying us too much attention. We shook hands. “I’ll be in touch,” he said. And then he pulled a cap down over his eyes and walked into the cold Damascus night. It was late. The activist was heading back to the work of the revolution.