Tomorrow Will Be Better
"Executing people in this manner in a public square and killing Saado was unacceptable and turned many people against them.
"Our revolution was against oppression and we don't accept such actions under any circumstance."
Mohammad Shoeib, Raqqa, eastern Syria activist
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| FILE - In this Tuesday, March 5, 2013 file photo, citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows Syrian man sitting on a fallen statue of former Syrian President Hafez Assad in a central square in Raqqa, Syria. The Arabic words on the fallen statue read: "tomorrow will be better." A quiet power struggle in taking place in the eastern city between Islamic extremist rebels, who control the city after capturing it four months ago from the regime, and moderates trying to curtail their influence, making it a test case for the opposition.(AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center AMC, File) |
The Shiites, he said, "were executed in front of everyone, young and old." He described how three men taken by fighters affiliated with al-Qaeda as Shiites, were taken to the main square of the town of 500,000 people. There they were shot in back of the head. In presumed retaliation for the Shia having massacred Sunnis in Banias and Homs.
The revenge statement was publicly pronounced, in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant. The name adopted through a merger of Jabhat al-Nusra and Iraq's arm of al-Qaeda, an Islamist group well recognized for its icy brutality. For hours, said Mr. Shoeib, all feared to approach the bodies for burial.
Finally a nurse, Mohammad Saado, gathered his courage and committed to the collection of the bodies. To give them a decent burial. It was the humanely right thing to do. Everyone knew that. He responded to his conscience. Mohammad Saado was mysteriously assassinated the following day. The identity of his attacker unknown.
People living in Raqqa are not pleased with the presence of foreign fighters which Jabhat al Nusra (the Nusra Front) represents. The other extremist faction, Ahrar al-Sham, is Syrian, sharing the jihadist ideology of al Nusra. Both led the fight against the regime to capture Raqqa almost four months earlier.
Although they are both aligned, notionally in any event, with the Syrian National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army, it is their symbols that appear wherever they set up shop in Raqqa; the black flag of the Islamists. Mr. Shoeib opposes their presence and their methods. He is one of the directors of Haqquna (It's Our Right) whose purpose is to teach the population about democracy, about their right to vote.
Ahrar al-Sham, the native Syrian Islamists, have taken it upon themselves to ensure that some semblance of order exists in the city of a half-million. They have set up bakeries, they keep electricity and water available as much as is possible under the circumstances, and they administer the distirubiton of humanitarian aid from international supporters.
At the same time, regime warplanes strike at the town at random, dropping bombs on what are clearly felt to be opposition-held buildings. As a result, schools cannot be operated for fear of being hit. Government employees are not paid. And the townspeople complain that the Syrian National Coalition has abandoned them in their need.
Not so, insists a coalition spokesman. The city does receive SNC aid. People are unaware of the origin of the aid they receive. It is unmarked. On a school wall the legend "We the people want Syria to be a civil, democratic state", is legiible in small neat lettering. Next to it in scrawled, larger letters is a response: "The laws of the civil state contradict the Islamic caliphate."
"Raqqa", said one small-business owner bitterly, "has not been liberated. It has been re-occupied by the Islamists." Equating them, in his studied opinion, with the regime's brutal excesses in human rights deprivation.
Labels: Conflict, Human Relations, Islamism, Revolution, Syria
posted by Pieface @ Friday, June 28, 2013
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