Who are the Syrian opposition?

Emma Suleiman

Certainly many of you have asked and googled this question at a certain point in the last three years, and many of you have come to different conclusions based on the media they follow or have established an opinion based on stories heard here and there.

I am not about to analyses the different political parties that were established in the last three years nor going to categorize the opposition fighters’ types between moderate, jihadist or cool!

I am personally classified as part of the Syrian opposition although I don’t belong to any political party or group like millions of Syrians.

I am simply one of those 23 million Syrians who were mostly born under Hafez Assad’s era and witnessed helplessly the transition of power to his son Bashar.
I am one of those millions who left their home looking to build a new home somewhere else away from dictatorship and jungle law.
I am one of those millions who had a dream but never thought they can realize it one day until March 15th 2011.

You may call it, a civil war or saint war between Shia & Sunni radical or call it whatever you I wish, for me and for millions like me who have dedicated their full life to the revolution in the last three years and scarified every precious thing to achieve a dream we still call it a REVOLUTION, our revolution, believe it or not!

After being totally disconnected for long years from the Syrian society to the point that I actually forgot that I was Syrian, March 15th 2011 opened my eyes again to see the great people Syria had but I never noticed… People who were exactly like me with the same dreams and aspirations but much more braver than I am.

As an observer from outside Syria, my dream was to meet a protester, one of those heroes who dared to call for freedom in the face of the most criminal regime forces the history knew. I travelled to Turkey on June 2011 looking for Syrian refugees and couldn’t wait to see how they looked like. They looked just like me, had the same speech, same experience, living inside our outside the camps it didn’t matter for them. All I heard was, we will regain what we lost but at least we will be free then and we wont live in continuous fear in Assad’s farm.

The men I met back then, had different painful stories, some were jailed, tortured, some had to watch their wives being raped in front of their eyes. Endless miserable stories that a human brain may not be able to imagine. Those guys joined later the Free Syrian Army.

For the whole first year of the revolution I watched daily Syrian pacifically chanting for freedom while Assad’s regime spreading fear, playing on sectarianism, provoking Alwite and Christians by telling them that the Sunnis will assassinate them all if they come to power, in addition to showing multiple faces “the Sunni protector inside Syria, and the minority protector outside Syria.

In 2012, my mother got very sick, and her only wish was to see me, this is when my father called me one night and said: you must come right now, they won’t hurt you, you have done nothing, they shouldn’t hurt you. I said: are you sure, what if they jail me as soon as I reach the airport. He then cried and said: May be you right, I don’t want to lose both of you at the same time.

I then went to Lebanon, and waited at the border to see if I can smuggle to Damascus but it was impossible as security was very tight. I called up one of Assad high ranking thug to see if he can remove my name from the borders, He said: you are charged with working with external parties which means immediate execution.
Of course by “external parties” he meant the media I worked with.
Assad’s most dangerous enemies were those who conveyed his crimes to the world. He didn’t fear the protester as long as no one knows but he feared more the one with a camera or a voice.
Assad never feared radical Islamists, he created and encouraged them but he feared moderate democrats who could show the strong alternative and discredit his propaganda about his opposition and his people.

After months of suffering, my mother passed away, while I was still looking for ways to cross that border! I then decided to try through Turkey and meet those jihadists and see the Qaeeda flag the Western media was continuously talking about.

I went in at the time with Al-Farooq brigade, through the Turkish border to Aleppo, I was surprised to see such cool guys, and really cool guys, guys who had no choice but to join the fight to protect their families and their land. I asked me to take to where Al-Qaeeda is, they laughed and said: you mean those foreign jihadist fighters? I said yes. So they took me to Binnish, which had one the few camps at the time. They were about fifty in best-case scenario while the media was talking about 5000.

I spent a week inside Syria across Idlib and Aleppo talking to displaced refugees, fighters, journos, activist, doctors, field nurses and children. I saw how people managed to survive with no water, no electricity, no internet or phones and under continuous bombing. I saw a 12 years old child die in front of my and his father’s eyes. I didn’t know what to tell him.. So I just hugged him and remembered my mother..

I got to understand for the first time of my life what civil society really means when I saw the youth of Binnish working on their local newspaper and a play, which they could not perform later on as the village theatre was bombarded.

I saw young guys of 15 years old maximum dedicating their time to help the displaced, bring in food and deliver the aids. I saw men and women working together to repair the electricity cables after the bombardment and cleaning the streets.
I saw young girls desperate to learn new things to help the revolution and help others. I saw the real Syria!

Today, all I hear on Western TV is fighting terrorism in Syria and protecting the minorities. I keep wondering how could Assad who tortured his opponent from all minorities; bombarded churches that were used as field hospital protect minorities who lived in Syria since a thousand year? How could the radical shiia fighters from Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan who fighting the Syrian people along Assad’s forces are not considered terrorists and they will protect minorities in Syria?

How could Assad who terrorized a whole nation, destroyed its archeological heritage, massacred entire families with conventional and chemical weapons not be considered a terrorist?
How could Assad who hijacked the power in Syria for 43 years and murdered Lebanese and Palestinian leaders be part of Syria’s future?

How could the world do anything toward a nation that gave everything for their dignity? How could the world be such inhuman?

If Assad and his media machine have succeeded in convincing you that Geneva 2 peace talk is the solution, think twice and if you still wonder who the Syrian opposition is, just look at the Syrian people living inside camps since three years to understand.

Original source:  http://emmasuleiman.blogspot.fr/2014/01/who-are-syrian-opposition.html