as Syrian people we’ve been hearing about meetings between U.S. and Russia all the time, and all of it were like useless. So, we hope, with this new meeting, that at least the Syrian people will have like non-fly zones, so where the people, they can go there and stay safe. People, they have been getting killed not only by ISIS as the regime and the forces are fighting on the ground, so they’ve been getting killed also by United States and Russia. And the main thing that we’re looking for, to have this safe or like non-fly zones. And then, if they will able to have like a political solution to defeat Assad in the same time while they are fighting ISIS, or United States is fighting ISIS. So, that would be like the best thing for the Syrian people. And it’s going to be like the perfect tool to end this conflict soon.
no-fly zones could be like some areas, cities, town, or whatever, close to the borders. And it will be protected, so none of the forces can go there, none of the airstrike can target the city. Because right now there are like—tens of countries are bombing Syria. So, like, to have all these countries like bombing the—whatever they’re trying to bomb, and like to have the civilians away from these bombs and these conflicts. So, if Russia and U.S. want to fight, they can fight like with the other groups and have the civilians away from their fight. So, to have like only a place where it’s provided—places are provided with like electricity, water, like the basic thing to be—to have—like the basic kind of life things, and then to let the civilians go to it, so if they want to be out of this conflict. So, and then—and if like we’ll be able to have all the civilians in these areas, I’m OK, like, if they will destroy each other there.
we’ve been hearing about the fly zones like since 2012. And all like with the Obama administration, we’ve been hearing the same thing, and nothing happened. So, the Syrians started to lose the trust of U.S., so the Syrians mostly don’t trust the U.S. anymore. And a hundred person, they don’t trust the Russians, because the Russian like have killed like civilians, like more ways than anyone else in Syria. So, to have like both countries who are involved with killing thousands of civilians, so they’re like not a trustful countries like so. But we hope that they will agree to do that thing, after five or six years of talking and speeches.
when we’re talking about Russia, it means the Syrian regime. So, the Syrian regime is doing what Russia is telling. And so, we started not to mentioning Assad regime, which is the—like the main problem or like the main creator of the conflict in Syria, because Russia is taking its place. So, talking about Russia, it means like the Syrian regime and Russia. So, the Syrian regime has like no voice anymore. So, and they—like, without Russia, the Syrian regime would be defeated like years ago.
– Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Both Russia and Iran have said that he was killed, Russia said in a Russian airstrike in Raqqa.
it’s 100 percent rumors, because no way al-Baghdadi will be in Raqqa. And it was like a way just to remind people that, ah, Russian is fighting extremism, like just announcing that thing. Like I could tweet today that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi get killed wherever, and like all the media will talk about it, because it’s like kind of an important thing to do. And even the Russian airstrike, like with the Russian warplanes, targeted Raqqa a couple of times, and only the countryside. And most of the airstrikes were like—were by the international coalition. So there is like no way that al-Baghdadi would be killed by the Russians. It was like kind of propaganda, just to remind the people, ah, that we’re fighting extremism, we’re fighting ISIS. And it’s an easy thing to do, like with any country, any government, any group, since we have like all those countries and groups are fighting, so anyone can like announce that al-Baghdadi getting killed. So, there is like no video, no photos, no details, nothing at all. So, as I said, I can tweet it like after this show, and like I will have all the medias talking about it, and you will bring me again to talk about it.
all the clashes taking place around Raqqa. And al-Baghdadi, like mostly he should be in al-Mayadeen, Deir ez-Zor, that area, so he’s not going to be like close to the clashes, like fire lines. So, the thing—the city is like surrounded, and there is like no way. Like even like they will be—either they will defeat like SDF and United States and the coalition, or he will be—or he would be killed. So, and there is like no way to get to Mosul back that time, when they announced that thing, to come from Mosul or Iraq or wherever he was to Raqqa, and—because there are like clashes all the ways. And the safest place to have like the leader or the founder of ISIS be heading is like Deir ez-Zor, and especially al-Mayadeen.
it’s like the farest places of all these clashes that is taking place in Iraq and Syria, so—and it could be wrong, so that’s like my expectation like where he could be. Maybe he could be like in other towns, in other places, but probably he’s like in Deir ez-Zor, so—because it’s like the safest—the safest place so far.
– since the war began, the uprising began, in 2011, because of course this war did begin as an uprising against the Assad government, millions of people, Syrians, have been displaced outside the country and in the country. Now, the U.N. reported last week that something like half a million people have returned to the country, including to Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus. These areas are controlled by the Assad government now.
mostly the people who return, they were like—they are like women, children. The thing was, they were displaced to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan. And like being there, being like in the hell. So, there is like no services. Like recently in Lebanon, like Syrian refugees were burned and killed. So they were like tortured. So, nothing like changed. Those people, they left. They flee the country to have like a safer place. They ended up like within refugee camps, where there is like no healthcare, no services, nothing at all, staying at tents, were tortured and killed, arrested by the governments. And we didn’t fight the men, or like we didn’t fight like the international organization are playing like a main role to help them. So, all those government who are supposed to take care of those refugees, and they were taking thousand and millions and billions of moneys from like the European Union, U.S.A., and like in charge of taking care of the refugees, and they’re doing nothing. They are staying like in the desert, in nowhere, and they can’t leave these refugee camps. They can’t work there. There are like doctors, engineers. So they could help like to do something. And like even when the U.N. come, they take like less than 10 persons of them like to the European countries. Like as an example, like in Turkey, there are like almost 4 million refugees. Like in Lebanon, there are like almost more than a million.
In Lebanon, in these last few days, there have been major fires in camps, a little girl killed in one of these fires, many people injured, as the whole Syrian refugee camp burned down.
And like we didn’t find like any response from like the U.N., Amnesty or whatever. And like it was committed by the Lebanese army. So, we were talking like about the army of the government, not about militias.
so they said that there was like a suicide bomber in there. And they took all the refugees, like thousand of refugees, with children, women, like out to the desert. And they forced like most of them to take their clothes off. And they were tortured. They arrested many of them. And then they started like to burn these camps, where like children killed. So they didn’t care about like children. And even the like most—some of the Lebanese medias or like officials said, “Ah, it could be anyone, like a suicide bomber—a woman or a children. So we don’t care. We need like to—we need to check everyone.” So, that’s the thing. And like to be a Syrian nowadays is like a huge problem. Like it’s not only in the neighbor’s country, talking about Algeria and Morocco. There were like couple of tens of refugees who were stuck, and like the Moroccan government were sending them back to Algeria, and Algeria government was doing the same. And some of them got killed because of no food, no water, like no thing. And like we heard like only just a statement from like Human Rights Watch, from Amnesty or whatever, and they haven’t done anything. So, none of the other countries could say or do like, “OK, we’ll take these like 20 or 30 or 40 refugees and put them in somewhere, in a safer place.”
My uncle ‘Yassin Alhamza’ was killed by the international coalition led by #US airstrikes on #Raqqa city #RIP.
he was also going to a school where there is—I don’t know how it’s called. So, it’s like some—a hole in the ground where people get water. he went there like to get water, because there is like no water.
the school was bombed, and he got killed with seven children. So, they were also trying to drink water from the school. So, he didn’t killed first with the first airstrike, so some—like some kids were injured, so he tried just to get them, like to help them, two of them. And then, other airstrike targeted the same place, where he got killed.
He was like a teacher, and for like tens of years. So, he’s so known in the city, because he helped like—he was like a teacher of like two or three generations. And in Raqqa, we were like a tribal community, so everyone knows the other. And he was like so known in the city, and he was like that old man who decided not to leave his hometown. And he sent like all his family members outside of Raqqa, but he decided to stay to protect his house. And he was like unlucky, where he got killed.
He has like a son in Germany, like his daughters in—so, in Raqqa countryside, with SDF control. And his wife has died
right now with the Trump administration, they want to defeat ISIS as an organization, as a group, as soon as they can. So, to do that thing, they have to kill like that number of civilians. But if they will be like more careful, it will take them like longer than that, but that will prevent killing that number of civilians. So what they are doing, like there is like—they are like shelling on the city and airstrike in the same time, and it’s bombing the city randomly. So, they don’t care if they will kill like civilians, children or whoever. The thing they want to just defeat ISIS and somehow. So, doing—having this strategy, they will be able like to defeat ISIS as like in—like in a short time. But to be more careful and preventing killing that amount—that much of civilians, so they—and it would take them longer. So, they don’t want to spend that much of time. And for Trump administration and like for the U.S. policy with Trump, the main focusing on defeating ISIS. So, they want to defeating ISIS as soon as possible, and they don’t care about the other things. So they don’t care about the humanitarian side. They don’t care about the civilians. What they want to do, like killing or defeating ISIS, with whatever will happen.
– it was only in Raqqa that the U.S.-led coalition has killed more people than any other party in the first six months of 2017.
if you want to talk about the Syrians who have been killed with all the sides, like 90 percent of the Syrians have been killed by Assad forces. Ninety-five percent, even more. So, it’s nothing comparing with ISIS or other groups. So, but the thing—other groups started to be in the conflict, started with al-Qaeda, ended up with ISIS. So, every single city or every single town, there are like—some forces are fighting each other. And like some territories, there is like one force that’s controlling the area.
So, talking about like Aleppo as an example, it was controlled by—like most of it was controlled by the opposition or the Free Syrian Army, and then like the Russians started to bomb. They killed civilians way more than the Syrian regime, more way than ISIS, al-Qaeda, other groups. And they burned Aleppo. So, Aleppo was—like most of it was completely destroyed, so to defeat whatever. So, when the Russian airstrikes started to target Syria, the main thing, like the Russians kept telling that they want to bomb Syria, they want to bomb ISIS, they want to defeat extremism. And then they started to kill civilians, to kill like—to target like rebels. So the first Russian airstrike targeted like an opposition area where ISIS and al-Nusra a hundred kilometers away. So, and then they started to kill civilians, and they kept talking in the media that they are like defeating ISIS.
it’s like with the Russian, directly, when they entered the conflict, they started to kill civilians. So, they’ve been doing the same thing as the Syrian regime. They had like—they have like more developed warplanes, military equipments, and they—even they send soldiers. So, they started directly with the U.S., with Trump administration. So there were like no forces, no troops in Raqqa, and it was like only airstrike. And they were like so careful.
even like with the airstrikes, they were targeting like a specific car where are like ISIS fighters, like a moving specific car. Right now they just bomb like everything. So, that thing started to be changed like with the Trump administration.
But in the same time, talking from like a Syrian perspective, like who’s focusing or following up what the Syrians are thinking about, so people are like more happy with the like—or like happier with the Trump more than Obama, so because like in less than a hundred days, Trump administration bombed like an army base of the Syrian regime after the Syrian regime used like the chemical attacks. And like many Syrians started to call Trump “Abu Ivanka al-Amriki, like the father of Ivanka the—al-Amriki like the American. So, but the thing, like he destroyed like 20 warplanes. If that thing would happen like in 2011 or 2012, that would save like thousand of Syrians’ life. But the thing that—U.S. administration or U.S. government should not wait for like the chemical weapons or attacks to happen to have like an action. So, Syrian people are getting killed with power bombs, rockets, airstrike, everything, so not only like chemical weapons. So, the thing with the Syrians, they are saying like, “OK”—like some of them, “OK”—they were like saying, “OK. Should we wait like for another chemical attack to have like a response from the international community?”
So people were like more optimistic, because with Obama administration, he kept talking about red lines, and everyone crossed the red lines—so, even my grandmom—and he had like no action. So, the people, like the Syrians, were like hopeless from Obama administration. Right now, it’s started to be different.
Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently
my colleagues and I, all of us, we were like activists in the Syrian revolution when it started in 2011, and most of us like was arrested by the Syrian government. Personally, I was arrested three times by the Syrian government. So, and then like we believed in it as a revolution, and we joined like this kind of revolution trying to change the government, like defeating like a dictator. And then everything—like we were expecting that everything will be done like in six months. And it took like forever.
And then we ended up with ISIS one day. So our city was like the first liberated city. We were able like to do many activities, even Nusra was there. So we ended up with 40 civil society organizations, schools, universities. Life started to be normal. And then like ISIS showed up. They took over the city. They started this human rights violation.
And personally, as someone who’s from Raqqa, I didn’t expect that my city will have like all this focus. So, Raqqa was like completely forgotten before the revolution. So, even like in the weather news, they were mentioning like—in Syria, there are like 14 cities. They were mentioning only 13 cities, and even they were not mentioning Raqqa on the weather news. So, and then like all the media started to talk about it. The international community, Trump, Hillary, Obama, Putin—all like the world leaders are mentioning Raqqa like every single day. So, and personally, I didn’t see any foreign person in Raqqa. And right now there are like people from—like are fighters from 84 countries in Raqqa. So, it started to be like a new New York. So, like, my mom was telling me before, like after she left Raqqa, that walking in Raqqa’s streets you will hear like thousands of accents, thousands of languages. And like in one—she couldn’t imagine that’s Raqqa. So we were like—all people were speaking only our accent, only our language, before the—like before ISIS.
So, for me, I was forced to flee the country. ISIS came to my house to arrest me. I was lucky not to be there. Then it took me two days to get out from Raqqa. Then, like when—I kept in touch with my friends, colleagues, and we were—we knew like what was going on. And we started to see like ISIS propaganda, like the fake news. So we decided that we will not be silent, we should do something. And it was like not a planned thing. So, we had like that Skype call. Everyone was like in the front places. And then we agreed to do something. And we decided to have this name, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently. “Raqqa,” the name of the city. “Is Being Slaughtered Silently” is like a slogan. We say it in Arabic. It means like when there is like a—when there is like a violation, and if there is like someone who’s attacking you, is torturing you, and like you don’t have a power to say something or say, you know.
So, that was the thing. And “Silently” because, back that time, no one heard about Raqqa. So, we came up with this name, and directly we started the Facebook page, Twitter account. And we ended up doing a website. And then we started our reports. So, we decided to take the place of the—like the place of the international media. Because there was no media in Raqqa at the time. Because ISIS kicked out the media.
that was like the main reason. And then we ended up like we—that we don’t want to just report news. So we have people, like we have our families, our relatives, our friends, living in Raqqa. So we decided to do something to aware them, when ISIS started to recruit children, recruit civilians. So we started our campaign to let the people know that there was like a resistance movement in Raqqa. And then we started to do this magazine to send like messages to the children. We focused more on children than anyone else, so—because it was like the main target of ISIS.
because they had like—they have like not enough knowledge to decide this or no, which is good, which is not good. And children were in the street all the time, and ISIS cars were driving all the time. ISIS did the tents to do like games with the children. And whoever was answering, they give him like money and dollars, mobile phones, something their family were not able to provide to their children. So children thought that ISIS is like the good people. And if any child or kid decided to join ISIS, he or she doesn’t need the permission from the family, so they can easily go and join ISIS. So we started to send messages to their families: “OK, be careful. Watch out your children. Don’t have them in the street alone.” And then we did like a caricature written in our local accent.
so to let the children read it and understand cartoon, like to let them understand like what’s going on. So we’ve done it with the experts, and we were sending these materials to our colleagues, who were—they printed out the magazine and spread it out.
ISIS used like the media to recruit people everywhere. So most of the soldiers who joined ISIS, they joined because of the media, because of the propaganda, because of the Hollywood-like. So, many—like ISIS was sending messages, you’re like—like “You’re playing like these video games on computer or PlayStation or whatever. Come and play it in the reality.”
ISIS recruitment videos in English
it’s not only in English—in French, in Turkish, in like tens of languages. So like they produce videos in other languages, mostly in English because it’s like the international language, to recruit people everywhere. So they were not focusing only about Syrians or only about Arabs. And then they use the videos to send messages, and especially recently. So, they were not asking people to come and join them, so they were saying, “OK, wherever you are, you can go and do attacks. You can go and like kill people. You can go and like bomb yourself. You can do whatever you want.” And that’s what we’ve been seeing recently, like in U.K., before in U.S., in Asia, in Africa, in Europe and everywhere. So, and those videos, those messages were sent in all the languages, so to let all the people understand and get it.
And they have like—and they have like a good machine to promote that thing on social media, so through Facebook, Twitter, other things. And sometimes they go like to Twitter and see like the trender, so what’s the most used hashtag, so and they tweet with it, so to promote their propaganda.
ISIS came first to Raqqa in April 2013. I stayed in Raqqa until January 2014. After they took over—after they took control of the city, they came to my house looking for me, so I had to leave after two days. Most of my colleagues decided to stay in Raqqa. And then, in April, we came—we came up with the idea of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently. We started to work on it. And then, after two or three weeks when we started, ISIS announced that—and in the Friday’s pray, like in the—every single Friday prayer, there is like a speech. And they announced in that speech that “Anyone who’s working with RBSS(Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently), if we will arrest”
“would be killed or executed, if we find out who they are.” And that’s what happened. Like after like a week or two weeks later, after the speech, in May 2014, they arrested one of my colleagues in a checkpoint, and then they executed him in a public square.
his name was Al-Moutaz Bellah Ibrahim. And later on, they started like to do many things trying to stop us. So they spread like security cameras everywhere. They spread like checkpoints. And they couldn’t find any of us. Then they arrested the father of Hamoud, one of my colleagues, and his friends.
Hamoud is also co-founder of the group. And they started to communicate with us, like either giving three names of our colleagues inside or killing the father. So Hamoud had like to choose between his father and his friends.
Hamoud was in Turkey. I went to Turkey to stay with him. And then he said that his father is not better than the rest of the Syrians. So they—he told them, “Go and kill my father.”
they gave him a choice: turn in three of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently inside, and you’ll save your father, or we will kill your father.
And he said like, “OK, kill my father.” So then they executed his father like in a professional Hollywood video, was produced by ISIS. ISIS tied him like to a tree, and they came behind the tree, they shot him in his head. And then—it was like a way to stop us. And then we went back to Hamoud, and he kept saying that thing: “They thought by killing my father, that they will stop us doing this work. They didn’t know that they pushed us to do more and more.” So, and for Hamoud, he kept saying that. Every time when he thinks that he’s like powerless and he has like no power to complete, he’ll watch the video of his father, and that gives—that gives him more power. And then he named his baby after his father.
And then like ISIS had like a long armor. They beheaded Ibrahim, my colleague, and his friend. So they came in Urfa, in Turkey, in the Syrian-Turkish border. So, Urfa is a Turkish city.
They got him in Turkey. So they sent like a guy who stayed with him for six months. He made like a friendship with them. Then he brought other people like to his apartment, where we found out next day that Ibrahim, my colleague, and his friend Fares both were beheaded. So, and later on they assassinated Ahmad, Hamoud’s brother, in Idlib. So, it’s a city controlled by the opposition and Nusra. And then, recently was Naji. He was like our trainer, our movie director. He was like 40 years old. He had two daughter—he had two daughters. They assassinated him like in Gaziantep in the afternoon, 12 p.m., in the city center. And in that point, we couldn’t stay in Turkey anymore. Our office in—we had like an office in Turkey. They tried to bomb our office more than one time. We were lucky that the Turkish authorities stopped the cars. And then we couldn’t stay in Turkey anymore, so we had to move our colleagues to Germany. And to know more about other things, you need to watch the movie. It will be open in theaters July 7th in New York, July 14 in L.A. and across the country.
like we knew that our work is like so effective, when we knew that ISIS started to target us and follow us, not only in Syria or in Raqqa, even like outside. I’ve been threatened all the time in Germany. All my colleagues, they have the same thing. So, our messages reach out like mostly other people in Raqqa. We started with the magazine, with the graffiti. And like early, in the beginning, people had like access to the internet. And like early, like when we started, like thousands of people were arrested because they put “like” on our Facebook—on our Facebook page. So‚ every—like, and ISIS kept talking about us. And like many people, they were arrested and charged of being RBSS.
So‚ and then, for ISIS, they didn’t target anyone specifically. So they’ve done attacks everywhere. And they didn’t—like, and they didn’t try to target, or they didn’t attempt to target someone like personally, like a president, a minister, a politician or whatever. They’ve done like these random attacks everywhere. We were like the only group who were targeted by names, by persons.
So, that point, we felt that we were doing like an important work, and ISIS trying to stop us in any way. And having all that things, and having all these like family members, relatives, friends, colleagues who were killed, doing this work, that pushed us like to complete more and more. And right now we ended up like the only source of information from Raqqa to the international media, international community and everyone.
No one’s focusing about the day after. Everyone is focusing only to defeat ISIS. So, there is like no plan for like schools, like rebuilding the city, like doing education stuff to the children, to the civilians. So we’re afraid that the city will be left alone, and like those civilians will create another extremism.
So, they’ve been living with ISIS all the time. They had—know ISIS only through ISIS propaganda and the recent only to our—like to our posters or whatever. And, for sure, we can’t compare our work with ISIS, because we don’t have the same fund as ISIS. Basically, we don’t have any fund. And we don’t have the same equipment. None of us studied any media, any journalism, so all of us, we are like citizen journalists. So, the civilians, like they had only ISIS propaganda all the time‚ in the street, home, radios, screens everywhere. And then they will have like a new group. So, and it will be so hard to them to understand what happened.
So, it should be organizations, civil society organizations, who should be there like to educate them, to aware them about what happened and what will happen to them. So, to have like a kind of a specific treatment, they need to have like humanitarian aid. The civilians have to have like many things. And like we’re missing all the things. Everyone is focusing: “We want to defeat ISIS.” And no one is focusing about the humanitarian side, what will happen to the civilians.
if SDF will remain in Raqqa, Assad’s forces can’t bomb the city, because it’s supported and funded by U.S. So, there is Manbij as an example. It’s controlled by SDF, so the Russian, the Syrian regime, like they couldn’t like bomb it. So it’s not going to be bombed, so if SDF will remain. And so, that’s a good—that’s one of the good things, from the worldview, so because like the Syrian regime warplanes is the worst ever. So, people would be sure that there is like no more airstrikes. But people will—they have the [inaudible] in their mind. So, the thing—like, it’s so important to work about the idea.
I can’t say that I’m brave, since I’m here outside. I have like—I can say that my colleagues are brave. They remain—they’re like in the city. Any of them could be killed like in any second.
And all of us, like we have hope, because when we start—when we joined the revolution, we joined something we believed in. And, for us, like we knew if we would not do that thing for our city, no one will do it. So it was like a duty for us to do that thing. And we love our city. We love our work. And we’re trying like to push as much as we can, doing interviews, doing our work, doing whatever we do, to go back one day to our city, like to have our city liberated. So, and for me, I don’t want to be called refugee anymore, I don’t want to be here in U.S. or in Europe. So I want to stay home.
I was threatened in Germany. And I was asking to stay under security—under like security protection, and I refused. So, I’m not safe in Germany. And like wherever I go, I’m not safe. I could be targeted or killed anywhere. But the thing like—I don’t think about it; otherwise, I ended up with a therapy. So I’m trying not to think about it at all. And sometimes like missing the threats doesn’t make my day. So, the thing, I’m trying to be normal. And I don’t know like what will happen with me after 10 years, if I’ll be alive. So, maybe I will be crazy. But the thing, like dealing with all the things, with the blood, with the videos, with the conflict, all that years, we started like to be stronger and stronger. Like, right now watching like an execution video is like watching like a football game. So, all the things could affect us like in the future, but like so far, we have to do the thing; otherwise, we’ll ended up only with ISIS propaganda and the government’s propaganda.
http://www.raqqa-sl.com/en/
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Abdalaziz Alhamza
Syrian journalist and activist. He is the co-founder and spokesperson of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, formed in 2014 to document the abuses of the Islamic State.
— source democracynow.org