By Aryn Baker / Tripoli, Lebanon @arynebaker
Just back from the front, where he watched his rebel-commander father die in a rocket attack launched by the Syrian army, Berri al-Hamad stalks the worn carpet of his family’s temporary refuge in Lebanon, swearing vengeance. His head wrapped in his father’s beanie, knitted by his grandmother with the red stars and black-and-green stripes of the revolutionary Syrian flag, Berri aims an imaginary AK-47. “Oh, Bashar,” he growls at his distant enemy, Syrian President Bashar Assad, “you killed my father. I will not rest until you are dead. I will kill every one of your soldiers with my gun.”
Berri is 4 years old. His is not the uncomprehending bravado of a toddler mimicking violent cartoons — he was the first to kiss his father’s bloodied face when fellow fighters pulled the body of Hassan al-Hamad out of the shattered remains of the ad hoc ambulance he had been driving as he ferried injured fighters from the front. Berri knows what death is, and says he can’t wait to join his father in heaven, once he has killed Assad, or has died in the trying.
There are plenty who hope the boy won’t ever get that chance. The staggering destruction and rising death toll of the Syrian civil war, now in its third year with more than 100,000 dead, has forced many to conclude that the only way out of the stalemate is through some sort of political compromise. The U.N., along with the U.S. and Russia — which backs the Assad government — is pushing for a peace conference in Geneva as early as November. By getting representatives from the Syrian Coalition, the umbrella opposition group based in Turkey, to sit down with members of the Assad government, they hope to hammer out a transition deal that will bring an end to the violence.
Even if the two sides can overcome their significant differences to come to the table — the Syrians and the Russians say Assad is an integral part of the transition, even as the opposition insists it will not take part in any transition government that includes him — fighters on the ground say they have lost too much to accept anything short of Assad’s death. They are the likely spoilers for any kind of compromise, and their numbers are on the rise. For every rebel who has died in the battle to oust Assad, there is a family determined not to let that sacrifice go in vain. “God damn Geneva and all those who want to negotiate,” says Nusra al-Hamad, Hassan’s mother. “After all this blood, after all these burned hearts, there can be no reconciliation here. We sacrificed our lives for a free Syria, not for Bashar to stay.”
At 47, Nusra is the widowed matriarch of an extended family that has seen 35 members die in the past two years, either on the battlefront or as victims of a ferocious government bombing campaign in her hometown of Baba Amr, in March 2012. A week after Hassan’s death, on Sept. 22, what is left of the family has taken refuge across the border in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. Hassan, commander of a small brigade active in the Homs area, was the second of Nusra’s three sons to die. She says she is fully prepared to lose the third, only 15, if he too is called to fight Assad. And she is inculcating her four grandchildren with the desire for revenge, beaming as they declare their desire to die in battle. While Nusra and her family may be an extreme example, they are in no way unique in their determination to see the government overthrown, no matter the cost.
The world may exhale in relief if a compromise solution for Syria is found, but according to rebels — and their families — on the ground, it doesn’t mean the fighting will stop. If the estimated 1,000 disparate brigades that make up the armed opposition aren’t brought into the process, they are likely to continue their fight, contributing to an insurgency that becomes even more of a regional proxy war and an easy recruiting pool for extremist groups like al-Qaeda feeding on the frustration and resentment of rebels who feel they have been ignored. “We won’t stop fighting until everyone in the regime is dead,” says Abu Alaa, Hassan’s second in command. “If the [political] opposition makes negotiations with Assad, we will fight them and Assad. If the U.N. comes to implement a cease-fire, with Assad still there, we will fight them. Because where were they when Assad was killing hundreds of thousands of Syrians?”
Categories: Arab World, Asia, Syria