The Syrian Civil War seems to be slowly moving towards its conclusion. Assad and his allies control 70% of the country, ISIS is nearly removed as a state, and the remaining rebels are either in a weakened bloc in Idlib Province in North West Syria or in small besieged pockets across the country. The Syrian Revolution is over, and in many ways it has been over for a few years . Any non-Islamist rebels were outgunned by Islamists and jihadists who were better funded. More secular groups were given the option to either be taken over by stronger and more extreme rebels, or be militarily crushed. Most chose the former.

For those who support Assad however, these secular groups never existed and neither does Leftist opposition to Assad. The rebellion was from it outset solely a takfirist Islamist attempt to take over the country. I’ve even heard some claim Assad is running a socialist republic. But this argument fails when we examine the systematic imprisonment, torture and murder of Syria’s leftist opposition, and most shamefully of all, many Leftists are ignoring these crimes and claiming Assad is fighting an anti-Imperialist war. This piece will look at individuals who have been murdered or disappeared by Assad, and hopefully shed some light on the systematic destruction of Syrian peaceful opposition.

Omar Aziz promoted non-hierarchical self-governance on a local scale as an alternative for Syria with a fractured and dysfunctional State. In a paper he supported the idea of Local Councils which would promote human and civil solidarity, rejected the regimes economic policies which marginalised rural Syrians and supported horizontal alignment of Local Councils, coordinated by a National Council. The regime opposed Aziz’s ideas, and much of the community self-governance that he inspired across Syria has been brought under the regimes control as it has retaken land. Omar Aziz was taken by the mukhabarat on November 20th, 2012 and held in a cramped cell with 85 others. In February 2013 he had a heart attack and died a day before his 64th birthday after sustained torture. (1)

Jihad Asa’ad Muhammad (the name Jihad is common in the Middle East, don’t think he was an Islamist), a Syrian journalist and Marxist was reporting extensively on those imprisoned by the Assad regime. He wrote about Syrian women who would go in great numbers to prisons, police stations and government offices desperately looking for details of their husbands, their brothers and their sons who had been disappeared by the Syrian regime and its secret police. He particularly focused on the struggle of Syrian women. Jihad had long been a communist writer and was the editor-in-chief of communist newspaper Qassioun. On the 10th August, 2013, the mukhabarat arrested Jihad Asa’ad Muhammad in central Damascus. He hasn’t been seen since then, presumed dead in one of the regimes mass graves. (2)

Faiek al-Meer was a Syrian communist who joined the Syrian Communist Party which openly advocated for democracy and pluralism. He was first jailed in 1979 for distributing leaflets. In 1983 he was fired from his job on request of the secret police for his political activism. Undettered, he was again imprisoned in 1989 for 10 years for the crime of openly supporting democracy, and he was held in the now infamous Saidnaya Prison. Undettered again, he continued his political activism. In 2010, before the outbreak of the Civil War he was sentenced to 15 years in absentia. Al-Meer joined the revolution and worked in cooperation with Aziz on community organisation. Faiek al-Meer has been disappeared since October 2013 after being taken into custody by the mukhabarat and is presumed dead. (3)

Bassel Khartabil was a Syrian software developer who is “credited with opening up the internet in Syria and vastly extending online access and knowledge to the Syrian people”. The internet was a key tool for early organisers in the non-violent protests against the Syrian government. This work made him a target for the Syrian regime despite his work being non-violent. He was taken into custody on the first anniversary of the Syrian uprising, 15th March 2012 at a peaceful protest by Military Security. For 5 days he was tortured and beaten, before being transferred to the interrogation department and held, without outside contact, for 9 months. On 9th December 2012 a military prosecutor charged him with spying for an enemy state and he was sent to Adra prison. In March 2013 he was awarded the Index on Censorship’s Digital Freedom Award. Bassel Khartabil was executed on an unknown date in 2015. His body has not been recovered. (4)

Bassel Shehadeh was a Syrian Christian who organised peaceful protests in Damascus. He documented these with his camera. In 2011, after having made a number of documentaries, Shehadeh was awarded a Fullbright Scholarship in North America at Syracuse University. He spent fall semester in America, but upon his return to Syria decided to sacrifice his scholarship to return to peaceful activism in Syria. He first organised a sit-in protest outside the Egyptian embassay in protest at Mubarak’s regime. After joining a protest by intellectuals he was arrested on July 13th 2011, moving to Homs upon his release. Bassel Shehadeh and another activist, Ahmed al-Assam were deliberately killed whilst filming a government crackdown in Homs, on May 28th 2012. (5)

Paulo Dall’Oglio was a Catholic Jesuit Priest who had served his community for three decades in a monastery 60 miles north of Damascus. He made his monastery a place of inter-faith dialogue, spoke fluent Arabic and obtained a PhD with a dissertation writing “About Hope in Islam”. After the early protests, Dall’Oglio wrote a piece calling for the peaceful transition into consensual democracy. For this he was expelled by the Syrian Government, and travelled to Northern Iraq to serve other Christians. He was kidnapped in Eastern Syria whilst attending a meeting with Islamic State officials where he was seeking to guarantee the safety of his fellow Christians, and is believed to have been murdered. (6)

I could fill many many pages with the accounts and stories of innocent Syrians, disappeared, exiled and executed by the regime. Every time someone claims the revolution was violent from its outbreak, they are ignoring the basic facts. Every time someone claims the revolution was Islamist from its outbreak, they are ignoring the basic facts. Every time someone claims that the Syrian Revolution is nothing but an imperialist attempt to undermine the sovereignty of Syria, they are ignoring the bloodshed of many thousands like Omar Aziz, Jihad Asa-ad Muhammad or Faiek al-Meer, all non-violent men and women who believed in a democratic and free Syria. The leftist opposition didn’t disappear, it was disappeared by the Syrian Government.

This piece has been updated, with changes from moderate to leftist and more accurate referencing.

(1) https://tahriricn.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/syria-the-life-and-work-of-anarchist-omar-aziz-and-his-impact-on-self-organization-in-the-syrian-revolution/

Aziz’s work: https://t.co/RsUAu3FthS

(2) https://budourhassan.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/freedom-for-jihad-and-syrias-wretched-of-the-earth/

Jihad’s work is in Arabic and unfortunately hasn’t been translated.

(3) https://www.aljumhuriya.net/en/content/portrait-revolution-journey-faiek-al-meer

(4) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/bassel-khartabil-safadi-executed-syria-activist-dead-prison-widow-confirms-democracy-adra-damascus-a7872771.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20150625170229/http://en.alkarama.org/1763-syria-un-calls-for-the-release-of-freedom-of-speech-advocate-bassel-khartabil

(5) https://web.archive.org/web/20131224114336/http://basselshehadehfoundation.org/en/bassel-shehadeh/biography/

http://www.syrianobserver.com/EN/Who/25656/Whos%2Bwho%2BBassel%2BShehadeh

(6) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/syria-expels-activist-roman-catholic-priest.html?pagewanted=all

http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2017/07/28/father_paolo_dalloglio_bridge-builder_in_syria/1327542

https://agensir.it/italia/2017/07/28/father-paolo-dalloglio-abducted-four-years-ago-his-brother-pietro-we-live-in-expectation/