Transcribed into English by Mohamad Ali Nayel


Mohamad Ali Nayel (MAN): My name is Mohamad Ali Nayel. Hello, and welcome to Status. Today, we are at the Development Interaction Network (DIN) with Maher Esber. To begin, please tell us about yourself and what you do at the DIN. 

Maher Esber (ME): I’m the director of Development Interaction Network [DIN]. It’s a network that functions in the development realm. Development is a broad scope, but we work on early recovery projects. In addition, we conduct studies and statistics in Syria regarding the situation of health and education, along with other aspects regarding the living conditions of residents inside Syria. Moreover, we have a media network to document human rights, in addition to our network that works on cultural activities inside Syria. We also work on conflict resolution as a result of our presence in the majority of areas. Using our links with many parties, we were able to connect some parties with others. We mostly rely on maintaining our credibility.

MAN: When did you start working on conflict resolution inside Syria?

ME: When we first started, we did not think about getting involved in conflict resolution, but we found ourselves between two warring sides reaching out to us – they were trying to get involved in matters like mediating cases to release kidnapped people, or settling a ceasefire to stop bombardment between two warring regions. We realized that disconnect between these two sides is the reason that the conflicts are ongoing. For example, when we approached one area bombarding another -- and asked them to stop shelling the other -- they asked us if the other ceasefire they too would, and we managed to convince warring areas to ceasefire.  Our work on conflict resolution started by April 2012. At the beginning of our network, we did not consider the kind of work as conflict resolution. We were working to ease the pressure that civilians face from the warring militant parties on all sides, whether from the regime or opposition groups Islamists and others. Of course, we were able to reach out only to those who were willing to listen to us, keeping in mind that not all factions accepted listening to us, let alone networking with us.

MAN: Were there areas which you were not able to connect and network with since 2012, or did your access change as the situation changed since 2012? 

ME: We started with an incident that took place in Aleppo’s central prison. It all started when Haraket Ahrar al-Sham and Lewa al-Tawhid stormed Aleppo and surrounded the prison. The regime had withdrawn its military widget which was deployed in Aleppo and redeployed it inside Aleppo’s central prison. Then, the Islamic front Lewa al-Tawhid and other opposition groups encircled the regime forces inside the prison with the 4,500 prisoners held inside the prison. To us, as rights activists, we had already established connections with prisoners inside the prison who informed us that the regime had taken prisoners as human shields. We received pleas for help from inside the prison by a few individuals -- who unfortunately died later -- who pled with us to get involved and press the opposition to stop bombing the prison, because the regime was killing people inside the prison, tossing hand grenades at prisoners.  There were other incidents where the regime fired shots at prisoners each time the opposition shelled the prison. This was the start of our involvement in conflict resolution, after we had established communication with some prisoners who I had personally knew from my time in Saydnaya prison.  We communicated with Ahrar and Lewa al-Tawhid and urged them to stop bombing, in addition the prison was in a desperate need of food and medications… The negotiations took a long time and lasted over a year, in the end there was an initiative by both sides who had assigned their representatives for negotiation, the one assigned by Ahrar al-Sham was killed in an explosion his name is Hob’ldeen al-Shami. The regime chose a general in charge of the political security of Aleppo called Reiad Abass who was inside the jail at the time. Negotiations between both sides were about dismantling the front releasing the prisoners and a formula to withdraw forces. We also succeeded, through negotiation, in letting the Red-Crescent bring in food medication and water on daily bases. But each time there was a problem: distribution of food and medication got disrupted, and as a result, many people inside the prison died from starvation or thirst. It all ended with 840 prisoners dead. This was a big failure. We could not save those people. The prison had a wing for women and there was four children below five years old. The regime received food while inside prison, but only gave the prisoners crumbs of food -- enough to keep them alive.

MAN:  As a Development Interaction Network functioning inside Syria, do you get hostile classifications or labeling from warring groups? Do they perceive you with suspicion?

ME: Always. Our situation is always subject to doubts. There is not one side that trusts us. Of course, the regime is primarily the first to doubt us and there are other groups in the opposition that we do not talk to, like Jabhat al-Nussra (JAN) and ISIS. They already distanced themselves and are too stringent and too extremist to talk with. They are not open to dialogue they have one trajectory although we try but still, there is no trust. The regime has no credibility. The regime utters loads of empty promises, but then in reality, they do not practice what they say. Therefore, there is an atmosphere of distrust. We tried numerous times to talk to the regime, but each time, we were met with lies and deception – approaching the regime becomes a waste of energy. In some areas, the regime made deals, but never fulfilled the deal in its entirety. The reason is the fact that the regime doesn’t acknowledge the others that they are negotiating with. Therefore, the regime considers negotiations only to manipulate the other side for their own benefit. I remember an agreement that took place in Nabek area. There was opposition forces stationed in Nabek, which is located on Damascus’ international motorway the one connecting Homs and Damascus, they had blocked the motorway to Damascus. The regime was planning to bomb the whole area in order to reopen the road. There was an agreement, in the end, stating that the regime would withdraw to a one hundred meters area and set up barracks under the condition that the regime will spare civilians from Nabek. The agreement took place and the opposition forces withdrew from the motorway. The regime was back to the assigned area – they dug up trenches, deployed reinforcement tanks and mortars. The second day, the regime broke the agreement and began shelling the areas of Nabek and Qara.   
We always emphasize that we cannot guaranty any agreement, so we can keep our credibility intact with people. We usually tell both sides what each had offered and stress not to trust us or the other side -- we leave it up to both sides to make their final decision. We tell people to see what’s best and work on the offer we negotiated.  At times, people say the regime lies. There are always exceptions and urgencies which the regime complies with – but in others incidents, the regime renounced their agreement. 
 
MAN: As a network, do you have presence on the ground in Syria or do you operate from outside Syria? 

ME: We are based in our Beirut office. Where we operate from is licensed and, in addition, we have eleven offices in Syria because we also work as a media network -- not only conflict resolution. We do document human rights, so we have reporters on the ground. In addition, we conduct development work and survey situations in regards to education, health, labor market, and the residential situation. We also evaluate the necessities in case humanitarian organizations needed a map of needs we provide an assessment of what’s needed most. We work on cultural campaigns in regards to what the Syrian people want our role to be, in spreading democratic practices and rights awareness in regards to civil activism.  

MAN: Since you mentioned humanitarian organizations attempting to work in Syria today, in Lebanon at least, there are resounding talks that NGOs are preparing to enter and operate inside Syria in a post-war phase. As a network, are you prepared to deal with the role that NGOs are going to play in Syria, since the Syrian refugees’ experience with INGOs has been a failure so far? Are you aware of this post-war phase? 

ME: The entire world is having a lousy experience with NGOs. The thing is that we do not have all options available at hand, so we are obliged to deal with emergency circumstances and hard conditions; our situation in Syria is hard our situation outside Syria is harsh. The aid or financial aid that we receive is restricted and programmed to serve a specific direction – it is not fit to our needs, or according to the way we assess needs. It fits the needs according to how they see best to serve them. For example, they want to stop the flow of immigration to Europe, so they supply the needs of surrounding countries in order to end the wave displacement towards Europe. They want to create a buffer zone inside Syria so people can be displaced within Syria and not towards Europe. They create conflict resolution in order to ease pressure on civilians and that’s of interest to us -- here where we can agree with them on this point. But when it comes to fundamentally solving the problem, they do not do a thing to serve the interests of Syrians, but they function within solutions that could better serve their interest best.   NGOs, in the end, whether we like it or not, are subject to their funding that flows from the foreign ministries which serve their policies. Based on this, we operate in what fits our interest best and what not. I do not imagine that in the future there will be a change in this mentality whether in NGOs or the policies of those who fund and direct those NGOs. Therefore I think the situation will remain dire.

MAN: Can you share with us success stories where your network was able to achieve through negotiations between the warring sides in Syria? 

ME: We were involved in evacuating civilians from Homs -- the second evacuation of militants, we were not involved in. As for evacuating civilians, we met with both sides and put them together in direct negotiations without a mediator. The evacuation of civilians of Homs al-Kadima (old Homs) was the result of our efforts to get both sides into an 80% negotiations, then an agreement. We also brought in Yaqoub al-Helow -- the High Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs in Syria -- who used his cars to evacuate civilians from Homs. Then, both warring sides kept in contact and resumed negotiations regarding the militants without our involvement. We worked on bringing in aid to Mo’adameyeh. We tried to release kidnapped people, but did not succeed in all the cases. In Hama’s countryside, we negotiated a ceasefire. Moreover, regarding Aleppo’s prison and the transfer of prisoners, of course the regime did not commit to its agreement -- we found out that, after the transfer to Adra prison, some of the prisoners were liquidated. There was never a full success story.

MAN: If we go back in time five years to evaluate the uprising, where do you think the uprising is today? And at what stage was the uprising was hijacked? 

ME: At the beginning of the uprising, I wasn’t present -- I was in jail. I was released in the second pardon, about three and a half months since the start of the uprising. In the beginning, there was the uprising in the shape of protests by the Syrian people. I was involved in the Local Coordination Committees and we used to document each week more than 800 protest or 800 point of protest possibly encompassing all regions and areas of Syria. It’s all documented on Youtube, showing people demanding freedom civil-rights and a democratic state. It was obvious what the Syrian people wanted at that stage. Then we were left alone -- there was no international stance. None of the countries who allege to support “freedom and democracy” were involved. Specifically, the US and Europe did not put their interests aside and said “we want to support you.” Instead, they were all looking at us with an advantageous eye, rife with an opportunism that was unfortunately awful. This kind of opportunism backfired on these countries later on. The countries that got involved were involved with their own agendas and interests. Saudi and Qatar did not get involved with clean hands. They supported the extremist sides, and they used their media outlets to advertise those extremists at the expense of the peaceful civil side and the Syrian people who had been -- from the start -- staging a peaceful uprising, demanding a democratic state and civil rights. At the start, the Syrian people wanted to create a state like all successful states in 2011, but then came crashing in the awful Saudi and Qatari involvement. Of course, the regime’s intransigence is also to blame and how they later got involved in the civil war and brought interference from Hezbollah and Iran.

 We were at a point where the regime pushed and turned the uprising into a civil war, targeting first the civil and peaceful activists, disregarding the extremists. The Americans and all like-minded countries know this. They justify it in saying that the regime had legitimacy while the others did not. After one year and a half of killing and building up of extremist militant movements who received regional support and borders where open for them the situation got to a point where these powers converged and concentrated.  While us, the civil Syrian bodies, we could not hold in the absence of any support be it political financial or informational.  There was no protection for us because we did not believe in the need for weapons or getting armed. The regime also played the game of minorities and boasted his public base under the pretext that these were extremists they were fighting. In the mid of 2012 is when Islamic movements started emerging with plans that have nothing to do with the uprising but only extremist plans that had to do with each movement and they wanted to rule to spread their ideology. The regime shrunk and turned into groups of militias – actually, the regime collapsed and turned from a body of state institutions and an army into a regime of sectarian militias. This is what is left of the regime at the moment. I cannot say that there is a regime or a state in Syria.  The regime and the state are incoherent -- there is only concentrated sectarian militias getting reinforcement from Iran and Hezbollah fighting other sectarian militias. 

MAN: Do you mean that there is no role now for the Syrian army, but that it’s all in the hands of sectarian militias?
ME: Exactly. The regime transformed from relying on the army to more reliance on sectarian militias because the regime couldn’t trust the army. There are more than 6000 officers arrested and numerous defections, more than 9000 officers defected and left the country. In the beginning, the army received orders -- many of which were not executed and those who did not obey orders where noted. The regime, at some point, had an interest in not having a military institution. We never had an army in an institutional sense.

MAN: Some argue that the regime is not sectarian since the composition of the regime, up until now, has been mostly made up of the majority Sunni sect and not all regime functionaries are Alawites. What do you think about this analogy and how can we define the regime? 

ME: Of the many analogies that came out the easiest, I think, is to say the regime is sectarian. This is a simple analogy, and I think it’s not as simple as that.  Some analogies say the regime is Baathist. Others say the regime is classist and materialistic, composed of groups of merchants and financial racketeers. More analyses say the regime is an individual dictatorship led by Bashar al-Assad and the Assad family. There are those who say that it’s a sectarian Alawite regime, but I think the regime is not one of these things but a composition of all of the above. At times, the regime used the strength of the Baath. In other regions the regime used the minority case as a card.  At times, the regime is an individual family dictatorial system add to that the network of Damascene and Aleppo merchants who are allied with the regime. The regime also maintains an alliance with Sunni religious authorities, such as Sheikh al-Booti and others, who have coexisted with the regime. So the regime, in my opinion, is made of this structure. I think when the regime was confronting the Syrian people, the result was showing that it was facing the Sunnis who comprise 65% of the population -- some estimates say more others say less. Therefore, it was easy for the regime to say “I’m facing the Sunna,” who have taken in all the extremist organizations in the world, such as Jabhat al-Nussra, and before them, Al-Qaida, Salafi groups, and their ilk. This is when the regime began propagating that this was not an uprising but only extremist groups. Then the regime started killing and destroying Sunni areas -- it bombed them with chemicals -- and we all know how it went. Even when the regime released all the prisoners, this loosened the extremists to build their forces within the uprising. Moreover, there is a responsibility by opposition groups who were considered nationalist and democratic. They should have understood the game from the beginning and should have said “stop,” and stopped the breaches by extremist groups. Breaches started appearing from the start -- from the beginning there was no fixed position, however the opposition cannot bear the sole responsibility because many countries did not support the nationalist agenda fronted by the opposition. The case of Syria is too complex, but I think, at this stage, the regime started a process of refining the army in a minority sectarian militia sense. The regime realized that it does not need a fully integrated army that represents the Syrian people. In a sense, the regime cannot fight the Syrian people with an army that represents the Syrian people. The regime wants an army composed of minorities and groups of militias made from Shia and others in order to fight the groups of Sunna and this was the game that the regime got us into.

MAN: Can we say that the uprising is over and ought to be repeated, or is the uprising in a bad stage which it might recover from to have a role later on? 

ME: I believe that uprising did not stop for one second, but other projects took over and marginalized the uprising. At the moment, there is a civil war between two sides, and there are all the Syrians who believe in the uprising. Twelve millions of them are either outside (refugees), and the ones who were left inside (Syria) are incapable of fighting or doing anything. In the case of a political settlement towards a ceasefire or even to stop the war in Syria -- and a will to establish a state -- then it is possible for the Syrian people to reap the fruits of the uprising and kick start building and establishing our society all over again, by fighting the extremists and dictatorship and establishing freedom. It will take years of accumulation.

MAN:  You had a bitter experience inside one of Syrian’s notorious prisons. As a result, you acquired an expertise in Islamist movements operating in Syria. Do you think ISIS is now reaping the fruits of an ideology that was spread in the last fifteen years, resonating especially among the marginalized youth?  

ME: Yes, I believe that’s true. The ideology started 30 or 40 years ago. It all goes back to Abdulla Azzam or even Hassan al-Bana in Egypt in the 20s and 30s of the previous century, approximately one hundred years ago.  When this ideology started appearing, it started like in any other religion that has a group of extremists. Historically this existed within Christianity and Judaism. In all religions, there is always an extremist theology that rejects the world, rejects the other, and blaspheme anyone who disagrees with them deploying bloody methods. Islamist extremists front their ideology as the Islam that was practiced by the prophet’s Sahaba (companions), and et cetera.  

The process that benefited ISIS and the devout, religious Muslims was mostly the transformation that our region went through after the collapse of the Othman empire. Then, the French and British colonization came after the process of nationalist state-building in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.  This phase brought Leftists, Arab Nationalists, Liberals, and Islamists. Forty or fifty year later, all these experiments failed and resulted in dictatorships. Enormous dictatorships were established -- apart from Lebanon -- that went from one civil war into another. Meanwhile, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt became dictatorships.  Practically speaking, there was no foundation for an effective socialist ideology neither a nationalist nor an Islamic effective ideology. In the end it was empty slogans and pictures led by a dictator. The founding of dictatorship as a result of a total collapse of the above ideologies and the failure of political parties and projects to build a successful nationalist state supporting people with social justice led to a frustrated youth who wanted to change. But later on, when Arab youth organized and took to the streets with a communist agenda, they were ridiculed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of the communist experience, in addition to the disintegration of all communist parties. There was the nationalist example of Hafez al-Assad and Saddam Hussein that was also ridiculed by the public. As a result the void of ideology drove the youth in our region to return to the pious ancestors (al-Salaf al-Saleh), to bring back the pride of Islam. Then there came the revitalization of an image stuck in our collective culture that we were an Islamic empire that encompassed everyone. The kind of people who engaged in this thought believed that they want to achieve justice. I say this because I know them (from prison). They used to say that they wanted to achieve justice for all of humanity and bring all of humanity to paradise. They also preached equality for all and want to make all women free -- of course, free in their own conception. They engage in such naiveté, convinced that their cause represents the early days of Islam and how it produced such justice. They then turn to their bloody practices – and then they cry wolf feeling victimized. I know them and used to hear them weeping, saying they are weak and gentle, yet they blow themselves up and kill children, all for the higher cause.   

MAN: According to what you said, there seems to be an identity crisis among the youth. Do you agree that this ideological void is a result of the vanishing role played by the Left in the last twenty years, which opened up the way for groups such as ISIS, Nussra, and al-Qaida to recruit an economically and socially marginalized youth with an identity crisis -- not knowing where to belong, lost in a dilemma of “am I a Muslim or an Arab”?   

ME: I think we are in a time where media and the flow of information is open to us and on us. All the doors opened and all peoples started watching how each lived. We started learning how European citizens lived -- how their rights were preserved and intact. In the past, we did not know much about how other people lived. I tell you, in Syria, the media used to show us a certain problem somewhere in the world, and as a result Syrian people -- not all Syrians but the commoners, the simple ones of course, not the educated ones -- used to feel pity for the oppressive life that Europeans or Americans lived. The Syrian regime used to project an image about itself, showing the people that they got the best system of all. After this, the image of the other peoples shattered as result of awareness about the world began to take shape. This happened in the mid-90s onward. Questions about the way we lived started to appear and answers echoed realizing that this was not a good way of life we lived in Syria. People started realizing that we have been fooled, and slowly a wave emerged. I remember just before I was arrested in 2003 and 2004 wherever we operated in Syria we used to hear, in intimate conversation with people, resentments and swears against the regime. We started hearing people saying this regime is no good or this regime is causing us harm. Resentment snow balled and became a public sentiment even from those who supported the regime and did not understand all the issues especially those in the palace who were harmed by the regime and knew what happens behind closed doors. Later on, we started understanding that we need to liberate ourselves. We stopped having any national ambitions or a desire for regional liberation.  We wanted to liberate ourselves within this 185,000 square kilometers: Syrian land-space, according to the maps from the UN, not one meter extra and not one meter less. We just wanted a democratic state and equality for all citizens. We wanted to live without corruption and gangs of mafias. Here I can say that we wanted a humanist identity and not an identity in a nationalistic sense -- we wanted to live as human beings. One slogan people used to shout was “I’m a human, not an animal.” We did not have political demands -- we only had humane demands. This is the true uprising. This is why I do not see the uprising as a political demand. For us in Syria, the uprising was a question of “am I a human being or am I not?” In Syria -- and please allow me to say this -- if one is not with the uprising, one is not a human, which means one is accepting to live in the shadow of an oppressive regime as a slave. No one had protection and anyone could get beaten up and killed, even if he was an army general, such as the one that was killed few days ago (the Assad-cousin incident).

MAN: Do you think that ISIS will flourish and become the mother organization to all the splinters, like Al-Qaeda and Nussra and so on?

ME: I do not think so.

MAN: Or is it going to fragment into small groups?

ME: ISIS will not vanish completely and it will not be in full control. It will remain -- it will get weaker, as I said above, it will fragment and reinvent itself to try and play a role in politics and other issues -- but it will never be in full control or establish a caliphate. For ISIS, it isn’t about the movement itself, but it’s about the world and how it dealt with ISIS. Are we going to see an ISIS getting recognition from America, Europe, or Turkey? We do not know, but I do not think it will be recognized to rule over us. These countries might accommodate ISIS so that it will not lash at them, but hopefully this will not happen. We never know.

MAN: Following the Iraqi invasion, there was a rhetoric spread by the Saudi and Gulf media fronting a fake sense of victimization among Sunnis - which infiltrated the minds of many Sunnis - about a global conspiracy being sown against Sunnis. To add to this fake sense of victimization, there has been resentment building among the marginalized masses against the social order, which they took as oppressive or against the ruling elite.  Do you agree that ISIS became a place for vengeance for this kind of marginalized youth?

ME: Yes, a place to vent anger. In Syria, Sunnis were subject to tensions and a systematic one by the regime, as it kept targeting them. There was an unfettered targeting by the regime in bombardment campaigns on some areas because they were Sunni majority areas. Minority areas were contained and not oppressed.

MAN: I remember, at the workshop held at AUB by ASI, when you said that there was direct targeting against peaceful protests in Sunni areas, while in minority areas this targeting of peaceful protests by the regime never took place. You also said that this practice by the regime is what sped up the radicalization among Sunnis.

ME: That’s true. I know that in three areas, the one inhabited by Kurds, Salameyeh and Sweda people protested. In Salameyeh for example, protests were as big as 20,000 or 30,000 at times -- big numbers for a not-so-big town. In such massive protests, one can never control such massive numbers and at times there were clashes, such as an attack against the police station in the area. That police station was attacked again by a massive protest, where protesters invaded the building ripped down pictures and made the police forces retreat to the roof but none of them fired one bullet.  In other areas, the security forces would fire at a protest just by glancing at it from afar, even before it got to them. This is a testimony where the regime contained protests in some areas and killed protesters in others, and I began to wonder, then, why the regime was not firing at our protests. Then it was clear that the minorities were spared. The regime thought if they killed protesters in minority areas, then they are contradicting their motto of fighting extremists. In areas of Kurdish majority, the Kurds were out of control and it got close to a confrontation, but the regime in the end withdrew from the whole area and left them alone. By the end of 2012, the regime withdrew from all Kurdish areas on its own will. Kurds were protesting every day, throwing Molotov cocktails at the regime, and despite that, the regime withdrew and left them alone. The regime refrained from starting a battle with the Kurds, because then its story of fighting Sunni extremists would have been inconsistent. In Salameyeh, the regime contained protesters and their attacks against the regime forces, who received orders not to retaliate. In Sweda, the same thing happened -the regime contained protesters and even attempted to bribe the protesters by offering fuel rations. The regime kept trying to contain people and ease tensions. Yet in other areas of Sunni majority, the regime was killing arresting and bombing. In those three minority areas that I mentioned, there were separate incidents of shootings. And later on, in other areas, the regime dropped barrel bombs and made air raids as we see today.

MAN: Recently, American news outlets have circulated documents regarding Syria which were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The intelligence reports which were made public show that, in 2012, Americans knew about the rise of JAN and the preparations of ISIS to move into Syria, while at the same time, American security agencies were arming Syrian opposition fighters and had confirmed information about the rise of extremist groups. Yet there was no decision to stop them, under the pretext that they would fight Assad. Do you think the Americans decided to overlook the rise of extremists in a move to prolong the war on terror in the region -- in order to open up an economic arms-race as we see today? Or do you think that American foreign policy makers do not know what they are doing in the region? 

ME: I believe that, not only the Americans, but many countries, dealt with the Syrian uprising in an opportunistic, lousy manner. Later on, the Syrian crisis flooded and turned into an international crisis, effecting Tunis, France, and Britain, and I think they deserved it.  I told members of the EU parliament recently that you kept negating and procrastinating about Syria until suddenly a surprise came and now you have got ISIS. The EU decided to block borders in order to keep the conflict from spilling, but here we are. Obviously, the conflict did not remain inside Syria.

MAN: At the ASI workshop, you mentioned that, while you were in prison in Syria, you witnessed the ideological debates and differences between Islamists in prison, who have later become ISIS and JAN. Can you tell us what the ideological difference between these two movements is, and if possible, share with us parts of your experience in prison and why you were arrested?

ME: I was arrested in February 2006. We were a group of youth at the university and we had few demands that we expressed on our blog online. Before Facebook, we had a blog called Akhaweyeh (“brotherly”) for three years -- we used the blog as free platform to discuss whatever people wanted. In addition, this was a time where we, as youth, started to think that we have to do something and we believed that we could make change. Our activism started in 2000, and by 2006, we felt that the Syrian regime was becoming weaker. We sought to do something for this country for, us at least, and in 2005 we created an organization called Youth Gathering for Syria. We started by organizing a youth and students movement for Syria and we staged sit-ins demanding rights, freedom of journalism, and demands to end the emergency law. We were against the regime, but only to raise the bar of freedoms, not to overthrow the regime -- although we all wished the regime would fall. In the end we were discovered many got arrested, I was given a prison sentence of seven years. Six other activists were given five-year prison sentences.

MAN: What was the charge against you?

ME: We were accused of spreading prohibited ideas and acts that were misleading the nation, and with the creation of a political movement aimed at overthrowing the ruling regime. Our trial was at the Higher Court of State Security -- a court that was established under the emergency law. It doesn’t prescribe to the constitution or the judiciary. It is worse than a military court -- it’s an emergency law court. The judge of such court can sentence to death whoever he wants. I spent five-and-a-half years in jail and I was released in the second pardon during the uprising. At the early stages in Saidnaya prison, I was in solitary confinement. Later on, we were dubbed, in jail, the democratic group and we were sharing prison cells with the Salafi and Jihadi groups. As for the ideological differences between JAN and ISIS, these differences also started before they were in jail. There is two points of view historically, since Jihad started in Algeria in the 60s and 70s. There was a group that represented the thinking of ISIS, but those were few -- even one of the renowned thinkers of Jihad, who is critical of ISIS, called Abu Mus’ab al-Souri, wrote a book called the Algerian Experience, arguing that there was a struggle within Algerian Jihad, which mirrors the struggle today between JAN and ISIS. The same clash between different Mujahidin happened in Afghanistan -- they killed each other. In prison, these differences were not crystallized, yet there were differences and argumentation. They had not yet form an organizational body. They considered each other as Jihadis, arguing whether they should kill Shia as Zarkawi did, or whether they should refrain from it. Their discussions were such that one would say “I want to blow up Shia markets,” and others opposed it and said it wasn’t savvy. But they both considered themselves Mujahidin on the same front. Later on they started to become organizations and ISIS materialized. JAN sort of represented the Qaeda of Osama bin Laden and the difference between Osama bin Laden and Abu Mos’ab al-Zarkawi was present among their partisans.  Bin Laden was critical about Zarkawi’s brutality and his broadcasting of beheadings, condemning the killing of Shia families, women, and children. Abu Mos’ab is legitimately called the forefather of ISIS. The Islamic State in Iraq was found by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi who appeared after Zarkawi’s death. Zarkawi was the one who drew the blue prints of the policies and politics of ISIS.

MAN: When you were released in the second pardon were these Salafis and Jihadis you met in jail also released with you? 

ME: Yes, all of them. They left prison as if graduating from university, each with a doctorate in the arts of war and fighting and Takfeer.

MAN: Today, are you able to spot your jail mates and the roles they play on the ground?

ME: Of course -- I know them by name. I used to live with them. I know them well, but I’m not in communication with any of them at the moment. Today we are in different worlds. Originally, while in jail, we never agreed with each other ideologically and there was no animosity between us. Of course, not all of them, but some considered me to be an infidel or a democratic, and et cetera.

MAN: As a secular, were you accepted by the Salafis and Jihadies in jail? 

ME: In general, they (Salafis and Jihadis) all rejected me as a secular, but there was some who dealt with me as a human. We chatted, joked, and became friends hanging out while in prison, however they made it clear that we differ ideologically.  But there are the others who would not hide their animosity towards me, to the point of making a point of showing their hatred. Those others were provocative and attempted to hurt me throughout the five years of my time in jail. In the end, it all depends on the person and his background -- not all of them accept us.

MAN: If we would want to classify supporters of what have since became JAN and ISIS while you were in prison, did you notice a difference in nationalities between those who support the mentality of JAN and those attracted by ISIS?

ME:  Most of those who supported an ISIS mentality in prison were part of an Iraqi group -- one of them was called Abu Baker al-Iraqi. These were extremists -- they wanted to slaughter the prison guards, they wanted to slaughter people, they wanted to kill and blow up things. There was nothing called ISIS at that point, most of those Iraqis where from rural areas and from Bedouin origins. The nucleus among those extremists were from Raqqa. The two men from ISIS who are in charge of Raqqa today were with us in prison. I remember them being from that crew. The most extreme were those who came from Bedouin tribes, from rural areas, as we call them in Syria -- the Arab tribes who do not have a city background or did not live a modern life. Among the extremists in jail, there were also a few from Homs and Aleppo, but they were a minority among the others. The others who support JAN came from a civil, city life background, usually from Damascus or Homs. Those people came from a different habitat, from a different social-class, and their world view was different from those of ISIS.

MAN: And those who were close to the JAN line-of-thought rejected a civil society or a civil state? They wanted to establish an Islamic State?   

ME: Yes, sure, they all rejected a civil state -- they all wanted an Islamic state.

MAN: ISIS’ practices are a copycat of a country everyone recognizes, called Saudi Arabia. Do you think that Saudi played a role in the creation of ISIS as a result of Saudis’ spread of the Wahabi doctrine of Islam? 

ME:  Of course, of course they had role. Originally, Salafism was a doctrine within Sunni Islam and its founding grounds was the society of Saudi Arabia. In Syria, the Sunni society is not Salafi -- we had other doctrines such as the Hanafi or the Shafi’ai and the Ash’aari. Those are more Sufi, closer to the kind of Sunna in Lebanon and so on. In Egypt, it’s the same case -- big Islamic countries in the region are like that, like Iraq’s Sunna… are not Salafis. The dominant ideology at the moment is based on the Salafi ideology or, let us say, the way Salafism interprets Islam or the Saudi way of interpreting Islam, which is not Islam, per se. There is another interpretation concerning the position of women in society. There were Sunni regions in our society where women go out not fully covering their hair because they lived this way historically, unchanged for the last thousand years. They viewed Islam this way and they practiced in this way. If you turn to Saudi or Afghani women who wear the Burqa -- that’s their way of interpretation. So of course Saudi and the Wahabi movement had a role in manufacturing this doctrine. They consider themselves Salafis, they brag about following the pious ancestors (of the prophet Mohammad). The other thing that is turning into a joke these days is that if ISIS took over Saudi Arabia, all they would have to change is the royal family and the foreign ministry. Everything else fits into their practices. As for the society, they do not need to change anything in it because people dress as people under ISIS do, they are ruled in the same way -- all things are set the way ISIS is now.

MAN: Finally, you also mentioned at ASI’s workshop that there are two kinds of Salafis -- the missionary ones and the Jihadi ones -- but you said that both want Jihad. Can you explain what you mean?

ME: There are Jihadi Salafis and there are missionary Jihadi Salafis, and they add to it the Takfiri. In the end, it becomes a whole concoction of a missionary Salafi-Jihadi-Takfiri mix. ISIS is actually missionary Salafi-Jihadi-Takfiri -- they function with these three elements of practicing Jihad, spreading the doctrine and call the rest blasphemous. The missionary Salafis do not fight, they just try to bring people to Islam. They do not practice Takfir, they just say this is the true Islam which we practice. Then there is the Salafi who is a missionary Jihadi-Takfiri, who calls on you to become Salafi, who will practice Jihad upon you and deem you blasphemous until he kills you if you do not believe. In the past, there used to be Salafis who did not fight, and now, with ISIS, they are no more, since those Salafis do not condemn ISIS but ISIS condemned them, when they issued a declaration stating that those “who doesn’t call an infidel blasphemous is himself an infidel.” ISIS raised the bar. Today, it’s not enough to be a missionary or even a Takfiri – it has evolved such that a missionary must call infidels to Islam, and if infidels do not respond, they have to kill them. Without these three conditions, one is not considered a Muslim.

MAN: Do you think there is a way to counter and curb this ideology or is it too late, in your opinion?

ME: As for the methods, there are a hundred ways to counter it. It all depends on the circumstance that we function in. We are at a time where we should focus on removing the main sources that this doctrine flowed from. If we do not remove the regimes of dictatorships and replace them with freedom, then we are repeating the same process of producing extremism. You cannot fight extremism with dictatorships. The biggest mistake the Europeans made is empowering dictatorships to fight extremism -- in the end, it was plain to see that these two produce each other. In the end, it’s a cycle: dictatorship produces extremism and extremism produces dictatorships and so on. Our cause is to break this cycle, and the easiest and best way is to remove these dictatorships. Eliminating extremism is going to take time -- we need to start by healing our society first. Our society, at the moment, is being captured. New generations are being produced by ISIS, by JAN and others, and they are convinced that this is how life is. And at some point, or some phase, we are going to have to confront the ISIS militarily. ISIS will not be dealt with via dialogue -- not even through civil activism. Even organizations that are considered less extreme than ISIS will only be defeated militarily.  There are many levels to work on, but in the beginning, we have to remove dictatorship and start a civil state, or even the nucleus of a state. As it is, at the moment, let’s not fool ourselves -- we cannot start a civil state.  We need to start by building a civil force -- a civil army -- and find some sort of stability for the people to protect their freedoms. Those who want to be Islamist -- they are welcome, as long they do not offend the other. All these ISISs live in their ISIS lifestyle -- in countries, in Europe -- and no one offends them or harasses them. There will be a confrontation, and we’ll find the right circumstance, but it all depends on time and the available resources. There is a way.