ΣΥΓΚΛΟΝΙΣΤΙΚΟ ΑΦΙΕΡΩΜΑ ΤΗΣ EΦ. INDEPENDENT
ΣΠΑΕΙ Η ΟΜΕΡΤΑ ΤΩΝ ΣΦΑΓΕΩΝ.
Ιστορίες ανειπωτης τραγωδίας και ηρωϊσμού
στην μαρτυρική Συρία που ζει ημέρες Σμύρνης και Σουλίου. Εμείς οι
Έλληνες δεν έχουμε δικαίωμα να σιωπούμε.
“Μία φρικτή ιστορία που φέρνει στο φως η Independent. Ο τρόμος που
έχουν ζήσει χιλιάδες οικογένειες στην μαρτυρικη Συρία. Όταν οι ορδές των
ισλαμοφασιστων εισέβαλλαν στην Adra, μία οικογένεια, μητέρα, πατέρας
και δύο παιδιά μιλούσαν με αγωνία σε συγγενείς τους στην Δαμασκό.
Η απόφαση ήταν ξεκάθαρη: Εάν εισβάλλουν στο σπίτι, πυροδοτήστε τις
χειροβομβίδες και τιναχθείτε στον αέρα μαζί με τους εισβολείς. Πολλά
σπίτια Χριστιανών και Αλεβιτών έχουν πλέον εκρηκτικά γι’ αυτόν τον λόγο.
Μην διστάσετε στιγμή, αλλιώς θα πεθάνετε με φοβερά μαρτύρια. Θα σφάξουν μπροστά σας τα μωρά,
αφού βασανίσουν τον πατέρα τους. Έπειτα θα βιάσουν την σύζυγο και θα
την ακρωτηριάσουν. Τότε και μόνο τότε θα αποκεφαλίσουν τον πατέρα.
Η οικογένεια στην Adra αποχαιρέτισε δια τηλεφώνου τους συγγενείς όταν
ακούστηκα δύο πυροβολισμοί και η πόρτα να σπάει. Λίγο αργότερα, ένα νέο
Κούγκι γηγενών γράφτηκε στην μαρτυρική ιστορία του αγώνα για την
Λευτεριά. Εμείς οι Έλληνες μπορούμε να το αντιληφθούμε, όσο και αν
επιχειρούν να μας κάνουν το μυαλό κιμά με συνωμοσιολογίες, αερολογίες,
αόρατους εχθρούς και “φίλους” τούρκους, γερμανούς κλπ.
Ας ελπίσουμε να το καταλάβουν και οι αναγνώστες της Independent. Δείτε το δημοσίευμα:
It is a terrible story but it throws a grim light on the terrors of
the Syrian war. It is told at first in a calm, precise voice by Nusair
Mahla, a middle-aged government employee, until he finally has to choke
back tears as he speaks of the last moments of his sister Maysoun Hala
and her husband Nizar along with their two children, Karim and Bishr. He
says that many other Syrians have suffered similar tragedies, but in
few cases is it known so precisely what the victims themselves thought
about their fate.
Nusair, a neatly dressed man in a brown suit, says the first he knew
about his sister’s family being in danger was an early morning phone
call. He recalls it came after 6.30am and was from neighbours who said
that insurgents, whom he invariably calls “terrorists”, had entered the
industrial town of Adra 12 miles north of Damascus and were taking
hostages. This happened on 11 December when fighters from the al-Qa’ida
affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic Front, another jihadi group,
had captured the main employees’ residential complex at Adra using an
old sewer to outflank government forces.
Nusair recalls: “I immediately called my sister and told her to get
out and come to my house in Mezze.” Nizar worked as a public relations
specialist for the state oil company while Maysoun had qualified as an
engineer at Damascus University and was a housing manager at Adra. As
state employees they were at risk of being killed by jihadi rebels, but
what made their execution certain was that, though very secular in
life-style, they belonged to the Alawite sect, a variant of Shi’ism to
which President Bashar al-Assad and many of the Syrian ruling elite
belong.
Victims of war: Residents of Adra are evacuated during fierce fighting
In the event, the jihadis who had taken Adra believed that state
employment or membership of any religious minority – Alawite, Christian,
Druze – was enough to merit death. Maysoun told her brother that she
didn’t dare follow his advice to leave her apartment building because
the rebels were “in front of the door of the building and they are they
are also on the roof tops”. Even so, Nusair suggested she go with the
two children, Karim, 16, and Bishr, five, and maybe the jihadis would
let them pass.
She answered that “they look so terrifying and I am afraid. I was
looking out the window and I saw the terrorists killed one of the NDF
[pro-government National Defence Force militia] with a big knife”.
Maysoun explained to Nusair that she and Nizar planned to try to wedge
the door of their apartment shut. But if this failed and the jihadis
broke in, then the whole family had taken a momentous resolution: rather
than face torture and inevitable death at the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra,
they would die as a family by detonating grenades that Nizar had
somehow acquired (he does not seem to have had a gun).
The rest of the day was chaos, according to Nusair. All the
relatives of the trapped family were calling them on landlines and
mobiles to try to comfort them. At about midnight, Nusair’s 25-year-old
son William, who lives in Aleppo, called his aunt and asked about the
situation. Maysoun replied: “They are trying to get into the house.”
William heard two gunshots. Maysoun repeated that if the rebels got in
the family would blow themselves up. Then she cried out: “They are
inside the house, William, they are inside the house! We should say
goodbye. Please forgive us.” Then he heard an explosion.
Nusair breaks off telling the story and puts his hands over his eyes
as he tries to suppress his sobs. After a few moments he goes on to say
that William phoned him and said: “They are now in the hands of God.”
Nusair called the landline and mobiles of the family in the apartment in
Adra and there was no reply. He stayed at home with his own family and
Damascus and told them “we can’t do anything. They are now martyrs.”
Nusair gives some background about Nizar and Maysoun: “They were a
wonderful family. They were like a small democracy. Anything they wanted
to do they discussed and, even if five-year-old Bishr was against doing
something, they didn’t do it.” Nizar was very secular – “I used to call
him a secular extremist” – and pictures of the family together show
Karim with long hair and his mother with her hair dyed blond and without
a headscarf. She had been working hard trying to get ready housing for
refugees from Douma, a rebel stronghold not far from Adra. Much of this
emergency accommodation was in a half-built residential complex with no
glass in the windows and no furniture. Nusair, evidently very close to
his sister, says: “I used to call her every night and she would say, ‘I
am so tired preparing these houses that aren’t ready for people to live
in’.”
The story does not end with the explosion and the apparent death of
the family. At 3am the next day, Nusair got a call from Nizar’s brother
who said: “Nizar just called me but the line was cut.” Nusair
immediately called the Adra apartment on the landline and it was
answered. He asked: “What happened, Nizar?” Nizar replied in a slurred
voice as if in pain: “Bishr died and Maysoun and Karim are badly injured
and bleeding. They are not moving. It is too late for me but please try
to do something for them.” Nusair talked and tried to say encouraging
things but, he says, “finally the phone must have fallen from his hand.
Those were the last words I heard him say.”
As to what happened next, Nusair says the details are unclear. Some
neighbours in Adra said in the single telephone call they were able to
make that they had gone to the apartment and found Nizar, Karim and
Bishr dead, but that Maysoun was alive, although her leg was severed.
They took her to their apartment.
Then comes a final horrible twist to the story. Nusair’s daughter
Senna is at school in Damascus. Some of the children whose parents were
able to escape from Adra are now being taught there. She asked one of
them if he knew Maysoun. He said: “She was the woman with one leg cut
off they [the insurgents] dragged behind a car.” Nusair says that Senna
fainted as soon as she heard this.
The cruelties of the Syrian civil war get worse by the week. Each
side belittles its own atrocities and claims them as retaliation for
something even worse done by their enemies. Nusair explains why his
sister, brother-in-law and their children decided to kill themselves: he
says they believed that “the jihadis would kill the youngest child in
front of the mother and rape the mother in front of the husband. They
would torture the men and then kill them all anyway. Better to die by
their own hand.”
Accounts of what happened to the rest of the population of Adra are
confused. I spoke to some of the 5,000 refugees who had been allowed to
leave by Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic Front on 30 December and some
of whom are now squatting in a giant cement factory. They said the
jihadis had ordered them to their basements and had kept them there. The
number singled out for execution is put at between 32 and 80. There are
accounts of the doctor in the local clinic, a Christian known locally
as Dr George, being decapitated. Bakery workers who resisted their
machinery being taken away were roasted in their own oven. Jabhat
al-Nusra and Islamic Front fighters went from house to house with a list
of names and none of those taken away then has been since. This
includes the head of the legal department at the Information Ministry
who disappeared with his wife and daughter and whose phone is now being
answered by a man saying he belongs to Jabat al-Nusra.
The story of how Nizar and Haysoun’s family died together is well
known in Damascus. The many Syrians who work for the government or
belong to minorities wonder what they would do if the jihadis were at
their door. It is tragedies like this one that provide the fuel for an
ever more savage civil war.
Ceasefire breached
A ceasefire arranged in Homs to allow the delivery of aid and the
evacuation of women, children and the elderly was breached yesterday as
mortars were fired across the besieged city. Both sides accused each
other of breaking the fragile peace.
Four members of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent were reportedly wounded
by rebel fighters as aid workers tried to deliver humanitarian
supplies. State media said the Red Crescent members came under fire from
“armed terrorist groups”.
The regional Arab television station Al Mayadeen reported that it
was hoped that trucks carrying food, water and medicine for up to 3,000
residents would still be able to enter the city yesterday.
The opposition Shaam News Network, which blamed President Bashar
al-Assad for the attacks, said the mortar fire had coincided with the
entry of two UN cars into the besieged districts. Mortars were reported
to have targeted an area of Homs near to where negotiations over the aid
operations were taking place.
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