How
a nearly unknown businessman named Khaled al Ahmad became Damascus’
secret liaison to the West and quietly dealt Syria’s grinding war
to a close
by
Rania Khalek
Part
5 - Life returns to normal
I caught
a glimpse of the consequences of al Ahmad’s efforts last summer
when I visited several areas in Syria that have reconciled with the
government.
One of
the most genuine reconciliations to take place was in Hammeh, a Sunni
suburb of Damascus formerly under rebel control. Then there was
Qudsaya, also an outlying area Damascus that had been controlled by
the armed opposition. These suburban areas were the first to be fully
normalized, meaning the siege was totally removed and a free flow of
goods and people were allowed. They were also freed from unregulated
militias and their weapons. In a deal organized by the then-head of
the National Defense Forces in Damascus, Fadi Saqr, the opposition
was given a choice to stay and receive an amnesty that guaranteed
that none of the security agencies would arrest them. Their other
option was to receive safe passage further north to opposition held
areas, a practice pioneered in Homs in 2014.
During
Ramadan of 2017, a group of Syrian youths from Hammeh went to the
orphanage of the neighboring poor Alawite suburb, Jebel Wurud, to
deliver presents to the children, many of whose parents were killed
during the fighting. The residents of Jebel Wurud, who up until a few
months earlier had been enforcing a government-imposed siege on
Hammeh, were astonished. The next day the young people in Hammeh held
a children’s festival on a patch of land in the valley between the
two mountain villages that had been a no man’s land during the
fighting. As people from Jebel Wurud passed by the area to buy bread
at a nearby government-run bakery, they and their children, though
somewhat cautious and suspicious at first, eventually joined the fun.
Inspired by the kind gesture from Hammeh’s youth, a group of young
people from Jebel Wurud visited Hammeh the day after the festival,
bearing gifts for Hammeh’s orphans.
“We
focused on the families who suffered from this crisis from both
areas,” explained Ebrahim Fatouh, a Hammeh local who helped
lead the activity. “We got them together, especially the mothers
who lost their children.”
Ebrahim,
a 23-year-old freelance graphic designer born and raised in Hammeh,
is public relations manager of Temkeen, which means empowerment in
Arabic. Temkeen is a civil society group established by Ebrahim and
his friends back in 2016 to help repair Hammeh’s social fabric. But
it wasn’t until after the fighting ended that Temkeen was able to
do anything truly effective.
“From
2012 to 2017, until the reconciliation, these villages were
fighting,” said Ebrahim. The truce had allowed the necessary
space for him and his friends to get to work. Hammeh is but one
example.
Hammeh
is an extension of Qudsaya, an even larger Damascus suburb that
reconciled with the government as part of the Hammeh negotiations
last year. In early 2017, residents of Hammeh kicked out the armed
groups inhabiting the town and reconciled with the government after
lengthy and arduous negotiations.
Hammeh
and Qudsaya were held initially by the FSA — in Hammeh the rebel
forces included some fighters affiliated with Syria’s Al Qaeda
affiliate, Jabhat al Nusra. During ceasefires in Qudsaya, fighters
from Hammeh would often spoil the truce by launching attacks on
government areas. This infuriated the government and the residents of
Qudsaya and Hammeh. Ultimately the siege tactics imposed by the
government on these areas worked. Nobody was forced to leave, they
were given the choice of either remaining in the Syria of President
Assad or leaving to insurgent-held areas in the north.
An
estimated 300 insurgents, some 30 percent of the rebel fighters in
Hammeh, as well as some of the civilian elements of the insurgency
political administration, chose to stay and receive amnesty from the
Syrian government in exchange for handing over their weapons. For
those who stayed, checkpoints were removed and life was normalized,
including for the men who were given amnesties.
Residents
in Hammeh say that those given amnesty were able to return to their
ordinary lives and now they come and go as they please. While they
are looked upon with suspicion by some locals, there haven’t been
any problems except for one verbal skirmish during Ramadan. The
government got involved and mediated and those involved promised it
wouldn’t happen again.
Compared
to other areas that came under opposition control, Hammeh endured
little physical damage. On the way into Hammeh, I drove by what used
to be the Barada beer factory. It was in ruins, destroyed by Al
Nusra, which deems alcohol to be anti-Islamic. All that remained were
mounds of broken green beer bottles. There were some damaged
residential buildings strategically located at the top of the
mountain that overlooks Hammeh, which insurgents had captured in an
effort to control the entire town. Bullet holes from sniper fire
could be spotted on the exterior of some homes and shops. But for the
most part the town was still in good shape. And reconstruction on the
damaged buildings had already begun when I was visiting.
Hammeh
had been reintegrated into the city suburbs, so people and commerce
flowed freely. There was a checkpoint at the entrance to the town to
check for weapons and car bombs, but it was relaxed and easy to move
back and forth. The men in charge of the checkpoints were locals from
Hammeh who were hand selected by the local reconciliation committee,
demonstrating some of the local autonomy that exists in Hammeh due to
compromises by the government.
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