Razan Zeitouneh Interviewed by Joe Pace: Syria's Preemptive War against Infiltrators into Iraq

Syria's Preemptive War against Infiltrators into Iraq

Interview with Razan Zeitouneh
By Joe Pace
14 September 2005, Damascus
Published by "Syria Comment"

Razan Zeitouneh is a 29 year old Syrian human rights activist, lawyer, and journalist. She worked with the Human Rights Association of Syria until last September, when she left to work on several independent projects. She is the founder of the website, Syrian Human Rights Information Link, or SHRIL, an important clearing house for information on people who have been arrested or have disappeared. The site is written in both English and Arabic and constitutes an organized attempt to monitor human rights violations in Syria.

Razan explains that "the regime has started to arrest everyone associated with those who make it to Iraq" and is trying to "frighten people from even thinking about going to Iraq. " This raises the question: Why doesn't Syria trumpet these arrests? Why doesn't it use the fact that it has been terrorizing Islamists, Jihadists, and the families and friends of those who have infiltrated into Iraq to counter false American accusations that it is aiding and abetting Arab Jihadists to infiltrate into Iraq?

We can only guess at the answer to these questions.

1. The Syrian government maintains that Arabs have the right to resist foreign occupation. It has opposed America's invasion of Iraq from the beginning as illegal. Thus it is embarrassed by its capitulation to American pressure and does not wish to broadcast it.

2. The broad Syrian public agrees that the Iraqi resistance is legitimate, even as it condemns terrorists such as Zarqawi and the killing of innocent Iraqis. The government’s measures to crack down of those who would help the resistance is unpopular.

3. The regime is frightened of advertising the arrest and harassment of Sunni Islamists for fear of alienating the Sunni masses and Imams more than it already has.

4. Syria has no laws to properly prosecute the people it is arresting on suspicion of wanting to go fight in Iraq or of having fought in Iraq, thus it cannot advertise that it is breaking its own laws.

5. The president's press office is incompetent and not up to the task of briefing the international press on its efforts to help the US in Iraq.

Here is part one of Joe Pace's interview with Razan Zaitouneh.

INFILTRATIONS

[Joe Pace] Since the family members of those who are arrested on the charge of infiltrating Iraq often report the arrests to the human rights associations, you have an interesting perspective on the regime’s efforts—or according to some, lack thereof—to stem the tide of infiltrators. Is the regime cracking down on them or are they turning a blind eye?

[Razan Zaitouneh] I’ll give you the facts and you can come to your own conclusion. Always, at all times, there are people being arrested on the charge of attempting to infiltrate Iraq. At the same time, people are still able to reach Iraq and the regime has started to arrest everyone associated with those who make it to Iraq. So is the regime arresting these people to compensate for their inability to detain the original infiltrators, to create an atmosphere of fear in the cities and towns from which they leave for Iraq? Or are they trying to show the world a different picture, that they are stopping their support for the infiltrators? I don’t know the answer to that question.

A little while back, the authorities were spreading rumors that they were going to arrest all those who returned from Iraq. It created a lot of anxiety among those who had gone to Iraq—many of them returned from Iraq recently, some wounded, some surrendered to the Red Cross, and some were shocked when they found that Iraqis preferred the occupation. So a large portion of them returned and the security forces began asking about them and questioning their families. But then nothing happened. So I imagine they were doing that to frighten people from even thinking about going to Iraq.

When the authorities do make their arrests, is there usually a basis for their accusation that the person in question attempted to infiltrate Iraq, or are they making arbitrary arrests?

Usually what happens is that someone goes to Iraq and then after they leave, the security forces arrest their friends and acquaintances. They investigate them on the assumption that they also harbored an intention of going to Iraq.

There has been an upsurge in the arrest of Islamists, or suspected Islamists. Is the regime targeting Islamists because they see them as the most likely candidates to infiltrate Iraq, or is this a separate campaign?

They are arresting religious people even without accusing them of trying to enter Iraq. They are arresting people from all different trends: the Wahhabis, the Salafis, members of Hizb at-Tahrir (the Liberation Party), despite the fact that many of those people don’t believe in jihad and reject the idea that they are obliged to fight in Iraq. Any group which displays an inkling of fundamentalism is being pressured. They wave of arrests has been broad and it’s often arbitrary and the human rights violations they suffer are unimaginable.

Do you have a sense as to how the regime was supporting the infiltrators in the beginning?

I don’t have a clear sense. We all knew that whoever wanted to go was welcome and sometimes the authorities would help them. Everyone was talking about it; it was normal. Then after a short period, it suddenly became extremely dangerous. You would hear stories about accidents and forced disappearances, as in people would set out for Iraq and they would never make it, which of course means that they were arrested before they reached the border. Then the campaign of arrests began.

When they arrest family members and friends of the infiltrators, what do they do with them? Do they refer them to the High National Security Court?

There are many possibilities. In a village called ‘Abaddeh in the southern countryside of Damascus, three or four men left for Iraq with their wives. They disappeared suddenly without informing their families or anything like that. After two months, the security agencies made a sweep through the village and arrested eight people—family members and friends of those who left. They totally disappeared. It’s been more than 14 months and not a thing is known about them. [Razan informed me on October 3 that days ago, the families of the detained were permitted to visit their sons for the first time in Sadnaya prison. They are being referred to the High National Security Court; no charge has been issued.]

Another possibility is that someone disappears during the interrogation process, maybe they reappear after a year of investigation and then they are referred to the Security Court. There’s no set rule about how they deal with these issues. There is one man who left for Iraq right after the start of the occupation; he disappeared before reaching the border and nothing has been heard about him in over two years.

What are your thoughts on the continued accusations on the part of the US administration that Syria is not doing enough to crack down on infiltrators?

This is what baffles me the most. How they can continue to issue these accusations in the face of all the arrests of the infiltrators and people within the religious circles, I don’t know.

If the people within these religious circles aren’t participating in any illegal activities and they’re not trying to enter Iraq, what is motivating the regime’s campaign against them?

I think it’s a preemptive war against any sort of organized activity by those groups. Of all the human rights violations against the religious groups that the human rights associations have monitored, none have occurred against someone practicing or calling for violence. Most don’t have guns, and more simply, they don’t have the organizational structure—they’re just a bunch of individuals who meet and talk. So I think it’s a preemptive war being waged based on the fear that maybe these groups will produce violent followers or will engage in organized activity one day.

Do you think this preemptive war is going to diffuse the Islamist threat—assuming there is one—or is it going to foment a backlash?

For certain, it is going to produce a backlash. The US and this regime continue to wage war against these Islamists without ever realizing that these people cling to a doctrine which preaches that the world means nothing. All that matters is that I reach heaven. So I don’t have a problem with being arrested or martyring myself. The heightened oppression and its arbitrariness are reinforcing that doctrine and increasing their malevolence. Perhaps, if they were not thinking about violence, after they see the arrests, the torture, the violations, some day they will turn to violence.

I’ll tell you what I think the solution is. The experience of the war on terrorism that has been waged by both the West and this regime has proved that arrests, torture, etc do not create healthy societies. They thought that these pressures would discourage people from forming new terrorist organizations or from joining terrorist groups. The total opposite happened. The solution is that there needs to be an opening through which we can engage and dialogue with the religious extremists. There must be a political opening and economic improvement. Look, most of the people who are joining these movements are very young—many of them are in high school. They’re young enough that you can still influence them and convince them of the merits of democracy.