A Symphony of Resistance (2021)

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[16] Thank you.

[17] We love the belaida as not youhibu the Belaida Ahad.

[18] Sabahan, Messau 'an, and before the sabah, and after the msau, and yom al -Ahad.

[19] We love this country as not.

[20] has done morning, evening, before morning, after evening, and on Sunday again.

[21] And if they kill us, as they have done.

[22] Will they shirrude us, as they have done.

[23] Conquers to this country, we shall return.

[24] On our lands, trees shall grow again, to our nights, the moon shall return.

[25] and allowed the martyrs or shout them peace upon those who stood firm.

[26] Ten years ago, people throughout the Arab world took to the streets, protesting, singing, making their voices heard any way they could.

[27] A symphony of resistance.

[28] They were demanding a better future, with more equality, more economic opportunity, and more of a voice in electing their leaders.

[29] media soon labeled it the Arab Spring.

[30] But it was more commonly known within the countries themselves as A Thawrata, the Revolution.

[31] The basic story you've probably heard about the Arab Spring starts in December 2010.

[32] At around 10 a .m. as he was making his way through the streets, the policewoman began to harass my son.

[33] Mohamed Bouazizi was working as a street vendor in Tunisia, selling fruits and vegetables.

[34] barely making ends meet.

[35] Since he didn't have a permit, the police and other officials were constantly harassing him.

[36] It got so bad, he told his family, quote, I can't breathe anymore.

[37] And then, decided he just wasn't going to take it anymore.

[38] He set himself on fire in an act of protest.

[39] The martyr, Muhammad Boazizi, this poster says, the spark of the upper.

[40] Tweets, photos, and videos began popping up on the internet from Tunisia, warning of trouble to come.

[41] Arab neighbors nervous of how revolutionary feelings could spread.

[42] And then, like a wave, these pro -democracy protests, uprisings led by Facebook -savvy youth, spread from Tunisia, through Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Georgia.

[43] I know this is the first Arab revolution of the 21st century, or it will be brutal.

[44] suppressed.

[45] The Arab Spring was a moment of rupture captured on phone, computer, and TV screens when people throughout the Arab world woke up to the hidden world around them.

[46] And the thing about these moments of rupture is that once you're awake, you can't go back to sleep.

[47] You can't unlearn the things you've learned.

[48] There's no eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

[49] Maybe that's why as a team, we've been so fixated on the idea of rupture, of revolution since January.

[50] Does life just move on after an insurrection in your country's capital?

[51] Where does that energy go?

[52] What sparked it in the first place?

[53] A moment like that, it echoes through our lives and shapes the future in ways seen and unseen.

[54] And we can speculate all we want about what that moment meant.

[55] But the truth is, We're trying to historify something we're still living.

[56] In a way, there's no better example of that than the Arab Spring.

[57] Reporters often talk about it like it has some fixed parameters in time, a thing that happened 10 years ago that we can now evaluate from a distance and make into history.

[58] But nearly all of the countries impacted by the Arab Spring are still reeling from it.

[59] The hope, the chaos, the violence.

[60] Some even call the present moment an Arab winter.

[61] But whatever you call it, the rupture didn't just happen and then stop in 2011.

[62] And the people who took to the streets then are still living it now.

[63] So in this episode, we wanted to get a closer look at where the seeds of revolution came from and what it felt like to experience that moment of rupture.

[64] Each country has its own complicated backstory.

[65] So we're going to focus on just three places.

[66] will begin in Tunisia, Ground Zero, with Dura Agrabi.

[67] I am Dura Agribe.

[68] I'm 30 years old.

[69] I teach at the University of Cairoan in Tunisia.

[70] Then go to Egypt with Lina Atalah.

[71] I've been working as a journalist for the past 20 years, and currently I'm the editor of Mada Mosul, which is a Cairo -based news website.

[72] And finally, to Syria.

[73] of us has kind of buried away the image we had about Syria.

[74] With Kotaiba Idlibi.

[75] I'm the special representative of the Syrian Opposition Coalition to the United States.

[76] And I'm a fellow at the International Center for Transitional Justice.

[77] I'm Ramtin Arablui.

[78] I'm Randa Abd al -Fattah.

[79] And you're listening to Thrulyne from NPR.

[80] On the TED Radio Hour, MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, her latest research into the intimate relationships people are having with chatbots.

[81] Technologies that say, I care about you.

[82] I love you.

[83] I'm here for you.

[84] Take care of me. The pros and cons of artificial intimacy.

[85] That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

[86] I just don't want to leave a mess.

[87] On Bullseye, the great Dan Aykroyd talks about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he will spend his afterlife.

[88] I think I'm going to roam in a few places.

[89] Yes, I'm going to manifest in Rome.

[90] All that and more on the Bullseye podcast from Maximumfund .org and NPR.

[91] Part 1, Tunisia.

[92] I grew up in Tunis, the capital, in this place called Bardo, which is where the parliament is.

[93] So I was, I'm a city girl.

[94] In the house I grew up in, my grandparents also left there, which is very normal among.

[95] most Arabs to have the grandparents as well.

[96] And my grandfather is fond of gardening.

[97] And I remember our house, which is still my parents' house today, being always taking care of and having a nice garden and, you know, the jasmine tree in the summer.

[98] Like until today when I go to my parents' place, if I smell the jasmine, it will always recall the summer nights.

[99] Also, all the Ramadan.

[100] I grew up with people who lived in houses that looked exactly like ours inside.

[101] I would say everybody has moved there around the 50s, all middle -class families.

[102] So we could afford to go to school, we could afford good clothes.

[103] And my parents always emphasized for me and my brother, who's five years younger than me. the education is your way of leading a better life.

[104] I went to Manuba University, which is within greater Tunis in the capital.

[105] It's a very leftist university, I would say, very socialist.

[106] And it was the biggest cultural shock of my life.

[107] For more than 20 years, he was an omnipresent but untouchable leader.

[108] President Zin al -Abidin Benali.

[109] He founded and ran Tunisia's military security force for 10 years before turning to politics in 1986.

[110] Every morning there is someone on top of a table telling something about the regime, telling a story, a scandal.

[111] It arrests people for what they think.

[112] People are not really free.

[113] Maybe we don't know the truth about things.

[114] It was political but also social and economic.

[115] Economists call it crony capitalism.

[116] when political connections make a few people very rich.

[117] I would say 70 % of the students were not from the capital, and most of them came from very, very underprivileged areas in the country, away from the coasts.

[118] Some of them, their parents were taken away from them, were arrested in the middle of the night.

[119] I'm not talking about exceptions here.

[120] I'm talking about many people.

[121] And these people felt the gap between, between the capital, between the cities on the coast and where they come from.

[122] That's when I actually discovered.

[123] I was living in a country where there were people who were really poor and people who were oppressed.

[124] And maybe that's not me, that's not my family, but these people actually exist.

[125] And we had police officers who used to sit with us, like obviously pretending to be students, but everybody knew who they were, who sit with us in the auditorium and listen up to...

[126] lectures and take notes of what the professors say and take notes of what we say.

[127] It was a bright cold day in April, and the clerks were striking 13.

[128] I mean, we used to study things like 1984 by George Orwell or things like that.

[129] Until they become conscious, they will never rebel.

[130] And until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.

[131] They were not smart enough to know what the books were about.

[132] But every other week or like at least once a month, we used to come and get a beating from them.

[133] Everybody who went to this university at least had one good bruise from a baton.

[134] And that made me hate the regime and hate the police because I felt the police was the arm of the regime with which it was oppressive.

[135] Before the revolution, they'd been hideously oppressed by the people.

[136] capitalists.

[137] They'd been starved and flogged.

[138] We're hearing about Mohamed Bozizi on social media first.

[139] There were so many interpretations about why did he set himself on fire and so many narratives, I would say, around that, you know, how social media functions.

[140] Some people would say he was slapped by this lady who worked for the city council.

[141] Other people say he wasn't slapped.

[142] They just took away his card.

[143] Some people say he has a university degree and then we discover he doesn't have a university degree.

[144] There were videos, you know.

[145] They were on Facebook, people like setting tires on fire and throwing rocks and the police come in to disperse them and make them go home and things like that.

[146] I don't think the revolution would have happened without Facebook.

[147] Just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats.

[148] The second of January, I went to university, and I remember we were gathered as students trying to see what we can do.

[149] And that's the moment when one of our professors said, come with me, and then we went into the teacher's room, and there were plenty of our professors there from, the Department of English, from philosophy, from everywhere.

[150] And all of them were like, if something should start from this campus, it has to start with the arts and humanities, because change has always stemmed from people who read literature, from people who read philosophy.

[151] It felt so thrilling, I think, like the rush of adrenaline and also the pride in those people who just, I thought, they just taught us literature, but who actually believed in the things they used to teach us.

[152] We're going out hand in hand, and I don't know.

[153] I was happy I got beaten by the police.

[154] I was not alone.

[155] There was a lot of fear, but also a lot of hope.

[156] When my mother, you know, started worrying about me going out and protesting and all, I remember saying that these people can get to anyone.

[157] I said before, maybe you thought for a moment that you were safe from the regime, that if you do your job and you keep your head down, then you're fine.

[158] But look at us, look at you and dad, you've been keeping your head down all your lives, but it is coming into your lives through me, through my brother in the future.

[159] So it's ineffable.

[160] If we don't do this together, then no one is safe.

[161] Bread, freedom.

[162] and national dignity.

[163] It was time for the regime to fix itself.

[164] That's why I was going out.

[165] I thought there needs to be serious reforms.

[166] And then bit by bit, the more people died, the more oppressive the regime got, we got into a shab yoreid, esqat the regime down.

[167] The President delivered a speech.

[168] It's called the Fahmtcom speech, which is I understood you.

[169] I've understood you.

[170] I've got all.

[171] The battal, and the mouhtage, and the sysi, and what I'm going to do things to fix that.

[172] And then they did a bit of a stupid move, which is to cut Internet, because they were afraid of the flow of videos.

[173] And that made people go in the street, even though.

[174] people who are not curious, just wanted to go out to see what's happening.

[175] That's when I understood that this has taken a turn, like a point of no return, basically.

[176] I felt like if the regime doesn't fall, we may be in very, very big trouble.

[177] There was police taking pictures of us and everything.

[178] They know you.

[179] They know where you are.

[180] They can come get you eventually.

[181] So I thought this has to succeed.

[182] We have no other choice.

[183] January 14th, I remember my mother telling me, please don't go today, just today.

[184] Just today don't go out.

[185] And I was like, okay.

[186] I mean, it felt like another day.

[187] You know, we're still building up the pressure.

[188] But I didn't think it was the day.

[189] And I remember this very well.

[190] My parents, my brother and I, we were watching television And on national television, there was this sort of breaking news.

[191] When I'm like, oh my God, he left.

[192] And my mother was like a bit of freaking out a little bit, you know, because she's like, are you sure that's a good thing?

[193] We will be without a government.

[194] And how will that be?

[195] I remember my parents' reaction was very different from the one I had.

[196] I was overwhelmed.

[197] I started crying.

[198] I think that was the first time I felt like I was really free.

[199] Oh my God, it's such a strange, strange feeling.

[200] And I remember going upstairs to my room, and I think I didn't have a smartphone back then.

[201] So I went upstairs to my laptop, and I wrote on social media, we're free.

[202] No matter what happened after that day, that feeling was definitely worth it.

[203] The next days, there was a lot of fear and a lot of hope and a lot of waiting.

[204] I just wanted to know what's going to happen next.

[205] I just really wanted to know.

[206] I was working as a journalist in Egypt, and I was sure that I needed to get to Tunisia and witness what was happening.

[207] but also cause for protests in Egypt where starting to circulate, you know, my attention was organically shifted to that.

[208] We sort of here felt like a sense of pride, but also a sense of responsibility.

[209] We felt like, oh, this is, this was something that we are now exporting.

[210] It's not only olive oil and dates anymore.

[211] Breaking news tonight from Cairo, We're after a day of unprecedented violence, the international media coverage of the Tunisian Revolution.

[212] It's like incomparable.

[213] My administration's been closely monitoring the situation in Egypt.

[214] I mean, Tunisia is not Egypt, is not Libya.

[215] And definitely the stakes were not the same.

[216] Egypt is not a country in a bubble.

[217] There are repercussions to anything happening in Egypt to the whole world.

[218] Sometimes I feel that's, we're lucky.

[219] We're lucky they didn't pay that much attention.

[220] Maybe it wouldn't have.

[221] succeeded.

[222] When we come back, journalist Lina Adala takes us to Tahrir Square, Liberation Square, and inside Egypt's revolution.

[223] Hi, this is Janet from beautiful Heidelberg, Germany.

[224] And you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[225] Numbers that explain the economy.

[226] We love them at the indicator from Planet Money, and on Fridays, we discuss indicators in the news, like job numbers, spending, the cost of food, Sometimes all three.

[227] So my indicator is about why you might need to bring home more bacon to afford your eggs.

[228] I'll be here all week.

[229] Wrap up your week and listen to the Indicator podcast from NPR.

[230] Every weekday, NPR's best political reporters come to you on the NPR Politics Podcast to explain the big news coming out of Washington, the campaign trail, and beyond.

[231] We don't just want to tell you what happened.

[232] We tell you why it matters.

[233] Join the NPR Politics podcast every single afternoon to, understand the world through political eyes.

[234] Part 2.

[235] Egypt.

[236] It has been a very, very ugly night and it could shape up to be an even uglier day.

[237] The security apparatus was trying to deter the protests by excessive force from day one to test how far the protesters would go.

[238] The Huyus Square becomes the urban icon of the revolution.

[239] It's where the biggest encampment in 2011.

[240] would place.

[241] There was shooting, heavy shooting, into the protesters, turning Liberation Square into something of a war zone, as people fought for control.

[242] Tahrir Square was an extension of my everyday life way before the revolution unfolded.

[243] The 10 years preceding 2011's were marked by the beginning of my work as a journalist in my university years.

[244] I went to the American University in Cairo, which overlooks Tahrou.

[245] the early 2000s, where the years where a protest movement was emerging, in solidarity was the Palestinian Intifada.

[246] During the second Intifada, Palestinian militants pitted themselves against Israeli troops following the breakdown of peace talks in 2000.

[247] It claimed 4 ,700 lives, 80 % of whom were Palestinians.

[248] Later, in Solidarity was the Iraqi people in the wake of the...

[249] of the U .S. war.

[250] U .S. warships and planes launched the opening salvo of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

[251] But also the beginning of certain political mobilizations around different domestic demands, workers' rights, the right to a national minimum wage against police brutality.

[252] But I was trying to bring in the reporting back then is that sense of discovery.

[253] I was rather interested in the rupture that these protests were making to the state of affairs that we've lived through in Egypt for years and years, specifically, since the 90s.

[254] I grew up in Cairo back in the 1990s.

[255] All I remember is skipping class and spending time on the rooftop of the school staring, at the sky and just, you know, dozing off completely.

[256] It was a time where we were forced to believe that nothing much was happening.

[257] We mind our own businesses, stay home, you know, pursue our education, you know, not worry about anything, especially not worry about politics.

[258] It did feel like a state of induced sleep.

[259] I think it was the epitome of a long -term process that specifically started.

[260] in the 80s in the case of Egypt.

[261] Osim Abarak was a former Air Force pilot who seized power in Egypt after the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat.

[262] Mubarak was around for as long as I was around in this world.

[263] You know, no elections, nobody else has taken up this rule but him.

[264] This Islamic group is saying that your government is repressive, that it's denying due process.

[265] that it is not permitting democracy to flourish.

[266] That's good.

[267] That's good.

[268] We are not with democracy.

[269] He was speaking a lot of the times as a patriarch, the person telling you what to do and what not to do, what to think and what not to think.

[270] Believe me, these people, whenever they take power, there will be no kind of democracy at all.

[271] They deny government.

[272] They deny armed forces.

[273] They deny everything.

[274] So don't believe that.

[275] Music, you know, I used to totally grab our imagination.

[276] You know, Prince Guns and Roses, Bon Jovi.

[277] A brutal secret police who crush opposition.

[278] The United States and Egypt had been partners in the quest for peace in the Middle East for two decades now.

[279] And I think it's important that we continue to do so.

[280] What I've learned is that repression ebbs and flows.

[281] It's there as a constant, but it also ebbs and flows.

[282] And part of this dynamic was the changing relations with the U .S. Classically, Egypt has played this role for the U .S., but also the entirety of the West.

[283] It's a marker of regional stability.

[284] The waters of the Suez Canal, joining the Mediterranean and Europe with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean beyond.

[285] Swiss Canal and its, you know, centrality to international trade.

[286] The canal has existed since the 1860s, eliminating the long haul around southern Africa and thus saving time, money and energy.

[287] To, you know, the more complex dynamics of Israeli security.

[288] Against the tide of the Middle East, he kept the truce with Israel, which earned him lucrative military aid from the United States.

[289] Egyptian autocratic rulers, you know, have managed to engineer a narrative where the control, the political control, and the repression are necessary for this ability to survive.

[290] And that's a narrative that was most of the time accepted from the Americans and Western allies in general.

[291] As of the early 2000s, with increased exposure to technology, Egyptian, young, folks writing on their blogs about people's religion, people's love affairs, meandering about freedom and written in very personalized tones, but they were extremely political.

[292] So there was a broader awakening and I just happened to locate myself or to position myself was in it by deciding to be a journalist.

[293] Mubarak was trying very hard to weaken the possibility of a movement.

[294] all while seeming economically open.

[295] What you would do to put some control on this, you know, political contentious movement that's emerging online is to basically jail the people behind these logging sites.

[296] I must say it was an intelligent political game for quite some time.

[297] Sidewalks are being repaired.

[298] And there's heavy lifting.

[299] It's official.

[300] Cairo University will be the site of President Obama's speech to the world's Muslims.

[301] I, you know, remember the city being prepared for the talk was in the summer.

[302] On Thursday, June 4th, from the university's dome Great Hall, the president will take center stage.

[303] But for now...

[304] There was a lot of anticipation about how this could mark changing influence, let's say, that the U .S. can have on the region and on Egypt.

[305] Good afternoon.

[306] I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo.

[307] There was also a lot of skepticism about, you know, what would lie beyond the rhetoric.

[308] Asalam alaikum.

[309] So he left and things carried on.

[310] Egypt erupting.

[311] Demonstrators demand President Mubarak's resignation.

[312] The protesters are back on the streets of Cairo for a fifth straight day.

[313] The protesters hold their ground.

[314] The people of Egypt have rights that are universal.

[315] That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, the ability to determine their own destiny.

[316] These are human rights.

[317] The United States will stand up for them everywhere.

[318] I like to think, of the revolution as something really embodied or transcends big talks about politics and principles and ideas and abstractions it's in your body moments of emancipation even if they are temporary moments of emancipation is moments where you act in accordance with your first nature so you know when you become your first nature if your first nature is to dance and sing and all of that then, of course, at a revolutionary time, is the place for this nature to manifest.

[319] In my case, my job was the revolution.

[320] My job was to create that record alongside other journalists.

[321] President Hussein Mubarak has decided to step down.

[322] The Army telling people that it's time for them to go home is bringing this a little close.

[323] closer to a confrontation.

[324] Who could fill the political void?

[325] There was another powerful force at work behind the scenes of the uprising.

[326] The opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

[327] They've been touted by experts as the possible next ruling party of Egypt.

[328] But if that's the case, should we be worried?

[329] Some label them as a radical Islamist group.

[330] Others say they're a moderate movement that respects democracy.

[331] Hope and despair have always been budding fellows.

[332] me, you know, they sort of feed off of each other.

[333] Ever since the revolution started, there was also a lot of anxiety of, you know, what's next.

[334] It's not just about tool testing, but it's about collectively reimagining how we want this country to be like.

[335] I remember we held a vigil outside the Egyptian embassy.

[336] You know, it was silent, but then at the end, we saw.

[337] We sang Moutini, Moutini.

[338] It's the national anthem for Iraq today.

[339] It's a famous, you know, national song.

[340] Mautini.

[341] Moutini.

[342] We were surrounded probably by a few thousand police and intelligence members filming us in the back of everyone's minds, you know, the Syrian regime, the Assad regime was not in good relations with Mubarak.

[343] So we were kind of acting in a zone where we're like, oh no, we're celebrating the uprising against your enemies.

[344] But then once that was over, like someone yelled from the back, the beginning of a song where a prisoner is, you know, singing to his jailer and telling him, like, hey, you know, no matter how much basically you try to keep me in the darkness, there would always be light.

[345] That was the moment when kind of like hell broke down.

[346] When we come back, we go to Syria with Qutaiba Idlibi.

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[357] Part 3, Syria.

[358] I don't know.

[359] I don't know where to start.

[360] At least for the first 15 years of my life until 2005, Whenever Syria was mentioned in slogans, in propaganda, it was always called Syria al -Assad.

[361] Assad's Syria.

[362] Assad was the country.

[363] Assad was Syria.

[364] But in a way, my world kind of changed in 2005.

[365] My father passed away in April 2005.

[366] You know, funeral service in Damascus or generally in Syria, people would sit in, someone would be reciting Quran and time would pass, you know, someone would come in, drink a cup of coffee, stay for five minutes, and then they leave and so on.

[367] And that was kind of like the first ten minutes of my dad's funeral service.

[368] But then suddenly one of his friends stood up at the time and he said, those kids deserve to know who their father is.

[369] And he said, I will start.

[370] So he grabbed the microphone, and he said, I knew use of my father.

[371] He stood against this regime.

[372] He stood for what is right since he was 16 years old.

[373] He was detained in this place, in this place, trying to protect other people.

[374] Everyone else kind of stood in line.

[375] and they were just doing their, you know, eulogies talking about the time that they spent with my father.

[376] You know, I was just sitting there and I'm like, who are you talking about?

[377] Because never in my life that my father ever spoke about what he did when he was younger.

[378] You know, for me, my dad was a publisher and editor and maybe interested in politics from all.

[379] all the books we had at home, but there was nothing much to it.

[380] I'm like going through the process of rewriting my own history.

[381] So between 2005 and 2010, I was looking at the footsteps of my father, looking at articles or documents that he would have, the blogs he was going into, or the books that he's reading.

[382] And mustabiddu of the right, One of the books my father worked on for a long time on the original manuscript was Tabai 'Al -Extabad and Mascar al -Extaubat, The Natures of Tyranny and Slavery by Abduarhamal -Kawakibi.

[383] Eterned is the enemy of truth, the enemy of freedom, and the one who fight to kill them both.

[384] truth is the father of mankind and freedom is their mother I learned first that there were groups and parties who actually have been and still are involved in speaking up against the regime if they wake them up they will turn up if they call upon them they will respond otherwise their sleep will be their path to death and I think that started opening my eyes It's the underground Syria that I never heard off from anyone else.

[385] It started somewhere, I think, around the 60s with Hafez al -Assad.

[386] Al -Assad Sr. led a peaceful coup in 1970.

[387] The following year, he became Syria's president.

[388] Over the next three decades, he ruled with an iron fist.

[389] There was a revolutionary movement happening in the 70s.

[390] Some people decided to go on demonstrations, do strikes.

[391] My father was very active at the Damascus University at the time organizing students.

[392] But a group of people decided to go after military leaders and take out or assassinate military leaders of the regime.

[393] Hafez al -Assad kind of went crazy, not knowing who is behind this.

[394] Jail people, torture people, and start.

[395] It's estimated anywhere from 10 to 40 ,000 people were killed in the nearly month -long siege in the city of Hama.

[396] People would say, like, walls has ears.

[397] And then when they found out who the group is an off -branchot, Muslim brother, but at the time, they went on basically to arrest anyone at a time with a beard or anyone basically who regularly goes to mosque.

[398] By implementing that sense of fear through this machine they created, people will just volunteer up to rat on anyone they know, even their family members, just because they feared the destiny that those people might face.

[399] In the early 2000s, people had hopes that Bashar al -Assad is someone who, you know, was educated, partly educated in London.

[400] People had hopes that, you know, he would change things.

[401] But what kind of we didn't expect is that he will come in with his own insecurities.

[402] Bashar al -Assad grew up kind of in the shadows of his older brother, Basel.

[403] So Basel was kind of like the son who was always favored, who's always seen as the, you know, upcoming leader for Syria after Haafz al -Assad.

[404] Bashar was always looked down at as, you know, this child to the brother.

[405] who, you know, is going to be useless for ruling.

[406] But then his brother died in a car accident, and, you know, he became the crown prince that, you know, needs to come in and fill the position.

[407] It was always in the mentality that I need to prove all of those who didn't believe in me that they were wrong and that I can not only be my father, but I can be a stronger version of him.

[408] and he would use a stronger iron fist to hold Syria.

[409] We are the kingdom of silence.

[410] When I was 20, before that, prizing, I was operating a pizza franchise business.

[411] You know, finished my two years diploma, kind of my community college, got a full scholarship to a private school.

[412] So in a way, things were up and going for me, let's say, you know, economically.

[413] Because, of course, I mean, you know, communication increased.

[414] You have better internet coming and I started, you know, hearing about, you know, what's happening in the countryside outside Damascus, especially in north and in East Syria.

[415] Grievances against the authorities in the Syria, he presides, are many.

[416] They include corruption, the dominance of Assad's minority al -aweets over the Sunni Muslim majority, economic hardship, and a rising cost of living.

[417] The government ended social subsidies for basic commodities between 2007 and 2010.

[418] There was the drought that displaced the agriculture society in Syria.

[419] People were starving.

[420] It was literally like hunger games.

[421] Damascus was the capital where, oh, everything is going fine.

[422] But then everywhere else it was.

[423] hell.

[424] One day, one of my employees basically came to me and he said, hey boss, do you want a gun?

[425] Because everyone is buying a gun.

[426] And I was like, how do you know?

[427] And he mentioned one size, I think it was nine or fourteen million a gun.

[428] He said it went up from 25 ,000 zero pounds to 75 ,000 zero pounds.

[429] So literally 200%.

[430] Everyone is buying.

[431] When things were going around Tunisia, especially after Egypt fell down, some kids in elementary and middle school in the city of Darra in southern Syria.

[432] You know, after school went out and wrote on the wall of their school, Jacques Doria, doctor, it's your turn doctor.

[433] The doctor here is the president, Bashar al -Assad, as in like, you're next.

[434] They went to their home, they arrested those kids, and they basically started, you know, held them to torture them to know who actually wrote this sentence on the wall of the school.

[435] The picture that's been emerging on the internet from within Syria tells a story of mass protests, shootings and killings.

[436] Syria's president has blamed the unrest, sweeping his country on foreign conspirators and defied calls to lift his country.

[437] The president decided to come and give a speech.

[438] And he said, actually, all the wrongs, wrong things.

[439] He never apologized, he never acknowledged.

[440] He never acknowledged the problem, the torturing of kids in Dar 'a.

[441] He said, hey, you know, if you want war, we will give you war.

[442] What the regime did is just pulling out strategies they used back in the 70s and 80s, jail people, torture people, and star people.

[443] We remember Hamma and your father, Hafez al -Assad.

[444] He, ruthlessly, set out to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood.

[445] Are you simply being your father's son here?

[446] I don't know what you mean by ruthlessly.

[447] Do you know what happened at Hamo?

[448] I've never heard a soft war.

[449] Have you heard about soft war?

[450] There's no soft war.

[451] War is war.

[452] What the regime did at the time was to put a siege on the city of Daran and stop the flow of flour.

[453] So if the government stops the flower flow, basically bakeries are shutting down.

[454] But when I saw this basically image, I was like, okay, next Friday, I'm going to be in that same place.

[455] Our pizza franchise business had our own warehouse of flour.

[456] They said we supply the business.

[457] I organized with some of my other employees.

[458] I said, like, hey, you know, let's go there and, you know, I'll give you the flour.

[459] flower in the warehouse.

[460] So we went there, basically, you know, gave them a flower.

[461] But someone saw me standing with those activists, and he went and ratted me to the Air Force Intelligence.

[462] And they called the checkpoint and said, like, hey, you know, when this car comes out, basically, bring them in.

[463] Then on my way out, I was stopped.

[464] They were like, hey, you know, the general wants to chat with you over a cup of coffee for five minutes.

[465] Of course, I mean, that cup of coffee over five minutes, there's a lot of jokes around it because the intelligence always, you know, say that when they want to arrest someone.

[466] They covered my eyes, but they didn't put coughs on me. So basically, I took out my phone and looking from underneath the blindfold, I deleted all contacts and messages, basically cleared my phone.

[467] They pushed me to the ground, you know, hitting us with their guns while dancing and jumping on the top of it.

[468] me and flapping, bunching, they turn electricity on, screaming, screaming, screaming.

[469] I felt my body stopped responding when I was feeling the pain, but I didn't even have the energy to scream.

[470] They kept me basically for five, six days.

[471] I spent 10 days in bed, basically just recovering.

[472] I remember my mom walking into the room and say, like, hey, you know, your uncle just got arrested her brother.

[473] And it turns out that my uncle's detention was all about me. It was only a week before the military intelligence came after me. I knew through the interrogation that they actually had spoken to him and he never mentioned anything to me. You know, I don't hold it against him but like this is the manifestation of the fear that people had.

[474] Detention.

[475] torture, detention, torture, detention, torture.

[476] The third time the government tried to arrest me, I basically escaped.

[477] So when they came to me and they couldn't arrest me, they tried to actually arrest my little brother.

[478] And that was kind of the breaking point for me and kind of I cannot let anyone be in the same position I was in.

[479] And so I took my little brother and we left to Lebanon and I thought maybe it's going to be, I don't know, like Egypt or even Libya, like a matter of a few months and then we would be back.

[480] But yeah, months, turn it to years and now it's been a decade.

[481] A decade of war that has left hundreds of thousands dead and no change in Syrian leadership.

[482] In a way, I don't know if we can talk about something called Syria today.

[483] For many Syrians, they feel flagless.

[484] They feel countryless.

[485] Assad's Syria is not the Syria they won't.

[486] That feeling of disappointment, even despair, is shared by people throughout the Arab world today.

[487] In the 10 years since the Arab Spring began, each country has grappled with varying degrees of oppression, turmoil, and violence.

[488] Revolution led to change, but not necessarily for the better.

[489] An extraordinary tumultuous few years in Egypt, the Arab Spring, the coming to power of a Muslim Brotherhood president, a coup, and the emergence of a new soldier's strongman, Abu Fata El Sisi, who clamped down on all aspects of Egyptian society.

[490] Our office has been raided.

[491] I was arrested again last year.

[492] A lot of the group, the media that have been around us have, you know, close shop.

[493] A lot of friends happen to be in.

[494] in jail.

[495] I feel that we're slowly going back into something that might resemble the 1990s.

[496] Democratic reforms were implemented in Tunisia and the country did set itself apart from other nations.

[497] Observers went as far as saying Tunisia was the only success story of the Arab Spring.

[498] But was it?

[499] You know, this is the question that Tunisians don't like to ask each other nowadays because when people ask each other, this question they basically fight about it.

[500] What changed during those 10 years is that one minister or one president replaced another, but the system remained the same.

[501] I would describe Tunisia today as this place who just keeps disappointing you just to give you one very good news.

[502] That makes you not give up on it.

[503] What continues to be the case is that the revolution presented the notion of possibility, even if it's outcomes right now are far from the best for anyone really.

[504] We're all born in places that we don't really choose.

[505] But in 2011, that was the moment where for me I chose to be part of this great noble movement stood out with the people, was part of the people.

[506] Nowadays, I think I believe any place in the world could experience a revolution.

[507] You know, when you're, when you live in a day, dictatorship.

[508] You think a democracy is, you know, like, is ideal.

[509] And then when you live in a democracy, you start aspiring for a better economy and you start aspiring for more individual rights.

[510] So I think, yeah, it can happen anywhere.

[511] That's it for this week's show.

[512] I'm Randallad de Fattah.

[513] And I'm Ramtin Arablui.

[514] You've been listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[515] This episode was produced by me And me and Jamie York Lawrence Wu Lane Capplin Levinson Julie Cain Victor Ibeyes Hart Shaw Yolanda Sanguine Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Bogle Thanks also to Leila Faddle Ahmed Suleiman and Anya Grunman Our music was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric Which includes Show Fujiwara Anya Mizani Naveed Marvie If you like today's show, remember to take a moment and show your support of ThruLine with a donation to your local NPR station.

[516] Go to donate .npr .org slash ThruLine.

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