We are on April, 25 2014. In the northern surbub of Hama (Syria), the towns of Morek and Kafr Zita are the target of around fourty daily air bombing.

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After passing numerous checkpoints guarded by armed men of local brigades, we entered Morek with Ahmad. The city seems like crushed to me. Building are spread on the floor, walls are smashed, the mosque is shattered. Only the cracked concrete arrow of the minaret is still feverishly standing, as if it was here to remind those who enter in the city that war spares nothing, neither men or symbols.

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The closest building didn’t go the same way as the mosque. Knocked down by a missile explosion, nothing remains of it but a shapeless pile of rubble. The streets are cleared out from their inhabitants. The deep silence frequently interrupted by a distant kalashnikov’s salvo, remind us the dangerosity of the place.

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Soon, we bumped into a few men striding across this desolated landscape. They are armed and their irregular outfits shows their membership to insurgent groups. Their skin is tanned by the sun and their faces seem tired. Nevertheless, they became lively and smiling, catching sight of Abu Moussad, the brigade’s chief of Ahmad. He is driving our car. The day before, his brother died. After a short greeting and condolences, these men return behind the lines to take some rest. They will be soon replaced by others mujaheddin. Thanks to a rotation system set up days and nights, men didn’t have to stay more than a few hours on the harder spots of the front. Where we are arriving, Al-Assad’s troops are about only fifty meters from us.

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A shadow, a shape taking form for a brief moment, a movement behind an opening, and a bullet is on it way. Shooting exchanges are regular, and each wounded needs a risky repatriation to a makeshift hospital, or sometimes, when it gets worst, an insane race to Turkey.

In Morek, insurgents are on a defensive position. They strengthened some points with soil piles and rubble bags. There are waiting, worried about the next Al-Assad’s offensives. In front of us, they do not seem to be decided to attack massively, which would allow a progression to the north for the regular troops. They content themselves with intense bombing on the city, patiently turning this landscape in a vast wasteland. Everytime a barrel is droped, everybody twist and turn, ebullient and ready to shoot in vain at the planes and the helicopters, sometimes just watching out the barrel falling to protect themselves. The explosions keep a deafening pressure. Every bomb is a testify of the asymmetrical ratio of power between the insurgents and the army.

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So, we wait. We think and we make uncertain plans on the regime’s intention.

 

Maybe the generals of the regular army wait for the resolution of the siege of Homs to tip over their forces on this side. Or maybe, the Regime is not as strong as it seems. Of course it has this incredible military superiority with MIG and missils, helicopters and explosive barrels. These bombings intrigue. It is a mix between a high technology, the helicopter, and a handmade weapon, almost archaic, a barrel full of explosives, lighted by a fuse and pushed by a kick at high altitude. Sure, the final effect is very destructive materially and psychologically, but it is impossible to aim a precise point. As if it was an economical solution. As if the Regime, although superior in terms of power, was also tired by this long-lasting war of exhaustion. As if, by extension, the helicopters and planes which permanently threaten us were in a limited number.

This is nothing but suppositions. Like when a plane seems to hesitate to go down too close to the front line, the men feel it like a sign that the pilot thinks the insurgents are armed with anti-aerian wepaons. Like when in the night, lying in the grass nearby a house, to have some survivors in case of a bombing destroying the place, you try to hear the sound of the helicopter above your head, holding your breath, putting out your cigarets fearing of pilots having infra-red telescops detecting heat.

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Nothing but supposition, but suppositions is already some kind of protection.

 

Despite the waiting, on the front, the street fightings are fierce. Every stone bears the scars of war. The whitewash wich used to cover buildings is now rising like a white opaque cloud, blocking the sight at every explosion. This wasteland is the one and only bolt, preventing regulars troops to follow their path up to the north of the country. And with the fall of Homs a few days after our departure, Morek might become an important issue.

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Kafr Zita, the nearby town, is used by a bunch of fighters as a base behind the lines, as the rest of the close region. Except in HQ, we have never seen large groups of insurgents in the same location, these ones being small groups of about fifteen mujaheddins, scattered in different house, separated by several kilometers. On the other hand, this town still counts many civilians families, unwilling to leave their house or too poor to give up the few they have. Day and night, fixed to the walkie-talki, these families look for the aerian attack announcement from the regime army.

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Far in the sky, out of the kalashnikov’s reach, MIG and helicopters indifferently discharge missiles and barrels on Morek ans Kafr Zita.

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During ten days, in this region, we joined a mujaheddin’s brigade, leading an ethnographical investigation and a documentary on the everyday life of these fighters. After two first trip of fourtee days in the North of Aleppo, we follow our investigation on the syrian rebellion. We know it, war times are hard to grasp : uncertain and suspended time where life is diving in a fully ignorance of the next day’s shape.

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The brigade we accompany day and night is composed of 107 mujaheddins. Formerly students, shopkeeper or farmer, most of them were not prepared for war. All are from Hama or around. It has been built on family, friendly or neighbourhood relation. They all knew each other before the revolution. Practising Islam, shared by the entire brigade, is a key criterion to be part of it. As everywhere, combatants uses the same words to justify their revolt. They strongly denounce the violence of an arbitrary power, the religious repression, the bribery, the physical violences, the abductions and disappearance, everyday’s humiliation. The massacres of 1982 in Hama are in everybody’s memory. All these story told are embodied in the close and concrete existence of the combatants. The Deraa children’s episode definitively lifted the veil of fear and lead to an important swaying of people on the ways of rebellion.

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From the begining, the armed struggle is explained the same way. What changes is the vocabulary used by the combatants. During our two trips in July and december 2012, we noticed that stories were full of exaltation, determination, dreams and subjonctive. Past and futur were homogeneous. They believed in an large scope of possibilities. They owned their futur. From now on, as the conflict gets stuck, hope is shrinking. Tiredness naturally appears on these faces aged and dryed by the intensity of the war. Here, the feeling of going round and round in circles in the narrowness of the free territory is deep. Fight seems now « ineluctably steered toward the impossible ». It is like dispossessed of its potentialities. Only the living day and the presence here and now update the armed fight. « People lost most of their dreams. Before, they had a lot of dreams, but necessity took it away. I have forgot everything now. From now on, nothing is left but war’s necessities. » explains Ahmad.

 

The feeling of « being alone in this world » appears through every speech. Quite evidently, their solitude in view of the international community, strenghtens their feeling of being completely alone in this geopolitical vault, impassive and silent, indifferent face to this enormous and transparent cadaver Syria has now become.

 

The contempt of foreigns forces, or even the stigmatization that mujaheddins suffered from, pushed to a certain religious radicalization. During each of our meetings, the fighters discussed with us of what is the « real Islam ». They talk about a tolerant Islam, open to the other religions. If the uses of Islam are steady, it is a way to moralize customs. This is not a surprising fact. Apart from Syria’s specific cultural context, we understand that a revolution is caracterized by the destitution of the ancient orders and by the dispossession of the individuals from their ordinary relations to the world. Besides, while the country slips to the uncanny and the threatening, while violence comes terribly banalized, while destruction gets omnipresent, while death gets to be a part of everyday life, the religious speech certainly testify this persistent wish of order. That is how Islam permits generic but no singular possiblities. Incidentally, it is uncommon to ear combatants clearly stating how Islam could find a political and practical application. Fundamentally, Islam seems to work as a shield against wandering.

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Finally, in a practical way, religion helps in the acceptance of death. In the moments of anxiety and tension, particulary on the front line or during the bombing, we observed an unsettling calm. Concerned, we asked for some explaination. Answers are always the same : « Allah determine the day of our death (…) there is nothing you could do about it. » 

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In its current form, the possibility death is praised. It is faced as to make it vain. It is even glorified, desired and transfigured by the construction of the figure of the martyr. During our trip, eight members of the brigade died. We ear the crying and the sadness twist and turn the mujaheddins. But quickly, death seems to be accepted as a necessity to catch a glimpse of the tough dawn of a shining brand new world. Nevertheless, as the pile of dead body grows, the figure of the martyr tends to decline. Death is banalized. Worst, it gets rationalized. It is not uncommon to see graves digged before knowing their occupier. And so death tends to melt in an impersonal transparency. Martyr becomes a dead man without a name, an « almost nobody ». In front of this international mutism, in Syria, death becomes brutality and inconsistency.

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