By Stephen Dockery
TRIPOLI, Lebanon: In a small fabric
store in Tripoli, Mustafa Saadeddine and Burhan Mousa Agha are preparing for
the day’s rally supporting the Syrian uprising.
They have drawn up a stack of
posters calling for the end of the regime.“Stop massacre in Homs” reads one,
and “Stop the butchering” reads another. Against the wall leans a stack of pre-Baathist
era flags and an amplifier.
Saadeddine and Mousa Agha are the
rank and file of young Syrian activists who have organized into a sophisticated
network to provide aid for refugees, spread the news from cities under siege
and support the friends and family they have left behind. They work in spite of
their uncertain welcome in Lebanon, where activists are allegedly kidnapped and
President Bashar Assad’s security services are believed to be tracking refugee
families.
Syrian Activists have banded together
across north Lebanon, creating the Coordination Committee for Syrian Refugees.
A small administrative council oversees the aid and activism work they do.
The Tripoli headquarters is modest:
The walls are adorned with tassel samples and the back room is stocked with
reams of fabric. Saadeddine and Mousa Agha sleep upstairs with their six other
colleagues on thin cushions arranged in a rectangle in one room. Drying laundry
hangs in the adjacent storage room and sewing machines line the walls.
But it’s here that dreams of regime
change cultivated in Syria are again looking to take root.
“The Syrian people don’t have a
voice,” 27-year-old Mousa Agha from Homs says. He’s taking it on himself to
give them one.
Tens of thousands of people have
been forced to flee the bloody crackdown in response to the uprising against
Assad’s rule. Many have taken refuge in Tripoli, which has strong family and
religious ties to Syria’s western cities such as Homs.
Downtown, under the city’s central
clock tower, taxi drivers cry out offers for rides to Homs, and Syrian
revolution flags flutter outside several shops.
Tripoli is perhaps the safest place
in the country for refugees, but it’s not nearly as safe as it seems.
Last month protests against the
Syrian government ended in three days of gun battles against Assad’s supporters
in the Lebanese port city.
But the idea of operating in other
cities such as Beirut, with its many groups sympathetic to the regime,
including Hezbollah and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, is unconscionable
for the activists.
Even other areas like Hermel and the
Bekaa city of Zahle have seen a recent spate of kidnappings of refugees.
“It’s safe but not so safe, but if
you look to other places in Lebanon it’s more safe in Tripoli and Akkar,” says
26-year-old Saadeddine.
On a warm Sunday at the end of
February the activists’ leader joins them in the fabric store’s lobby to hold
forth on plans for the afternoon’s rally.
Polished and dressed in black rimmed
glasses and a neatly arranged scarf, Amin Mando looks like a graduate student
at university. But the 27-year-old, who owns the store, never attended high
school and now cares for the 1,066 families that make up the Syrian refugee
community in Tripoli.
Because of his strong ties to a
number of families in Homs, Mando is responsible for spreading a small pool of
resources to a fast growing community in need of shelter, heating and food.
But Mando’s network and other local
organizations responsible for caring for the majority of Syrian refugees are
running out of resources.
Their leaders travel with small wads
of cash provided by local families and religious organizations, while lower
level workers live on a more day-to-day basis. Other funding sources have yet
to materialize.
“I have a dream that what the Syrian
regime is saying, that all the Arab nations are giving money to Syrians, that
that will come true,” Mando says.
A few hours after noon Mando,
Saadeddine, Mousa Agha and the other activists from the fabric shop pile
themselves and their banners, flags and loud speaker into two cars and drive to
the rally site at the International Committee for the Red Cross office in
Tripoli.
Unlike past rallies which brought
together Lebanese and Syrians for the cause, this demonstration is for the
refugee community alone.
Mando didn’t want trouble during the
rally and knew the skittish refugee community would only turn out if they felt
safe. Mando put out word to the refugee community the week before about the
rally for the uprising.
And people do turn up, by twos and threes
at first and then by car and bus loads, about 200 in all.
Women line up on one side, men on
the other and children get their face painted in opposition colors and the word
“freedom.”
Mostly from Homs, the people feel
relatively safe here away from the daily shelling, but they aren’t entirely at
ease either.
Eventually Mousa Agha, a long
flowing black bandanna tied around his head, climbs up on the wrought iron
fence surrounding the ICRC.
He bellows into the amplifier and
fists and voices from the crowd pound the air in response. Calling out the
names of the neighborhoods in Homs under siege, “Bab Sabeh, we are with you
until death ... Inshaat we are with you until death,” he cries and the crowd
chants back.
Saadeddine is in the crowd smiling,
arms locked with fellow protesters. They sway back and forth to the rhythm of
the chants.
The opposition flags wave, as do
banners of the Islamic shahadah.
The media presence is small and the
protesters are mostly performing for each other and the cell phone and pocket
cameras that have become the identifying marks of Arab revolutions across the
region.
The normally quiet and soft spoken
Mando takes his turn on the microphone. He pumps his fist and yells out into
the microphone.
“We obey you God,” he chants with the
crowd. “God is the greatest.”
“We are the voice of Homs,” the people chant.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2012/Feb-29/164979-syrian-refugees-unite-to-keep-revolt-alive.ashx#axzz1nkwdh1ES
