Syria: “We are witnessing the fall of humanity”

Malek Jandali

Malek Jandali is a Syrian composer and pianist considered to be among the most versatile and creative musicians in the Arab world.

He is the first Syrian and only Arab musician to arrange music based on the oldest music notation in the world, which was discovered in the Bronze Age city of Ugarit, Syria.

He has recently attracted widespread international attention for his strong stand against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Martina Sabra met the artist in the country of his birth, Germany, where she interviewed him for Qantara.de. The Arabic word “qantara” means “bridge.” The Internet portal Qantara.de represents the concerted effort of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Center for Political Education), Deutsche Welle, the Goethe Institut and the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations) to promote dialogue with the Islamic world. The German Foreign Office funds the project.

Following are the Qs & As of the interview with Jandali as conducted by Martina Sabra, edited by Lewis Gropp and published yesterday by Qantara.de:

Mr. Jandali, you said you would bring something special with you to our interview?

Jandali: Yes. I have a piece of what’s known as a "shepshep" here – the front part of a small, colorful rubber slipper. This slipper belongs to a child who managed to escape from Syria to Turkey and survive in spite of heavy bombardments by the Syrian army. Some Syrian students brought it after visiting refugee camps in Turkey and gave it to me in Toronto. This rubber slipper was an item in a charity auction organized on the occasion of my concert in Offenbach, Germany. The audience donated thousands of Euros. This is the most expensive shoe I ever saw. It's not Gucci, it's not Armani -- it's freedom. Look at it. Isn't it great?

During the past two years you have given many successful concerts around the world, among others in London and at the Konzerthaus in Vienna. What was it like for you?

Jandali: I was born in Germany and went to Kindergarten here, so this was where my first introduction to music occurred. We moved to Syria when I was six. But until the age of 12, I used to come to Germany every summer, to the "Sommerschule" in Waldbröl, a small town not far from Bonn, and take piano lessons. Unfortunately, I lost touch with my teacher, Mrs. Schneider. So my last visit here dates back to the 1980s, almost 30 years ago.

 It is wonderful to be back. Germany is a beautiful country. The concert at the Capitol in Offenbach was a great way to meet the Germans and the Syrian community and support the Syrian children in their revolution for freedom.

From the age of six, you grew up in the city of Homs. How did you manage to study piano there, more than 30 years ago?

Jandali: Actually it was pretty challenging to find a piano teacher at the time, because there wasn’t a music school in Homs. But there was an excellent piano teacher at the Tchaikovsky conservatory in Damascus. I had to travel every Thursday from Homs to Damascus for two hours, take my piano lesson and come back by bus. Later I applied for studies abroad and I got a full scholarship for the U.S.

You grew up under the Baath regime and travelled between the US and Syria when the Baath regime was still stable. To what extent did you internalize the Baath ideology and how did you manage to rid yourself of it?

Jandali: To be honest, you're sitting in front of a professional liar. I lied every morning. I loved Bashar in the morning and I hated the system in the afternoon. They force you to say: I sacrifice my soul and my life to Assad.

Every morning at school. Then you go home, and your parents tell you that Assad is not good. This is schizophrenic, and it all happens when you are still a child.

After I came to the US, it took me a good 10 years to cleanse my soul, to be honest, to tell the truth and not lie.

Many famous Arab artists, like the Lebanese singer Fairouz or the Syrian singer Sabah Fakhri, have so far remained silent over the violence of the Assad regime. Why this silence, do you think?

Jandali: It's disgusting. This regime has applied a strategy to hijack minds, including the minds of artists. It has succeeded in withdrawing the humanity and freedom and the essence of feelings, of human feelings from people’s hearts. An artist who does not stand alongside the children of Syria at this moment in time is not a human being. I call them "the empty drums", since they are just drumming to the crimes of the dictator.

Malek Jandali’s Freedom Qashoush Symphony

Do you think that musicians in Germany and Europe should take a clearer stand in favor of the Syrian revolution?

Jandali: We need to differentiate between ordinary people and governments. My album "Emessa", which was the old name for the city of Homs and which I dedicated to the Syrian revolution, was recorded together with the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra. To me this means that the people of Russia are with the people of Syria, not with the government. Some of the musicians in Moscow cried when we recorded the piece "Al-Qashoush". For me, art is a universal message, the search for beauty and truth.

You composed the piece "Al-Qashoush symphony" in 2011 and dedicated it to Ibrahim Al-Qashoush, a firefighter from Hama who stood up in public and sang a very famous song against Bashar Al-Assad. Al-Qashoush was brutally tortured, murdered and mutilated, the perpetrators were most probably thugs in the pay of the Assad regime. What do we know about Al-Qashoush? Did he really compose the song "Go away, Bashar"?

On July 4, 2011, Qashoush was found dead,

his throat cut and his vocal cords ripped out

Jandali: Every revolution throughout history has a legend. The legend of the Syrian revolution in music is Ibrahim Al-Qashoush. To me, even though Ibrahim Al-Qashoush was just a firefighter from Hama, he was the first true Syrian artist to break through the wall of fear and lead the way for other musicians and artists – he actually ignited the cultural revolution. This revolution is not only about freedom and human rights. It's a cultural revolution. No freedom, no art; no freedom, no progress.

After you published the Al-Qashoush Symphony in the spring of 2011, regime bandits in Homs targeted your parents. Their apartment was looted and they were both badly injured. How did you feel when that happened? Did you ever think of stopping your public statements against the Assad regime?

Jandali: It was very difficult, to be honest with you. You feel very guilty, useless and weak. It was a shameful act to go and beat my mother and break her teeth, at a time when they couldn't come after me. I am a US citizen; they could not touch me. But you know, to me this was a measure of honor. If this is freedom, I love it to death; I am ready to die.

Recording of Ibrahim al-Qashoush stirrting up protesters with his ballade

The attack on Malek Jandali’s parents and their home in Homs

Some people argue that even if Assad disappears, the Syrian people will not be better off, because Syria will fall apart, socially and geopolitically…

Jandali: Every moment of delay makes the situation more difficult, because we are witnessing the fall of humanity. But I don't want to give up hope. I think that we can build a new, better Syria. The people of Syria have the potential to become a beautiful symphony with different colors. The only thing we are missing is the beat of freedom. The soil of Syria is the cradle of 10,000 years of civilization. The alphabet and the first musical notation were developed in Ugarit, and even the inventor of the Apple computer, Steve Jobs is somehow related to Syria – his biological father was a Jandali from Homs and a cousin of my father.

We don't want to have a little crook, a liar telling us: "Oh, your civilization is only 40 years of Assad!" Let me put it differently: We are already free. There is no return. Bashar Al-Assad is a war criminal who must answer to the ICC for all his crimes.

Are you able to be creative, seeing the endless violence and horrors in Syria?

Jandali: We are witnessing disturbing news every day, but it is an historical moment for the Syrian people and for me personally this is an immense source of inspiration. They bomb people who are lining up for bread in the street – it is horrible, but it reminds you of the price of freedom.

Do you have any new projects?

Jandali: My upcoming project is a Syrian symphony, with four movements, full orchestra, close to 60 minutes of music. It is going to be a major symphony and it is almost finished. Most of the themes and motives are from the streets of Syria, from the revolution. At a later stage, I would like to introduce it to big orchestras and venues around the world. I see it as my duty to present the nobility of this revolution in some of the most respected places on earth. Because that's what art is: it is soft power.

Tremseh: Assad’s third massacre in seven weeks

Warning: Graphic images from Tremseh

Warning: Graphic images from Tremseh

The Syrian government’s armed forces and paramilitary shabiha Thursday slaughtered some 220 men, women and children in Tremseh, a small Sunni village in Syria’s central province of Hama.

It is not only the third copycat massacre in seven weeks, but also the bloodiest in the Syria conflict.

The first massacre was in Houla, north of Homs, on May 25, when over 100 villagers, including dozens of women and children, were either shot or stabbed to death.

The second was on June 6 in Qubair, twelve miles from Hama, Syria’s fifth largest city, where at least 78 civilians were massacred, 40 of them women and children.

Yesterday’s was in Tremseh, again near Hama, where Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, killed some 30,000 civilians in the February 1982 Hama Massacre.

Tremseh was attacked with helicopter gunships and tanks before the shabiha militia went in on foot and carried out the execution-style killings with knives and AK-47s. They then torched some of the houses and bodies.

Activists say many of the victims were displaced people from the neighboring village of Khneizra.

They say bodies are stacked in Tremseh’s mosque and many others are either buried under the rubble or scattered in the farming fields.

Activists say government forces surrounded the village on Thursday morning and heavily bombarded it for several hours, killing many people.

Shabiha militias from nearby Alawite villages then moved in, they said, killing many more villagers and setting fire to houses. Others who tried to flee through fields were also gunned down, the activists said.

One activist, named Ahmed, told Reuters: "So far, we have 20 victims recorded with names and 60 bodies at a mosque. There are more bodies in the fields, bodies in the rivers and in houses... People were trying to flee from the time the shelling started and whole families were killed trying to escape."

Gen. Mustafa al-Sheikh, head of the Free Syria Army’s Military Council, said there were no FSA fighters in Tremseh, “which was attacked because it supports the revolution.”

The commander of the FSA, Col. Riad al-Asaad, confirmed this and urged Syrians, whether military or civilian, to mobilize, cutoff roads and attack military airports.

The opposition umbrella Syrian National Council (SNC) said in a statement the gruesome massacre in Tremseh “ranks among the Syrian regime’s most infamous genocides.”

Separately, the SNC’s Human Rights Bureau put the number of Syrians killed on Thursday at “more than 343, among them many women and children… most of whom were victims of a massacre in Tremseh.”

UN and Arab League envoy for Syria Kofi Annan says he is “shocked and appalled” at reports of mass killings in Tremseh.

“Mothballed” in Hama since June 16, some of his UN observers are now reportedly trying to reach Tremseh “to investigate” the killings.

Wafik al-Samarraie, writing for the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, warns today, “Do not underestimate the genocide campaigns’ danger to the revolution.”

“Without wanting to cause a major letdown,” he opines, “the facts show the regime still has the upper hand on the ground as well as the ability to mount extermination campaigns that pause a serious threat to the revolution.

“While weapons and hardware continue to flow abundantly into the regular army’s depots, military supplies liable to help insurgents protect civilians remain wanting.

“Until this writing, not one shoulder-launched missile has been fired at warplanes or gunships targeting civilians. Pictures showing FSA fighters carrying man-portable anti-tank weapons are extremely rare although civilians are constantly bombarded by tank formations.

“We’ve heard a lot from the regime and its backers about the ‘flood of military gear reaching the insurgents’, but there is no sign of this anywhere. The few cars we see on video clips are antiquated and unfit for the battlefield. Personal weapons the insurgents are carrying date back to the 1950s. You can also tell from the video clips the insurgents hardly have anything resembling military dress or boots. All this proves the Syria arms embargo is clamped on one side only…”

It is noteworthy, Samarraie concludes, that the regime has in recent weeks resorted to salami slicing tactics, whereby it would isolate chunks of restive areas and then blitz each one in turn. The process pauses a significant threat to the arms-starved revolution. “If this persists, the outcome is fraught with uncertainty.”

Annan-Houla-Qubair and back to Annan

QUBAIR VICTIMS: Children, a baby (right) and a grandmother (top right)

Scores of video clips of the Qubair massacre are already posted on Youtube

After troubleshooter Kofi Annan’s entry to the Syria scene came the massacres -- first in Houla and now in the Hama countryside.

By tonight, Annan will be pulling a rabbit out of his hat. He will tell the 15 members of the UN Security Council of his “Plan B” and then wait for the count of takers.

The death count in yesterday’s Hama countryside massacre is provisionally put at 86, many of them women and children.

Government-backed shabiha militiamen stabbed and shot their victims in the villages of Mazraat al-Qubair and Maarzaf, about 20 kilometers northwest of the city of Hama.

"They executed [nearly] every person in the village. Very few numbers could flee. The majority were slaughtered with knives and in a horrible and ugly way," one activist in Hama told the BBC's World Tonight.

"The small number of villagers who fled were the only people remaining who could tell the world about this horrible massacre."

A Qubair resident told the BBC when the army and militia left the village, he discovered about 40 bodies -- mostly women and children who had been stabbed to death. He said he saw the burned corpse of a three-month-old baby.

Activists, including the Observatory based in Britain, called for an immediate investigation. "The Syrian Observatory for Human rights calls on the international monitors to go immediately to the area. They should not wait to tomorrow to investigate this new massacre," it said in a statement.

"They should not give the excuse that their mission is only to observe the ceasefire, because many massacres have been committed during their presence in Syria."

In a statement on state TV quoted by AFP news agency, the government said "a terrorist group” committed the “heinous crime".

The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network, said the Qubair killings took the total number of people killed nationwide by security forces on Wednesday to 140.

Annan, the joint UN-Arab League envoy, will give his latest assessment of the Syrian crisis at an open meeting of the UN General Assembly on Thursday morning (New York time) and then brief the Security Council behind closed doors later in the afternoon.

UN diplomats expect Annan to present Security Council members with a new proposal to rescue his failing peace plan -- a "contact group" of world and regional powers to help end the violence. The group would bring together Russia, China, the United States, Britain, France and key regional players, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Iran.

If this is what Annan plans to suggest, he's already been met with objections from the U.S. and Britain, who don't want Iran to participate.

Leading political analyst Abdelwahhab Badrakhan, writing today for the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, says what comes next after the collapse of Annan’s six-point plan “is unclear – except that the gradual trend for outside intervention is already on the table.

“But such intervention, if it were to happen, won’t restore the regime’s lost national and pan-Arab virginity. The regime proved so brutal and oppressive and committed so many crimes as to make its forcible ouster a humanitarian duty.

“Obviously, invoking Chapter VII of the UN Charter, as the Arab League wants, won’t be easy. It would mean eventual recourse to military action, which is anathema to Russia and Iran. They are the two countries intruding the most to buttress the regime. But both know the regime can’t survive -- hence their concern.

“The Russians and Iranians want to secure their postmortem interests. And the only way they can do so is to have a hand in configuring the next regime’s shape.”

Badrakhan says time is short for the “grand bargain” that would put all the principal bilateral differences between Washington and Tehran – including Syria -- on the table at the same time and agree to resolve them as a package.

True, he says, the idea of a palace coup in Syria (that would overthrow President Bashar al-Assad by his inner circle) has become redundant. But it always remained the inevitable synonym of “real reform.” To preempt the growing threat of outside intervention lacking a UN mandate, Russia and Iran have no viable option to safeguard their national interests other than engineer a palace coup in Damascus.

UN-Turkish humanitarian corridors to Syria war

Davutoglu and Clinton (State Department image)

The next palliative to the Syrian crisis is likely to be a three-month old French prescription mandated by the UN and administered by Turkey: humanitarian corridors to the Syria war.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu reveals as much in remarks to Milliyet, the major Turkish daily newspaper founded in 1950, after his extensive talks in Washington this week with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.  

Ankara, he tells Milliyet, is set on a two-pronged approach to the situation in Syria – one political, the other humanitarian.

“We tried everything in the nine months of our negotiations with the Syrian regime,” Davutoglu said, adding:

“In the end, we supported the Arab initiative. But Syria detached itself from its people and the Arab world. The prevailing universal impression is that the regime is relying on Russian, Chinese and Iran’s backing.

“We’re now working in tandem with the Arab League on two tracks. On the political track, we aim (presumably through the planned “Friends of Syria” coalition) to raise world public awareness and create an international consensus. On the other track, we want to work with the United Nations on a mechanism to deliver humanitarian aid to Syrian cities, particularly Homs and Hama.”

He also told Milliyet, “We are thinking of delivering the humanitarian assistance to the said cities through humanitarian corridors.”

Davutoglu’s words echo his remarks after meeting with Clinton at the State Department on Monday, when he told a joint press briefing:

“We went through the situation in Syria. First, we agreed there should be a new humanitarian initiative to reach out to people who are suffering because of shortages of food and medicine everywhere in Syria. And therefore, I spoke with the UN Secretary-General yesterday, and we started, as Turkey, an initiative with the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, (on ways) to make this humanitarian access possible.

“Secondly, of course the political dimension. We (the United States and Turkey) will be together in Tunisia, and the meeting in Tunisia (of the “Friends of Syria”) will be an important international platform to show solidarity with the Syrian people, and to send a strong and clear message to the Syrian regime, that they cannot continue these violent policies…”

Clinton herself told Monday’s briefing, “We will work closely with Turkey and other partners to address the growing humanitarian concerns of those who are suffering. We have heard the call of the Syrian people for help and we are committed to working to allow the entry of medical supplies, of emergency help to reach those who are wounded and dying. We are increasing our funding to organizations like the Red Crescent, the International Committee for the Red Cross, and we’re working directly with Syrian organizations at the grassroots to help families who have no electricity, food, or clean water.

“And because of the process leading toward Tunisia, we will work closely with Turkey and others to promote a political process.“

The frontier between Turkey's Hatay province and Syria offers the probable site for the "humanitarian corridors" first proposed by France last November. Hatay is hosting all five camps for refugees who crossed over from Syria.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe outlined the proposal for technically and politically challenging humanitarian corridors to Syria in late November, saying they could be carved out either with or without the approval of Assad’s regime.

At the time, Juppe ruled out military intervention, but when asked whether humanitarian convoys would need military protection he said: "Of course ... by international observers, but there is no question of a military intervention in Syria.”

"For us, there is no possible humanitarian aid without an international mandate," Juppe said.

Humanitarian corridors to Syria and the February 24 “Friends of Syria” conference in Tunisia would fulfill two provisions of last Sunday’s Arab League resolution on the Syrian crisis.

A third provision urging the UN Security Council to pass a resolution setting up a joint Arab-UN peacekeeping force for Syria is on its deathbed. Both the United States and Russia concur the peacekeeping request “will take agreement and consensus” since “there is no peace to keep in Syria” as yet.

The case for regime change in Syria

Kamal Jumblatt, killed in 1977

Lebanon Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, whose father Kamal was shot and killed in 1977 and whose Progressive Socialist Party is represented in government by two ministers, explained in a statement this week why he expects Russia and Iran to support regime change in Syria. Following is my English wording of his Arabic text:

Much as Václav Havel, the great intellectual, essayist and late president of Czechoslovakia, wrote about the “Power of the Powerless,” martyr Kamal Jumblatt spoke of “shirtless men eventually liberating the world.”

All historical experiences show peoples move forward, not backward. What is built on falsehood is unsustainable since [the Almighty] “defers but does not overlook.”

It’s as if the “Power of the Powerless” was meant to describe current events when it was written by Václav Havel, the playwright who lived through the 1968 Prague Spring that saw the Red Army quash attempts at political reform by Czechoslovakia’s then-prime minister Alexander Dubček, and later returned to lead the 1989 Velvet Revolution after spending several years behind bars as a political prisoner.

Indeed, it is the power of the powerless that sparked, and is sparking, Arab revolutions demanding, freedom, dignity and pride.

And much as Jean Balach set himself on fire in 1969 to protest a totalitarian regime, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia to protest oppression and humiliation. History is a cumulative trail and an open book to whoever wants to draw lessons.

Russia would probably be better advised to contemplate the principle of “Power of the Powerless” in addressing the situation facing its Syria ally, acknowledging that security solutions won’t unravel the current crisis, which can only be solved by regime change.

Instead of clinging to a regime that did not learn the Hama lessons of 1981 that mirror Budapest’s in 1956, Russia would do better to counsel the regime that rotating power is more important than holding onto it and shedding blood. Didn’t Russia rise against Tsarist tyranny before?

It would be advisable as well if the Islamic Republic contemplated the “Power of the Powerless” principle and if Imam Khomeini’s successors remembered it was the principle used to bring down the Shah of Iran in a great historical struggle, which proved that bare chests roaring for freedom and democracy could face up to omnipotent regimes.

Iranian missiles might have great military impact, but reverberations of the words of the great poet Saadi Shirazi are more potent. The sons of the Islamic Revolution ought to remember what Shirazi wrote to redress the injustice afflicting the Syrian people: “We’re humane and our roots are one and the same, so how can we enjoy life when others hurt? How can we breathe in pleasure and abundance when we see a brother in distress?”

[The Druze, better known as] Bani Maarouf in Syria also know that popular movements don’t backtrack, that collective memory is unforgiving, and that the shirtless in Deraa, Sanamain, Basra al-Harir, Khirbat al-Ghazalah, Idlib, Homs, Hama and the various other Syrian towns and villages control the future because they represent the “Power of the Powerless.” It is high time they refrained from joining police forces and military units cracking down on the Syrian people. Scores of them (Druzes) have been returned home in coffins after fighting their folks in other parts of Syria.

The thousands of shirtless who fought and won in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen under the banner of “Power of the Powerless” will be followed suit in other countries. It is the logic of history and its rule. Indeed, [He] “defers but does not overlook.”