"Syrians do not break ..."
Ankhar Kochneva, a Russian journalist living and working in Syria, an eyewitness to all that is happening in this country, one of the world's most knowledgeable journalists in the situation in Syria, answers questions from Tomorrow related to the past, present, and future of the Syrian state. "TOMORROW". Anhar, tell us about yourself, about how you decided to move to live in Syria, about what is happening there now, and whether things really are in the country are exactly the way people are broadcasting from blue screens.
Ankhar KOCHNEVA. I have been working as a travel agent since 1999, and since then I have traveled to Syria several times a year, I know this country quite well. When all these events began there, I began to go there more often - about once every two months in order to better understand the situation, to be aware of what is happening. Then it was decided to move to Syria for permanent residence - and now for the ninth month I am constantly living in Damascus. I write articles for Utro.ru, I give interviews for various publications, and also work in the Syrian Ministry of Tourism, I cooperate with almost all groups of journalists who come to Syria - as an interpreter and accompanying person. Probably, I am the only journalist who visited the city of Homs twelve times in the past few months, which is constantly spoken of as a "stronghold of the opposition."
Speaking about what is happening in Syria, it should be noted right away that the information that the media sphere gives us is 99% frank lies. For example, it is said that there are supposedly some "peaceful demonstrations" that the government shoots from tanksthat armored vehicles are standing in the cities, that prisons are overcrowded, that the population is almost eagerly awaiting the invasion of NATO troops ... This is all an absolute lie. In all cities where government control is maintained, silence and tranquility reign, apart from provocations and terrorist attacks organized by bandits. Otherwise, everything is calm: bazaars are working, children are running around the streets, people go shopping, in cafes. As for the demonstrations, over the past year and a half of my life in Syria, I have seen only three "protest demonstrations", each of which was staged. We came across the first at the end of 2011, not far from Palmyra, in a completely deserted place near an ancient temple in the desert, there was not a single living soul around, except for a group of young people who actively depicted a mass protest on camera. They shouted something for about ten minutes, waved their flags, photographed everything and evaporated the same way they came - all of a sudden. The second "demonstration" was the throwing of set fire tires in the middle of a busy street and scattering pieces of paper with the slogan "Freedom forever!" Then I was in the city with Vesti reporters, we heard some screams, ran to the scene, but we didn’t find anyone except the police and the janitors who cleaned all this, as well as a local resident eyewitness who he proudly declared that he had given one of the "demonstrators" in the ear, and repeated: "If they are peasants, then why are they running away? Let them stand and explain what they need!" Well, and the third case: being in the city of Zabadani, which, by the way, is also lying, that there isn’t any stone left from the city, that it’s almost aviation they are bombing, although in fact everything is fine there, I and the RTR film crew fell into the clutches of the “rebels” (in fact, the bandits). In Zabadan, the government is trying to resolve the matter peacefully, is negotiating with these bandits, using such loyalty, they took control of a part of the city. A car drove up to us, they said: "Follow us." We decided to take a chance and went. They mowed down under peaceful local residents (although bandits are always easy enough to distinguish among the crowd - from a wary look, aggressiveness shows that these are not ordinary people), therefore we did not check the documents, we introduced ourselves as Poles. It saved us: if they knew that we were Russian, they could do anything. There have been cases of abduction of our journalists. Since Russia does not allow the bandits to seize power (and for this, of course, they need the NATO invasion - they themselves are militarily incapable of anything), Russian bandits are extremely disliked.
"TOMORROW". That is, they place their hopes solely on external forces? If in the same Libya some part of the army betrayed Gaddafi and went over to the side of the rebels, then in Syria, as I understand it, there is no such thing, and practically the whole army is loyal to Bashar al-Assad?
A.K. Yes, things are going that way. Again, speaking of lies in the media: the world is trying to impress that there is a process of mass desertion from the Syrian army, this is not true. I talk a lot with the military and I see what happens to those of them who are captured by the bandits. Find their bodies with traces of terrible torture. And you want to say that someone from the military will go to the bandits - knowing their attitude? In no case. Video clips are widespread, somewhere one or the other "former soldier" of the Syrian army says that they deserted and went over to the side of the enemies of the Assad regime. Where do they come from? Some of them include people who have never had anything to do with the army: they are simply dressed in camouflage, and they say everything they need. And then people in Syria see this video and say: "Yes, this is a house painter from our village!" There is another method - when real military people are abducted and forced to record video messages under torture. If you look at these frames, you can see that in most cases “deserters” read the text either on a piece of paper or from a monitor - that is, these are not their words. There was a glaring case when, on the video, again, a military pilot was reading the text from the monitor, there were about 25-30 people in the back, an absolutely gangster appearance, with weapons, and the pilot had his hands tied. That is, despite the fact that there were much more of them and the strength was on their side, this pilot tried to resist, fight with them. And what, we have to believe that this man with his hands tied is a deserter and is voluntarily among the bandits?
After the captured military is used to record videos, they are usually killed. They kill - and then give out their bodies for civilians who died at the hands of the criminal Syrian army. This is a very common practice. For example, during a regular meeting of the UN Security Council on the Syrian issue, “rebels” shouted to the whole world that Homs was being shelled, in which 120 people died. Nothing like it really was. Another video is thrown into the media - there are about 40 people killed in the room. There are no traces of shelling, all neatly shot, but they are shown as victims of bombing! And everything is in underwear, which makes it clear to people who understand the situation that they are military, from which they just took off their uniform. So imitate mass casualties among the civilian population. Apart from those who have already been found dead or returned for ransom, at the moment there are about 2 thousand people in the hands of gangsters. Militants use ordinary citizens as a human shield for themselves - say, in the center of Homs, they control two districts precisely because they hide behind local ones and hold them hostage: including women, children, the wounded - those who need urgent medical care. . Because of this, the army can not conduct a special operation and knock them out of Homs.
Returning to the topic of desertion. Only their own children, drafted into the army in accordance with a common military duty, are moving to the side of the bandits. Here they can really go to their own. And so that ordinary, loyal soldiers would go over to the side of bandits — it is simply impossible, they still see how they are related to the military, as if they are purposefully shooting at people in military uniform. Military uniforms - for them it is already a reason to kill a man. Who will go to the side of the militants, ready to kill you for one of your clothes? No one. Another thing is that another method of bandits is blackmail, when a family of a person is abducted and told him: "Come over to our side or no longer see your relatives." In such a situation, when a person is cornered, he can give up slack and break the oath for the sake of his loved ones. But again, there is no question of any voluntary transition.
"TOMORROW". What is the social base of gangsters? Are they just marginalized, or do they have a certain ideology, principles for which they are fighting?
A.K. Ideology there and does not smell. "Kill, rob!" - that's their whole ideology. What is the difference between events in Syria and events, say, in Tunisia or Egypt? In these countries, revolutions were made by the hands of the middle class. In Syria, the middle class refused to go to the barricades. They tried to arrange a “Twitter revolution”, in February 2011 of the year called for access to the square on the so-called. "Day of Wrath". Before the day on which this action was appointed, the leadership of all opposition parties came to the police and said: “If someone comes, it’s not ours. We understand that this is a provocation, we don’t need this.” After that, virtually no one went to the “Day of Wrath”. But the external forces continued to sway the situation - once the middle class couldn’t be raised, they launched option “B” - they staged a provocation in Dera'a. Until now, I hear from people: "There, the authorities tortured children." And who told you that? Has anyone seen these children or their parents? The classical scheme - some kind of horror story is distributed without special evidence, then one media after another begins to refer to it, and now everyone believes in it. I myself was in the city of Deraa on several occasions, communicating with different people there, but for some reason no one confirmed this to me. historythat the children were tortured. These are all fairy tales. Or another example. AT news reports can be found information for March 2011, that in the same city of Deraa, an ancient mosque was allegedly destroyed and blown up by government troops. In fact, the mosque still stands in place, opposite it, the ancient ruins of the Greco-Roman period were filmed, so these ruins were passed off as a destroyed mosque. For what - it is understandable, in order to cause righteous anger: what a bad army, the mosque destroyed! This is generally a distinctive feature of the information war going on in Syria - people are caught on their good feelings so that they think: "How is it that they are killing innocent people ..." And who is killing? Not at all the side that the media talk about. There are a lot of lies. I live in the center of Damascus, from time to time I read in the news that there is no more stone left of the street where I live. The most perfect lie.
Judging by the way this information war is being built, really serious institutions take part in it and a lot of money is spinning. Many journalists simply outbid. Suppose there is in Moscow one employee of the Palestinian embassy, a publicist who wrote quite well about Syria (that is, in a positive way, without lies). He is offered a lot of money, and after that he begins to write absolutely opposite things. There are a lot of such cases: journalists who cover the events in Syria in a key advantageous to the bandits immediately get cars, apartments ... people start to live somehow abruptly and suddenly well! All this has been happening for a long time, for a year and a half already, the mechanisms have long been understood - it is clear why he said this, this one did this.
"TOMORROW". It turns out that this information war has some one-sided character. A huge stream of lies on the one hand, and on the other ...
A.K. On the other hand, there are people who have no resources! Let's say that my colleague Lena Gromovoy and I are sitting in Damascus, we don’t even have enough money to set up a fast enough internet connection, which is about a thousand rubles a month for our money. It comes to ridiculous.
"TOMORROW". Why is information support so bad in Syria itself? Does the government have no leverage of its own?
A.K. The authorities are doing everything they can. Recently, a new government was appointed, including the new information minister. Great hopes were placed on this man, he was known as a public figure even before he became a deputy and a minister. Perhaps he will be able to make some kind of breakthrough and rectify the situation.
In recent years, the activities of the foreign department of the Ministry of Information are almost entirely focused on working with journalists who come to the country. Personally, for about a year I have been telling the officials of this department that it is worth paying more attention to the press, which writes about Syria abroad, to work with it. Because it is this press that forms public opinion - despite the fact that they do not have their own correspondents, their own materials. Foreign journalists usually copy outright disinformation, for example, from Israeli websites, write “statements” and give it away for their own reports. Unfortunately, the level of journalism has fallen all over the world - talented reporters are not needed, people are needed who are able to write "statements" of other people's materials.
Syria itself is a rather underdeveloped system for presenting information. To take at least the website of the SANA news agency - it is not operational, not too informative, it is rather difficult to get information from it and other local sources about what is happening in the country. The Ministry of Information does not work well enough when it resists external pressure. And this pressure is really great, as Bashar Asad rightly said in one of the interviews, more than a thousand channels around the world are engaged in harassing the country. The information war is being played out - at the moment this, unfortunately, is the case.
You can have different attitudes to what is happening, there is even some kind of analogy with the events of the Apocalypse, where it is said that the Beast will be given the ability to turn a lie into the truth, and demons will come to all the kings of the world and tempt them. So what is happening is quite in tune with the events of the Apocalypse, which, by the way, according to the Koran should happen in Damascus. There is a battle between Good and Evil ...
"TOMORROW". And good bye loses. And what does the common people think about what is happening? What is the opinion of ordinary Syrians about what is happening in their country?
A.K. First, because of the recent events, a large number of people lost their income. In particular, the tourism sector is completely idle; These are transport, guides, hotels ... A lot of people from this sphere have lost their jobs. Before the riots began, Syria was visited by several million people a year, making purchases, because Syria is a country with prices about 3-5 times lower than in the same Moscow. Now this powerful inflow of capital has disappeared from abroad, and therefore people who are accustomed to a certain decent standard of living cannot afford this level for themselves.
Secondly, the living conditions of the Syrians themselves have changed for the worse. Syria used to be considered one of the safest countries in the world. Say, when I lived in Damascus with my five-year-old daughter who does not speak Arabic, I, despite this, always knew that I could let her go somewhere to run alone, not to know where she was, and nothing with her It happened. People could walk around the city on 4 in the morning, and it was absolutely safe. Now, of course, everything is not so, especially in those areas where gangsters rule. Locals try to stay at home, they are actually deprived of their freedom of movement. People say: “Give us back our stability!”. It gnaws them much more seriously than even falling incomes. Everyone wants the riots to end as soon as possible, so that the army finally catches all the gangsters, and the feeling of security and confidence in the future will return to the people.
Even by approximate estimates, there are no more than one hundred thousand militants in Syria, and the country's population is twenty-three million. And all of us who live there are now hostages of this insignificant minority, less than half a percent of Syrians. Therefore, of course, everyone wants the chaos to stop and the country began to live as before.
"TOMORROW". Anhar, you as a person living in Syria, understand the logic of the events taking place there much better than a bystander. What do you think, how can all this end? Does Syria have a chance to return to normal development, or will this conflict, artificially inflated by external forces, ruin the country?
A.K. Speaking of external interference, I think this: if we could be bombed, we would have bombed a long time ago. There is no official reason for the invasion, and besides, Syria is not at all a toothless country, in case of an attack we will snap. Everyone understands this, so now there is such an exhausting war, when the regime is being tried to fall down due to internal conflict.
I have a favorite reference book called Scenarios for Further US Invasions, it was written about ten years ago and published in Russian in 2009, it is on the Internet, you can read it freely. It describes possible options for American pressure to establish hegemony around the world, the countries on which they can strike. And one of these countries is Syria. When you read this book, you get an understanding of what the Americans do and why they do it, despite the fact that, of course, the plans undergo some adjustment, and the scenario of real events may differ slightly from what has been stated in the book. The essence, however, remains the same.
For some reason, the West was convinced that the more pressure on the Syrians, the stronger the anti-government sentiment will be, the common people will think: "The government is to blame for everything, let us be better than NATO, bombing will change, and we will live in chocolate." Those who planned this strategy did not take into account the fact that the Syrians - in the good sense of the word - "Soviet people." That is, these are people who have real patriotism, who are willing to endure some kind of hardship for the sake of their country. When you see a child crying at the father’s funeral, who, wiping away tears, says: “Daddy died for the Motherland”. Or when a woman in mourning says: “I have thugs killed two sons, I have two more left, but I know that they will go into the army and are proud of it,” it becomes clear that the Syrians are not so easy to break, and this is the West did not take into account.
Regarding the future, the pressure on Syria from all sides will increase in the next three months. Recently, regular documents were adopted in Geneva on the creation of a common government of the government and the opposition, it was just chickens to laugh, I read them - everything is said there on behalf of the "Syrian people", but there are no representatives of the Syrian people at this gathering, and what participants have the right speak on behalf of the nation, it is not clear. There are people who do not live in Syria on 20-30 years, for example, the same Burkhan Galyun, the former head of the "Syrian National Council", who long ago moved to Paris. And these people supposedly represent Syria and its people ?! However, many of them do not even have Syrian citizenship - they refused it. Funny, honestly. These are those who sit abroad. And I already said about those who act in the country - they are just gangsters. And does anyone seriously believe that someone from such an "opposition" will be allowed to enter the government? The Syrians themselves do not want it and will not allow it.
In general, the adoption of these documents suggests that in the coming months we will not be bombed. On the other hand, I have information from American sources that, nevertheless, there will be bombings, and they will begin somewhere in August-September. In any case, the pressure on Syria will be stronger and stronger every week and every month.
Syria has powerful resources for resistance: factories, developed agriculture, to some extent - mineral resources, albeit rather scarce. At least two states of the region - Lebanon and Iraq - remain allies and partners of Syria, that is, to isolate the country will not work. Syria’s economic, geopolitical position is fairly strong. And, of course, we should not forget about the support of Russia and China - our Foreign Minister said, after the start of all these events: "As long as we have such economic partners as Russia and China, we don’t need others."
In general, I think that the pressure will continue, but I am sure that if there is no invasion from the outside, bombardments, we will stand.
Information