SHAMIL IS a law graduate and businessman who organises anti-government protests in Syria.
During a clandestine meeting in the capital, Shamil (29), a fair man with a closely trimmed beard, says: “I am every day everywhere in Damascus” – a veritable Scarlet Pimpernel.
He operates through a network of friends and contacts who do not belong to any particular movement. Shamil, his nom de guerre, is taken from the name of Chechen Muslim fundamentalist Shamil Basayev, killed fighting Russia in 2006.
The Syrian Shamil had no interest in politics before the uprising in mid-March and had no “bad experiences or problems with the government”. However, he says, when he saw what happened to peaceful demonstrators, he joined the protests at the Omayyad mosque in the old city of Damascus.
He adds, more in sorrow than in anger: “We are ordinary people and took to the streets as ordinary people. They described us as traitors and infiltrators. We were faced with death by shooting and arrest.”
During March and April, he “wanted only freedom and reform”. But due to the harsh tactics adopted by the security forces, he started to stand for “the fall of the regime”.
“Everything and everyone must change. During the past eight months, there has been a lot of fighting . . . Things are much more complicated now.”
He supported the Arab League plan aimed at defusing the crisis but it was rejected by the government.
Shamil was caught leaving a demonstration one Friday during Ramadan in August.
“The police took me to a minibus and started to beat me. The police had been ordered to detain 30 persons from that district but they arrested only eight. Since the cells in the prison were full, they put us in a roofless room where we could breathe [unlike other prisoners crammed into airless cells]. Four to five persons conducted interrogations. They beat me everywhere but my face so as not to show.”
He saw neither a lawyer nor a judge and was not allowed to call his family. His friends did not know where he was. After two weeks he was forced to sign a paper he did not understand before being released. His jailers put him in a car and dropped him off near the railway station in central Damascus.
He promptly took part in another demonstration.
Shamil does not agree with calls by exiled anti-regime activists for external military intervention. “A few people are killed every day now; if there is foreign involvement thousands will die.”
However, he believes the regime will not respond to sanctions by ending violence against protesters. Shamil favours dialogue with the government only to prepare for its exit.
He does not speak of incidents he has not personally witnessed or make exaggerated claims about protests. “I am answerable to God and will speak the truth whatever happens to me . . . I might not jump from a balcony if this is going to hurt me, but I will not hesitate to say a rightful word. I am driven by my conscience and my humanity.”