Enura Sham is a pseudonym for a French intelligence officer. She did not seek to break the secret to settle some accounts, but she chose to talk in a book about a mission for a few months that she undertook in Syria 10 years ago, during which she witnessed what she called the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, and no party was spared her arrows. Neither the regime, nor the opposition, nor even the great powers.
With this brief introduction, the French Le Point magazine summarized a lengthy review by Romain Gaubert of the book of this officer. Nothing about it after that, says the head of French military intelligence, General Christophe Gomard.
story characters
According to Le Point, this Arabic-speaking French officer - whose investigations we are following in Aleppo, Homs, Damascus and throughout Syria - was not under any cover aimed at obtaining information in a secret way, but was working as an observer to collect evidence on behalf of the United Nations about violations of the regime and the opposition, because The two camps accused each other of the worst, so she visited prisons and hospitals, secretly collected some testimonies, and developed relations with leaders of the Free Syrian Army and with representatives of the Syrian regime.
Thus - the writer says - we meet in her book some characters worthy of the heroism of a novel, such as "The Red Prince", a leader of the Free Syrian Army who seems to control all the threads, and like a young intern in a hospital who believes through his testimony to United Nations agents that he can still He avoided civil war, plus the director of a prison completely overtaken by events, UN officials no longer leaving their hotel, others on the contrary risking their lives trying to avoid the worst, and finally a regional governor installed by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who doesn't seem to be worried at all from the chaos in his country.
Although Enura Sham is keen to conceal the identity of her sources, many of whom disappeared during 10 years of war, these field diaries that she recorded allow us to realize through minute details the turning point or the tragic moment in which the “Syrian crisis” turned into a civil war, especially since this mission It begins a year after the start of the first popular demonstrations, precisely at the moment when Bashar al-Assad and his relatives refused to compromise and doubled down on repression, mass arrests, torture and assassinations, while the Free Syrian Army in its strongest moment believed that it could topple the regime, and therefore both camps closed the door to dialogue, At a time when there was no other player on the scene, as the role of Russia and Iran on the side of the regime was marginal, and there was no presence of the Islamic State on the side of the opposition, and the jihadists were marginalized, according to Le Point.
daylight campaign
The newspaper adds that in these diaries, the officer draws attention to the strange role of Western powers negotiating with Syrian opponents in Turkey who only represent themselves, while those fighting Bashar al-Assad on the ground seek help from everywhere, even "from Satan," as one of the leaders says. The Free Syrian Army at the time, referring to "Al-Qaeda".
At the same time, Enura Sham tells how the regime, without hiding it, perpetrated repression in hospitals, barracks, and prisons, and how its machine aimed to terrorize the population, only to have the rebels assassinate young recruits or local police officers to spread terror in response.
The United Nations monitoring mission, in which the French officer participated - as the writer says - had a goal related to collecting evidence of disappearances, arrests and assassinations, establishing links with key actors and trying to promote dialogue, but its mission only took a few months, after which it abandoned the mission after it It was attacked from all sides as if it were an element of harassment, and after noticing with alarm that its field reports made no progress with the belligerents nor with the great powers, the rest was known, from the involvement of Iran, Russia and Turkey, the birth of the Islamic State organization and the death of more than half a million Syrians.
Hands tied to the steering wheel
The officer says that the corpse of an animal crushed on the road has become more sympathetic to her than the body parts of a suicide bomber scattered hundreds of metres, but one element shocked her - as she says - with hands cuffed to the steering wheel, asking, "Since when does a jihadi or fighter who is convinced of what he is doing need to be Handcuffed with the steering wheel? Are jihadists from Iraq or elsewhere committing these acts and claiming responsibility for them in the name of the Free Syrian Army? Another unverified rumor is that the Free Syrian Army is holding soldiers from the Syrian army forcibly sending them to commit suicide."
In the Aleppo Hospital - which is still under government control - the officer recounts how she and one of her comrades advanced, hiding from the eyes of the intelligence services, to talk to a young trainee whom she described as brave because he is trying to save the residents of Aleppo by informing the United Nations about the danger of the hospital, as wounded civilians do not come to the hospital. The hospital, because the intelligence takes them to murder.
at the devil
The situation was very bad in the villages along the Euphrates River, where Enura Sham went, there the government continued to drop barrel bombs from helicopters, especially at the time of the burial of children, which was frequent, which made the population crazy from the severity of the pain and hatred of the international community, so that the observers They would have been killed without trial if they had appeared right after the barrels were dropped.
And Enura Sham adds, "At that time, the leaders of the Free Syrian Army battalions were disgustingly rejecting any interference by al-Qaeda in their revolution, but one of them now - and he knows me - announced in front of me that he and his comrades are ready to go get weapons from the devil." And the devil there is coming from Iraq, And "I am - as the officer says - in a good position to know that this is true, and that the lack of Western intervention is making al-Qaeda gradually appear as a last resort against Bashar."
fighting techniques
Returning to the operations, the officer says that when the Free Syrian Army fighters are not surrounded by government forces, they flow towards the suburbs and the countryside, and when they are surrounded, they have nothing left but to fight to the death, because that is better than being taken alive.
The army does not destroy cities blindly - as Enura Sham’s diary says - but rather works in a deliberate, accurate and purposeful manner, and it uses the same tactic everywhere, first surrounding a relatively large area in a way that is permeable, and at the same time informants are introduced to the area, then the army closes ranks Little by little, until he rules it, and once pockets of resistance or fighters are identified, the residents are asked to leave the area, and the exits are checked by the police and intelligence services at the checkpoints, to arrest the men and young men suspected of sympathizing with the Free Syrian Army or those with gunshot wounds.
At the same time, informers come out, then army units attack using heavy weapons supported by helicopters, and once the area is militarily occupied, the army gives way to militias that enter every house and stab and slaughter the residents as fighters, then loot the place like the army, and sometimes they are burned The house or its destruction with explosives, and these methods are applied in the countryside as well as in urban areas.
Hype
The government shows the bodies of Free Syrian Army fighters stacked in pickup trucks after they have been mutilated, and focuses on extremely horrific scenes, some of which indicate that the person was tortured before the killing and some of which show that he was executed. The regime - through these images that prove its brutality - wishes to send a reassuring message to those who support it, and a terrifying message to the rebels and those wishing to join them, and all this is happening a few blocks from the United Nations.
On the other hand, the officer tells - not believing - that a leader from the Free Syrian Army brings them a number of young men who he says were prisoners of the Syrian security and were tortured, although they do not bear any visible signs and they are silent waiting for a gesture from their leader, to talk about what he wants from them. One of the heinous practices carried out by the regime.
On the issue of prisoners, the author of the diary considers that the number of people detained by the Free Syrian Army is small, and they are often ordinary criminals or fighters who have "behaved badly." She believes that the prisons of the Free Syrian Army have a similar reputation to government prisons.
Anura Sham notes that the leaders of the Free Syrian Army show clear contempt for the Syrian National Council, from which the international community wants to form a transitional government, a hypothesis that the leaders of the Free Syrian Army consider absurd, and they do not want to cooperate with those who fled Syria and seek to obtain powers they do not deserve, especially because they They believe that nothing can be negotiated as long as Bashar is in power.