My Conversation With Muhammad
Muhammad’s last post was an epic, tracking his journey to save a stray cat, escorting it to a shelter in Aleppo. Being born in Eastern Ghouta, Muhammad takes great pride in being a Syrian. Eastern Ghouta, a suburb outside of Damascus, has been called by the United Nations, “Hell on earth.” It has been ground down to rubble, dust and blood, with a death toll of over 100 a day. Many of the dead are children, and the living have moved underground into tunnels, including prenatal units. Muhammad recently has escaped to Idlib, a so-called “safe zone” when I spoke to him. Having experienced the war since he was eight years old he has not had access to a formal education, however, he has been able to convey the horrors of the Syrian Civil War through Instagram, reporting in both Arabic and English. He has been documenting the brutal tragedy that has spread through his nation. At this point in time, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has marked the death toll to be 522,000 people in the last 8 years. Eastern Ghouta accounts for 15,000 of those deaths.
Muhammad is an extraordinary reporter who is only 16 years old. He interviews his friends and the children of Syria. When I first reached out to Muhammad Najem I was quick to assume that a response would never be received. Although it only took a few hours to get one saying “Yes, thank you for sure, I am ready to answer.”
To provide some insight as to why there is a war that has decimated Syria, I will attempt to explain the convoluted tale of conflict in the Middle East. Before diving into Syria, it should be noted that Iran and Saudi Arabia have a long-standing feud over control of the region. This feud has resulted in proxy wars throughout the Middle East. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fired the first shots in 2011 at peaceful Arab Spring protestors. The protestors began to fire back and fractions of the Syrian military defected to join them. This bond formed what is known as the Free Syrian Army. This uprising transformed into a civil war and extremists from around the region traveled to Syria to join the rebels. Assad encouraged this by releasing extremist prisoners so that it would be more difficult for foreign backers to support a rebel group that is inundated with extremists. Iran has been fighting on the side of the Syrian military in support of Bashar al-Assad while Saudi Arabia has been sending support to the Sunni militia in protest and to counter Iran’s influence.
The Assad regime’s crimes against humanity were only heightened in 2013 when the use of chemical warfare killed 1,429 civilians; 426 of those deaths were children. The images of rows of dead women and children flooded the airways and the Obama administration ordered airstrikes against the Assad regime. This now lead to the great powers dispute with Russia backing Assad and The United States opposing them. In 2014 there was a fracture in the extremists and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria was formed, also known as ISIS. ISIS did not fight Assad but rather other rebels. They created a mini-state and marched across Iraq. The U.S then turned its focus to ISIS and launched an airstrike campaign to combat them, taking the focus off of the civil war. When Trump won the election, he vowed to stay out of Syria and soon after, Assad took over the rebel urban stronghold of Aleppo with the help of Russia. Then in 2017, Assad used Sarin gas, resulting in the death of 85 civilians, many of whom were children. In protest, Trump launched Tomahawk missiles onto a Syrian airfield, adding another layer to the multi-dimensional civil war in Syria.
The minute that Muhammad responded to my direct message via Instagram, I immediately gained some new followers on my own personal page. Three “photographers” from Moscow had started following me. I looked at their pages to see if this was just a coincidence, or if somehow what I was doing had raised a red flag and they needed to check on me to see who I was and if I was going to write an inflammatory piece on the conflict. Their pages were all clearly faked, except for one who had seemed to be a real photographer. I blocked them all immediately, made my own account private and began to change passwords. I called my ****** who owns a cybersecurity firm and asked for advice. We scanned my computer for malware and sure enough, there was malware that was quarantined and removed. Two days later, an Outlook account that I had used as the backup email to the encrypted Gmail account I had created to correspond with Muhammad had been hacked and suspended by Microsoft. I am still pushing forward with my communication with Muhammad.
Muhammad introduced himself to me as Muhammad Najem, from Eastern Ghouta, and that is his pride. As a 16-year-old he lives with his family of two sisters and three brothers who are currently desperately looking for jobs in Idlib. He was eight years old when the war began and has been displaced ever since. He said that filming videos of the tragedies were his attempt to show an authentic experience of what was happening in Eastern Ghouta. He truly believed that the videos would change their lives and the siege of his hometown would end, but the bombing still continued and the busses came in to take civilians out of Ghouta to Idlib. His family lives in a small house in Idlib, but the shelling of the so-called “Safe Zone” continues in all corners of the city. Muhammad explained to me that after coming from Ghouta, the tragedy in Idlib is especially painful as there has been no improvement in the last year. In fact, despite reports, Muhammad claims that the war is only getting worse. He continues to report in Idlib so that the people can convey their suffering in an honest and truthful way. Muhammad concluded his first conversation with me like this,
“When I remember what’s happened to us, I just want the war to end in Syria. Then we will feel comfortable. We can complete our study, we can rebuild our house, but bad memories we can’t forget.”
I have not heard from Muhammad in the last two days… but in our last correspondence we made plans to continue our conversations and look forward to having a FaceTime call with a translator.
