Many rebel-held Syria towns attempt to fill power vacuum

TAL RIFAAT, Syria — Unshackled and in flip-flops, the first defendant of the day was led into the principal’s office, where he sat in a brown plastic chair before seven imams.

The man, Nidal, was accused of being one of President Bashar Assad’s shabiha militia members and informing on antigovernment activists.

“The men caught this guy … being a shabiha,” Ayman “Abu Ali” Sheikh, a hardware merchant who heads the newly formed town council in this rebel-held town, told the imams presiding over the religious court.

In his hand, Sheikh held a brightly colored spiral notebook with “Romance Days” written on the cover; what would have once been used by a schoolgirl had been repurposed as a court docket, listing 120 cases ranging from theft to custody battles to murder.

“I didn’t. There is a Koran — I will swear on the Koran,” Nidal said.

On the wall above the heads of the seven imams were blank spots where for years Assad’s photo hung, along with that of his late father and the Syrian flag. They were ripped down more than two months ago, when opposition fighters and activists ran out the last of the police officers and representatives of Assad’s government.

Like the missing photos, there is a power vacuum in towns and villages across Syria that have recently come under the control of the opposition. Now some residents are cobbling together councils and courts to fill it.

“In all practicality the regime has fallen here and we found that there was a security and civic void,” Sheikh said. “We had to find a solution.”

He and others in Tal Rifaat, north of the battleground city of Aleppo, formed a town council with 33 members, all men, and a religious court. The council oversees things such as garbage collection, funerals and humanitarian aid.

As the country further descends into civil war, it is perhaps one of the few hopeful signs that a post-Assad period might be characterized by something other than chaos and vendetta killings.

But in the early stages of trying to govern themselves and institute a new form of law, there are inevitable stumblings. Parallel courts and overlapping authority can lead to confusion. More worrying are reports of summary executions by the rebels, as well as abuse of detainees.

In the Tal Rifaat court, Nidal, sitting slightly hunched over with his hands clasped in his lap, admitted informing on two brothers who were opposition activists.

“Don’t you know that this is a big crime? That you should be punished for this?” asked one of the judges, Sheikh Hatim Badran.

A few minutes later, Nidal was found guilty of being an informant and a shabiha. His punishment would depend on the fate of the brothers.

***

The court proceedings were interrupted by a commotion outside.

The imams walked to a white pickup that had pulled up in front of the school. In the back were four bodies: men dressed in civilian clothing, their hands tied behind their backs, each shot in the head. The men had been held at the much-feared air force branch before their bodies were found that morning in Aleppo.

The side of one man’s head had been ripped open and his face sagged down. A rebel leaned over another body and cut the rope binding the wrists, trying to restore a bit of dignity.

A few minutes later, the truck drove off to the cemetery.

Even if the judicial arm of the government no longer extends to Tal Rifaat, the violence of its repression regularly does. Shells and rockets slam down on the town almost daily, leaving at least a few bodies in their wake.

A recurring theme of the Syrian uprising is that it gets ahead of itself: calling towns “liberated” when tanks are less than a mile away or launching ambitious offensives when there is a severe lack of ammunition.

With government law enforcement slipping away in rebel-held towns, crime has risen as many people find themselves jobless and without opportunity. But most of the problems the new authorities confront stem from the rebels themselves, as young men suddenly find themselves with the title of “revolutionary,” easy access to weapons and sometimes a willingness to intimidate.

Since the beginning of the uprising, many in the opposition dismissed the idea that a post-revolution period would be chaotic. But as the fall of the regime becomes more likely, the need for building the early stages of a civil society becomes clear, even as rebels work to destroy the existing one.

***

In the town of Marea, north of Tal Rifaat, the metal doors of a school were kept locked and the courtyard and basketball court were empty save for the growling sound of a generator.

This was the prison run by a coalition of rebel militias known as the Al Tawheed Brigade, where more than 150 prisoners are held, many of them police officers, shabiha or soldiers.

In one classroom, dozens of men sat on the floor or on thin mattresses. They were dressed in T-shirts and sweat pants, and though the windows were open there was no cooling system and the room reeked of body odor.

Near the back of the room a bald man stood up. He had been here for six months, since being seized in Aleppo, accused of being a shabiha and an informant for the military police. He said he worked with Mohammad Ibrahim Shaar before Shaar was promoted to interior minister; there are conflicting accounts on whether Shaar died in a bombing in Damascus last month, but the rebels clearly believe he was killed.

The prison warden, a burly former truck driver with a bandaged hand who goes by the nickname “Jumbo,” asked him: And do you know where Mohammad Shaar is now?

The man raised his head slightly before answering with a strained smile, “Dead.”

“Dead,” Jumbo repeated.

In the next room, a science lab with a lesson still written on the marker board, court is held several times a week. So far, the rebels say, no one has been executed.

At the prompting of their captors, the prisoners all spoke glowingly of their treatment. But a human rights worker described more of a “mixed record.”

Anna Neistat, associate director of emergency programs with Human Rights Watch, has spoken with many detainees in the suburbs of Aleppo who complained of being hit on the soles of their feet with cords or sticks. The courts readily admitted using the tactic, which they said was an authorized form of punishment under Islamic law.

In Aleppo, though, Neistat has heard reports of much harsher treatment, and detainees complained of being beaten while they were in the custody of the opposition Free Syrian Army. There have also been a number of executions, some on the spot and others coming after a judicial process.

“On the one hand, we are worried of continued reports of abuse and executions,” she said. “On the other hand, we are hopeful that they have an intention to get things right, they don’t want to be like the regime they are fighting against.”

***

A few days after the Tal Rifaat religious council was formed, about a dozen residents came out to question its authority.

But the demonstration didn’t last long; regime forces began firing artillery on the town and everyone in the streets ran for cover. Still, resentment toward the council lingers.

Yassin Debo, a media activist with the Al Tawheed Brigade, pointed out that all the council members are from the town’s wealthy families. “Where are the poor people?” he asked.

The members recognize that they are only in the beginning phases of forming new government agencies. Some of the courts are trying to include lawyers as well as the imams to combine Islamic law, known as sharia, and Syrian law.

“We are now at the birth of a new nation, and when you are just born you get up and fall down and make mistakes, and now we are learning,” said Eimad Muhammad Diman, who is involved in the brigade’s political wing.

After Ramadan prayers one night, several dozen men gathered to discuss the council’s humanitarian committee, which will distribute money to the needy and to the families of those killed.

The order of business was simple, to discuss how many people would lead the committee and how they would be chosen. It took more than an hour of arguing — members brought order by rapping their pens on the table — to finally settle on four people heading the committee and picked from a group of nominated candidates.

“You gave us a headache for nothing,” one of the attendees told committee coordinator Khalid Yassin afterward.

Yassin looked at him with surprise, and replied, “Building a country is nothing?”