Syria’s Nonviolent Resistance Ignored by Media
Syria’s Nonviolent Resistance Ignored by Media
Much has been said about the level of violence in Syria, where bloodshed continues between armed rebel factions and President Bashar-al Assad’s possibly chemical-weapons-equipped regime.
What with bomb attacks in Damascus and reports of rebels leading offensives with surrogate PlayStation-controlled tanks, nonviolent protest activity may not seem like headline-grabbing material.
But Syrian author and activist Mohja Kahf says nonviolent protest there not only started the whole uprising, but continues to feed unrest. The prominent Damascus-born poet and writer, author of The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, has been a vocal supporter of nonviolent campaigns in her homeland.
“Where is Syria’s nonviolent resistance?” Well, she says, they “started the uprising, and nonviolent resistance aimed at bringing down the brutal regime has never stopped.”
“I am a rank-and-file member of the Syrian Nonviolence Movement,” Kahf told me by e-mail, referring to a European nongovernmental organization created by Syrian exiles last year. Her parents were exiled from Syria when she was a child, but the Arab-American writer, described by the New York Times as “something of an idol among Muslim American women,” is closely monitoring developments in Syria along with her husband, Najib Ghadbian, a member of newly formed National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.