How Assad Moved to Crush Syria’s Uprising | The Regime (full documentary) | FRONTLINE (PBS)

0:13 What kind of government turns so

0:15 fiercely on its own citizens?

0:17 [music] What kind of man is its leader?

0:22 And why does what happens here matter?

0:30 I think it would be easy to make the

0:31 argument that Syria's rebellion is the

0:33 most important of all the rebellions

0:35 happening in the Arab world.

0:38 Syria is so embedded in the

0:39 relationships in the region.

0:41 Its long-standing alliance with Iran, its

0:43 long-standing alliance with Hezbollah,

0:45 uh the border it shares with Israel, the

0:47 border it shares with Turkey and Iraq.

0:49 And the idea that something could spiral

0:51 out of control very quickly is not

0:53 beyond the realm of possibility.

0:58 The Syrian rebellion began in a small

1:00 farming town 60 mi south of Damascus.

1:04 On March 6th, 15 young boys painted

1:08 messages on these school walls.

1:13 They were copying what they've been

1:15 listening to in El Jazzer and other TV

1:18 channels covering the Egyptian uprising

1:21 and the Tunisian uprising.

1:24 Soon after, the boys were rounded up by

1:26 the government's secret police, the

1:28 Muhabarat.

1:31 Their fathers went to see the police

1:32 chief, a cousin of Syria's president,

1:36 Bashar al-Assad, and begged him to

1:39 release their children.

1:41 He refused, and he said, "Forget that

1:44 you have these kids.

1:46 Go and make other

1:47 ones." And if they were not men enough

1:50 to make children, then bring us your

1:53 wives and we will make children for you.

1:57 One boy was never returned.

1:59 He is presumed [music] dead.

2:02 Images of another circulated on YouTube.

2:05 Several of the children had their

2:07 fingernails pulled out.

2:08 They were beaten.

2:09 And there are even reports of

2:12 rape being committed against these

2:14 children.

2:15 And in a close-knit tribal

2:16 society like that, there was only one

2:18 thing they could do.

2:19 Be rioted.

2:22 [cheering] That very instance of repression, of

2:26 torture seemed to galvanize the town

2:28 itself.

2:28 Here were the children of the

2:29 town being mistreated by a government

2:31 that was distant, that had neglected

2:32 Dada.

2:33 Uh and almost from that moment, uh

2:35 the uprising seemed to gain momentum.

2:41 It led to a major demonstration that was

2:44 put down brutally by force with the

2:47 killing of several civilians.

2:52 And it snowballed from there.

3:00 Many Syrians who hoped that President

3:02 Bashar al-Assad might intervene felt

3:04 betrayed.

3:06 Those who believed in President Bashar

3:08 Assad lost all that faith when the first

3:11 bullet was fired at a civilian in a

3:13 street in Syria.

3:23 For over four decades, the Assads have

3:25 ruled Syria, a fractious country of many

3:28 tribes and religions.

3:33 The Assads come from a long persecuted

3:35 minority Muslim sect, the Alawites.

3:39 The Alawites had traditionally been the

3:41 repressed and oppressed in the country.

3:43 In fact, a famous uh Sunni medieval

3:46 philosopher by the name of Iban Ta once

3:48 declared that the Alawites were worse

3:50 than Jews and Christians and were

3:51 infidels and there should be a holy war

3:52 carried out against them.

3:55 But Hafa al-Assad found a path to power

3:58 through the military.

3:59 Under French colonial rule, Sunnis had resisted

4:02 serving while Alawites like Hafes found

4:06 opportunity.

4:08 The young Assad was also a rising star

4:10 in Syria's socialist bath party.

4:14 At age 40, he engineered a coup to seize

4:16 the presidency.

4:19 Hafazles had rose to power from the

4:21 bottom up.

4:22 He had to fight the battles

4:23 that came with the coup d'etas that came

4:25 with trying to corral the different

4:26 forces of the country into his camp.

4:29 He ruled by putting trusted family

4:31 members in high government posts.

4:34 The brother is in charge of security,

4:36 the cousins of the banking system,

4:38 in-laws uh in security as well and

4:41 military.

4:41 So the reality is this is a

4:43 family business.

4:44 And like Tito in Yugoslavia or Hussein

4:47 in Iraq, Assad also knew how to use

4:50 force.

4:51 His Bath party repressed any

4:53 ethnic or religious challenges.

4:55 The Bath party promised to get rid of

4:58 sectarianism.

4:59 He demanded and for the

5:00 most part the Syrian population was

5:02 receptive to this Fostian bargain that

5:05 the Syrian people would accept a little

5:06 bit less freedom and liberty in return

5:08 for stability.

5:11 Assid also secured his power by taking

5:13 in millions in Soviet military aid and

5:17 welcoming thousands of Soviet advisers.

5:20 But in 1979 there was a revolution in

5:23 Iran.

5:26 The dynasty of the sha was replaced by

5:28 an Islamic state under Ayatollah Kamei.

5:32 In Syria and across the Middle East,

5:34 Islamic fundamentalists rose up

5:37 and there were attacks against the

5:38 regime.

5:39 It was essentially almost a

5:41 civil war.

5:42 A bombing campaign targeted government

5:44 buildings and Alawite military officers.

5:48 The attacks went on for several years

5:50 and in 1982 the regime basically said

5:53 that's it.

5:53 That's enough.

5:54 We have to deal with this once and for all.

5:56 We have to show that we're in control.

6:03 Their chief target was the stronghold of

6:05 Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, [music]

6:07 Hama.

6:08 In 1982, the Syrian regime launched one

6:12 of the worst massacres in the history of

6:13 the [music] Middle East.

6:14 The regime used artillery to level large parts of the

6:17 town.

6:18 Between 10 and 30,000 people were

6:20 killed or were disappeared by the

6:22 regime.

6:24 [music]

6:24 Bodies were buried before these pictures

6:26 were taken.

6:28 I just remember there was a lot of

6:30 rubble [music] and a lot of destruction.

6:32 It looked like a war zone.

6:34 Amar Alazam was studying archaeology.

6:37 On his way to a dig, he drove through the

6:40 city.

6:40 And the other thing I remember

6:42 were these neatly bulldozed areas where

6:45 where where areas had been cleared and

6:46 bulldozed as we drove through the city.

6:49 These were probably also the mass graves

6:51 that everybody talks about.

6:53 That was a very stark moment in which

6:57 the Alawi dominated regime, the Bath

7:00 party um made it clear to Syria that it

7:03 would not brookke any opposition.

7:06 It was a ruthless obviously makiian way to deal

7:08 with the problem but it did deal with

7:10 the problem from the perspective of the

7:12 Syrian regime because uh until recently

7:14 you really haven't had uh any serious

7:17 Islamist opposition uh to Hafas al-Assad

7:20 or his son when he came to power in

7:21 2000.

7:23 A phrase was coined the hama rules the

7:27 idea that you quash rebellion by making

7:29 sure that your citizens know that you

7:31 play by no rules at all.

7:36 [cheering] [applause]

7:42 Almost 30 years later, President Bashar

7:45 al-Assad faces a similar test in Hama.

7:48 [cheering]

7:56 Hama looked like Cairo.

7:58 It looked like Tunis.

7:59 This was a popular uprising and

8:00 the government was very threatened by

8:02 that narrative.

8:05 I think there's a sense out there within

8:07 the government that what they're facing

8:08 right now is reolent of what they faced

8:11 in the late 70s and early 80s [cheering]

8:14 and it helps feed that [music] notion

8:16 that we can deal with this by security

8:18 and security alone.

8:20 The regime has a playbook.

8:22 If you're faced with a crisis, go back to the

8:24 playbook and see what we did the last

8:26 time we got through a crisis.

8:28 So the last time they got through a similar

8:30 crisis was hammer.

8:32 So you have a

8:33 protest, you have an uprising, you

8:35 suppress it.

8:36 The playbook does not say

8:37 negotiate with the protesters.

8:39 So there's no negotiation.

8:46 One very high-ranking Turkish official

8:48 told me that what's going on inside the

8:50 leadership is that Bashar's mother

8:51 herself is telling him that these are

8:53 the same events that they remind her of

8:54 what happened in the late '7s and early

8:56 80s.

8:57 And her advice to him is that he

8:58 has to act like his father.

9:00 He has to be

9:01 strong.

9:01 He has to be decisive and he has

9:03 to crush this element of rebellion

9:04 against him.

9:08 Bashar sent in tanks, armored vehicles

9:11 and snipers.

9:15 This is how the Assad, both father and

9:17 son, deal with domestic threats.

9:20 They retreat into their Alawite fortress uh

9:23 and there's this convulsive reaction

9:26 to put down any sort of domestic threats

9:28 and to put them down ruthlessly.

9:32 Many Syrians had hoped Bashar would be

9:34 different than his father.

9:37 During the first massacre of Hama,

9:39 Bashar was studying medicine at the

9:41 University of Damascus.

9:43 The studious 17-year-old expressed no political

9:46 ambitions.

9:47 After graduation, he moved to

9:49 London.

9:51 He was not earmarked for the presidency.

9:53 He was going to be an opthalmologist and

9:55 he was prepared to do that for the rest

9:56 of his life.

9:58 The heir apparent was

9:59 Bashar's older brother, Basil.

10:02 But in 1994, he was killed in a car

10:04 accident.

10:06 Bashar was ordered to come

10:07 home.

10:09 He joined the Republican Guard and was

10:11 sent to serve in Lebanon.

10:13 Preparing for the day he would take

10:15 office.

10:18 We all knew he was going to take over.

10:20 We all knew that Hassad was on his last

10:23 legs, if you want.

10:24 Um, you know, he was

10:25 close to death.

10:26 It was very clear that

10:26 he was very ill and the question was

10:28 always how well-groomed has Bashar been.

10:33 President Assad has closed.

10:34 He was inaugurated in July 2000.

10:37 The young doctor with his fashionable

10:39 Britishborn Syrian wife, a former banker

10:42 at JP Morgan promised reform.

10:45 People were giddy with the idea of

10:48 reform.

10:48 Early on in Bashar's reign, he

10:51 opened up the country to the internet.

10:53 He lifted uh exit permits which were

10:55 required for Syrians to travel and he

10:58 allowed more trade in the country.

11:00 He said we can open up.

11:02 We're going to have some private newspapers, private

11:04 press, internet.

11:06 And he believed that he

11:08 could win the hearts and minds of the

11:10 people through modernization and let a

11:14 lot more light in.

11:19 He had allowed what became to be known

11:22 as the Damascus spring.

11:24 He promised reforms and he promised political

11:27 reforms.

11:28 And so there were political

11:30 salons that began to emerge and people

11:33 began to talk about ideas.

11:35 How is Syria going to meet the future?

11:38 Which path is it going to take?

11:39 And there was an era I

11:41 would say in the 2003 2004 in which

11:46 there was an open debate and a healthy

11:48 one.

11:50 [music] He was genuinely popular amongst the

11:53 young people who hadn't lived through

11:55 his father and who saw him as potential

11:57 reformer and he kept on telling them

11:59 that life was going to get better and

12:02 they could see fairly dramatic changes

12:04 at least for the wealthy.

12:06 In Damascus and Aleppo, the two largest

12:09 cities, the transformation was evident.

12:12 There's been a great deal of

12:13 infrastructural improvement in both

12:16 cities.

12:16 That's very noticeable to anyone

12:17 who's been to Syria over the years.

12:19 Uh there's been a nuvo ree that has been

12:22 created.

12:23 There was a sense of commercialism.

12:25 People felt that they were seeing things

12:27 in the street that they might see in

12:28 Beirut, a much more prosperous city in

12:30 some ways.

12:32 But the regime's old guard watched the

12:34 Damascus spring with fear.

12:36 They urged Bashar to stop his political reforms.

12:40 They told him it would undermine the

12:42 regime.

12:43 The political establishment, the Bath

12:45 party.

12:46 And those in the senior ranks of

12:48 authority uh decided that if this free

12:51 political debate was going to continue,

12:54 they were going to lose their heads.

12:57 Uh and so uh there was a sudden clampdown,

13:00 it was the return of authoritarianism.

13:05 In 2005, hundreds of activists and

13:08 intellectuals were arrested.

13:10 The Damascus spring was over.

13:14 For the next several years, as Syria

13:16 faced drought and high unemployment,

13:18 especially in the countryside, President

13:21 Assad's popularity eroded.

13:26 [cheering] This year, a popular revolt in Tunisia

13:33 toppled a dictator.

13:37 [cheering]

13:39 Egypt was next.

13:43 It was unclear if the Arab Spring would

13:45 spread to Syria.

13:47 There was a sense that there was going

13:48 to be a contagion that this unrest might

13:50 spread to other parts of the Arab world.

13:53 But even at that moment, I think there

13:54 was a sense that Syria was too

13:56 authoritarian.

13:58 Syria wasn't at the point

13:59 where it would have fed a rebellion.

14:00 And I think that's why until now we've seen

14:02 this uprising focused in the countryside

14:04 rather than the big cities.

14:07 This is a movement of the rural parts of

14:09 Syria, this disenfranchised countryside

14:11 that was stricken by drought, neglected

14:12 by the government, and that had a lot

14:14 less to lose, say, than the bigger

14:16 cities like Damascus and Aleppo.

14:21 At first in rural towns like Dra homes,

14:25 Latakia and Hama, workers and farmers

14:28 were timid in their demands.

14:31 Initially when the protest went out,

14:33 people were asking for dignity.

14:35 They were asking for housing to subsidize

14:38 heated fuel.

14:39 We want jobs.

14:40 We want cheap bread.

14:41 And it is only when uh the

14:44 authorities turned brutal on them deadly

14:47 uh that they began to chant that they

14:49 want a change of regime.

14:59 [applause] A month after the uprising began,

15:11 President Assad came before Parliament.

15:15 Syria's business and political elites

15:17 applauded him.

15:19 He walked in and it was

15:20 all very jovial.

15:22 There was a lot of

15:23 clapping and cheering every time he

15:24 spoke.

15:25 At one point, one of the members

15:26 of parliament stands up and says, "Sire,

15:29 you are such a brilliant leader that you

15:32 should not just be the leader of Syria,

15:33 you should be the leader of the world."

15:36 The expectation, not only the popular

15:39 exploitation, but the expectation of

15:41 those circles of power or that Bashar

15:44 Assad was going to stand there and

15:46 introduce a package of reforms that

15:48 hopefully would allay these grievances

15:51 and would meet with the popular demands.

15:54 Instead, he stands up there uh to accuse

15:59 this entire uprising of being a foreign

16:02 conspiracy.

16:09 There was no sense of remorse.

16:11 That's what shocked people.

16:13 There seemed to be

16:14 a complete detachment as if everything's

16:16 going to be okay.

16:17 My people love me and

16:18 look, my car was being mobbed as I leave

16:21 the parliament.

16:25 [applause]

16:32 Outside Damascus, the calls for Bashar's

16:34 resignation were only getting louder.

16:41 As the uprising spread, demonstrators

16:44 picked up a song written by a brick

16:46 layer from Hama.

16:50 Then it was recorded by a popular Syrian

16:52 singer Ibrahim Kash.

16:57 It became the people's anthem.

17:01 [cheering] It's kind of a popular song and the

17:19 lyrics was carefully chosen and

17:21 sometimes funny, sometimes humor,

17:23 sometimes uh very deep and it was soon

17:28 all over the country.

17:32 But in July, the singer was silenced.

17:36 Eventually they got hold of him.

17:39 and they uh tortured him brutally

17:42 uh to a limit that they took off his uh

17:46 his throat and they ditched him in a

17:49 river.

17:52 When he was discovered his throat was

17:54 obviously caught out uh just to send a

17:57 message that whoever dares to chant

17:59 against Bashar Assad will face a similar

18:02 destiny.

18:05 The regime also organized mass rallies

18:08 of its own in Damascus and Aleppo.

18:12 Government workers were called to the

18:13 streets.

18:20 There is a very strong well of support

18:23 for the regime in those cities.

18:25 And this is vital for the regime because the last

18:28 thing they want to see is a situation

18:30 that occurred in in Egypt in Tahir

18:32 Square in in the center of of Cairo.

18:35 Uh you know if that happens if there are

18:37 large-scale protests in Damascus and

18:39 Aleppo that's when it becomes uh you

18:42 know almost a certainty that the regime

18:44 will will fall.

18:45 Today it's the upper

18:46 class Sunnis from the cities who are

18:50 hanging with the regime and feel like

18:53 things were going in the right direction

18:55 and they don't see any alternative and

18:56 they're frightened of the countryside

18:58 getting too much power and taking over

18:59 and perhaps being too fundamentalist and

19:02 other things for them.

19:04 [cheering]

19:04 For now, months after the uprising

19:07 began, Bashar al-Assad is holding on,

19:11 even declaring victory.

19:13 Most people thought this regime would

19:15 have crumbled and fallen by now.

19:16 They gave it Ramadan.

19:18 Everybody was saying in

19:19 Ramadan it's going to do it 6 months.

19:21 This sort of thing.

19:22 And now we're in the

19:23 seventh month and the regime is

19:25 confident.

19:26 [cheering] There's no question at this point that

19:30 the Syrian government thinks it's won.

19:33 There's a sign in Damascus these days

19:34 that says it's over.

19:36 Another sign says congratulations Damascus, we won.

19:38 I think there is a mindset in that

19:40 government.

19:40 It does believe it's won.

19:47 But the opposition is not conceding.

19:50 They have formed a political party and

19:52 called for outside help.

19:56 Defecting military officers have [music]

19:58 established their own militia.

20:01 Syria's neighbors now worry that a

20:03 Syrian civil war is imminent [music] and

20:06 may overflow its borders.

20:10 When the Arab revolts began at the

20:12 beginning of the year, there was so much

20:13 hope.

20:14 But what we're seeing with Syria

20:15 is the danger is the flip side of those

20:18 Arab revolutions.

20:20 [cheering] Civil war in Syria is going to have

20:22 reverberations immediately in the rest

20:24 of the region.

20:26 And I think everyone's

20:26 bracing themselves for that.

20:32 Syria is the hub of this tinder box and

20:36 a region which is extremely unstable.

20:38 And should it fall and there be civil

20:41 war, it could ignite flames of

20:45 revolution and undermine regimes which

20:48 are extremely important.

20:51 So it's hard to see where this ends.

20:57 [music]

21:26 [music]

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22:16 [music] [music]