A signal of optimism and humanity from Syria

How a young and by no means reckless Syrian nerd almost accidentally became a passionate activist and world citizen: that, in sum, is the story of Khaled Shaaban (34), the driving force behind Roia. This Syrian IT organization has saved lives by providing war zones in Syria with internet, telecommunications, software and computer education. This year, he visited the Netherlands. 'We had no mission, we just fell into it.'

Carl Stellweg

Khaled Shaaban once led the life of a cautious Syrian citizen. Don't ask uncomfortable questions if you can't tolerate ugly answers. Keep a low profile, then you won’t get into trouble. 

A humdrum existence under the iron rod of the mukhabarat - the secret police - and the ubiquitous menacing cardboard images of father and son Assad.

Then Friday April 15, 2011, came along. A day the opposition of the regime had proclaimed as a "day of anger." 

Thousands of so-called troublemakers had been protesting against Bashar al-Assad for a month. Khaled was watching a major demonstration near his home on the outskirts of the city. He worried about what was happening to the country. 

Suddenly, there was a big upheaval in the crowd, people started to run, and before he knew it, Khaled was dragged along. Within a minute, two lifeless bodies rolled in his direction. 

They had fallen from a pick-up truck that transported wounded demonstrators to the hospital at great speed. 

'I saw immediately  that those two men who fell at my feet were dead. That was the moment everything changed for me.'

The little voice that had been muttering annoyingly in the back of his head for some time now, grew so strong he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Stepping out of the box: sounds like a trendy truism, but it exactly describes what happened to him. He left behind the false safety of the life he had led so far, never to return.

Meanwhile, some eight years later, he’s become a 34-year-old IT activist, sitting in a hotel lobby in The Hague, talking about the idealistic Syrian IT organization Roia, of which he is one of the driving forces. The interview is part of a small tour which also comprises meetings with potential donors, policy officials and ambassadors.

Khaled Shabaan ©Dafne van Baarle

He looks remarquably little affected by the collossal tests of strenght he has had to endure since that memorable day in April 2011 - the horrors of a Syrian prison, the daily bombings, the exhausting fear. On the whole, Khaled Shaaban makes an extremely energetic, enthusiastic and cheerful impression. 

The last few years, he gradually started to feel like a world citizen, with an insatiable curiosity for places he was barely aware of not so long ago, but which he has visited since: Cambodia, the Philippines, Vietnam.

And now, for the first time, Khaled is in Europe.

He was only allowed to enter the Netherlands after a third visa application, even though it is here that Roia is registered as a foundation. This happened thanks to the mediation of sympathizers such as the prominent Bahraini human rights activist Esra'a al-Shafei and the Dutch arabist and 'culture broker' Dafne van Baarle, who is chairman of the board of which Khaled is also a member.

The reason for this arrangement is that the organization, which saw the light of day in encircled, isolated and bomb-pummeled territory, has grown so large that it needs the kind of favorable fundraising climate that the Netherlands has on offer.

Sweet poison of the Arab Spring

How different Khaleds outlook on life once was. A few weeks before the decisive incident with the two bodies, a friend had told him that the Arab Spring might well have come to Syria, and Khaled was dismayed.

'I hoped it wasn't true. What was going to happen now? How was I going to protect my family and my work?'

In the following weeks he told himself that Syria was immune to the sweet poison of the Arab Spring. 'There was no reason for it here, I said to myself. I mainly listened to reassuring dispatches from the Syrian regime, and turned a deaf ear to any other narrative.

'At some point, that little voice at the back of my head started. It kept on nagging that something was irreperably wrong, that the whole way in which this country had been ruled for years was wrong, even though I had never paid a lot of attention to it. But I was scared, you know.'

The revolution before the revolution

Khaled Shaaban had done well so far. Especially considering the fact that he hardly seemed to be cut-out for an exceptional life.

He grew up in Jobar, a suburb of Damascus. After primary school he had to earn some money. At the age of fourteen, he learned to be a tailor and a carpenter, but it was when he first saw a computer mouse that he really understood where his talents lied.

'One day, I was working in the computer store of a business relationship of my grandfather’s, unpacking some boxes, when my eyes fell on this strange thing I never saw before. I had no idea what it was, but I felt irresistibly attracted to it.'

Within a year the sixteen-year-old knew more about  IT than his manager. He learned to assemble computers, specialized in network architecture and even got extremely deft at hacking. 

To cut a long story short: in no time he became an extremely accomplished nerd, in a region where at the start of this millennium, IT was still in its infancy.

Soon, though, the very young population of the Middle East was to discover that the digital highway was a pathway to a bit of freedom. Khaled Shaaban was at the forefront of this revolution, which preceded the Syrian revolution.

However, when the Syrian revolution broke out, he wasn’t a frontrunner at all. As an IT manager with a wife and a newborn child, and doing quite well for himself within this system that people had started to challenge, it seemed only sensible to him to protect what he had.

Granted, the regime probably wasn’t one of the most charitable on earth, but at least you knew what you had.

The Techie of Syria

The confrontation with the two dead men wasn’t the only incident that caused his viewpont to tilt. Maybe the subsequent detention of his brother was even more decisive. ' 'Through paid informants, we learned that his fellow prisoners regularly heard him scream, which could only mean he was being tortured. From that moment on, I had no doubt which side I ought to choose.

'But still I was terribly scared. I certainly didn't have the courage to participate in demonstrations, even though I felt a genuine need to do something.'

That opportunity presented itself quite quickly. 'People came to me, asking me if I could protect their cell phones and encrypt their laptops. Sure, that was easy-peasy. And that's how I earned the code name Sham tiqani in the activist circles - the Techie of Syria. It was a title I could have taken pride in, except that I still saw myself as a coward. The death-defying attitude of others filled me with awe. I couldn’t live up to it.'

The seed for Roia was planted when Khaled met another tiqani, with whom he installed the first devices for the reception of internet satellites – they had to be smuggeled –to bypass the regime's IT infrastructure.

More drastic solutions were soon needed, since by that time Damascus had cut off telecommunications in the countryside. Which meant: no internet, no telephone, nothing.

And so, Khaled and his associates simultaneously installed devices in the countryside and in the capital, and let them ‘talk’ to each other. 

In this way, they directed the internet from enemy territory to those who needed it most: hospitals in particular, that remained in contact with each other, but also with the outside world - as a humanitarian voice that could tell what was going on in Syria.

'Still, I was only a part-time activist at the time,' says Shaaban. 'I had not given up my job in Damascus. But that was about to change.'

Farewell to part-time activism

The second tipping point occurred after his arrest at a checkpoint on a day that many people were arrested in retaliation for the abduction of a sniper by rebels. 

The treatment he and other detainees received in prison was cruel, but not as horrific as what the regime had in store for those against whom the regime harboured a specific suspicion.
 

He was blindfolded, beaten, trapped with many in such a tight space that no one could find a bearable position. He was subjected to psychological torture with threats of impending execution. 

He felt that death was near, saw people actually die, or go crazy before his very eyes.

'And yet I was encouraged by prisoners who knew their fate was sealed. Who could be certain that they would never leave this place alive. That was incredible.'

Hardly less startling, for an outsider, was the conclusion Khaled Shaaban drew when he was released.

'I told my comrades that this had been a valuable experience. Because now we knew that part-time activism would not suffice. We could only get rid of this regime if we devoted ourselves to it full-time.

'This was about everything that this regime did not represent. It was about people dying, about human suffering. '

'This was no longer about freedom, it was about good and evil. It was no longer about political demands such as the lifting of the state of emergency, or about ideals such as freedom of expression, but about fundamental humanity. It was about everything that this regime did not represent. 

'It was about people dying, about human suffering.'

Khaled had never heard of human rights, but he became a human rights activist. Full time. He quit his job, sent his family to Jordan, and moved to rebel territory in eastern Ghouta (the eastern part of the rural area that borders Damascus in the east and south).

He and other technicians set up their first official project, the emergency medical system, a telecommunications system that enabled medical services to respond quickly to emergencies. They also managed to establish contact with foreign aid agencies, and received some financial support from the Syrian National Council.

The fear did not abate - quite the contrary: 'I was no longer afraid that I would be arrested, but that I would die.'

'We jumped up, ran to an adjoining room, looked at each other, registered that everyone was still alive, and immediately fell asleep again, since we were constantly on the verge of exhaustion'

Shaaban and his staff, which now numbered eight people, started installing radio towers that could capture internet via satellite, so that the entire region remained online, free of charge.

In mid-2013 the mast was destroyed by the regime. They rebuilt it with a spare mast, plus a less easily detectable signal.

They were living under extremely dangerous circumstances, and perhaps that was precisely why they often had a laugh.

'They bombed our masts, but also our office. One night, a barrel bomb fell right next to the room where we slept. We jumped up, ran to an adjoining room, looked at each other, registered that everyone was still alive, and immediately fell asleep again, since we were constantly on the verge of exhaustion. 

'We have often laughed heartily about this incident – I guess that may be a little difficult to understand for an outsider.'

Created by necessity

In 2013, Khaled received an invitation from European donors to come to Istanbul to talk about closer cooperation. The aim was to give the organization, which at the time simply was called "technical agency", more substance. 

This also gave him a chance to see his family, that had traveled from Jordan to Turkey without any trouble.

The journey that awaited him was far more dangerous. The distance to the Turkish border was around 350 kilometers. A car was available, but it finally took him a week to get there.

A large part of the journey was done on foot at night. Once he and his escort were ambushed by the army. They survived by keeping perfectly silent and resisting the temptation to shoot back, since that would have given the enemy the opportunity to precisely locate them.

After he arrived in Turkey, he had difficulty to shake the alienating grey shroud of war off his mind. 'I was shocked to see people walking the streets carefree, and to experience how everything worked in a normal way.'

In Istanbul, his talks with donors resulted in an expansion of activities and in the name change in Roia - "vision" in Arabic.

'We just did what seemed to be necessary, what people asked us to do'

'You see, vision was really what we had been lacking. When we started, we had no mission at all, no objective, no preconceived idea, we just did what seemed to be necessary, what people asked us to do. That is also why we do not see ourselves as founders of an organization. It had simply been the needs, the circumstances, which created and shaped us, we more or less fell into it.'

Khaled Shaaban learned from humanitarian professionals in Istanbul how to make plans, to apply for grants, and to set out a strategy. 

'From an informal group of people who provided emergency aid based on the skills they happened to posess, we became a company that strives to use IT in as many ways as possible to improve living conditions in areas of violent crisis.

'We started to set up IT training courses to help people get a source of income. After all, it doesn’t matter in which place IT freelancers work, it could be anywhere, even Syria. Moreover, IT can significantly improve the role of women. It helps them gain more independence.’’

Khaled pauses. 'Gender equality is the most natural thing in the world as far as our team is concerned,' he says. 'Which means we are not inclined to advocate it. But that would be a mistake: we shouldn’t fail to present it as a spearhead of our policy, since in general, the position of women in the Middle East profoundly needs to be ameliorated.'

Finally,  Roia started facilitating online activism and developing management software for local civil authorities and hospitals.

'In short, we have learned to broaden our perspective, so as to ensure continuity.'

The call of a ‘normal’ life

In the meantime, a painful process was taking place in Khaled's head. 'My stay in Turkey gave me a renewed taste of what one might call a ‘normal life’. I thought: why shouldn’t  I have one? I had a family, and I wanted to continue to educate myself. Almost all of my  family members had migrated to Europe and they urged me to join them. It was a very tempting proposition.

'At the same time, my friends in Syria, who knew nothing of my doubts, were constantly sending me messages about what they had achieved. 

'In the end, I couldn't abandon them. A moral duty? I wouldn’t call it that. Idealism? No. It was ultimately a matter of loyalty to a group of individuals. And perhaps Roia had also become my baby.'

However, Khaled did not return to Syria. He continued to direct the organization from Istanbul. He was now head of an NGO, raised funds, devised policy.

'If this disastrous turn of events has taught us anything, it is to take losses'

This went on for a few years. Until last year, when the storm of war lifted Roia up and smashed it to pieces: aided by Russia, Syrian troops conquered the entire eastern Ghouta.

All activities of Khaled's organization halted. The damages suffered were immense. A number of employees lost their lives. The rest of them fled with tens of thousands of other people to eastern Aleppo and Idlib, which was still in the hands of rebels and where Roia resumed its programs as best as it could.

'If this disastrous turn of events has taught us anything, it is to take our losses,' says Khaled, also referring to the rebel authority in the area, which ranges from moderate to less moderate Islamist, and sometimes has obstructed Roia in its activities because of its alleged ties with perceived Western enemies.

Destruction in the town of Arbin, in the eastern Ghouta (© Qasioun News Agency)

All in all, the operating radius of the organization has shrunk considerably. At the same time, it seems to have outgrown Syria. Roia now also offers IT courses to the two million Syrian refugees in Turkey, as well as to poor Turkish citizens.

The courses give both groups access to foreign markets which offer more perspective than the Turkish one. Additionally, there are plans to develop activities in Yemen and Iraq, in short: to alleviate living conditions in every serious crisis area in the Middle East.

Would Roia be willing to work in parts of the country that are under the control of Assad? A few years ago, Khaled would have answered that question with a resounding "no". 

But now he thinks differently. 'Since I live in Turkey, I look at things in a more nuanced way. I realize that the revolution must not turn into a religion. In essence, we are not a political organization. When I was still in Syria, I was inclined to think in terms of good and evil, with virtually nothing in between. Citizens who supported Assad were part of the problem.'

He implicitly refers to his own position, at the outbreak of the revolution, when he says: 'Many of these people will have pragmatic reasons for their support for Assad. Moreover: how can you ever hope to win them over for what you stand for, if you keep the doors shut? No, the main problem is that we cannot trust the regime.'

Breaking down the wall of fear

Nevertheless, it seems that the regime has decisively gained the upper hand now. How does Khaled envision the future of Syria? Does the country have a future? 

'Listen,' he says sternly. 'Countries like Cambodia and Vietnam have also suffered appalling losses, yet still exist. If Syria survives as a country, this will not be a unique occurence in history.

'It may surprise you what I’m about to say, but as far as I'm concerned, the Syrian revolution has ended and has been a success. The Syrian revolution was not just about territory, or about political power. It was also about culture. That culture of taking things for granted is finished. The revolution has broken down the wall of fear. We have learned to be critical,  we now have the courage to say no. Never again will the regime feel so unthreatened as before.'

But doesn’t that mean that the Syrians will have to fear that they will suffer even worse repression than before? 

'In the long run, that won't help the regime. People will give priority to their basic needs for the time being. Food, drink, clothing, a roof above their heads. As soon as all this is reasonably provided for, the call for political freedom will re-awaken. 

'Sometimes I compare my country with a body that has been poisoned for years. The revolution has expulsed that poison, but of course this has come with sores and fevers and so on. At present, the body is receiving antibiotics and is in a kind of coma, in which it is healing itself. 

Nobody knows how long this healing process will take. Colossal amounts of money, colossal efforts are needed for the reconstruction. So if you ask me if Syria does have a future - my answer is yes. But I can’t possibly tell you when that future will begin.'