Glasshouse: A true story of the Arab Spring (part 1)
My name is Kevin Dawes and I am a freelance battlefield photojournalist. In October of 2012 I was captured by forces loyal to Bashar Al Assad after crossing illegally from Turkey into Syria at the border near Reyhanli. I was held for three and a half years. Two of these years were spent simply missing in the eyes of the world before my whereabouts were leaked to the west by another prisoner. I was eventually returned home by way of the Russian Federation after endless unknowable diplomacy and back room bargaining by the State Department and Syrian forces. This is my narrative of those events.
It all started in Turkey. Hatay, formerly Antioch, is a city famous for its role in the crusades and magnificent public baths. It is nestled in a rolling blanket of olive groves and cotton. It was also the jumping off point for anybody with a camera hoping to make it as a high risk photographer and journalist. What made this convenient is that the city and surrounding region were both totally riddled with Syrian resistance, there to tend fragile supply lines and get medical aid, and foreign spies of all stripe. Turkey. Russia. Syria. Anybody who had a stake in the Arab Spring had rolled on Turkey, their biggest puds in hand, in an effort to control the spreading flames. An orthodox last defense of old world national institutions in the face of a high communicating pissed off mob. My piece in this circus was a hotel in a nearby affiliated town called Harbiye.
I was the only American in attendance at this hotel. It was small and abutted against a small valley that was choked with olive trees. There was a dining room in which breakfast was served and the suites were spacious and quiet. Turkish military personnel and round trip rebel traffic from Syria were common. It was from here that I would have to discover the routes that the other journalists had been using and avail myself of them. Nobody raised any eyebrows at my cargo of medical supplies. They had grown used to far stranger sights.
When I arrived in Turkey I didn't know anyone. No leads on any fixers and my press colleagues with whom I was still on good terms with after the events of Libya had either been recently deported or had yet to embark on a Syria attempt. This didn't strike me as a problem; journalists had been penetrating the Syrian border with ease for some months and had been producing stories and footage. At this time there had only been one fatality among my peers: Marie Colvin had perished in a mortar attack. We were numb to these things. Mortar martyrs had lost their shock value after Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed in Libya. Most of us had been wounded by fragments there; had our token encounters with dispossessed state security personnel there. We had become jaded. The caliphate had yet to visit its horrors on the world. There were no videos of journalists being decapitated. No jihadi John. No John Cantlie in a gimp suit vomiting Islamist agitprop at us while trying to stifle screams. Approaching people cold and taking people at face value were both de facto industry standards. People like my hotel clerk.
He was a sturdy fellow who spoke excellent English and was amiable to my agenda for Syria. He helped arrange a number of meetings with various parties who claimed to be able to convey me into Syria. He was not my only lead. During my wanderings in the Hatay area I had met a few other possible contacts though none proved reliable. A stall keeper at the nearby bazaar had dumped me at the Assad controlled border crossing in Reyhanli. A man claiming to be an FSA officer in a downtown hotel would only help me if I gave him feedback on his rebel plots. I shed him in short order. A room at Guantanamo was not an idea that I relished. These early attempts were a series of frustrating misadventures. During them I had acquired a companion. Not long after arriving in Turkey I had encountered another journalist by the name of Chris who claimed to be a Canadian citizen. We had decided to throw our lots in together and searched for routes into Syria.
Many strange things had been happening in the background during all of this. Strange passing encounters with people I had only known in Libya. Afflicted double entendre from a number of folks edging in around the corners. Self gratification comes at a high premium in the Turkish spy biz, apparently. One of the most memorable events was being introduced to cab drivers that my hotel clerk claimed could convey me into Syria. One of them saw me and instantly panicked and exclaimed "Oh No!"
I had known him as a hotel clerk in Libya at the Goz El Teek hotel. My hotel clerk in Turkey locked eyes with him when he did this, folded his arms, and looked smug. Needless to say, the then very flustered man declined to transport me. Another encounter like this took place in the dining room of the hotel that he tended and I resided in. Bashir, someone from Libya who worked for a militia that had hosted me, was sitting there having breakfast and conversing with somebody in Arabic. When he saw me his eyes bulged out of his head and his jaw hinged open but he quickly recovered and, electing to ignore me, returned to his business. I did not see him again after this.
The hotel clerk at the hotel where I was staying eventually came through with someone who claimed to be able to get me across the border. We met in the lobby and spoke at length using translation software. Much like my hotel clerk he went from no English to perfect English in the span of a few days. Being considered a cretin has many advantages. One of them is effective counterintelligence. The only trouble with this is that nobody wears name tags. It is impossible to determine who has slithered up next to you and why. I had many encounters with spies from the west in Libya and their scrutiny was approximately as intense as what I was being presented with here. I did not think that anything on my agenda would warrant the expenditure of an espionage asset or dealing with the murder of an American and the associated cost of adequate cleanup. Perhaps he was simply an FSA member determining if a journalist and prospective cargo was an Assad spy. Whatever the case, he was the ride I chose and it was not long before we embarked for the border.
(to be continued)