Moussa Haddad (left) created the Les Amis de Tamam association in 2016.
Credit : Tamam’s Friends
It’s a 50-year-old book that has just closed in Syria. A gloomy book where each page is filled with darkness, one blacker than the other. A book in which the al-Assad dynasty, Hafez, the father, then Bashar, the son, recounted itself in all its ignominy. From now on, since December 8 and the end of the regime proclaimed by the liberation army led by Islamist rebelsIt is “a new book starting”slips Moussa Haddad, a Laval resident of Syrian origin, president of the Les Amis de Tamam association.
“No freedom, but security and food”
Moussa has been following the life of the Syrian Assad regime from afar for 40 years. Forty years of terror which will be difficult for him to erase. “It won’t be easy to forget everything that has been experienced and transmitted over 50 years. You have to be psychologically realistic. A people who have been formatted with Bashar al-Assad in power, preparing his son for the future… All of this is integrated, so we must give them time to digest this liberation and change state of mind to move on“, analyzes the Laval resident.
But will the Syrians have time to integrate this change? Thirteen years after the failure of the Arab Spring and successive wars including that against the Islamic State, the international community is already wondering about the post-Bashar period. Because it is indeed Islamic rebels, led by a leader, a former member of Al-Qaeda, who are at the helm of the liberation army. For Moussa, who goes to Syria for one to three months every year, his people have other priorities : “international politics, I no longer believe in it. The priority is to have something to eat, to heat yourself in winter, to take care of yourself and to feel safe. You know that in Syria for four years they have had electricity, sometimes barely 4 hours a day. Imagine, this humiliation, this poverty, that’s what touches me. Today, if we say to the Syrians, ‘you want freedom’, they say, ‘we don’t want anything, neither freedom nor democracy’. We just want security and warmth, to have food to feed our children.“.
Worrying neighboring countries
A very down to earth first thought which does not prevent him from worrying about the future. “What shocked and disturbed me was thatbarely 24 hours after the fall of the regime, the state of Israel has not stopped bombing Syria. Previously, it bombed regularly. Today, there is no more regime and despite that, Israel does not stop bombing. Second thing, it’s happening in northern Syria, with regard to Kurdish Syrians: they are being bombed by Turkey and the Syrian national army. Is this that we will one day find the geographical unity of Syria? That worries me“, confesses the man who ran a chalet at the Laval Christmas market for several days.
To support the actions of the solidarity association Les Amis de Tamam, you can buy Syrian products such as Aleppo soap or mint tea in Laval, at the Les Cornichons grocery store or at the Rouessé grocery store.
