A town in northwestern Syria has become the creative center of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. Since the beginning of the uprising, the residents of Kafr Anbel have drawn signs that skewer the Assad regime and express outrage that the world has not done more to stop the killing in Syria.
The signs come in two basic varieties. Some are cartoons, often drawing their inspiration from Western movies or TV shows, which lampoon the Syrian government and its allies, notably Russian President Vladimir Putin. Others are straightforward, text-only banners that call for NATO intervention in Syria or arming the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA). Many of the signs are written in English.
Raed Fares, an activist in Kafr Anbel, explained to FP that the town's residents chose to draw in English, rather than Arabic, explicitly to reach an international audience. "It's very important to send our message to all the world," he said. "And English is the public language."
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The creation of the signs, said Fares, is a group effort. "When I get the idea, I send it to my friend in Kuwait and he translates it [into English] for me," he said. "Then I have the one who will write it, he is my friend and he is not wanted by the regime."
Here, a sign in Kafr Anbel criticizes U.N. and Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan for Syria and calls for foreign military intervention.
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The first demonstrations in Kafr Anbel broke out in April 2011, shortly after the beginning of the uprising. In an attempt to minimize the unrest in Syria, however, state television ran footage of the protest saying that it had occurred in Egypt. Fares said that the first signs were simply meant as proof that the protests were occurring in Syria.
The signs often use Western cultural touchstones to make their point -- in this case, imagining Vladimir Putin as Leonardo DiCaprio and Bashar al-Assad as Kate Winslet from the film Titanic.
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In this poster, Kafr Anbel's residents repurpose the popular game "Angry Birds" to fit their plight. In this version, "Angry Syrians" bombard Assad and two of his major allies, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, with a pig-nosed Putin rounding out the quartet.
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A few of the signs have caused a stir as far away as Washington, D.C. The banner above was used to illustrate an article on Foreign Policy's The Cable about a group of experts urging the Obama administration to increase its assistance to Syria's opposition groups.
Fares said that he watched eagerly as the sign spread to media outlets around the world. "I followed this banner in every site and everywhere," he said. "Trust me, we believe in it, and every word in it."
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Fares said that his banners targeted different audiences -- either the Syrian people, the Arab world as a whole, or the entire world. Whatever his focus, however, his aim was to provoke people to action. "I like to do this," he said.
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This sign, taken from the same demonstration as the one praising "Bush's audacity," exemplifies many Syrians' exasperation with peaceful protest. Here, a bloodied Syrian revolutionary armed only with an olive branch steps into the ring against an armed Bashar al-Assad, while the referee orders the fight to continue for a ninth round. This demonstration was held in December 2011, as the revolution entered its ninth month.
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As the signs say, Kafr Anbel is still occupied by Assad's security forces -- Fares said that more than 1,000 soldiers were present in the city, manning seven checkpoints. Activists play a constant cat-and-mouse game with the Syrian military: Many of the demonstrations are organized not in the town itself but in the surrounding forests, where they are harder to locate. More recently, activists have braved potential arrest to briefly gather in the town center -- for no more than 15 minutes -- to show defiance and have their picture taken with the banners.
Amid the crackdown, anti-Assad activists have been forced from their homes due to fear of arrest. Most have sought refuge in the woods, or the villages surrounding Kafr Anbel.
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Anti-Assad activists have been extremely critical of the U.N. monitoring mission in Syria, which they view as insufficient to end the bloodshed. The mission was suspended on June 16 as violence escalated, due to fears for the observers' safety.
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This sign depicts Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar and founder of the Assad dynasty, as Don Vito Corleone, the famous mafia don portrayed by Marlon Brando.
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A demonstration in Kafr Anbel in February. Outrage over lack of international action is a common trope of the town's banners. The U.N. estimates that more than 10,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011.
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Russia's Vladimir Putin, the Syrian regime's most important international ally, is a regular target of Kafr Anbel's signs. Russian arms sales to Syria have increased dramatically in recent years, and have continued unabated even during the crackdown.
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A Syrian revolutionary "bug spray" envelopes a mosquito version of Bashar al-Assad. In a June 2011 speech, the Syrian president embarked on an extended analogy describing those opposed to his rule as "germs" -- a description that sparked predictable outrage among anti-government activists. Portrayals of germs and bugs have only proliferated in anti-Assad art since then as the opposition has made the metaphor its own.
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While Russia, as Syria's principal international patron, comes in for most of the blame in Kafr Anbel's posters, other international players are not spared. Here, Assad sits comfortably under an umbrella marked "safe area," with the flags of Russia, Israel, the United States, and the European Union protecting him.
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Here Assad sits much less comfortably atop a brewing volcano in Damascus. The poster reflects protesters' hopes that the Syrian government will soon lose control in the capital -- a hope stoked in recent days by rebel attacks on the Palace of Justice and a base of the elite Republican Guards in Damascus. As violence spread in Damascus, Assad for the first time described the situation in Syria as a "state of war."
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But for the residents of Kafr Anbel, the slow-motion collapse of the Assad regime is little solace when dozens are still being killed each day by its security forces. In this scene, protesters pose in front of a blank sign -- signaling that they have ran out of words to get their message across to the world.
"Don't try anything with Assad, just military intervention can stop the killing in Syria," Fares said when asked to sum up the signs' most fundamental message. "That's it and nothing [else] will help us, just military intervention."
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