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BEIRUT, Lebanon – A prominent anti-government activist in Syria who has been spitting to draw the attention of the international community to the fate of his country was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in his hometown Friday, said his friends.
Activist Raed Fares used videos, skits and protest posters that refer to American culture and often virulent social media to criticize Syrian military, jihadists and Western leaders who, in his view, did not not allowed to put an end to the violence that was tearing his country apart.
The murder of 46-year-old Fares comes as the war in Syria draws to a close. President Bashar al-Assad has taken over most of the country with the help of Russia and Iran, although armed rebels and Kurdish militias backed by the United States still hold significant territory .
But for those like Mr. Fares who saw the uprising against Mr. Assad as a revolution and hoped that it would bring democracy, his assassination was a bitter sign of how far that dream had become.
"The last flame of a once proud and ambitious revolution by civilians is out of breath," said John Jaeger, a former State Department official and friend of Fares. "I hate to think about it like that, but here it is."
Mr Jaeger said that other activists seeking political change in Syria were still working, but the dangers have led most of them to the rest of the world.
"There are not many people with his visibility and status who are still in the country, so it's a hard blow," he said.
Like many Syrians who had been inspired by the uprisings of the Arab Spring to protest against Mr. Assad in 2011, Mr. Fares had no political past or activism, but many reasons to revolt against the Syrian government, dominated by Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, for more than four decades.
Assad had always treated the dissent brutally, and Mr. Fares recalled recalling a child while security officers were killing his neighbor. He also remembered terrified people who had taken refuge in Kafr Nubul, his hometown in northern Syria, in 1982 after the massacre perpetrated by government forces seeking to root out Islamist militants. in the city of Hama.
When the uprising broke out in 2011, Mr Fares, who had left the medical school to study English and was working as a real estate agent, joined the team enthusiastically.
In the aftermath of the government's attacks, he shot videos to publish online, organize protests and helped design banners in English to catch the attention of Americans. Some targeted American politics and were widely shared on social media.
"Obama! Your role in Syria will never be accepted as a mistake like Clinton's Rwanda," reads a sign criticizing the Obama administration's reluctance to intervene militarily against Assad. "It will be a premeditated crime. "
Others have expressed sympathy for the victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and have offered their condolences to the death of actor Robin Williams, citing one of his lines from the movie "Aladdin" ": "To be free. Such a thing would be greater than all the magic and treasure of the whole world. "
In 2013, Mr. Fares produced a satirical video, "The Syrian Revolution in Three Minutes", which used Syrians disguised as cavemen to demonstrate that the international community had failed to protect Syrian civilians from security forces, government bombings and attacks chemical.
With funding from the State Department, Mr. Fares created a local radio station, Radio Fresh, which broadcasts music, information and warnings about air strikes.
But civil activists like Mr Fares have come under increasing pressure as extremist groups such as the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have conquered power in rebel-held areas. They opposed the broadcast of music and stormed the radio station to stop it, as well as promoting what they saw as Western ideas like democracy.
In 2014, two gunmen from the Islamic State attacked Mr. Fares outside his home, shooting him in the chest, which is one of the many efforts by extremists to stop his work.
Aware of the risks, Mr. Fares said during an online chat to a New York Times reporter that he was working "in a minefield", but did not want to leave Syria.
"This is our revolution and we will continue," he wrote. "We managed to confront them through our media, so the only choice they have is to kill us."
Last year, Mr. Fares spoke at the Freedom Forum in Oslo about the efforts he had made early in the war to document the attacks that often killed his friends.
"These were not numbers, they were people, my parents, people I know, my friends," he said. "Assad is still killing, but we continue our revolution until we realize our dream of making Syria a democracy for all."
But the trajectory of the war had made activists like Mr. Fares increasingly rare. With the State Department cutting off all support, the radio station was no longer being broadcast and Mr. Fares was desperately seeking support for other student and women's support projects.
A tenuous agreement between Turkey and Russia was the only obstacle to an assault by the Syrian government on the province of Idlib, where he lived. And extremist militants were still active in the area.
Friday, he was returning home after a mosque with a friend, Hammoud al-Juneid, when gunmen opened fire on their car, killing both men. Mr. Fares' friends assumed that the assassins belonged to an extremist group linked to Al Qaeda.
Mr. Fares was buried Friday afternoon and a friend who attended his funeral was shocked to see how much he was being subjected, unlike the loud protests that Mr. Fares had organized in the city.
"It was the spirit of the revolution, and today, I really felt that we had lost the last spirit," said the friend, expressing it under the covered by anonymity for fear that he too will become a target. "All those who started the revolution of the same age as Raed died or fled, so who will cry Raed in the same way that he had used to cry martyrs in the past?"
