Ladies and gentlemen,
before I start my short talk, I would like to show you this 50 second clip from Syria.
It is about what I experienced there during a bombardment.
It's the beginning of one of my reports, so you will also hear my Arabic voiceover.
I would have loved to tell you that women are raising their fists, chanting slogans,
Please just have a look at the pictures and listen to the sound of war.
Get an idea of the situation in Syria and how men, but especially women, live in it.
Women's rights in Syria.
Sure, I am very much interested in the subject of women's liberation in the Arab world, and I know that you are as well.
So I would have loved to start this talk by mentioning names of women fighting for women's rights within the revolution inside Syria.
I would have loved to tell you that women are raising their fists, chanting slogans,
standing on barricades, demonstrating for change, equality, and women's rights.
But there are hardly any women left inside Syria playing a leading role in this conflict.
During the first year of the revolution, during times of protest, there were some female activists.
But the protests by now have developed into a full scale war.
More than 70,000 people have been killed.
Almost all female activists were either killed, or detained, or they have fled outside the country.
Female voices are heard on the internet, or outside Syria, but are not present any longer in Syria itself.
Syria's revolution has no Joan d' Arc.
And this is not such a strange development. I have visited war-torn Syria frequently.
The Assad regime is not giving me a visa,
so I am bound to sneak illegally into Syria and travel with rebels through opposition-controlled areas.
There are no hotels open anymore, so I stay with families.
And every time I ask these families, men and women, "Is there a leading female figure in your community?"
The answer, again and again: "No, there is not."
Frankly, I almost feel sometimes a bit uncomfortable asking about women's rights to local Syrian women.
A bit embarrassed even, because as I try to discuss women's rights with women in Syria, grenades fly over the house,
exploding a couple of hundred meters away.
I just showed you the clip, and these kind of situations are the norm.
You live in constant fear, scared to die, scared to get wounded, always on alert for the next bombing or shooting.
My point is this: Syria is generally a conservative society, especially in the countryside.
Most women there are housewives who generally stay at home and take care of their family.
Of course there are exceptions, but what I am describing is the norm.
Then such a society is put in the midst of a war.
Well these ladies have much bigger issues to worry about right now than women's rights.
To them, every day is about this: Will I and my children survive these rockets and grenades?
What about my husband who was on the front line?
And how do we get food today?
With most salaries gone, where do we get money from and how are we going to provide food?
These daily worries comprise 99.9% of what goes around in the mind and lives of women in Syria.
What women on the ground tell me, first the killing and the war should stop,
and then we can start to talk and think about the role of women in Syria again.
Currently, women's issues are a luxury that nobody inside Syria can afford.
Even after the revolution, Syria will not be a Western-style feminist stronghold.
Based on the ground reality, I would advise you to stop expecting that Syrian women, or Arab women in fact,
will follow the same path as Western feminists do. Because they won't.
Don't mirror your own set of rules and morals and think that Syrian women will abide by these same rules.
Different societies are simply different, and not everything is a mirror of the West.
If you think the revolution will create groups in Syria like Femen, whose members protest nude, you will be disappointed.
Women's rights in a future Syria will be dealt with in the context of being a male-dominated society,
and a society with very strong religious and traditional feelings.
Let me give you a short example of how this works.
In Aleppo, I met 21 female policewomen, fully veiled, covered with niqab.
Here is a picture of them. I carry my camera, they carry their Kalashnikovs.
When I show these pictures to Westerners, many are like, "Oh my God, what is this? This has nothing to do with feminism."
By the way, Arabs think the same way as well, some of them.
But let me tell you that these same women, before the revolution, did not have a job, did not leave their houses.
So to them, they feel like, "We are useful to the revolution and actually, we are playing a role in it."
You might not see it like that, but to them, this is a step forward.
I just gave you this example to show you how complicated and different women's rights are in the Arab world
compared to traditional feminist dogmas in the West.
Again, I am not judging if it's good or bad to dress up like this. I'm just showing you what the ground reality is.
Some people will now say the revolution in Syria is very Islamic and bad for women.
Look at the pictures you just showed us. Assad's regime is at least secular, and women are much freer.
There is some truth in that. There is indeed more freedom for women on the Assad side.
But let me give you another example.
The economy of Chile during the rule of the dictator Pinochet did pretty well. Should Chileans not have rebelled against the dictator Pinochet?
Take the Taliban for example. Some people say during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, at least there was security and peace.
Should the Afghans have accepted the Taliban forever then? The same goes for Syria under Assad.
Let me end with another picture.
These are girls from Aleppo, born and raised in the same city as the fully-veiled policewomen you just saw.
These are Kurdish female rebels, fighting the Assad regime.
Within Kurdish society and especially in PKK circles,
women, more or less, have the same rights as men.
I joined these ladies on the front line, and the one on the left is a sniper.
The other two were shooting in front of me at a tank.
To my knowledge, most Western armies--American, Norwegian, French--do not allow women on such active combat duties.
While we were sitting in a destroyed house, machine gun fire was in the back. Shells were hitting nearby.
We were talking about the subject of women in Syria, women in the Middle East, in fact.
She told me something which I think is very important, and which pretty much sums it all up.
She said, "How can you expect women to be free if the whole society is not free?"
Thank you for your attention.