ten years later, a French soldier recounts her intelligence mission at the start of the war in Syria

10 years ago, Enora Chame was sent to Syria. On Saturday, June 9, 2012, in a UN 4×4, the only French soldier in a group of international experts tasked with observing the ceasefire leaves for the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor, 450 km from Damascus. His vehicle was then stopped by armed men: “We are surrounded by aggressive young bearded men with evil eyes“, she describes. They are members of Al-Qaeda.

“There’s a part of the brain that tells you it’s not true: ‘I’m in a movie. It doesn’t happen, not to me.’ That part of the brain, says Enora Chame, is completely useless, while the other calculates everything, is hyper-vigilant and wonders ‘where can I go, what can I do? What can I say ? What did he just say?’ You’re too busy to be scared, actually. And me, the discomfort I had was that we were released without a fight. We didn’t fight to get out of it. We had waited for our fate like sheep in front of the butcher. And that’s what struck me. And the smile of the guy who wants to cut my throat, a warm smile. It’s a really, really weird feeling.”she describes.

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Enora Chame spent four months of 2012 in this universe of violence, lies, cruelty shared between the forces of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, the rebels of the Free Syrian Army, and jihadist factions. A cycle was then triggered and the UN could not stop it: it was the beginning of the war in Syria. Every day, civilians disappear, as if swallowed up. “After a while, you end up wondering how many people have been arrested and where are they? In Damascus, I rented a small apartment right next to some security services and the Ministry of Defense. And I said to myself that under my feet, if it is, there were cells filled with people, tortured people, prisoners, and I had the impression of stepping on people.“

Collecting lists, inspecting hospitals, morgues, places of attacks and attacks… To document the beginning of a war, because no one wants of a ceasefire, Enora Chame wrote then “we failed“. However, every day, she keeps the sense of the mission. She overcomes the fear felt by some of her 300 colleagues dispatched to the site, persists, recovers forensic medicine sheets, lifts the sheets to photograph the corpses. She records the traces of the dead, an obstinate scribe of the massacres perpetrated.I did everything I could do. I went quite far, all the same, in my search for testimonies, for the elements collected. But I don’t accept that excuse.”