A Very Busy Man Behind the Syrian Civil War’s Casualty Count
Andrew Testa for The New York Times
"I am a simple citizen from a simple family who has managed to accomplish something huge using simple means." Rami Abdul Rahman, the founder of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
COVENTRY, England — Military analysts in Washington follow its body
counts of Syrian and rebel soldiers to gauge the course of the war. The
United Nations and human rights organizations scour its descriptions of
civilian killings for evidence in possible war crimes trials. Major news
organizations, including this one, cite its casualty figures.
Yet, despite its central role in the savage civil war, the grandly named Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is virtually a one-man band. Its founder, Rami Abdul Rahman, 42, who fled Syria
13 years ago, operates out of a semidetached red-brick house on an
ordinary residential street in this drab industrial city.
Using the simplest, cheapest Internet technology available, Mr. Abdul
Rahman spends virtually every waking minute tracking the war in Syria,
disseminating bursts of information about the fighting and the death
toll. What began as sporadic, rudimentary e-mails about protests early
in the uprising has swelled into a torrent of statistics and details.
All sides in the conflict accuse him of bias, and even he acknowledges
that the truth can be elusive on Syria’s tangled and bitter
battlefields. That, he says, is what prompts him to keep a tight leash
on his operation.
“I need to control everything myself,” said Mr. Abdul Rahman, a bald,
bearish, affable man. “I am a simple citizen from a simple family who
has managed to accomplish something huge using simple means — all
because I really believe in what I am doing.”
He does not work alone. Four men inside Syria help to report and collate
information from more than 230 activists on the ground, a network
rooted in Mr. Abdul Rahman’s youth, when he organized clandestine
political protests.
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