BACKGROUND OF GHASSAN AND INTIBAH KADI

ABOUT US
From our book we published in May 2016.

BACKGROUND OF GHASSAN AND INTIBAH KADI

Ghassan comes from a political activist family in Lebanon. He is in his early sixties, a Lebanese national with both parents born in Syria and, with family equally spread across both Syria and Lebanon. Due to his family and community background, Ghassan felt he could express himself more freely in his efforts to defend Syria and to tackle highly contentious subjects, by using a pseudonym, “Ghassan Kadi”. His writings are informed by his interesting, rich, but rather traumatic background.  

Ghassan grew up in the household of a very influential SSNP figure. It was the young Ghassan who urged his father to end the SSNP-Assad feud. In 1976, he told his father, “…they broke your bones in jail because you said “Tahiya Suria” and yet your party is still allowing this wedge to continue between it and the Syrian government.” It took two days for his father to start making initial contacts with Syrian officials which eventually led to the first meeting of Abdullah Saade, the then President of the SSNP, and Abdul Halim Khaddam and, the rest is history. That was the first ever link between the national movement in Lebanon and the Syrian government after the rift that Jumblat created. After that, all the other parties joined in.

Ghassan grew up witnessing many struggles in his city and region and also the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, starting with a non-militant version that his paternal uncle introduced to the Levant from Egypt. His uncle can be best described as the intellectual and spiritual father of the Levantine Muslim Brotherhood but, he never advocated violence. His father, as a great secularist, and this uncle struggled with each other throughout their lives. 

Ghassan lived mainly in Beirut for 9 years of the most difficult part of the civil war and was even held under home arrest by Christian ultra-right wing extremists for seven months. Ironically, his father, who had no idea whether his son was alive or dead, had negotiated the release of about 120 people of all backgrounds during the civil war and, in fact, had secured the release of a member of his son’s kidnapper’s family without realising that it was his own son who in exchange would be released but, he was still trapped in that hostile environment and managed to escape later on. 

Ghassan has been very active in the social media (Facebook) defence of Syria, mainly through writing articles, explaining the history and background of this war, explaining current issues and future scenarios of the “War On Syria” to his English speaking target audience. 

With his wife “Intibah”, he also occasionally produces translations of important reports or analyses that never make it outside of the Arabic speaking world. These include pieces by Sami Koleib, Ibrahim Al Amin, Ogarite Dandache, Tarek Tarshishi, Abdel Bari Atwan, Nahed Hatter and translations into English of “The Saker” interviews. Regrettably, the importance and significance of this contribution seems mostly lost on “pro-Syria”, Western analysts who preferred Western analysts to that of the Indigenous insight and expertise. 

Ghassan and Intibah, endeavoured to inform as wide an audience as possible via social media, for the first three and a half years of the war in the Facebook group “The Syrian Revolution: The Untold Story” and then in the group, “REDLINE SYRIA”. 

Since August 2014, most of Ghassan’s work is published on well-known sympathetic media sites. He is a regular guest writer for The Saker (http://thesaker.is/) and gets interviewed by Sputnik, Sputnik Radio, and has been published a number of times in Katehon, in Global Research and Oriental Review with his work being republished widely on other sites.

Intibah comes from a European heritage. Her professional background involved working mainly in roles of advocacy, community development and management of projects. She has also managed a number of organisations. 

When the attack on Syria began, Intibah swung into action to counter all the rhetoric and propaganda. By mid-2011, she was invited by the founder of the Facebook page “The Syrian Revolution; The Untold Story” to be one of the three Admins. Intibah took her role very seriously and worked countless hours towards this.

Late in 2014, she left that role and, with Ghassan and a few friends, established another group on Facebook called REDLINE SYRIA which aimed to highlight the Levantine narrative and priorities for the defense of Syria. This was in response to and in contrast to a growing issue of Western generated efforts to coralle the narrative into a narrow, non Indigenous, leftist, anti-imperialistic, “politically correct” framework and also as a response to the infiltration into the movement of “controlled opposition”, other entities and agenda. Many of the voices of Levantine analysts, journalists and activists had been silenced and even pilloried and control over the on line defense of Syria had been largely lost and diverted from the indigenous Levantines resulting in loss of control over what issues to priotise Intibah set up a blog to collect her and Ghassan’s work http://intibahwakeup.blogspot.com/