On Both Sides, Syrians Make Pleas to U.S.

Mohammad Hannon/Associated Press

Syrians at an antigovernment protest in front of the Syrian Embassy in Amman, Jordan, last month. Many who favor a strike have e-mailed American lawmakers.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The video from Kafranbel, a rebel-held village in northern Syria, has been sent by e-mail to members of the United States Congress and posted repeatedly on their Web sites — often in long strings of comments about Syria that have flooded unrelated posts about health care or the openings of new constituent offices.

Quoting Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King Jr., the video shows village residents who have lost family members in President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on the Syrian uprising as they plead for American military strikes on their own country.

"You have to say yes!" one little boy shouts. A young girl adds, "You should feel ashamed, because you can save our lives but you never want to try."

On the other side, equally passionate messages are bombarding the offices of American lawmakers from Syrians and Syrian-Americans who support Mr. Assad's government — or simply oppose the armed uprising. They use antiwar slogans and symbols and stress the growing influence of militants linked to Al Qaeda among the rebels.

"You shouldn't be standing against terrorism in Afghanistan and Mali, and when it comes to Syria, supporting it," said Johnny Achi, a Syrian-American electronic engineer who has lived for decades in Los Angeles. He is visiting Damascus as he helps run a Facebook-based campaign to mobilize Syrian-Americans to lobby their representatives against military intervention.

As Congress prepares to debate whether to endorse President Obama's proposed strike on the Assad government, administration figures have spread out to press their case, including Secretary of State John Kerry, who on Sunday made an effort to line up Arab support for intervention.

Simultaneously, on a more grass-roots level, the publicity war among Syrians to get their own messages out about the issue is also reaching a crescendo — and is just as assiduously focused on Capitol Hill and the American public.

Each side has increased efforts to connect with Americans on what it sees as common values, with the opposition stressing the fight for political rights in the face of a violent state crackdown and Mr. Assad's supporters stressing the secularism of his government.

The Syrian government is pushing hard, too. Parliament members have sent letters to their American counterparts in Congress, and Mr. Assad used a television interview with Charlie Rose to assert that his government was not behind the chemical attacks that have ignited international outrage.

Grass-roots activists are building on expertise developed over the past two years as they used the Internet and social media to get information out about Syria. Informal armies of antigovernment activists have long pumped out videos of dead children being pulled from rubble, of warplanes attacking neighborhoods, and of security forces torturing prisoners, even as government supporters have shared videos of rebels killing prisoners or desecrating shrines.

Yet with lawmakers primarily focused on their own voters, the limits of citizen media campaigns across oceans and front lines are being tested. The question for Syrians is whether their voices — those of the people most directly affected — will be heard.

Mr. Achi's group takes credit for helping change the minds of some fence-sitters, like Representative Michael G. Grimm, Republican of New York, who recently withdrew his support from Mr. Obama's plan.

But others are not sure. K. Ibrahim, 33, fled Syria after being detained twice for anti-Assad activism and now runs a social media campaign to challenge the government's claim that its opponents are primarily Islamist extremists. Yet she said she doubted her work would affect American decision makers.

"But for us, what can we do?" said Ms. Ibrahim, who asked to be identified by only part of her name for her safety. "We have to keep on shouting."

Both sides work from a common assumption that most Americans paid little attention to Syria until the question of direct American strikes came up. (One brief history of Syria on a pro-strike Web site begins, "There was once an evil dictator named Hafez al-Assad.") They assume that American voters operate from a basic antipathy to Middle East interventions after the Iraq war, and from a fear of Islamist extremists.

"It's perhaps the first time they heard about Syria or tried to find Syria on a map," Ms. Ibrahim said. "And they're like, 'Qaeda, Qaeda, Qaeda.' Come on, you're getting this out of context. You don't have just a choice between Qaeda and Assad."

Ms. Ibrahim, a member of Mr. Assad's minority Alawite sect, organized a response to a social media campaign by United States service members who were posting pictures of themselves with signs such as: "I didn't join the Marine Corps to fight for Al Qaeda in a Syrian civil war."

In her countercampaign, young Syrians have posted pictures of themselves engaged in decidedly non-extremist activities — drinking beer, wearing tight clothing, even laying out hashish on a table — with slogans like "I'm Qaeda? Seriously?"

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