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NY Times Op-Ed, Nov. 14, 2019
The Brief and Inspiring Life of James Le Mesurier
By Janine di Giovanni
Ms. di Giovanni is the author of “The Morning They Came for Us:
Dispatches from Syria.”
On Monday morning, James Le Mesurier, the founder of Mayday Rescue, a
charity that supported and trained the White Helmets, the Syrian civil
defense group, was found dead in Istanbul. His body was found outside a
building in the Beyoglu district where he had an apartment and office.
It is unclear whether Mr. Le Mesurier, who was 48 and healthy, fell or
was pushed from the balcony of his apartment. The Turkish authorities
have started an investigation.
Mr. Le Mesurier, a former British Army officer, had worked in Iraq and
Kosovo before turning his attention to Syria. He was committed to
ensuring war-torn communities learn how to take care of themselves when
no one else was coming to save them. He was awarded the Order of the
British Empire in 2016 for his work.
The White Helmets are emergency medical workers. They have, according to
their own estimate, rescued about 115,000 people and lost more than 250
of their own volunteers — they have a high chance of being killed
themselves when they rush to the scene of a bombing. This was the world
the funny, smart, brave and principled Mr. Le Mesurier worked in.
His work earned him many detractors, including Maria Zakharova, the
spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Three days
before his mysterious death, Ms. Zakharova claimed that Mr. Le Mesurier
was a “former agent of Britain’s MI6, who has been spotted all around
the world.”
Most foreign correspondents, humanitarian workers and United Nations
officials frequently get landed with the sobriquet. There is no evidence
that Mr. Le Mesurier was a spy.
I saw him as a humanitarian who accomplished enormous feats in
alleviating the suffering of civilians in Syria. I first encountered him
after spending time in Aleppo during the terrible days and nights of
fierce aerial bombardment, where barrel bombs were dropped on the city
by the Syrian regime’s jets.
I have been under fierce bombardment before — in Sarajevo, Chechnya and
Iraq — but Syria was something else. The sheer terror of civilians
buried under the weight of concrete buildings, sometimes for hours,
sometimes for days, was unforgettable.
Mr. Le Mesurier’s concept of the White Helmets was to train civilians to
look after their neighbors, to pull them out of the rubble, to bring
them back to life. He always told me that people were more likely to
search for others if they knew it was a member of their community. “If
you get buried, you know someone is looking out for you,” he said.
“Someone is coming for you. This is how community strengthening works.”
ImageMembers of the Syrian Civil Defense carried a victim after an
airstrike on a market in Ras al-Ain in northern Syria last May.
Members of the Syrian Civil Defense carried a victim after an airstrike
on a market in Ras al-Ain in northern Syria last May.Credit...Syrian
Civil Defense White Helmets, via Associated Press
The White Helmets were formed in 2014. Soon after, Khaled Omar Harrah, a
former home decorator and father of two, pulled a 10-day-old baby, who
had been buried for 16 hours, out of the wreckage of a building. The
YouTube video went viral. Mr. Harrah was killed in an airstrike in 2016.
By then, the White Helmets were superheroes. They were nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize. A Netflix documentary about their work won an Academy
Award in 2017, and Hollywood stars signed petitions in solidarity.
George Clooney bought the rights to a film about them.
But the White Helmets had dangerous enemies, most notably those attached
to Russia. By 2015, the Russians had joined the dogfight over the skies
of Aleppo as a partner to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The
Russians bombed many civilian targets, including hospitals. The White
Helmets became more vulnerable; more than half were killed in
“double-tap” strikes, where Syrian regime and Russian warplanes returned
to the site of a bombing to target the rescue workers.
The Russians unleashed an army of trolls to discredit the White Helmets
by branding them “Al Qaeda.” Mr. Le Mesurier took on these adversaries,
dismantling their accusations about funding and the lies the White
Helmets supposedly spread about Russian and Syrian government attacks.
There were also personal slurs, about his character and his background
in the British Army, from pro-Assad trolls and bloggers, but he shrugged
them off with a kind of nonchalance. The only time I saw him get truly
angry was when one of the trolls mentioned his wife, Emma Winberg, who
works for Mayday. She was asleep in their apartment at the time of his
death.
Mr. Le Mesurier’s enemies were persistent and their reach was wide.
According to a study by One Syria Campaign, an international advocacy
group, “Bots and trolls linked to Russia have reached an estimated 56
million people with tweets attacking Syria’s search and rescue
organization, the Syria Civil Defense — also known as the White Helmets
— during ten key moments of 2016 and 2017.”
Since the Russians joined the war in 2015, the White Helmets have been
filming attacks on opposition-held areas with GoPro cameras affixed to
their helmets. I was told by countless United Nations officials and
human rights activists that what the Russians feared most was evidence
that could land them before a war crimes tribunal.
The White Helmets caught the Russians red handed and recorded their
crimes on video. In a secret villa on the grounds of the United Nations
Office in Geneva, a group of forensic experts are going through
thousands of hours of videos and photographs made by civilians and
others, which will hopefully one day bring justice. Syria is probably
the most-documented war ever.
I often spoke with Mr. Le Mesurier and traveled with him to a White
Helmets training exercise at a secret location in Turkey in 2016. “Why a
secret location?” I asked. “Security,” he replied. “Do you know how many
people want us dead?”
I watched former vegetable sellers, teachers and scuba diving
instructors learn how to dig for babies under concrete slabs and put out
fires. At night, I listened to them tell stories, play music and prepare
for a friend’s wedding in Aleppo the following week.
They were weary and embattled. Aleppo fell a few weeks later, changing
the tide of war for good. The United Nations stopped counting the dead.
The peace process stalled. Syria came off the front pages.
The misery and the bombings did not stop. Mr. Le Mesurier continued
working. He planned to bring the concept of the White Helmets to other
war zones.
What saddens me most, aside from the loss of a good man, is that
front-line humanitarian workers are protected by international law under
the Geneva Conventions. But in Syria, no one is immune from death: not
civilians, and not those helping to ease their misery.
Janine di Giovanni (@janinedigi) is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and the
author of “The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria.”
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