After doubts grow, a regime backer flees Syria

CAIRO — Younes al-Yousef rarely goes outside in Cairo, fearful that even here someone will recognize him and word will get back to Damascus. He stays in a simple, rented apartment with his wife and children, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and watching TV for the latest from the homeland he fled, Syria.

Al-Yousef is waiting for the fall of a regime that he once believed in. He served as a cog in its machine, as a cameraman for a pro-government television station that showed Syrians "the reality" of the uprising.

"I was a supporter and I benefited from the regime, I can't deny it," the 35-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview in his apartment. "I tell you the truth, I was with the regime heart and soul."

But he said that as he watched security forces blast towns where protesters took to the streets to demand the ouster of President Bashar Assad, he could no longer believe the line he was helping bring to the public, that "terrorists" were tearing apart the country.

He expressed his doubts to a colleague. Then, fearing retaliation, he packed up his family and fled the country.

Al-Yousef's account of his experiences could not be independently confirmed, given the chaos in Syria and the limitations put on journalists by the government.

But his story gives a glimpse into how the regime has used one of its most powerful tools on the home front, the media, to keep the broader public on its side as it faces the greatest internal challenge in 40 years of rule by the Assad family.

Since protests began in March, the government has insisted they were not a popular uprising like those that toppled dictators in Tunisia and Egypt but the work of terrorists and armed groups in a foreign-backed plot to tear Syria apart. For Syrians watching the influential pro-regime media, this has been the cause of the daily bloodshed.

The message resonates among Syrians who have been taught for years that the Assads' secular, nationalist rule is what keeps the country together. There is particularly fear among minorities — the Alawites, a Shiite Muslim offshoot, and Christians — that Sunni Muslim fundamentalists will take over and retaliate against them. Even among the Sunni majority, which has been the backbone of the uprising, some fear the country will be torn apart if Assad goes.

Al-Yousef says he never had any reason to doubt the government's version.