The Civil March for Aleppo

By Andrew Quist

Berlin based journalist and blogger Anna Alboth had been following news reports of the war in Syria since its inception. But in 2016, after watching videos of the devastation in Aleppo and speaking with Syrian refugee friends about the war they fled, Anna felt she had to do something. She posted on Facebook a question and call to action: Will you march with me from Berlin to Aleppo, the route Syrian refugees take but in reverse, to raise awareness and influence public opinion in the hopes of ending the war?

As an activist who had previously organized a nationwide campaign in Poland to provide sleeping bags to Syrian and Iraqi refugees living in Berlin, Anna was not making an empty gesture with her posting. As support for the march began to pour in over her Facebook feed, Anna and others began organizing.

On December 26, 2016, a group of 400 ordinary citizens and humanitarians began the march. By the time they had completed the eight month trek through 12 different countries and reached the Lebanon/Syria border, more 3,500 people had joined for at least one leg of the journey. Thousands more local residents stopped to ask the participants about what they were doing. The conversations often began with puzzled curiosity, but ended with the onlooker asking what they too can do to help the people in Syria.

By taking action to raise awareness for the plight of Syrians, Anna and her fellow travelers were able to resist the psychological bias of pseudoinefficacy and its gravitational pull to do nothing when confronted with a seemingly insolvable problem. Their impact was felt in the media and in the minds of each individual who interacted with the march. Each marcher also inspired their network of friends and family to pay attention and make a difference.

The war in Syria has not ended, and Syrians continue to die. But the Civil March for Aleppo perhaps created a spark, a ripple for peace. As Robert F. Kennedy said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

You can read about the Civil March for Aleppo at civilmarch.org.

Photograph of marchers in Sarajevo by Janusz Ratecki