What has opened the eyes of many Syrian refugees in foreign countries is the global oppression.  I am happy that we started looking at things in the bigger picture. We came to the conclusion that what happened in Syria is a result of something bigger and rotten that is happening on a political and economic level.   However, the struggle is not over and will never be.

by Ahmad

July 2017

I. The Start of the Revolution

In 2011, the Middle-East exploded with protest. No fear, no going back, no weakness because now it was either the people or the governments. The Arab spring did have a domino effect indeed. Rapidly it spread over the Middle-East,  and Syria was not an exception.

Some say the Syrian revolt started at the beginning of 2011 and some say at the third month of that year. It began when some children at the age of 10 or 11 wrote this message on the walls of Dar’a: “the time has come, doctor” referring to the end of the Syrian dictatorship. The children were driven to the security basements, were tortured and got their nails pulled. The parents freaked out and went to ask about their children.  The reply was: “your kids never came to existence.  Go make new ones and if you can’t,  then send us your wives.  We will do it for you”.

Revolts started in the southern part of Syria and grabbed the attention of many Syrian cities where people went on  strike,  to protest and express their support.  Assad faced the revolt with laughter on TV and with an iron hand on the innocents on the streets.

Syria is a very diverse country.  All religions and sects were present in the protest, all schools of thinking and all regions.  “One, one, one, the Syrian people are one” or “we have no sectarianism”,  the chants went. Assad was becoming more brutal toward his people,  and that was when people decided to stand up for their dignity and fight back at the end of 2011.

Members of the Syrian army ignored the orders and joined the revolution with their simple weapons.  The main reason people in Syria retaliated and decided to fight back was that women were being raped and children were being killed.  Volunteers went from all over the country with the objective of liberating Syria and establishing democracy. Female fighters participated as snipers and some  managed to take tens of Assad soldiers down. The Free Syrian Army or FSA, were guerrilla war fighters whose main goal was to protect the people and bring down the regime

Solidarity grew so fast that by 2012 the people took control of most of the country. A lot of people were looking forward to  liberation and waiting for it.  But it never came. Assad concentrated his militia on controlling wealthy neighborhoods. He wanted their support and he had it.  The revolution took the shape of a class war between the oppressed and the ruling class.  When I use the word, war, I am referring to all types. Yes, a psychological war by the Assad regime to torture children  in front their fathers. Yes, humiliation by regime soldiers raping a woman  in front of her chained husband.  I mean  the regime’s starving people to death by sieges that never allowed any type of food to enter a region, or bombing the fields so that people would  have no food supply. Some activists in besieged areas of Syria where people were starving, started a project to fight back. The group is called the 15th garden. It supplies the Syrian people with seeds to create self-sufficiency. It is not easy to defeat the power of the people.

II. Escalation and Terrorism

Syrian society is diverse. Both Assads made sure to introduce certain sects to the government more than others.  Bashar al-Assad  imprisoned jihadists coming to Syria from Iraq after the war with the Americans.  He pardoned the jihadists to release terrorism.   A beast, Islamist terrorism indeed is. Ignorance is clearly seen among most of them.

Syrian jihadists who joined extremists like ISIS were young. A young man can’t really decide, judge or choose on such matters when experts are lacking.  Jihadists who came from abroad for instance have no clue about how Syria is geographically. They have no idea what they just bombed and invaded. When they speak Arabic,  they try to imitate Mohammed’s Arabic as a symbol,  and it sounds horrible. That shows that they are trying to hold on to something, no matter what.

The high potential of fear and destruction of the country and infrastructure that ISIS possessed was absolutely not an obstacle for Bashar al-Assad.  He used this to prove that he was right all along, that he was not the worst.  That led to an increase in the number of his supporters and calls by his people, artists and actors to use chemical weapons on terrorism.   He influenced his fans to give the green light for more murder. Assad supporters never hesitated for a second to declare their total support. As a result, he became more and more brutal, and that meant more people dying.

Day after day Assad was losing,  which is why he asked for the intervention of super-sectarian militias  known as the “Hezbollah.”  Hezbollah is led by the Shi’a Muslim scholar ‘Hassan Nasrallah’ who fought against the Israeli army and kicked them out of Lebanon in 2000.  For that reason, at that time, his picture invaded every house in Syria and people prayed for him and praised him in every conversation.  But now,  his hidden sectarian intention was out,  and Syrians were disappointed.

I have a friend from Qusayr village near the Syrian border with Lebanon,  who  told me a story about a man he knew there.  “There was an old man where I used to live and he had a son whom he loved. The man had been saving money to help his son get married.  But the 2006 Lebanese-Israeli war started. Refugees started coming from Hezbollah-controlled areas because they were being bombed by the Israelis. This man used the money he had saved for his son, in order to support the refugees instead.  He told his son to be patient and that God would compensate him in the future. When the war ended, the refugees went back home. Seven years later, they sent their children to Syria in support of Hezbollah’s intervention in the Syrian civil war.  Hezbollah militias killed this man’s son a week before his wedding. What made them so brutal?

The religious figures in general have failed the people the most. They were divided into a neutral group, a  pro-Assad group and Salafi extremists.  Assad’s army started dividing the people and provoking  anger by torturing Sunnis,  and by targeting Sunni neighborhoods but not Alawi neighborhoods.  Furthermore, the Salafi Imams have been pushing the rebels to become extremists just like the Shi’a militias that intervened as well.

It went very fast.   Jihadists came from everywhere in response to the calls of the Salafi Imams. Many Muslim countries for whom Iran represents a threat,  supported these extremists in order to make them a front line against Iran. The Iranian reaction was to become even more extremist and push harder.  At a certain moment the number of frustrated Syrians was high and they formed the Syrian Al Qaeda.   It sounds horrible but actually most of them were just Syrian kids who were ready to become extremists after they lost everything, and after every single country and nation had failed them. The foreigners kept on coming to Syria to give their Afghani, Chechnyan or African experience to the battlefield.

III. Conclusion

The people rebelled because they wanted to catch up with the rest of the world.  We felt that we were being left behind because we were focusing on the wrong objectives and going in the wrong direction. No one could foresee the escalation.   The question remains: “Which is better?  Chaos or Dictatorship?”

As one Syrian said: “When I left, I had done everything possible to stay. ” Leaving your country and risking your life is not easy. The Syrians paid a big price, hoping that it would pay-off one day.

What has opened the eyes of many Syrian refugees in foreign countries is the global oppression.  I am happy that we started looking at things in the bigger picture. We came to the conclusion that what happened in Syria is a result of something bigger and rotten that is happening on a political and economic level.   However, the struggle is not over and will never be. Solidarity is what kept us alive one day in Syria. Today, we know that a lot of oppressed nations out there are desperate for our support and solidarity as well. The complexity of international politics did lead to a lot of immoral situations. What does it mean when you have enough money to go to Mars but you can’t afford saving refugees from the sea? What does it mean when the most powerful armies couldn’t destroy a small militia like ISIS? Or you can’t afford to support solar energy but you can invade Iraq?  This is the infinite hypocrisy of the current system.

No one is for the people but the people. The sooner the society realizes that, the better for our collective benefit.