'Liberation' of ancient Palmyra came at huge cost, say opposition activists

 'A 30-year-old activist from the anti-Assad Palmyra Revolutionary Coordination Committee, who asked to be referred to as Abdul Majd al-Tadmuri, told Fairfax Media "the regime wants to show the whole world with Russian support that they are the only force that can stand up against IS's barbarity ... but that's not true".

 The local opposition group, which started in July 2011 after the revolution against Dr Assad turned bloody, still receives footage from activists on the ground using satellite phones in hidden sites around the city. It said in a statement that Russian raids over a week had destroyed half of Palmyra's infrastructure.

 "When Palmyra was invaded in May 2015 by the Islamic State, it was more of a swap between the regime and the terrorists," 'Abdul Majd' said. "The Syrian forces withdrew from their military stronghold in the city centre, the airport, the prison, to the deserted areas outside of the city." '

Syrian exiles speak, five years into the war

 'University student Mais (29) found herself in the southern city of Deraa when the first major security crackdown took place on March 18th, 2011.

 “A lot of revolutionaries were in the streets calling for freedom when the solders started firing on them,” she recalled. That day, at least five were killed and dozens of others detained by security forces, never to be seen again.

 “The people woke up from their numbness,” she said. When her brother, an activist, was abducted and found dead outside Damascus in 2012, Mais blamed the regime’s security forces.  “I left Syria for Turkey because we lost my brother and my family didn’t want to lose me too. Also I’m a girl if they [the security forces] took me at that time I would be raped by them.” '

Former ISIS Hostage: 'We Need A New Narrative'

 Nicolas Hénin:

 "They are not enemies. They cooperate together. ISIS needs the regime to kill Syrians in huge numbers, so then, ISIS can come and tell the Sunnis in Syria we are the bad guys powerful enough to protect you. We are like your godfathers. Because as long as ISIS is here, the West will be terrified and will say, maybe, Bashar al-Assad is the lesser problem. This regime, which claims that it fights terrorism, that it is secular. It is nothing like that. All the foreign fighters who joined the Iraqi insurgency in the early years of the American occupation of Iraq, they all transited through Syria! And this transit was managed by the Syrian intelligence. The regime played with terrorism to ensure its future.

 Assad needs ISIS to survive. He released Jihadi prisoners at the very early stages of the revolution, he declared an amnesty. But this amnesty did not concern all the democrats. They stayed in prison. All the political prisoners in jail, they stayed in jail. But all the Jihadis, they were released because he wanted a civil war, he wanted this revolution to become a civil war. And for the very same reason he also created tremendous fear among the minorities in the country. So that the Syrian Christians, for instance, are convinced that if ever the revolution succeeds then they will be either dead or will have to flee, which was at least at the beginning totally wrong. Yes, there is definitely now concerns for the future of minorities in Syria. But at its early stage it was just people begging for its freedom.

 One of our main mistakes is to believe that ISIS is the problem. No, ISIS is just the result of the problem. If we fight only ISIS, is just like if we fight fever but don’t care of the disease. No, we have to fight the disease. And the disease, what is it? It is the massacres being committed against the Syrian population. Since the beginning of the revolution over 300 thousand Syrians have been killed. Do you know that the Syrian regime has killed between seven to ten times more civilians, since the beginning of the civil war, than ISIS? So it is our short view on this, and our only focus on ISIS and terrorism because we are afraid of these guys. And it’s normal because it’s their job to terrorize us. It is this which creates the conditions for ISIS to become prosperous."

Syrian recounts flight from civil war, struggle for acceptance

 'Syrian refugee Lawrence Powell was born in the wrong place at the wrong time, a secret "criminal" whose family disowned him as civil war erupted in his homeland. 

 "No one in my family or friends knew I was gay," he recalled Friday evening. "It's a crime in Syria. It's a scandal socially." 

 Then came the Arab Spring of 2011, which led to rulers being ousted from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. In Syria, though, rebels pushing for freedom of speech, jobs and education were killed by President Bashar al-Assad's regime. 

 "Blood brings blood," Lawrence said. "When people are being killed, they seek revenge. It was a real revolution. Then the revolution was stolen. ISIS came, Hezbollah came, the Free Syrian Army came. Unfortunately, this revolution by good people was stolen."

 When Lawrence refused to be seduced by a high-ranking government official, he was jailed for three months.

 "After jail, my family knew. To be outed by police - this is a scandal. And I am the oldest son, so I am like a role model for the family. So I was disowned."

 That's a bit of an understatement. His brothers pummeled him brutally, and Lawrence's sisters helped him escape through a window while the brothers took a break. George helped Lawrence move to Lebanon in 2013 while trying to obtain either U.S. or Canadian tourist visas. Neither country cooperated. But finally, after medical exams, background checks and repeated interviews, the treasured U.S. visa came through. The couple flew to Houston and visited George's family members en route to Colorado. They loved Lawrence, too.

 "They all showed me all the love," Lawrence said, beaming. "Even George's mother, who is 94 years old and very conservative. But after a day, she loved me so much.

 Personally, I have a good life, and everyone is welcoming me. But I want to tell the people that Middle Easterners aren't terrorists. We have the same fears you do. We just escaped from the war. We want to be productive, we want to work." '

Muzna Al-Naib speaking about Palmyra

 Muzna al-Naib:

 "The city is not saved. ISIS and Assad are basically two faces of the same coin. I spoke today to activists inside of Palmyra, they said nothing has changed. Before ISIS took this city, the artifacts were looted by Assad's shabiha, and the city has long been known to Syrians as the site of one of most horrific prisons, where people have been tortured to death. At least 1,800 people have been killed in the 80s, in seven massacres, and basically the city has been bombed with cluster bombs for the last few weeks, causing more than 50% of the neighbourhoods in the city to be destroyed.

 This is the perfect propaganda game. The city was handed to Daesh, to ISIS, according to the former attorney-general of Palmyra, who spoke about this; and now it was taken again. So as the loss of Palmyra was the perfect coin to get international attention, now the regaining of Palmyra is the same thing.

 There are two evils on the ground. The people on the ground are fighting both, but the outside world are more concerned about the artifacts than the people on the ground. No-one can claim they are more devastated about what is happening to the heritage of Syria than Syrians; but come on, human life is more important, the protection of civilians should be the priority of any narrative about Syria, and there is no excuse for putting all the attention on the artifacts and playing the propaganda game of Assad and ISIS.

 What needs to happen now is the protection of civilians. There are so many prisons right now in Syria where people are being tortured to death. The tragedy of Palmyra prison shouldn't have been repeated, shouldn't be going on right now. Inside Sednaya prison, people are dying in horrific ways right now. We need the world to act. We need them to prioritise human lives, our human values, rather than historical artifacts." 

The surprising ways fear has shaped Syria’s war

 'Syrians’ stories about life before 2011 call attention to a silencing fear that served as a pillar of the authoritarian regimes of Hafez al-Assad and then Bashar al-Assad. People consistently describe a political system in which those who had authority could abuse it limitlessly and those without power found no law to protect them. As one man explained: “We don’t have a government. We have a mafia. And if you speak out against this, it’s off with you to bayt khaltu — ‘your aunt’s house.’ That’s an expression that means to take someone to prison. It means, forget about this person. He’ll be tortured, disappeared. You’ll never hear from him again.”

 A lawyer described a world in which “a single security officer could control an area of 20,000 people holding only a notebook, because if he records your name in it, it’s all over for you.” Undercover spies and pervasive surveillance led parents to warn children not to speak because “the walls have ears.”

 “Nobody trusted anyone else,” a rural dentist noted. “If anyone said anything out of the ordinary, others would suspect he was an informant trying to test people’s reactions.” A drama student joked, “My father and brothers and sisters and I might be sitting and talking . . . And then each of us would glance at the other, [as if to think] ‘Don’t turn out to be from the security forces!’ ”

 A Syrian in exile since childhood noted: “When you meet somebody coming out of Syria for the first time, you start to hear the same sentences. That Syria is a great country, the economy is doing great. … It’ll take him like six months, up to a year, to become a normal human being. To say what he thinks, what he feels. … Then they might start whispering. They won’t speak loudly. That is too scary. After all that time, even outside Syria, you feel that someone is recording.”

 The spread of peaceful protests across the Arab world in 2011 helped launch a dramatically distinct experience of fear as a personal barrier to be surmounted. Syrians who participated in demonstrations explained that, aware of state violence, they never ceased to be afraid. However, they mobilized a new capacity to act through or despite fear. A mother told me that “no amount of courage allows you to just stand there and watch someone who has a gun and is about to kill you. But still, this incredible oppression made us go out … When you chant, everything you imagined just comes out. Tears come down. Tears of joy, because I broke the barrier. I am not afraid; I am a free being.”

 Syrians I meet follow each new crisis, from the Assad regime’s use of newly horrific weapons to the rise of the Islamic State, and lament the fate of a revolution that now fights tyranny on multiple fronts. Nearly all expressed despair with the foreign agendas distorting what began as a popular groundswell for dignity. “Many countries have interests in Syria and they are all woven together like threads in a carpet,” a Free Syrian Army commander shook his head. “We don’t know where this is leading. All we know is that we’re everyone else’s battlefield.” The 20-somethings who led demonstrations count lost comrades with a pain tinged with depression, even guilt. “I belong to the revolution generation, and I’m proud of that,” one young woman explained. “We tried our best to build something. We faced a lot, and we faced it alone. But we lost control. We don’t know what is useful anymore.”

 Many people’s most urgent fear is for their loved ones: children who have lost years of schooling, family scattered among Syria and several other countries, and relatives who have been arrested and never heard from again. A Syrian colleague articulated this fear in reaction to the January 2014 revelation of photographs evidencing systematic torture in regime prisons. “The most difficult part of the torture pictures,” he told me, “is not the decomposed flesh, the starved bodies … or even the knowledge that the torture is both widespread and systematic. These things have always been elements of our Syrian reality. What is so difficult that I do not think we have the strength to overcome is the fear that some of these pictures may show us the body of someone we know and we hope is still alive.”

 In describing how they have experienced the Assad regime before and since 2011, citizens are transforming its power from something too menacing to be named into something whose naming renders it contestable. When a state uses fear to silence subjects, their talking about that fear — articulating its existence, identifying its sources, describing its workings — is itself a form of defiance and an assertion of the will to be free.'

One of Madaya’s critically injured speaks out: ‘We're human beings, not just numbers to be moved around’

 'Despite surrendering to the Syrian regime last September, Madaya remains blockaded. That means nothing and no one enter or exit without the government’s permission. The 40,000 civilians trapped inside rely entirely on the goodwill of the Syrian regime to eat, and in the case of Ibrahim Abbas, for permission to leave the town to get the surgery he needs to stay alive beyond the short term.

 "I was injured on March 7, 2015—a Friday. I was going to Friday prayers, and was hit by a sniper round in my stomach that cut up my intestines. Currently there are no colostomy bags in the field hospital. I have one bag in poor condition. You're supposed to change the bag once a week. I've been using this bag for an entire month.

 We're human beings, not just numbers to be moved around. We don't need aid or humanitarian campaigns, we need the world to look at us with humane eyes. We need the world to appreciate, and understand our situation. I'm a young man, 26 years old, and until now I've done nothing in my life, and I feel like I'm an old man of 60.

 The regime arrested me at the end of 2012 and forced me to join the army. I served for six months, then fled at the beginning of 2013 and returned to my hometown of Baqin, next to, and administratively a part of, Madaya. I committed myself to civil resistance and worked as an independent citizen journalist. Currently I'm an activist with a civilian project called Ammirha." '

 This isn't a war, it's a revolution belonging to people who came out to demand the most basic rights—freedom, equality, and life with dignity. I'm with this revolution until my last breath; on the other hand, I hope it ends as soon as possible and in a way that satisfies everyone. Five years is enough in my opinion.

Daraa tells story of Syrian revolution

 ' “The first spark of the Syrian revolution came out from the al-Arbaeen school in Daraa after a number of students were detained for spraying anti-regime graffiti,” Abu Ali Mahamid, a member of the so-called Shura Council of Daraa, told Anadolu Agency on Monday.

 On March 18, 2011, thousands of protesters set out from the historic Omari Mosque in the city to protest abuses by regime forces and demand the release of students. Mahamid said pro-Assad forces threatened to open fire on the protesters in an effort to disperse the mass rallies.

 “As demonstrators did not heed their calls, security forces opened fire on the protesters, killing two people, who were the first two martyrs of the Syrian revolution,” he said.

 Five years after the revolution, almost all of Daraa’s landmarks have been destroyed, including the Omari Mosque, whose minaret was brought down by regime shelling in 2013.'

The Syrian Spring Blossoms Again

  "I still remember that day clearly, the February 11, 2011. The people of Egypt succeeded in overthrowing the regime that held it for three decades. The windows in our house were closed that day by my mom; she was fearful like any other parent in Syria. My mom always told us not to have any political discussion with anybody out of the walls of our place. My mom closed the windows and started dancing, clapping and ululating. In Arab countries ululation is commonly used to express celebration - that day we celebrated the feeling of freedom in our house for the first time.

 Many people thought at the beginning that the Syrian revolution is a copy of the other revolutions in the Arab world, but this is false. Syria was a very specific situation which pushed the people to be unintentionally ready for a change which was demanded years ago. People had been fed up with injustice and all the regime needed to do is make one more mistake.

 As time passed, the regime had almost the complete comfort to react violently to the peaceful chants. The regime's brutality increased and many massacres were committed in different Syrian cities and towns.

 The number of political detainees reached unbelievable numbers. Syrians raised their voices again and again but the international community did nothing serious to stop the bloodshed. Some Syrians lost hope in getting any international support, so the Free Syrian Army was established by officers who quit the regime's army, the ones who refused to join the regime that was committing war crimes.

 Five years have passed and everybody is trying to cover up what really happened and is still happening in Syria. They want Syria to turn into black and then they can be satisfied with their scenarios about extremism and Syria being a field for a civil war, but they are not going to be able to hide the truth which is as clear as the sun.

 Syrians are the doctors in the field hospitals who are keeping Syrians alive. Syrians are the civilians who are sharing their last amount of food under siege and shelling. Syrians are the teachers who are volunteering to teach the children under siege and doing their best to feed their minds even though they can't feed their stomachs. They are the refugees who are still holding Syria inside their hearts wherever they are going and trying to show the best in them to the whole world. 

 The revolution flag was all over Syria for the last two Fridays, and the black flags that the regime and regime's supporting entities wanted to look like as if they belong to the revolutionaries just disappeared!

The color that they tried to make Syria stick to for the last 3 years was demolished in two days and by hundreds of peaceful demonstrations. The Syrian revolution is still alive against all the faces of oppression in Syria. And if you are not able to see it after all, that would be because you don't want to."

Meeting the Syrians who helped start the revolution

 'Mohanned: "We stood defiant, facing the police and the shabiha militia, demanding freedom, justice and democracy. They opened fire, some of us fell dead, but we held on, unarmed, in a peaceful manner. It was an incredible feeling, it's indescribable.

 I'd rather sacrifice myself for 5 or 10 years, to put an end to this régime, than be controlled by this régime for centuries on end. In most countries, people are allowed to protest, as part of their fundamental rights, but in Syria, it was suicidal."

 Riad al-Asaad: "The entire world has turned a blind eye to the situation. Now there are talks of a political solution, but the régime should put an end to its offensive, and to its bombings. During the last conference in Geneva, the Syrian régime kept on advancing towards Deraa, and on the coast, and besieged Aleppo. The régime prevents access to humanitarian aid, and starves civilians, while the US and Europe do nothing about it."

 Aziza Jalad: "Just last week, we saw that many protests broke out in Syria. If the bombings ended, and if the régime stopped killing or arresting demonstrators, I believe the entire country would keep on protesting, including in territories controlled by the régime."

Yassin: "The ceasefire could pave the way for a permanent solution in Syria. But for that to happen, things need to change. There will not be any solution if Bashar al-Assad stays in power. Syrians are fleeing their homes because of the war. If the war ends, they will stay in Syria. But the war started because they wanted Assad to step down, so if the current régime stays in place, the migrant crisis will continue."

 Ziad Majed: "Russia pretended it was there to fight Daesh [ISIS], and we see that Daesh is still occupying 40% of the Syrian territory. What Russia really did was save the Assad régime from military collapse, they gave it the possibility to regain some territory. The peace talks are starting, and maybe the Russians thought that Assad was asking too much, the analogy used by his state affairs minister about refusing any discussion concerning the transition, is challenging the Russian, American and de Mistura discourses about the necessity of having a transition. Putin wanted to show he is back internationally, and is imposing himself on the Syrian situation, and maybe he is telling Assad to calm down a little bit, because Assad was saved due to this military intervention.

 Maybe with the new Russian position, it will put pressure on the régime to accept compromises. What continues to be the problem, is the place of Bashar al-Assad in a transition. For the opposition and for the majority of the Syrian people. After 45 years of rule by the Assad family, the only condition of success for the talks, is the departure of Bashar al-Assad. So that the fight against Daesh will start, so that the many challenges facing Syrian society can start being addressed. If they agree on how to deal with the Assad question, many of the other things, I'm not saying they would be easy, but at least negotiations on that could start.

 The problem today is, what kind of transition? The Syrian régime uses the term, 'coalition government', meaning the régime will stay, and add some opposition figures. While Geneva I stipulates a transitional body, that will lead to elections, and then to turning the page of the past. So I think the negotiations will mainly be about that, and how to deal with Daesh later.

 I think the Syrian population has benefitted a lot from the ceasefire, because for four years now it has been under the bombing of the Assad's aeroplanes, of barrel bombing, of the Ruusians recently, and the consequences of all sorts of fighting. We've seen that as soon as the ceasefire was respected, partially, all kinds of demonstrations against the régime; peaceful gatherings, started again, and there was a kind of rebirth of civil society, that in the last years emerged, tried to organise itself, to survive, and now is feeling some help to end the conflict. On the other hand, without a political horizon for the ceasefire, all parties will try to benefit from it, militarily speaking, to reorganise their troops, to prepare for the next phase. Unless they understand that this is a long-term ceasefire, and in parallel the peace process will lead to long-term changes in Syria. The priority would be the régime change, at least the Assad change, if some structures of the régime would be preserved for the next phase.

 There are three or four reasons why Assad didn't fall in 2011. Unlike in Tunisia, in Syria the structure of the régime is a mixture of security services, military, and a family clan, based on sectarianism and the confessional configuration in Syria. The reaction of the régime was not to look for a political compromise, but to crack down on the demonstrators, to destroy the society of the demonstrators, and use all sorts of force, exactly as Bashar's father did in 1980 and 1982. The the reaction of the régime was quite different, and led to the militarisation.

 The second thing is the geo-strategic location of Syria. On the Israeli border, on the Iraqi border, on the Turkish border, with all that meant with regional actors becoming involved.

Thirdly, the Syrian régime had a strong ally in Iran, that from day one supported it, and then Russia also jumped in, because it considered it was its ally that was being targetted, and Putin wanted to show that he is loyal to his old alliances, and will protect them.

 All that generalised the conflict, and internationalised it, plus Daesh, but at the origin, and I think the major responsibility, is of course that of the régime, that refused all kinds of political compromises, of dealing politically with its own society, and preferred to just use violence against it, to crack down on it. This has also been the history of Syria, unfortunately, since 1970, where the régime replaced politics in the society with violence, that is the killing machine that operates against all kinds of dissidence and opposition, and preserves politics for regional and international questions. So I think it's a mixture of that, and the timing did not play for a quick change in the régime. We saw in 2015 with all that, that the régime was very close to collapse, and that's probably why at that moment Russia decide to restore the balance, in order to make a compromise where they were part of the new Syria.' 

Syrian revolutionaries: ‘Carrying arms was not a choice’

 'Mohammad al-Ibrahim, 23, was one of thousands of young men who took part in the early, initially peaceful demonstrations. He told Al Arabiya English that the uprising forced him to switch paths and take up arms to defend himself. He was 17 when he said he led some of the demonstrations, shouting anti-government slogans, reciting poetry, and singing revolutionary songs. His personal turning point was towards the end of 2011, during a peaceful protest. He said none of his fellow demonstrators were armed when regime soldiers opened fire, killing two of his cousins.

 “I don’t regret using weapons against a monstrous and brutal regime… and if I can go back in time and pick up arms in the face of a regime that destroyed my homeland, my future, and killed my beloved ones I would not hesitate,” said Ibrahim. “I don’t believe that the revolution ‘failed’ because it became armed,” he said, adding that the Syrian regime had been behind the creation of Islamist militant groups and had been aided by foreign intervention.

 Ibrahim’s mother, who refers to herself as Umm Mohammad, said she had not wanted her son to take up arms, but felt she had no right to interfere in his decision. “I told myself my son isn’t of more value than the rest of the Syrian men who are dying to protect us.” Repeating what she claims is the sentiment of most of the wounded men, she said “[It turned out] the only reaction the regime understood was the same weaponized response they used against us, even though the revolution was initially peaceful. The very regime that drowned out our voices with its bullets had to hear us when we picked up our guns. They took our land, homes, memories, everything beautiful, even our beloved ones, and their actions led to my son becoming crippled in front of my own two eyes. What do you think our reaction is going to be? Of course were going to resort to arms… to protect ourselves.”

 Hadi Abdullah, an independent Syrian journalist and activist from the city of Al-Qusayr, Homs, said that many Syrian men had no other choice other than to pick up arms. “The crimes committed by the Assad regime pushed the Syrian protestors to carry arms… many Syrian men carried arms not by choice but were forced to defend themselves. We hoped that our revolution would continue as a peaceful movement and attain freedom and democracy without a single bullet,” Abdullah told Al Arabiya English.

“No one can sit and watch Assad’s Shabiha [thugs] slaughtering entire families than resist taking arms to defend their family. No one can sit and watch the regime forces detain women and abstain from picking up weapons. It’s human nature to fight to live and defend those you love.”

 Bashar al-Zoubi, who is also referred to as Abu Fadi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Front and is head of the Yarmouk Brigade, also said that picking up arms was never a choice and that they were ‘welcomed with tanks and bullets’ while peacefully protesting. “We are revolutionaries and not opposition. We took the streets demanding freedom, and a better future for Syria. Our words were not heard, so we were forced to take up arms. The opposition might have a different agenda than the revolutionaries, but this is what we’re fighting for. The ceasefire in Syria has brought back the wonderful old days of the revolution, where we went out as one and demanded for our rights.”

 Mohamad, 24, who asked to not have his full name disclosed, said he decided to join one of the early rebel groups, the Free Syrian Army, after his mother was killed in the town of Manbij in the northern Aleppo province. He said he was at home when Syrian airstrikes hit the market where his mother and sister had gone to buy clothes for his sister’s soon-to-be-born child. She had lost both her legs and there weren’t enough medical professionals and supplies to save her. After losing my mother, I felt I had nothing left to lose. If someone keeps hitting you, and you tell them to stop through words over and over, and they continuously hit you... you're going to strike back, am I correct?" '

"Doctor, Your Turn," The Young Men Who Started Syria's Revolution Speak About Daraa, Where It All Began

 'Omar first heard about the graffiti at morning recess. It was winter, he was 14, in the middle of 10th grade, and his friends said it was just a prank. The day before, just after school, a handful of Omar's classmates found some red paint and scrawled, "Your turn doctor," on the school's wall. The "doctor" was Bashar al-Assad, Syria's dictator, and in Daraa, Syria, in February 2011, those words could get you killed.

 It's been five years since Omar's friends wrote on their schoolyard wall; now the city of Daraa is divided between enclaves controlled by the Syrian government and parts that Omar says have been "liberated" by the Free Syrian Army. Omar avoided arrest, but his friend Yacoub, who was 14 at the time and also in the 10th grade, was not so lucky. Over the course of weeks, the police in Daraa completely brutalized Yacoub. They forced him to sleep naked on a freezing wet mattress, they strung him up on the wall and left him in stress positions for hours, and they electrocuted him with metal prods.

 It was in Daraa, a mostly Sunni city well known for its well-to-do families and close military and financial links to the state and the Assad family, that the first full-blown rebellion broke out.

Omar remembers going to mosque on one of the first Friday protests and watching the imam — who had for years read out a pro-government message at the end of his sermons — throw the regime's talking points on the ground. After prayers, the families and friends of the boys who had been arrested poured onto the streets, and began chanting "We want our kids out of prison." The police responded with tear gas, live ammunition, and sniper fire. Omar was among that first group of protesters, and remembers fondly how the people of Daraa — even those who had no connection to his friends — rallied around them.

 "I thought the people in the neighborhood would be against us, and think we were just stupid kids," Omar remembered. "In the end, writing on that wall was viewed as something heroic and courageous."

  Ismael, now 43, worked as an administrator at Daraa's main hospital during the early days of the uprising. One of his young cousins had been rounded up in the graffiti arrests, and Ismael was one of the first to join the protests. A few weeks into the uprising, Ismael secretly filmed medical workers uncovering a mass grave on the outskirts of town, he passed the film to a relative in the US, and it was eventually aired on CNN. Afterwards, Ismael was arrested, but his family managed to scrape together $20,000 to bribe an official and get him released. He immediately fled the country, and he's now a refugee in Toledo, Ohio. He says countless cousins and uncles have disappeared into Assad's prisons, or wound up dead on the streets.

 An official with the Free Syrian Army, Khaled now lives in rebel-controlled Daraa and he's had a few close calls, dodging the explosive-filled metal drums the Syrian military shoves out the back of helicopters. Since Russia, the US, the Syrian government and rebels agreed to a partial ceasefire last month, the front line that divides the Daraa city center has been largely quiet. But the years of barrel bombs, offensives, and counteroffensives, have taken a serious toll. "This generation is pretty much destroyed emotionally — now kids' toys are weapons." Khaled says. "We all need therapy." Khaled has the means to flee Syria, but he's decided instead to devote his life to overthrowing the Assad regime. He spends his days coordinating rebel activity around Daraa: he helps train new recruits, and make sure that some government services continue to function. "I want things to go back to normal, that's my real hope." '

'Curse your soul, Jolani': The inner-struggle of Syria's opposition

  'Hundreds of anti-regime demonstrations have taken place in Syrian opposition towns over the past week after a five year hiatus.

 One of the most surprising twists to this tale has been how the Syrian population have remained largely "unradicalised", despite nothing more than superficial support from democratic powers. 

 Popular songs have even take aim at the jihadi fighters in the neighbourhood.

 [The revolution] was hijacked by the bearded men,

 Curse your soul Jolani [Nusra leader] and your soul Hassoon [pro-regime Sunni cleric],

 Curse your soul Baghdadi [IS leader] wherever you are too!

 This combined with the fact that, in many areas, Islamist fighters such as the Nusra Front - al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise - are their only lines of defence against pro-regime militias is proof that Syrians have not fallen victim to Stockholm Syndrome. Chants in support of the Free Syrian Army accompanied by energetic singing and dancing relive the heady days of 2011. The relative peace means the war - but not the fight - has been temporarily put on hold.

 Such secular "slights" to the puritanical sensitivities of local Salafi-jihadi fighters have rattled some elements within Nusra, which angrily broke up one demonstration in Idlib province this week, threatening to shoot at protesters.

 "Both fundamentalist extremists and Assad regime supporters have been embarrassed by the protests. Supporters of both groups have claimed that the protesters are being paid by foreign agents," said Oz Katerji, a Middle East analyst. "Democracy and free speech terrifies reactionary counter-revolutionary forces more than anything else."

 "As soon as the bombing lightens then immediately the jihadists are weakened," said Robin Yassin-Kassab, a British-Syrian writer and co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. "Assad produces jihadists. When a battle takes place, Nusra is seen as a friend of the revolution because it is fighting the regime. When a battle isn't taking place then Nusra is seen as an authoritarian power trying to enforce an unjust political project. Nusra's project is not democratic and it must be upset that after five years of trying to embed itself in revolutionary Syria, still the people on the streets are calling for freedom, democracy and the Free Syrian Army, and not the jihadist militias."

  Michael Karadjis, from the University of Western Sydney College and a writer on Syrian affairs, believes that a reduction in bombing has given moderate revolutionary forces a shot in the arm. "The FSA supporters and civil uprisings were very tactically wise in coming out all over the country as soon as there was a lull in the bombing... or perhaps people spontaneously came out," he said. 

 If Russia and the regime re-launch major bombing raids on rebel towns to suppress these protests, as has been reported today in eastern Ghouta, then it would no doubt backfire and likely trigger a more unified and extreme military response from the opposition, particularly if international condemnation remains muted. Groups such as Nusra, which have been among the best-performing armed opposition groups, would no doubt be among the main benefactors. The West and regional powers would also be in no position to ask rebels to cut ties with the extremist groups.

 "It is futile to demand the FSA not to have military coordination with groups like Nusra to fight the regime as the US has demanded for years. I'd go further, it is a call for mutual destruction of anti-Assad forces," Karadjis added. "With a regime like Assad's, some military element in [the resistance] is almost essential. But the greater the response, the less the civil component of the FSA's military struggle can raise its hand."

 The longer the bombing continues, the greater the potential that groups such as Nusra have to expand their ranks. "The ceasefire does have an isolating effect on groups like Nusra precisely because they thrive on the extremist atmosphere that inevitably comes from war," said Karadjis. "That is why Assad pushed for civil war from the moment the civil uprisings began." '

Activists who lit Syria revolt washed away in migrant wave

 ' "When I arrived in Germany, I felt like I was living with an open wound, like I'd lost my soul. I felt guilty for leaving everything behind," says Jimmy Shahinian, a 28-year-old activist with sharp features and jet-black hair. "We had made a promise that we would change things."

 Syria's conflict erupted on March 15, 2011, when protesters massed on the streets to demand that President Bashar al-Assad step down. Shahinian, a Christian, joined the movement, and was subsequently jailed and tortured.

 When the jihadist Islamic State group took over his native city Raqa in 2013, he began receiving terrifying death threats. Smuggled into Turkey in an ambulance, Shahinian became one of nearly five million Syrians who have fled the country since the conflict began.

 Yazan lived through a brutal, nearly two-year siege in the Old City of Homs, once known as the "capital of the revolution" but now squarely back in regime hands. "In Syria my body was besieged. Here, I am besieged in my head," says the 30-year-old. He admits he can't move on while his father and brother remain among the estimated 200,000 people held in the regime's hellish jails.

 "Here I can eat, I can sleep in safety. But however hard I try, I can't imagine the future," Yazan says. "My whole life is on hold until the regime falls."

 Ahmad al-Rifai, a 24-year-old who spent months taking photos in opposition strongholds across northern Syria, is also in Germany -- where more than one million asylum requests were registered last year. He blames the Syrian government but also the international community for the transformation of the revolt into a war that has killed 270,000 people.

 "In the good old days, the people would decide when and where to protest, or when to go on strike," Rifai says. "Now, the Syrian people have no decision-making power at all. Syria has become a playing field for major powers like Russia, the United States and Iran." '

The Syrian Revolution Is Not a Holy War

 "Before the uprising, Daraya was a sleepy middle-class suburb for Damascus residents. By 2011, it had become an epicenter of peaceful protests, as thousands marched in the streets calling for Assad to step down from power. As a member of the Syrian Christian community, I was overwhelmed with excitement to join this grassroots people’s movement that called for democracy, freedom and rights for all Syrians, no matter our differences.

 Syrians were united then. The church bells rang in Daraya in solidarity with the protesters. From their balconies in the narrow streets, Syrian Christians showered protesters below with rice and flowers. They marched hand in hand.

 By 2012, the Assad regime intensified its armed crackdown against the unarmed protesters in Daraya. A terrible massacre occurred there on Aug. 24, 2012, as Assad’s regime sent troops, secret police, and members of the elite 4th Division to prevent residents from fleeing the city by any means necessary. Families were executed in their homes, whole buildings of women and children were machine-gunned in the streets, and residents were even decapitated — long before the so-called Islamic State even existed.

 The state-run media launched an aggressive propaganda campaign claiming Muslims were massacring Christians, aiming to stoke fear of the opposition in the Christian community. As regime soldiers went door to door, searching for people to murder, it was the Christian community of Daraya that opened theirs to protect those fleeing the atrocities. One Catholic church treated the injured and prepared food for them.

 Assad attempted to break Daraya with chemical weapons in 2013, launching a horrific sarin gas attack that killed over 1,000 across the Damascus suburbs — many were children still in their pajamas when the nighttime attack happened. Images of asphyxiated children lined up on the ground are etched in our memories of that night. The international community was on the verge of holding Assad accountable for that atrocity, but the Russians intervened at the eleventh hour with a negotiated settlement. Before the ink was dry, Assad instituted a brutal starvation siege upon Daraya and neighboring Moadamiya.

 The Russians and Assad have proven adept at shifting the narrative surrounding the peace talks. We are asked to discount the atrocities that Daraya and other towns in Syria continue to suffer at the direction of Russian-manned command centers in Damascus. The fight against the Islamic State and al Qaeda, the narrative goes, is paramount.

 But how can one fight these extremists, who threaten to slaughter Christians and Muslims alike, without a moral commitment to ending the humanitarian crisis? And how can Moscow claim that it is fighting terror in Syria when it systematically contributes to the destruction of the very antidote to terror — civil society activists, women, and, yes, even us Christians who once lived in harmony with our countrymen in Daraya?

 Syrian priests to this day continue to defy the regime by covertly smuggling food into besieged Muslim neighborhoods, at the risk of their lives. The Bible tells us: Do not repay anyone evil for evil. If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. The threat this principle poses to Assad’s and the Islamic State’s authoritarian worldviews is more powerful than any man-made weapon.

 Just this week, Daraya’s local council reported to me that regime tanks are encircling the town and seem poised to stage a ground raid. Despite this threat, Daraya residents are taking advantage of the relative calm to organize peaceful demonstrations and a children’s festival. These demonstrations are happening throughout the country — after nearly five years of war, even a brief respite from the indiscriminate attacks was enough for Syrians to return to the streets to peacefully demonstrate their commitment to freedom from tyranny in all its forms.

 If Assad remains emboldened and enabled to treat peaceful opposition as terror — I myself have been charged by the regime’s terrorism court — it can only ensure that the church bells of Daraya never ring again."