Syria ten years on: Everyone wants to go home

 

 ' “I hope that the world can do something in order for us to get back to our villages and homes…is that possible?”

 Ten years have passed since the spark of the Syrian revolution ignited, several pages have turned, each containing stories of pain and suffering. A people confronted with the bullets of tyranny, writing with blood the first words of the revolution's tale that narrates a struggle between right and wrong.

 On March 15, 2011, the Syrian people stood up to the face of tyranny and broke the bars of silence behind which their freedom was being held. The genie had been let out of the bottle and will not return.

 On March 15, 2021 in the centre of the Northern Syrian city of Azaz, people once again gathered on the streets to raise their voices and protest.

 Free Syria flags hung everywhere and those original revolutionary chants "the people want the fall of the régime" sung out in the air.

 Within days of the start of the peaceful movement, Bashar al Assad's prison cells were filled with hundreds of peaceful demonstrators demanding the restoration of their dignity and their right to human life.

 The decade-long war that’s followed has been brutal. Hundreds of thousands have died, were detained or disappeared.

 Still, in the early days of the revolution many Syrians dreamed of a breakthrough, a chance to see light at the end of the tunnel, but instead the Assad régime cracked down harder, putting people in prison for defying the régime and subjecting them to some of the most severe forms of torture documented this century.

 In Molham camp, not far from Syria’s Azaz, volunteers there are trying to provide better housing for Syrians displaced by war.

 To date, more than half the Syrian population has been displaced internally in Syria or had to flee the country and are now living abroad, often in dire circumstances.

 To get to Molham camp you drive past an endless sea of blue and white tents, that make up the vast majority of unofficial displacement camps in the area.

 We stopped along the way and met some of the children from the camps who were eager to tell us what they were learning at school and how they wanted to be teachers, one wanted to be a doctor another an engineer.

 Small children, in desperate circumstances, with big dreams.

 The accommodation in Molham is higher quality, brick walls and a roof over their heads.

 Ahmad Hamra lost both of his legs in a bombing in Aleppo four years ago. When we meet him, he’s cementing in a small plant in front of his new accommodation.

 “We are tired,” he says, “the régime have spent ten years of war and bombing. All my family were killed, all of them were martyred by war planes in Aleppo. My father, my mother and my only brother, all of them were martyred. I’m the only one left, but I lost my legs.”

 Ahmad’s story of loss is familiar to millions of Syrians who have faced a decade of bombardment, detention and siege.

 In over ten years of reporting the war, I’ve spoken to people who were starving and so desperate during the siege of Eastern Ghouta, they told us that they were forced to eat leaves.

 I’ve been inside Idlib and witnessed the terrifying silence that comes and how everyone looks to the sky when there’s the sound of an airplane overhead.

 To this day, Idlib comes under air attack by the régime and Russia.

 Futaim Hammadeh and her family fled Idlib “Our homes were destroyed by warplanes, when warplanes were roaring in the sky my son was a kid and used to shiver and cry from their sound. Many people were killed, all of them were tragedies.”

 But despite the well documented killings carried out by the Assad régime, effective intervention was absent from the start. Arab League Monitors, UN monitors, Kofi Annan’s peace plan - all failed.

 Calls from Syrians and their supporters for serious intervention, after the chemical attacks on Khan Skeikhoun, demanded a no-fly zone over Idlib where today civilians are still at risk from the Assad régime's barrel bombs - all ignored.

 Yusuf Al-Hajjii expresses the anger many Syrians have at the lack of effective intervention, “the intervention of western countries wasn't enough, we saw nothing from the western countries.”

 There have been many complicating factors throughout the war in Syria.

 The rise of ISIS (Daesh), whose barbaric killings were stained in black ink on the bright pages of the revolution.

 But still, despite ten years of apathy from the international community, Syrians are calling on the world to intervene.

 “I hope that the world can do something in order for us to get back to our villages and homes," Futaim tells us, “is that possible?”

 In Molham camp and during the Azaz protest young children were making victory signs.

 Small moments of hope, yes. But it’s small victories like this that are a message to the Assad régime - you haven’t won yet.

 It was those voices that have proven to be Syrians' most effective weapon - words that shook a dictatorship and scared the régime.

 But the price paid by the Syrian people for demanding those basic human rights, freedom and dignity, has been a desperately high one.

 Bashir Abazid was one of the original group of boys that were detained by the régime accused of writing anti-régime graffiti in Daraa - ‘Your turn doctor’. He was just 15 years old at the time of his detention.

 Bashir tells us how detained in Assad’s prisons “we were statistics. We were identified by numbers, not names.”

 The conditions were so bad inside the prison Bashir tells us ‘I would have preferred to die than stay alive”.

 Put in solitary confinement he says “I didn’t want my captors to open the door, because that meant more torture, humiliation and beatings.”

 When Bashir was released, the story of what had happened to him and his friends (who have been called the Freedom Boys) had ignited the revolution.

 He says now “many Syrians ask me if I have any regrets after seeing what’s happened to the country. The situation there is dire. But what happened is not our fault. We regret nothing. The people took to the streets peacefully. We held olive branches and chanted for Syria and for freedom. The Assad régime fired live bullets at peaceful protesters. Those killers are the ones who should have regrets.”

 So many Syrians we’ve spoken to inside and outside the country have told us they still believe in the revolution, still believe the régime will lose and Assad will fall.

 But everyone, every single person we speak to, says exactly what Ahmad Anferse told us on the tenth anniversary of the war, “every person wants to go back home.” '

How Assad is preventing the return of refugees

 'The régime led by ruler Bashar al-Assad is seizing and expropriating the homes of those who have fled on a massive scale. The move appears to be linked to a targeted demographic policy. The régime clearly wants to be rid of a substantial segment of its population for good. A glimpse at the affected cities and districts shows that the intention is obviously that above all Sunnis – or members of the majority population – will lose their property. President Assad is a member of the Alawite religious minority.

 Aiman ad-Darwish fled to Germany in 2015 with his wife and four children. He comes from the world-famous desert city of Palmyra whose ruins were partly destroyed by IS. Aiman ad-Darwish now lives in a cramped refugee flat in the town of Osterode am Harz.

 In Palmyra, the family owned an impressive house: "312 square metres of living space and an Arabian courtyard with a pool and pomegranate trees," says Aiman ad-Darwish. He shows photos of the inside and outside of the property and a video of his children splashing about in the pool. "I worked and saved a long time for it," reports the interior decorator, "we moved there in 2009. In 2015, we had to leave this little fatherland."



 Aiman ad-Darwish is under no illusions. As he sees it, his house in Palmyra is lost forever, seized by the régime, essentially expropriated. "I'm in contact with my former neighbours, who fled to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They're all saying the same thing: access to the entire neighbourhood is blocked for former residents," he says. Aiman ad-Darwish, his neighbours and the overwhelming majority of the residents of Palmyra are Sunnis. "This expulsion policy is aimed at the Sunnis. Everyone knows that," says ad-Darwish.

 The first signs that the Assad régime planned to use the war for its demographic new order came in 2012. Even then, refugees were already being prevented from returning to their homes. When Assad recaptured the strategically important and predominantly Sunni rebel-held city of Al-Qusayr close to the Lebanese border with the help of the Shia Hezbollah in 2013, the Sunnis were banished from the city.

 Assad has made no secret of his long-term goal to permanently marginalise undesirable ethnic groups as a key outcome of the war. He made his intentions especially clear in a speech to parliament on 20 August 2017. For sure, the country had lost many of its "best sons" and suffered the destruction of infrastructure, he said, adding: "but we have gained something in return: a healthier and more homogenous society." Speaking in the same place back in 2015, he emphasised: "Living in a country or holding a passport does not entitle anyone to the fatherland." According to Assad, the way to earn the right to participate in the Syrian fatherland is to fight for it. Those who don't: "don't deserve any fatherland at all."



 Whenever he makes any statements on demographic policy, the dictator is always careful to avoid using the word "Sunnis". The régime continues to describe itself as "non-denominational" and committed to religious pluralism. It is indeed true that many Sunnis populate the middle and upper social strata, for example wealthy businessmen in Damascus and Aleppo who are loyal to the régime. And yet it is clear that the dictator's aim is to reduce the Sunnis' majority share in the population. Of Syria's population of over 20 million, some three quarters are Sunnis. The proportion of Sunni Syrians fleeing the country is even higher.

 More than 10 million Syrians are no longer living where they did in 2011, at the start of the conflict. Around half of all those displaced have found refuge in the few areas of Syria that the régime has not been able to recapture to date, primarily in the northwestern province of Idlib. The other half – around five million people – fled abroad. The régime wants to prevent their return.

 As well as strategically important smaller places such as Palmyra and Qusair, the expulsion and expropriation policies are affecting densely populated neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the large cities of Damascus, Aleppo and Homs. These districts were home to a concentrated number of poorer Sunnis who moved to the cities' peripheries from rural areas before 2011. Over the years, neighbourhoods such as Goutha to the east of the capital Damascus grew to become strongholds of the rebellion against the Assad régime. Now that the régime has recaptured these areas, it plans to distribute the real estate among its supporters: officers, soldiers, militiamen, loyal members of the business community.

 The German government is aware of the Assad régime's purging policies. Several confidential Foreign Ministry reports on Syria from the years 2018 to 2020 provide evidence of this. Each of these reports has a separate section titled "expropriations". The Foreign Ministry refers to "credible reports" from returned refugees who were prevented from repossessing their property. Some were even "detained" as they attempted to do so. The reports claim that the expropriations took place "on a large scale".



 Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) addressed the issue in May 2018 during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Speaking at a press conference in Sochi, Merkel said that "Concern" is raised in particular by "Law Number 10 in Syria, which means that people not reporting to the authorities within a certain period of time lose their homes". The decree, she went on, is "bad news for all those wanting to return to Syria one day," Merkel emphasised that she would "ask Russia to do what it could to prevent Assad doing this."

 At the time, Putin was unmoved. He countered with the telling suggestion that the Syrian question should be viewed from "humanitarian standpoints". It was clear that Putin was demanding a price before exerting any pressure on his ally Assad. To date, there has been no progress. Putin is standing firmly by the Syrian leader and wants Europe to pay for the reconstruction of Syria. Europe is demanding that Assad surrender power as a precondition.'

Syrian Journalists Reflect on Covering Decade-Long War

 ' “When the revolution started, I was in 10th grade,” Hiba Barakat, now 25, says. “I couldn’t participate in any of the peaceful protests that started in my village, but I would watch my brother go.”

 Her mother was an avid photographer who filled many albums with family pics. Inspired by her mother’s creativity and her parents’ love of reading, Barakat started painting and writing in school—poetry and stories—and in her teens she began documenting what she saw around her. After she and her husband, a journalist, divorced, she contributed to the Al Jazeera blog and other outlets. Her passion for photography didn’t go away. “I realized later that I can tell more stories and I can reach more people through photos instead of just writing,” she says.

 In February 2020, the photojournalist and her family were driven from their home in Urem, a village in western Aleppo, “because the régime launched this intensive military campaign against civilians in the province and our town.” They sought shelter in a nearby village, thinking it would be just a few days, but the bombing went on. About 10 days later, they took a chance and returned home. “I knew that this was the last time I was going to see home,” Barakat says. “We couldn’t take anything; we left all of our belongings at home. My mom was able to take only some of our photos.” She adds, “Our village was captured by the Assad régime forces four days later.”

 For a while after the relocation to Idlib province, she couldn’t work. “I tried to talk to people and to report on this humanitarian catastrophe, but it was such a hard crisis that you don’t know what to say anymore,” she says. “I remember the last day I was in my village, Urem. I shot this selfie video where I talked about what happened and that the régime is forcing us to flee and to leave our homes, but that was the only thing that I could do.”

 Women have borne the brunt of this war, she says. “There are so many painful stories about young girls and women in Syria. I’d need a book to tell them all. The stories of Syrian women’s struggles are of forced marriages resulting from wartime pressure, of loneliness and displacement, of having to leave school and abandon their dreams. This war is a curse that women have suffered from the most. It has made some of us stronger, but it has also broken many of us.”

 As for her mother’s hobby that started Barakat on this path, she says, “My mom lost interest and stopped taking photos since my brother was detained by the Assad régime in 2014. We haven’t heard anything about him since then.”



 Photojournalist Nabiha Taha is only 22 years old, but she has already lived several lives. “When the revolution started 10 years ago, I was only 12 years old,” she says. “When the régime invaded my city and started bombing it, there were a lot of injured people who needed help.” At 13, she learned first aid and worked as a medic. In that role, she did a few things that didn’t sit well with conservatives, like working in ambulances and field hospitals with male colleagues. “This was frowned upon by ISIS members,” she says.

 She also violated the ISIS-imposed dress code for women. One day, the jeans she was wearing under her black abaya cover-up were visible. A carful of ISIS members picked up Taha and a few friends. “They took us to their center. It’s called al-Hisbah. It’s where they do trials and they judge people,” she says. “They whipped us. Me and my friend got the most lashes. Our other friend who was pregnant got the lashes on her feet, and then they let us go.” She went right back to work at the hospital. At 18, she volunteered with the White Helmets. But after a year, she decided she wanted to be a journalist.

 Now she’s studying journalism and is scheduled to graduate from Syria’s Media Institute this year. She writes and produces reports for local outlets like Ayni Aynak (a.k.a. Women of Syria, a blog for female Syrian writers), online news platform Furat Press, and a humanitarian NGO. “Of course female journalists face so many hurdles that our male colleagues don’t,” she says, “especially in northern Syria because it’s a conflict zone; so many other groups are taking control of this area. We are always at huge risk—not just me, but all of my female colleagues. We face harassment in the streets sometimes. Also, because the community here is very conservative, it’s not usual for them to see a girl outside in the street holding a camera in her hand, so sometimes I face bullying or harassment. Someone once attacked me and tried to break my camera while I was working.”

 Kidnapping is a real threat. “When I want to move to other places that are controlled by extremists, it’s very dangerous for me,” she says. “I can’t go because there are checkpoints on the roads and I might be subjected to kidnapping or intimidation by those armed groups. Some of my colleagues were assassinated during the past years by those groups because they don’t want the truth to come out, but that didn’t stop us, and we continue to do our work.” She adds, “I hope that the U.S. and the international community will play a [bigger] role in protecting civilians and journalists. Because a journalist here in northern Syria is [not valued] and anyone can kill them with one bullet.”



 Ramia Akhras, 34, had a business and accounting degree when she was married, but her “very conservative” husband did not want her to work, she says. They lived in Kafranbel, a town in Idlib province known for its activism against the régime. After her husband joined the rebel army and was killed by a bomb in 2017, she says, “I had four children and I didn’t want to wait for charity or for help; I wanted to be financially independent.” She worked as a mosaic artist for a craft store. After the photos she posted of her creations received compliments, she decided to sign up for some photography and journalism courses.

 She has worked for the past several years for an online platform called SY+ that tells stories about Syria and Syrians using creative video. In 2018, she lost a son in a house fire; she and her other children had burn injuries and needed multiple surgeries. “All of my managers and my colleagues are my role models,” she says. “They’ve always supported me. And when I had the accident—the fire accident when I lost my son—they took me to Turkey to do the operations, and they stood by me, and they really took care of me, and I’m forever grateful for them.”

 The next year, a military campaign by Syrian forces forced her family to flee to a town in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. It’s harder for female journalists to safely get around, especially alone, Akhras says, but they do have access that men can’t have in the conservative culture. “Male journalists weren’t able to have access to the women in our communities,” she says, “so me and my female colleagues are able to go and meet more women and cover their stories and interview them.”

 Akhras often goes to the displacement camps for her work. “Everything I went though, from losing my husband to losing my son a year [later], I carry this pain in my heart,” she says. “And I always look for stories that I can relate to or I can share this pain with others. I think that I was blessed to get this job because it makes me forget a little bit about my suffering and think about other people’s suffering.”



 As a seventh grader, Sarah Kassim was living in Homs, the country’s third-largest city and the so-called capital of the revolution. “I was displaced from my city, but before I was displaced, I lived for two years under the siege,” she says. “I witnessed how the war planes were targeting us as civilians, without [being] careful of the children, women, or even the medical centers.” She and her family scrambled to find food and other basic necessities such as fuel, clean water, electricity, and medicine. Her school closed.

 Kassim, now 22, and her family went to Idlib, where she’s studying English literature. Her favorite book is George Orwell’s 1984. “The message that he has is the same that we have now. It’s about totalitarianism,” she says. Learning a second language has helped her journalistic work. She’s doing video reports on SY+, including an online discussion last July hosted by Kelly Craft, then the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., about the Security Council’s vote to consider cross-border delivery of humanitarian aid.

 Growing up under the shadow of war, she says, “was an awful experience for me.” But it taught her not to give up. “I have a message, and I have to share it, no matter what the difficulties I’m going to face or no matter what will happen.” She adds, “What I want you to know about me is that I am a person like anyone else, but a person who has witnessed the most painful tragedies and images, pictures of a war that feels endless. And this war, you know, no one wins.” Her message, she says, is “to keep fighting for the right things, and be a good example for society, and fight to change your society for the best. [It is] to be a good woman and not to give up your dreams, no matter the difficulties you have in your life, and to fight for freedom, fight for justice.”



 In Syria, going out to report on a story can get you arrested, abducted, or killed. But Yakeen Bido, 27, doesn’t let fear stop her. “I believe that even if I left journalism and just stayed at home like a lot of people want me to, any time a rocket or a missile can come and be dropped on my house and I could just die. So why sit at home doing nothing?” she says. “At least by my career in journalism, I’m an active citizen. I’m doing something. I try to leave a legacy. I try to make a difference in people’s lives and to elevate their voices and to tell their stories.”

 Reporting on scenes of war shocks some in her culture. “Sometimes I would report on battles, bombings, or massacres,” she says. “The community here is not used to seeing women as military reporters. Very few dare to appear in front of the camera on the spot where there’s a bombing or there’s a battle happening. So I think this is why there was so much spotlight on me.”

 Bido was the target of a smear campaign and anonymous threats last year. In early 2020, Assad’s forces launched a military campaign to capture the town of Saraqeb, strategically located on the Damascus to Aleppo highway. Saraqeb was under siege by régime forces when the rebels took it back briefly in early March 2020. “So the régime was trying to advance to this town, and they invaded this city for only like 24 hours. Then the rebels fought back and they got the city back. And during the early hours of when the rebels got the city back, I was able to go there, and I filmed myself in a video standing in the city center, saying, ‘This is our land; we want freedom. We are challenging the régime that’s using brutal force to kill us and to silence us, but we won’t be silenced.’”

 When the régime saw the video, “it blew their minds,” she says. “They couldn’t stand that a woman is challenging the Syrian régime from the middle of a city during a battle; the battle wasn’t even done.” As payback, she believes, a prominent official spread the rumor on social media that Bido was raped by extremists. And the next rumor was that when her father found out she was raped, he killed her. “So I was having breakfast with my friend and I started getting all these calls and messages from my friends saying, ‘Are you okay? Has something happened to you?’ And I couldn’t believe how low they went to attack me, because I’m a woman. What helped me to overcome all these threats and obstacles and challenges is that I believe that I have a goal. I won’t stop and just give up. I need to continue even though I know that the path of journalism, especially for women, is not an easy path, especially in somewhere like Idlib.” '

The cradle of Syria's revolution: Daraa ten years on

 'Last week, hundreds of Syrians gathered in front of the al-Omari mosque in Daraa, a city in the country's south bordering Jordan. Chants for solidarity and the revolution rang out as demonstrators marked the tenth year of the deadly conflict in Syria.

 Daraa occupies a unique role in the story of Syria's war. It was there, in March 2011, where what began as a localised protest became the 'spark' that ignited the revolution in Syria.

 A decade ago, the scene at the al-Omari mosque was much bloodier. The people of Daraa had been protesting against the régime for exactly one week when, on 23 March, they met at the mosque and local security forces stormed the area. In the aftermath, dozens of bodies littered the street.

 Word of local unrest made its way up to Damascus, where Assad faced a choice: offer concessions to pacify the local population or hand them the fist. He chose the latter, and that decision signalled an escalation that propelled the country into a decade of war and destruction.

 Today, the province remains an outlier among territories recaptured or reconciled with the régime. Its surrender in July 2018 was not the end of resistance in Daraa, and the area remains an open threat to Assad.

 It took seven years for the régime to eventually retake Daraa. In June 2018 Assad redeployed the military to the south, breaking the de-escalation zone brokered between the US, Russia and Jordan in 2017. 

 Members of the Southern Front, the southwest's anti-régime coalition, had been holding out for Western intervention until they received a text from Washington officials. "You should not base your decisions on the assumption or expectation of a military intervention by us," it read. They were alone.

 Throughout the summer of 2018 the régime launched a devastating air bombardment campaign with Russian assistance that displaced more than 270,000 civilians. Tens of thousands fled the city to nearby borders, which remained shut as Assad closed in. 

 Ayman Safadi, Jordan's foreign minister, reiterated that the kingdom would not open its borders to Daraa's displaced, saying, "We are at capacity." By August, opposition leaders were meeting with Moscow representatives to negotiate the terms of surrender. 

 Russian officials, acting as intermediaries between the rebels and the régime, offered the opposition pardons in exchange for their dismantlement and surrender of heavy weapons.

 Many agreed to integrate with the Moscow-backed 5th Corps, a security body separate from the central Syrian Arab Army (SAA). Within the 5th Corps the majority of former rebels belong to the 8th Brigade, whose theatre of operations remains uniquely local. In addition to rooting out extremists in the area the 8th Brigade acts as a sort of local security force.

 The terms of the province's surrender has allowed the population to remain politically active, and western Daraa in particular operates with some degree of local autonomy. This deal, argue Jomana Qaddour and Abdulrahman al-Masri, was never intended to be a long-term measure. "Localized governance will only increase resistance to Assad's intended return," they write.

 Daraa remains a symbol, the "cradle," of Syria's revolution, and its unique position in the history of the devastating war is not forgotten by its people. Assad has pragmatic reasons for wanting to secure Daraa as well: it sits along Jordan's northern border, where the Nasib crossing is a key trading point for Syria.

 As the régime's 2018 battle for Daraa was underway real concerns were raised by observers that the presence of Iranian forces would inevitably see Israeli intervention. From there, a major escalation between Israel and Iran would certainly be conceivable.

 While it is too soon to determine the longevity of Iran's presence there, it is notable that Daraa's citizens have resisted Tehran's greater ambitions in the area. 

 "The ambitions of Iran and Hezbollah in Daraa have also been met with growing civilian resistance manifested in increasingly frequent protests and graffiti across the governorate," writes Abdullah al-Jabassini, a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute. 

 Reconciliation was never synonymous with peace, and, since 2020 especially, Daraa has seen increased violence from the various actors seeking influence there. This includes tensions between the reconciled former opposition that have integrated with state forces, unreconciled opposition members, régime security forces, and Iranian and Russian forces.

 "The régime's return to Daraa is nominal at best," said Abdulrahman al-Masri, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. 

 The 2018 deal stipulated a return of state services to the area, a promise that has yet to be fulfilled. Nearly two years after "reconciliation" and one year into a deadly pandemic, many of Daraa's citizens lack access to sufficient health services. 

 Researcher Abdullah al-Jabassini has reported that a minimum of 425 instances of violence occurred in Daraa between August 2018 and March of last year, with the majority of incidences linked to the régime. In about the same time period, citizens held more than 60 protests across the province calling for the release of detainees.

 Put together, the competing factions operating in Daraa today present a real risk for a "relapse into armed violence," al-Jabassini describes in a report for the European University Institute.

 Discontent remains rife among citizens who feel that the régime has, two years later, yet to fulfil the obligations set by the reconciliation deal. Not unlike the environment in 2011, protesters today call for the release of detainees held by the state, improved economic conditions, and the stable delivery of state services.

 "The people are adamant on what they have pretty much started ten years ago," al-Masri says. "The population itself isn't one that you can subdue easily."

 But in the absence of a central authority, Daraa is plagued with "rising lawlessness" marked by inter-tribal disputes and civilian protests. As Assad seeks to further consolidate gains, unrest in Daraa may soon invite a military response.

 The Assad régime knows that the current situation is hardly a long-term solution. Damascus cannot claim true victory in the Syrian war until it has returned the country to pre-2011 conditions. Until then, resistance within Daraa will remain an open threat to the régime.'

Syria will never be safe under Assad

 Kholoud Helmi:

 'When I heard Denmark had declared parts of Syria ‘safe’, I thought about what would happen if I returned to the country of my birth. I am sure that if I did, I would immediately be taken to prison and disappeared like hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Or I might be tortured to death. Because ten years after the conflict in Syria began, the Assad régime is still in power.

 I come from the city of Darayya, which is about 20 minutes outside of Damascus. When I was growing up, if you criticised as much as the power shortages, you could end up in prison. In 2003, some of my friends organised a campaign against littering because the streets were filthy and posed with mops and brooms. They were arrested by the régime and held for three years.

 You couldn’t even organise a wedding without getting permission from the security services. When peaceful demonstrations against the régime began in March 2011, they happened after Friday prayers — because that was the only time people were allowed to gather.

 At first, the army used rubber bullets against the protests. Then they used live rounds. I will never forget how, in April 2011, we began to see tanks at the entrance of our city and were told we weren’t allowed to leave. In August 2012, the army raided the city and killed over 1,000 people over three nights. They slaughtered men in front of their mothers and wives. I saw this with my own eyes.



 The Assad régime and its Russian allies bombarded rebel-held towns. Still, although I was afraid for the lives of my parents and my brothers and sisters, I didn’t leave home. I only left when the régime arrested three of my friends as I was walking to join them. By mere chance, I called the first of those friends and they used a secret word meaning ‘it’s over’ to warn me before it was too late. These three friends were held in prison for nearly a year.

 After that, I couldn’t stay. I became what international organisations call an ‘internally displaced person’, moving from farmhouse to farmhouse to evade the régime. Finally, I made it out of Syria in 2013, first to Lebanon, then Egypt, before moving on to Turkey. I sought refuge in the UK two years ago and have been campaigning on behalf of victims of the Assad régime since 2011.

 So no, refugees don’t only flee bombardment and war. They flee persecution, arbitrary detention and tyranny. They flee when they see their friends arrested and neighbours murdered.

 Syria isn’t safe — not for opponents of the government. My brother remains detained in Syria, along with 100,000 others, 85 per cent of which are held in the Assad régime’s jails. 

 This year marks the 70th anniversary of the UN Refugee Convention, which defines a refugee as someone with ‘a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’.

 Actions like that of Denmark show that the definition of ‘refugee’ is under threat. It seems the international community thinks because the war in Syria is over, it is a place that is ready for refugees to return to. I wish.'

My anger is against those who left us to our fate

 

 'When Syrian teenager Bashir Abazed was arrested a decade ago for scrawling anti-government graffiti on his school wall, he never imagined an uprising would flare that would devastate his country.

 “The war...broke a lot of things in our lives, it took away our childhood and joy, it made us grow up before our time,” Abazed, now 25, said from Turkey where now lives, exiled far from his hometown of Deraa in southwestern Syria.

 Deraa became the cradle of the uprising and later insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad after two dozen teenagers including Abazed were rounded up and tortured by secret police for writing slogans against the Syrian autocrat.

 The youths’ act of defiance emulated the start of other “Arab Spring” uprisings that overthrew dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, and their brutal treatment in detention brought long latent discontent boiling to the surface.

 It escalated into street protests that were met with deadly fire by armoured security forces.

 Abazed, one of over two million Syrians who fled the war to neighbouring Turkey, recalls how a Syrian security officer forced him to confess under duress that he had scrawled the slogan, “Your turn is coming, Doctor Bashar.”

 Abazed was freed days later as the first round of mass pro-democracy demonstrations loosened the authorities’ iron grip and security forces resorted to gunning down peaceful protesters.

 He still has nightmares of tanks rolling though his crowded Deraa neighbourhood, relatives and friends who were shot dead and others who began to carry arms and turned into insurgents.



 Today Abazed and many of his townsfolk are among millions of refugees who have built new lives in neighbouring countries and beyond in Europe, with no intention of returning any time soon.

 Many fear they would be drafted into the army or arrested and know that their towns and villages where anti-Assad feeling ran high were pillaged and destroyed. Most say they will never go home until Assad’s rule is over.

 Only a handful of the original inhabitants of Abazed’s old Hay al Arbeen neighbourhood in Deraa remain, the streets mostly deserted. Some said that disaffection has grown again since Assad’s forces backed by Russian air power finally retook the town from rebels in 2019.

 Police repression has resumed amidst the economic ruin, they said, while authorities have restored statues and portraits of Assad and his late father in public places that were torn down in the early days of the uprising.

 “Nothing has changed from the days when we chanted for freedom,” Abazed said bitterly. “We demanded our rights. But the régime has not learnt any lesson. If anything it has become more vicious, clinging even more to power.”

 A Deraa resident said that, in one small gesture of defiance, dozens of people marked the 10-year anniversary on Thursday by chanting anti-government slogans in the streets of the town’s ancient quarter out of sight of security forces.

 “Even if Bashar has now taken back control, the revolution will not end and Bashar will never rule Syria as he used to,” Abazed said.

 “My anger is against those who claimed they stood for human rights but let us down and left us to our fate,” he said, alluding to Western powers which did not intervene against Assad in the conflict.'

Thoughtful committed citizens can change the world

 

 'For Reham Abazid, home is the place where you are safe and loved.

For most of her life, that meant Daara, a small city in southwestern Syria, where she lived a happy life with her husband and son in a house with a lemon tree.

 Now, it means Saint John, N.B., the Canadian city that has welcomed and nurtured her family since they arrived in Canada as government-sponsored refugees five years ago.

 "Home means safe, means love, but I can't find right now anything in Syria like I find it here in Canada," Abazid said.



 When the revolution began, Abazid was right at the heart of it.

 In March 2011, a group of children in Daraa were detained and tortured for spray-painting anti-government graffiti in support of the Arab Spring uprisings spreading through Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

 Some of the earliest protests in Syria were in support of those boys, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad responded with a brutal crackdown. The protests became an uprising.

 Daraa is a small city and Abazid knew the boys who painted the graffiti. Some of them were her brother-in-law's cousins.

 "It was crazy and, like, unacceptable," she said. "Because they are kids in the end."



 As the conflict raged on, Daara became a different place. Abazid's neighbourhood became a focal point of violence, with bombs going off almost nightly. No longer safe in their own home, the family moved in with friends.

 On the morning of Jan. 30, 2013, her husband Mohammad al Najjar got a phone call from his cousins. She says they told him: "If you have something very important at your house, you have to grab it right now because the soldiers are in the front of the street."

 Najjar got up to leave, but Abazid stopped him.

 "I told him, 'No, no, you're not going there,'" she said. "Because if they found him alone at home, they will kill him or they will take him and he will never get back home."

 Abazid, who was eight months pregnant at the time with twins, decided that she would go instead, accompanied by her father-in-law.

 They grabbed the documents they needed, but when they tried to leave, they spotted a tank on the street nearby.



 "I told my dad, 'Let's run, go back,'" she said.

 But it was too late. The régime soldiers spotted them and opened fire. It didn't matter that she was visibly pregnant.

 "They know and they don't care," she said. "Even if I have a child like one day old, they don't care."

 The pair dodged the fire and retreated back inside the house, where they hid out, waiting for the violence to die down. They were so happy to be alive, they burst into a fit of laughter.

 "I thought, 'Am I alive?' He said, 'Yes. I am alive too! And we was laughing," she said. "But at the same time, I can see the tears of his eyes."

 About an hour later, the bombing started.



 Abazid says she heard it before she saw it. She was knocked unconscious, and when she woke up, she was bleeding. The pair fled to a family member's house.

 "I stuck around eight hours bleeding with my babies, and I don't have any idea if they are alive or not," she said. "That was a very scary moment for me."

 Finally, when it seemed safe, Abazid's family got her to a hospital. The doctor, a friend of hers, performed an emergency C-section.

 The doctor handed her a healthy baby girl, who she named Rous.

 "I took her. 'OK, where is the other one? Like, I know I'm expecting a boy and girl.' She said, 'I'm sorry we lost the boy.'"



 Before she even had time mourn the loss of her son Hamza, government soldiers showed up with a document for her to sign. It absolved the Syrian government of the child's death, instead putting the blame on ISIS.

 It was a lie, Abazid said.

 "I refused to sign it. And they said, 'OK, if you refuse to sign it, you are not allowed to bury him,'" she said. "I was so angry and screaming at their face."

 She says the soldiers told her if she didn't sign the document, they would go find a dog to dispose of her son's remains.

 "My friend, the doctor, she said, 'Reham, you have to go right now from the hospital. You have to run away.'"

 The doctor snuck Abazid out through the employee entrance with her husband, newborn daughter, and stillborn son. She buried Hamza at her old house under the lemon tree; 18 days later, they fled over the border to neighbouring Jordan.



 Life in Jordan was hard, Abazid said. As refugees, they weren't legally allowed to work. Her baby girl had to drink sugar water because she couldn't afford formula. Her husband was arrested several times for working under the table.

 Then one day, her husband received another fateful call — this time from the UN refugee agency, telling them they were eligible for asylum in Canada if they wanted it.

 She has no intention of moving back to Syria, she said, but she would like to visit one day with her kids.

 "I wish someday to take them there, to tell them where I grew up and to show them, you know, here used to be our home." '

“I Still Believe In Every Word We Chanted”

 

 Waad al-Kateab:

 'In Syria, we knew the incessant feeling of something stifling our mouths, hindering us from breathing, speaking clearly and being heard. We were used to social distancing – a fear of others, even family members, was planted in us from childhood. Anyone might be an informant – such as the son who reported his mother after she voiced her frustration about the government’s constant electrical outages.

 Independent ideas, values, freedom of expression – these were a virus for Bashar al-Assad’s government. This is not just a metaphor. In one of the president’s speeches after the revolution – which began 10 years ago this month – he described us, the protestors, as “germs” from which Syria needed to be disinfected.

 I was 20 years old and a student at the University of Aleppo when everything changed for my country. For months, we had watched anti-government protests unfold in Tunisia and Egypt (the Arab Spring, as it would later be termed). We never thought the same would happen in Syria. But on 6 March 2011, 15 children were arrested in Daraa for writing slogans against Assad’s government. We couldn’t believe it, but the violent reaction from the regime made it all too real.

 After that, things escalated quickly across the nation, as more and more people emerged on to the streets chanting for freedom. In Daraa, a camera captured a father being beaten by the army. In Al-Bayda village in Baniyas, boys and men were pictured lying under the feet of soldiers. In Raqqa, a throng of people formed around a statue of Assad’s father, trying to pull it down. Enormous crowds gathered in Assi Square in Hama; hundreds around the giant clock in Homs; thousands of students – myself among them – at Aleppo university. The revolution was under way.

 We were ecstatic at what we had created, but shocked at the aggressive response from the government. A friend was arrested by the regime and imprisoned. We never saw him again. A colleague was killed at a security forces checkpoint. Whole cities were invaded by tanks. We were attacked by mortars, scud missiles, phosphorus, cluster and barrel bombs. This became our everyday life – and still is for many Syrians today.

 Growing up, I heard stories about the corruption of the military state, the injustice and violence, but I only saw it clearly when I reached secondary school. During Ba’ath Party meetings, I refused to affiliate with Syria’s sole political party and instead spent time alone in the schoolyard. My principal saw me as a sheep who had strayed from the flock. Though I wasn’t always comfortable being different, it taught me how to say no – and that no sometimes has a price, which is not always an easy one to pay.

 When the revolution happened, I understood what it meant to belong to a place. Before then, Syria didn’t mean anything to me. My greatest dream was to finish university and to work in the Gulf or do a master’s degree or a PhD in Germany.

 Suddenly, millions of us were fighting together for a new way of life, protecting each other, beating with one heart. I saw it in the shared smile of a stranger who I recognised from a protest. I felt it when I tried to rescue an unknown girl from the security forces. It’s why I smuggled a revolutionary flag to safety under my clothes during the chaos of a strike. I knew it when I drank water from a bottle that was being passed from one protester to another on a very hot day. It wasn’t cold, or clean, but it was the best water I have tasted in my life.

 As the weeks and months wore on, the violence used by Assad’s regime descended the country into a full-blown war. Shock gave way to relief when we heard explosions because it meant we had survived. I picked up my camera and started filming. I needed to capture what was happening. I would not be able to explain it – I had to show it.

 Somehow, among the falling bombs, I fell in love with Hamza, a doctor. We were married in the half-destroyed hospital where we lived and where he tried to save injured civilians, the young and old, friends and strangers. Soon, I was pregnant with our daughter, Sama. I was terrified, but I kept filming for her, so that one day she would understand. I didn’t put my camera down, not even during the hardest moments imaginable – not even when a mother found out her small child had been killed while playing with his brother. She wanted me to keep filming her indescribable pain, to show the truth to the world.



 It’s thought that more than half a million people have been killed in the Syrian conflict; over 90,000 are believed to have been detained; and an estimated 13 million, more than half of Syria’s pre-war population, have been forcibly displaced either internally or internationally. I have submitted my footage as evidence of war crimes and we are building a case against the Assad regime and its ally Russia.

 After 10 years, some people might think that we have been defeated, that we have made great sacrifices for a life that is worse than the one we lived before. But a revolution is a path of no return. I still believe in every word we chanted. Though I’m 30 now, and far wearier than that 20-year-old student in Aleppo, I still have her passion and willpower.'

Counting the Losses in Idlib

 'Tasnim, 11, doesn’t remember life before the war, but she remembers losing an uncle, her grandmother, two cousins, beloved family friends, and now, she says, hope. 

 “I dreamt that we were happy and going back to our village,” she says, sitting on the rocks that hold her family’s tent in place. She speaks matter-of-factly, like a weary adult. “In the dream it was like before, and our home wasn’t destroyed. But those are just dreams. Everything will stay like it is.”



 It has now been 10 years since the start of the Syrian revolution, and Tasnim holds on fiercely to the few things she hasn’t lost. She has school in the mornings and, at the moment, surviving family and friends. “But everyone who is good to us and we love, dies,” she says.

 Nearly a quarter of the population lives in Idlib and surrounding areas, the last remaining opposition stronghold.

 Like Tasnim, families here say they have lost almost everything to the war.



 When her village was attacked, Tasnim’s father’s life was saved by a member of the White Helmets, a volunteer rescue group that works in Syrian opposition areas. 

 “They bombed our house … and a neighbor hid us in a cave nearby,” she says. “I saw my father unconscious and the White Helmets were carrying him. They thought he was dead. I ran after the car shouting, 'Dad!’”

 Ibrahim Mohammad, 26, has served with the White Helmets since 2014 and says he has pulled countless people — alive and dead — from the rubble of bombed out buildings, including babies. 

 At a training center in Idlib city last month, Mohammad says he dropped out of college because of the war. He lost his home, friends and members of his family. But he did not lose everything, he says.

 When asked what the war has given him, he smiles warmly and replies, “A lot.”

 “We are living in the north, with freedom, dignity and on our land,” he explains. “We’ve lost so many people. Everyone has lost someone from their family.”  



 At the beginning of last year, nearly a million people fled their homes in other parts of Idlib province in the largest exodus of the war, many here to the opposition-controlled north.

 A number of rebel groups control this region, some with the direct support of Turkey. In Idlib city, one of the strongest of the groups, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is in charge, along with a civilian authority called the Syrian Salvation Government.

 Roughly 1.5 million people are displaced in this region alone, along with millions of others across the country. The presence of HTS complicates humanitarian efforts and potential peace negotiations as the group is viewed as a terrorist organization by the United States and other countries.

 But local authorities describe HTS as an opposition force like any other, adding they believe the humanitarian crisis would be best addressed by rebel victories that allow people to return to their homes without fear of the government.

 “In 10 years, our people have suffered through massacres and bombings with suspicious international silence,” says Muhammad Salem, the Syrian Salvation Government’s public relations director. “Our revolution was not for comfort and bread, but for pride and dignity.”



 For many families in the camps, however, a modicum of comfort and some bread to eat would be welcome, and potentially lifesaving as displaced families face sometimes-deadly cold and hunger.

 After Tasnim and her family fled the bombardment of their village a year ago, they moved through eight camps before they found a "safe” place to stay. Most camps were overcrowded and without running water or humanitarian aid. Tasnim’s uncle used to wait for it to rain so they could collect water for cooking or drinking.

 They finally settled in a camp with water tanks and some humanitarian aid, but not nearly enough.

 “Sometimes they bring us hygiene kits, but we don’t want that,” Tasnim says. “We need things for children like diapers, milk and food. We want to eat. It has been two months since we received any food aid.” 



 One of her neighbors, 50-year-old Fatoum al-Shamali, better remembers life before the war and says she wants more than just enough to eat and a heater for her tent, both of which are now lacking.

Al-Shamali says she wants to go home and one day be buried in her own village. Alternatively, if Assad’s forces advance, she wants to stay and fight, despite the fact that she needs two crutches to walk.

 “I’ll be first to fight for Idlib,” she says. “We have no other place to go.”

 Most families say they will flee if Assad’s forces move in, but even that plan is lacking, as there is increasingly nowhere to go. The Turkish border in the north is firmly shut and the region is surrounded by government forces.

 Tasnim misses her three-room village home, where she and her cousins used to play in the yard. But returning, she says, doesn’t seem remotely possible.

 “What did we do?” she asks. “Why did they take our village? We are children and did nothing to them.” '

Doctor who spent years running secret hospitals in Syria

 

 'Dr. Mahmoud Hariri has lost a lot over the course of the Syrian war — his colleagues, his patients, his home. But he never lost hope.

 This week marks 10 years since the start of the war in Syria. Hariri has spent much of that decade working in underground hospitals and medical schools in Aleppo and Idlib, risking his life to treat people wounded by the regime's mortars, bombs and gunfire.

 He now resides in Turkey with his family, but his work at home isn't done. Today the surgeon works with an NGO helping to facilitate an underground medical school in Syria, training the next generation of doctors to replace the hundreds who have fled.

 "How I survived, I don't know," Hariri said. "But thank God that I'm still alive, and hope I will be back again to my country and work again and train the new generation."



 When the war began in Syria, being a doctor meant having a target on your back — especially if you dared to treat rebel fighters or civilians wounded by the Russian-backed Syrian regime.

 Just a year into the conflict, President Bashar al-Assad's government enacted a broad anti-terrorism law that doctors and human rights advocates say effectively criminalized providing medical assistance to those who oppose the regime.

 And any so-called rules of war that protect medical facilities from attack were quickly thrown by the wayside. Hospitals have been been a frequent target for bombings in Syria, and doctors have been arrested, tortured and killed.



 At one point, Syrian doctors gave the locations of their clandestine facilities to the United Nations in order to create a "no-strike list." But as those institutions came under repeated fire in 2019, it became clear to doctors on the ground that Russia and Syria were using the co-ordinates for targeted attacks.

 "If I'm a doctor and being captured in an Assad-regime area, I will be jailed, maybe [for] life, or be killed because I helped [treat] a wound and because I treat such patients. This is my crime," Hariri said.

 "We lost a lot of doctors, a lot of our friends, some of the good hearts, those people who stayed in spite of all of these difficulties."

 Physicians For Human Rights estimates that at least 930 medical professionals were killed in Syria between 2011 and March 2021, and that more than 90 per cent of those deaths were at the hands of the regime.

 Some of them were Hariri's friends. Like Dr. Muhammad Waseem Maaz, killed in an airtstrike on an Aleppo hospital in 2016. At the time, he was one of the last pediatricians still working in the city.



 "We lost one of the best hearts in this world," Hariri, then using the pseudonym Abdul Aziz, said at the time.

 "He always smiled. We asked him, 'Please just take a rest.' He said no. He's now 36. He's unmarried. He said, 'How can I marry? I would be [too] busy for my family. I would not be able to work for those babies who are crying every day."

 Today a hospital in al-Salameh, Syria, bears Dr. Maaz's name.

 "Everybody remembers Waseem," Hariri said. "They remember this generation of those martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the lives of others."



 Hariri says that early in the war, when the government was enacting a brutal crackdown on protesters demanding reform, there was hope among Syrians that the international community would come to their aid.

 "At the beginning of the revolution, they expected that within a couple of months, everything will be fine. We will get rid of Assad by the help of American and European countries," he said.

 But it didn't take long to realize they were on their own, Hariri said. And that meant taking things into their own hands.

 For Hariri, that meant working in secret medical units to treat the wounded, while training young medical students to work as trauma surgeons in the field.



 Before the war, he was a surgeon and a lecturer at Aleppo University Hospital, and he and his colleagues identified seven students who he suspected had sympathies for the revolution. They joined the cause, and Hariri trained them in the basics of emergency first aid over Skype, concealing their faces and voices. During demonstrations, they would wait nearby in their vehicles, then shuttle the injured to safe houses for treatment.

 In the summer of 2011, Hariri's colleague who helped form the fly-by-night school was kidnapped and killed. Then three of his students disappeared, their charred bodies discovered a week later in the streets of Aleppo.

 "I still remember them, still crying for them, of course," Hariri said.



 During those years, Hariri also took steps to protect his own identity. For the first year of the war, he went by the code name Dr. John White. After his students were killed, he adopted the pseudonym Dr. Aziz.

 Now that he and his family are in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, he finally feels safe to live as himself again.

 "I'm still dreaming to see my father and my mother, unable to see them. They are living on the other side," he said. "But this is a price. You have to pay the price. It's the price of freedom."

 Leaving Syria was a difficult decision, one he made for the sake of his own children. At first, he would cross the border intermittently to provide aid. Now, he works exclusively out of Turkey.

 Throughout the interview, he sang the praises of those doctors and medical professionals who stayed behind.

 "I'm not a hero anymore," he said. "I'm just one of those team who are looking for the future."

 Hariri now works with an organization called Health Information System Unit to co-ordinate Syrian medical aid, as well as the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations to help operate a clandestine medical school inside Syria, which will see its first graduating class next year.

 "We are training. We are able to build our country," he said. "We are able to prove to the whole world that Syrians can do it, can build themselves. They can do the miracles in Syria."



 He's fuelled, he said, by his memories of the war. The little boy whose life he saved, who clung to him crying, "Thank you doctor. I love you." The nine-year-old whose shoulder he amputated and who died in his arms. The father who thanked God after only one of his twin sons was shot and killed by a sniper, because at least his other child was spared the same grisly fate.

 "I'm living now on the mercy and the love of these days. In spite of the difficulties, it was the best days of my life," Hariri said.

 "Because I did many things for the sake of those people, innocent, and saved hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lives. I do believe that as a doctor, I did my best for my people. Not for the sake of just earning money from this job — for the sake of humanity." '

Where Syria uprising began 10 years ago, dissent still rife

 'A neglected provincial city amid the farmlands of the south, Daraa was the first place in Syria to explode into protests against the rule of Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.

 Daraa saw the arc of Syria’s conflict. Protesters met by a vicious crackdown by Assad’s forces turned to armed rebellion and civil war. Opposition fighters broke free of Assad’s rule in many areas, only to be crushed by his military once his allies Iran and Russia backed it with their firepower.

 Now on the 10th anniversary of those first protests, Daraa is back under régime control. But only tenuously. Boiling with resentments, desperate from economic crisis and rife with armed groups, the uprising’s birthplace still feels perched on the rim of an active volcano.



 “The young men still inside Syria are living in despair,” said Ahmed al-Masalmeh, who helped organize protests in Daraa a decade ago. Now in exile in Jordan, he remains determined to see the cause through despite the régime’s military victories. “We will invest in the despair ... to relaunch the revolution again.”

 Al-Masalmeh, at the time a 35-year-old electronics shop owner, was among the protesters at Daraa’s Omari Mosque on March 18, 2011, when security forces opened fire on the crowds. Two people were killed, the first to die in a decade of war that would killed more than a half million people, drive half of Syria’s population from their homes and level entire sections of its proudest cities.

 Al-Masalmeh had expected some violence, but thought Assad couldn’t get away with what his father Hafez Assad did in 1982, killing thousands to crush a revolt.

 “We thought the world has become a small village, with social media and satellite stations,” he said. “We never expected the level of killing and brutality and hatred for the people to reach these levels.”

 In some ways, Daraa set the tone for the opposition. A backwater compared to more cosmopolitan cities in the center, Daraa province’s population is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, largely conservative and impoverished — and bitter over decades of neglect. While secular activists advocated peaceful protests, Daraa’s protesters when faced with security agencies killing and torturing them turned to armed militias to fight back.



 The viciousness of the crackdown fueled sectarian hatreds, particularly between Sunnis and the Alawites, the minority sect to which Assad belongs.

 “My fear turned into spite and hatred. I hated Shiites, I hated Alawites,” said Nadel al-Amari. He left university in March 2011 and started a media center in Daraa transmitting images of protests to the world. Al-Amari was detained and brutally tortured for four months in 2011. He fled Syria and now lives in Germany.



 At its height in 2013 and 2014, rebels controlled most of Syria east of the Euphrates, parts of Daraa province and much of the north. It battled for all the major cities and even threatened Damascus from the surrounding countryside.

 Assad’s forces unleashed airstrikes, devastating barrel bombs and chemical attacks. The tide turned when his allies, Moscow and Tehran, stepped in directly, first Iran with military experts and allied Shiite militias, then Russia with its warplanes.

 Sieges and military campaigns against opposition-held cities and towns flattened neighborhoods and starved populations into submission. Opposition territory shrank, until it became confined to a small enclave centered on Idlib province in the northwest, dominated by Islamic militants and surviving only because of Turkish protection.

 Régime forces backed by Russia overwhelmed Daraa province in August 2018.

 But Daraa was far from controlled. Daraa has come under a unique arrangement mediated by Russia, partially because of pressure from Israel, which does not want Iranian militias on its doorstep, and from Jordan, which wants to keep its border crossings open.

 In parts of the province, rebel fighters who agreed to “reconcile” remained in charge of security. Some joined the 5th Corps, which is technically part of the Syrian Army but overseen by Russia. State and municipal institutions have returned, but régime forces stayed out.

 Elsewhere, Russian and régime troops are in charge together in a watered-down government authority. In the rest, the government is in outright control, and the Syrian army and Iranian-backed militias have deployed.



 The organized opposition presence gives a margin for protests and open anti-government sentiment hard to find elsewhere.

 Some rebels rejected the deal with Russia and wage a low-level insurgency that has killed more than 600 people. The dead include régime troops, pro-Iranian militiamen, rebels who signed onto the Russia deals, and mayors and municipal workers considered loyal to the government.

 As in other parts of the country, many are concerned over Tehran’s expanding influence. Iranian-backed militias recruit young men attracted by a stable salary. Traders linked to Assad and Iran have exploited the destitution in Daraa to buy up land. Pro-Iranian militias are said to be encouraging Sunnis to convert to Shiism.

 A new civil movement in the province is working to raise awareness against land sales and rally opposition to upcoming presidential elections, in which Assad will be the only candidate, said Hassan Alaswad, a prominent lawyer from Daraa now in exile in Germany.

 But at the same time, the public is also exhausted by the economy’s collapse across Syria. Inflation is spiraling, and there are few jobs. Trade and agriculture are broken down, and infrastructure wrecked.


 In Germany, al-Amari is working to build a life. But he is inexorably intertwined with Syria. He follows events in his home city. He breaks into tears when he talks of home. He hasn't seen his family in 10 years. Tattooed on his forearm is the date of the first protests, March 18.

 “We are living and not living,” he said.'

Hope still lives among the Syrian people

 Rabia Kasiri, White Helmet and medical student in Idlib:

 "The past 10 years have taken an extreme toll on me, and I don't think about the future anymore. The constant bombing by Syrian and Russian warplanes forced us to live in a state of emergency and I always wonder if I will live until the next day. I might leave the house and never come back or I might go to sleep and never wake up.

 I fear that if we will live like this for many more years, my daughter will grow up feeling the same. Six-year-old Rahaf represents my hopes and dreams. She gives me strength and happiness every day. I love medicine and I dream I'll be able to finish my studies and become a doctor. I dream our children won't live in fear, deprivation, and danger like we did. The war took so much from us, but we have to remain strong to be able to help others. I hope for peace to prevail and for no more lives lost."



 Dr. Tarraf al-Tarraf, surgeon in Idlib:

 "When I joined the protests in 2011, I dreamed of our right to freedom and dignity.

 I wanted to resume my higher education but all my dreams stopped when I lost my brother Dr. Huthaifa, who died from torture in Assad's prisons; my brother Dr. Yousef, who was killed by a Russian airstrike; and many of my friends and colleagues. I also lost my home and was displaced with my family. I stopped dreaming when all I could do was try to save the life of a child injured by the bombardment.

 I hope for the targeting of civilians and hospitals to stop and that we're not forced to set up more hospitals inside caves to escape the airstrikes.

 I hope for the release of all detainees in Assad's prisons, including doctors and medical workers who were tortured for doing their jobs. I hope for all the doctors who were forced to leave the country to be able to return home and help build a stronger health system that would meet the needs of all Syrians and compensate for the hundreds of hospitals destroyed by Assad and Vladimir Putin's warplanes.

 But it is impossible for any of these dreams to become a reality while Assad is still in power. I fear the régime will continue to commit crimes -- from bombardment, detention and forced displacement -- and the international community will continue to remain silent and turn a blind eye to these crimes."

 Nora Barre, Syrian-American activist:

 "We can't discuss Syria's future in a vacuum without understanding the intricate relationship with Russia and Iran -- with Assad as their puppet. Iran has the most skin in the game on the ground in Syria, but Iran's economy is suffering due to sanctions following the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

 Russia's economy is also struggling due to Covid and increased sanctions, so I believe Russia will also start to withdraw its support for Assad. The Caesar Act (sanctioning Assad supporters) has unfortunately caused unbearable suffering for Syrians but has also starved the régime's resources.

 Today, Syria is a failed state with increased suffering, worldwide refugees and terrorists.
The best case scenario for Syria's future is not filled with sunshine and rainbows. The end for the Assad régime will be when the continued decline of the Iranian and Russian economies means they stop funding the Syrian killing machine."



 Wafa Mustafa, Syrian activist and journalist:

 "It will not be long before Assad and his inner circle are on trial for crimes against humanity. The evidence is stark and all it takes is for the international community to overcome Russia's and China's Security Council vetoes and refer Syria to the International Criminal Court. I hold onto hope that more than 130,000 political prisoners will be released and my dad will be free and will join the call for justice for all the years we have lost together.

 It should also be possible for the families of those kidnapped by ISIS to see justice done or to find answers about their loved ones, for all those detained by armed groups to be freed.

 Ten years ago so many Syrians demanded freedom, dignity and democracy. I continue to march and campaign for these very same values and I will not give up hope."

 Hasna Issa, Syrian activist:

 "Ten years since the revolution started, Assad has killed hundreds of thousands, forced millions to flee their homes, bombed schools and hospitals and burned farms. But we don't regret calling for freedom, dignity and justice, and will continue to do so.

 Being detained by the régime for participating in the peaceful protests 10 years ago made me hold on more firmly to our revolution's values and goals, because I've witnessed what happens in Assad's dungeons with my own eyes.

 My husband left me alone with my twin daughters in besieged Ghouta -- the way I was treated by the community for being a divorced woman made me fight for women's rights and it became my struggle. I do everything in my power to support and empower women around me, especially young women, because it all starts with raising a generation of leaders who will help shape the future of our country.

 So many Syrian women seek to build a better Syria that guarantees them their rights to freedom and dignity. We don't want a food basket or charity, we want justice and accountability. We want to return to our homes that we were forced to flee, we want schools for our children, we want universities to give proper education, we want job opportunities to work and be independent."



 Hiba Barakat, journalist and photographer in Idlib:

 "When the revolution started in 2011, I wasn't fully aware of how criminal and corrupt the régime was. Maybe because I was too young or because of people's fear of speaking out. I later began to see the crimes that the régime was ready to commit to silence the people. I was forced to flee my home more than once to escape bombing. My brother has been missing in Assad's prison for years and we know nothing about what's happened to him. My father was killed by a Russian airstrike. My life turned upside down in an unspeakable way.

 Armed groups and militias took advantage of the honest and peaceful revolution that was sparked by young men and women who demanded freedom and dignity. Then it turned into a proxy war between many states with different agendas and policies.

 I fear we will find ourselves ruled by régimes that are similar to the one we fought to bring down. I fear there will be no place for me in this country anymore.

 What I hope for is another revolution that will liberate us from those who imposed themselves as rulers with the power of their weapons."



 Ali Abdulkader, manager of the Kesh Malek advocacy group: 

 "When we were forced to flee our home last year, my 8-year-old daughter Hiba came to me crying because she left her favorite toy behind. It breaks my heart every time I think about it.

 I was a law student when the revolution started but I soon turned to work with civil society groups because I believed that our work with the youths is essential in helping them shape the future of the Syria we still dream of.

 The world stood still as the Assad régime and his allies committed all kinds of crimes against Syrians over the past 10 years. It stood still as extremist groups, including ISIS, emerged to take advantage and tried to distort the image of our revolution. But that didn't stop us from continuing to work for a free, civil, democratic and pluralistic Syria. Even if we don't get to live to see it, at least our children will get the chance.

 My hope is for the world to realize their huge responsibility to step up to end the suffering of millions of Syrians, hold criminals accountable and restore our faith in humanity and human rights. It's never too late to save Syria."

Activists have no regrets on 10th anniversary of revolution

 'Syrians this week will mark the tenth anniversary of the Arab Spring revolution against President Bashar al-Assad's rule which took their country by storm and shaped its present-day reality.

 While many Syrians today feel great sadness at the death and destruction that their country has suffered over the past ten years, Syrian activists who took part in the revolution have said they remain committed to the ideals of freedom and dignity which the 2011 protests espoused and have no regrets.

 The beginning of the Syrian revolution is generally dated to 15 March 2011, when hundreds of activists took to the streets of Damascus in a "Day of Rage" against the authoritarianism, corruption and political persecution which had pervaded Syrian political life ever since President Bashar al-Assad's Baath Party took power in a 1963 military coup.

 Sawsan Abou Zainedin, an activist from Suweida province, said that the régime's authoritarian rule pervaded every facet of life in Syria before the revolution.

 "We were raised to fear the security forces, informers, and the mukhabarat (secret police), who people said knew everything about you. They were present everywhere and this made us afraid to talk and even to think loudly. Everything was being run in a way where régime loyalists and Baath Party members got preferential treatment. In practice we were living the régime's oppression in every aspect of our daily lives – in schools and the education system, in job opportunities and university places and even in entry to hospitals."

 Assad's régime responded to the first protests in the only way it knew how, with repression and arrests, but this was only a small foretaste of the violence it would later inflict on the Syrian people.

 The uprising quickly spread across the country, however, as news of protests and their repression in one Syrian locality would quickly reach other parts of Syria through the then-new tool of social media, and people took to the streets in solidarity with the régime's victims.

 One of the earliest centres of revolutionary activity was Daraa province, where the régime had detained and tortured teenage boys for scrawling anti-Assad graffiti on a wall in early March 2011.

 Dani Qappani, an activist from the city of Moadamiyeh near Damascus said, "My activism started in the first months of the Syrian revolution, and it was all thanks to my city, Moadamiyeh. All of its people rose up in the early days in solidarity with Daraa, against what Assad's gangs were doing to its children and its people."

 Abou Zainedin told of the innovative forms of non-violent resistance that her and other activists in Suweida province took part in.

 "When the Arab Spring started we felt we could speak, and that change was possible. People organised in a really spontaneous way. We'd organise demonstrations together and perform other acts of rebellion – paint pictures of the president with red, release balloons with revolutionary slogans on them, or write slogans on dozens of baseballs and release them all over the streets. This was our response to the violence of the régime in Homs and Daraa and other areas."

 Many Syrians had left their country before 2011 over the long years of Assad family rule and the protests in Syria inspired members of the Syrian diaspora to take action in support of the Syrian uprising.

 Leila al-Shami, the co-author of the book Burning Country: Syrians in War and Revolution said that the Syrian revolution had defined life for her over the past decade.

 "I think for all Syrians the revolution has defined the last decade for us. In 2011, when it began, I felt immense pride and admiration for the young women and men who risked their lives to attend protests calling for freedom and social justice," she said. "Being outside Syria but having friends and family inside, some of whom were involved in the protest movement, I felt a responsibility to do what I could to stand in solidarity and amplify Syrian voices to ensure that they are heard outside."

 Salam Abbara, a Syrian-French medical researcher, said that she found a big discrepancy in the way the Syrian uprising and later conflict was being reported and what was happening on the ground.

 "Since the beginning of the revolution I was involved in media or humanitarian activism. I participated in an initiative to translate information from the ground to English and French because journalists could not enter Syria [at the time]. The Syrian conflict is very hard to understand to most people, and lots of people forget the most important part of it: a fight for dignity."

 Today, ten years on, the hopes of the people who took part in the original protests of the Syrian revolution seem like a distant dream. The régime received crucial support from Iran and Russia and showed that it was willing to destroy the entire country in order to stay in power. It had no reservations about deliberately targeting schools and hospitals, or using chemical weapons against civilians.

 By contrast the activists who took part in the earliest protests of the Syrian revolution received little more than rhetorical support from Western and Arab states.

 Syria in 2021 is in ruins. Over half a million people have been killed, mostly by the Assad régime and its allies. Nearly seven million people – over a quarter of the country's pre-war population – are refugees outside Syria and a further six million are internally displaced. It is estimated that the war has cost $1.2 trillion worth of damage and it will take decades for the country to rebuild. Eighty per cent of people in Syria live in poverty today.

 However, despite Syria's ongoing tragedy, the Syrian activists said they had no regrets.

 Dani Qappani documented human rights abuses by the régime and was pursued by its security forces, while his brother was arrested. After the régime lost control of Moadamiyeh to rebels, it used chemical weapons on the city, killing hundreds of people and later overrunning the rebel stronghold

 "My experience during the revolution was one of a dream fulfilled, a dream of freedom of thought and expression, a dream of liberation from servitude to individuals, to the Assad family, from all the chains restraining our minds, our eyes, and our mouths," he said.

 "Personally, I have never regretted my participation in the revolution and I will not regret it. It's an inevitable result of the oppression, repression, and criminality that Assad's gang has practiced for decades," he said.

 Sawsan Abou Zainedin said that despite the hardships her country and her family experienced, she would only hold the Assad régime, not the Syrian uprising, responsible.

 "Of course, I have no regrets, 100 per cent. My father, my brother, and my sister were detained and we were constantly harassed by the security forces and Assad's supporters. But we can't hold the revolution and the dreams we had of freedom and justice responsible. The régime, its security forces, and its allies are responsible for the death and destruction in Syria," she said.

 Her sentiments were echoed by Leila al-Shami.

 "I don't feel regret regarding the revolution. When people suffer decades of oppression it's inevitable that they will eventually rise against tyranny. My regrets relate to the brutality of the counter-revolution and the failures of the international community to act to stop the ongoing slaughter of civilians," Al-Shami said.

 Salam Abbara is currently working on 100 Faces of the Syrian Revolution, a project to preserve the memory of the Syrian activists who took part in the uprising and their work. She said that so many Syrians were still working for a better future for their country.

 "Thousands of Syrians are still working every day, whether in arts, media activism, humanitarian projects, legal initiatives against impunity, local councils, women empowerment projects, and so on. So we should not forget them, and try to focus on those people who bring positive action to go further."

 Syrians have led a long campaign for justice against Bashar al-Assad's régime and last month, a German court sentenced a former Syrian intelligence officer to four and a half years in prison for crimes against protesters in a landmark ruling.

 Abou Zainedin said that the efforts to bring justice and accountability gave her hope despite the bleak situation in Syria today.

 "We have a very long way to go in order to get to a point where we can start building the country we dreamed of. We have to focus on justice, and holding criminals accountable," she said.

 "We must pressure the international community to support Syrian efforts to realise justice through all legal avenues. We must also pressure them to deliver aid to Syria in a just way that respects human rights, and not contribute to strengthening the régime or rehabilitating it".

 "But in the long term, I have faith that all Syrians will stand up for their rights and for justice, or at least some aspects, of it to be done. They know the road is very long but it has to be travelled," she added.

 "One day Syrians will see the dream they tried to achieve become real, even if it's through very small steps and even if it doesn't happen in our generation or the next."

 Qappani also said that he remained confident that the values of the revolution will bring positive change to Syria in the future.

 "On the surface, the present situation is not what we wished for and not what we sacrificed for… however, since we have broken the fear barrier imposed on us for decades and as long as we don't lose hope in a free Syria and fight to establish justice and accountability for criminals from all sides, first among them Bashar al-Assad, I am confident we will see a better day, where we will cry tears of joy with one eye and tears of sadness with the other." '