Israa | ﮼إسراء

All these sleeping beasts were awakened when the world decided that Assad’s crimes towards us weren’t enough to hold him accountable & Syrians fled for their lives in droves.

I mean I’m all for fighting these dangerous waves of racism, nationalistic populism etc, but what boggles my mind & concerns me the most is that even in the countries with most Syrian refugees, the narrative is still about how “the war has ended why aren’t they going home?”

People have such a short memory that almost no one mentions Assad -the main factor for refugees refusal to return- is still in power, no major media coverage in host countries for Assad’s continuing crimes, esp towards returning refugees and the ongoing campaign against Idlib!

So a lot of people believe that Syrians are abusing their welcome and staying here for work and money, ofc there are other narratives in play in each country but none of them carry the truth objectively, which is what we need to do right now, we should win back the narrative.

So a couple of basics for ya if you don’t know much about Syria, I’ll try my best to highlight the Syrian tragedy and the most important and memorable events, the ones that shaped our destiny and continue to do so.

I will update this thread as much as I can and whenever I can, so at least if you follow me you’ll know what happened the way I saw it.

2011: Syrian kids wrote anti Assad slogans on the walls in Daraa, Assad detained and tortured the kids, parents demanded their kids and got turned down

Protests followed in Daraa, Assad shot the protesters and we had the first martyr in the first days of the protests, protests spread to other cities in solidarity with Daraa and its children, again protests were met with violence and live bullets from the start

I saw them in the streets, saw the blood and saw the shooters, Assad said it’s all a big lie despite the overwhelming evidence in videos, photos and live witnesses. Peaceful protests spread regardless of the state’s violent response

During the coming months, a lot of soldiers and officers defected from the army, they were met with celebrations from the people they wanted to protect.

Their mission in differed from one area to another, sometimes they were only there to protect the protests and others they had to hold their positions and protect the whole area from being stormed by SAA.

& the regime had to retreat from some areas due to the presence of defected officers & soldiers, the regime started committing massacre on a large scale.

During this time, protests kept on every Friday and sometimes inside the week as well but Friday was more convenient because of Friday prayers, naturally a lot of Syrians go to these prayers..

.. and because of the police state we had & the absence of any civil society structure allowed by Assad there was no other way for ppl to gather in a peaceful manner without the mukhabarat noticing and stopping them, but it was hard for them to stop Friday prayers..

.. so ppl protested every Friday, they gave each Friday a name and a purpose in order to highlight an important issue or demand that week, it’s also useful to note that not only Sunni Muslims joined these Friday protests, a lot of Alawites, Christians Ismailis and others

Would join as well, sometimes they’d join the prayer itself even if they’re not praying bcz they didn’t want to be noticed by the Mukhabarat (state security org) if they waited outside the mosque

protests kept on live-streaming (the process of live-streaming was so bloody hard bcz ppl lacked the equipment & when they were foumd by the Mukhabarat it was like you were caught with a nuclear weapon)

So ppl wanted to show the protests to the outside world, in a bid to gain sympathy and show the world that our demands were simple, freedom and freedom only, Hama organised one of if not the largest protests in the history of the revolution..

.. streaming from every bloody city, village and neighbourhood all across Syria. They’d say the protests were staged in Qatar, ppl were paid actors by Bandar bin Sultan and that they gave the protesters “delusion pills” and 100 dollars to join.

No lie was consistent with the other btw, any garbage would do for Assad and the main point was to deny that Syrians, the regular ones would partake in such “treasonous” protests

History repeated itself again when Hama was stormed in August /Ramadan of 2011, hundreds were killed by government forces, “condemnations” poured in ofc but no real action was taken to stop this massacre

My city had a similar but milder case of regime invasion of rebelling neighbourhoods like the one I lived in, however telling it atm is bloody hard for me so maybe later on idk

August was one of the bloodiest months in the stage of our revo, more than 3000 killed, the more Assad included the regime in these city invasions -Hama and Deir Ezzor and some towns in Idlib- the more defections we were seeing.

August which coincided with Ramadan was truly a bloody month, it was then the regime decided that a show of force was needed , they killed a lot of ppl in Lattakia as well, we spent much of it at home with electricity cuts, the sound of gunfire outside was horrifying