– Akmal Haider Falahi (Ph.D. Arabic AMU)
When the public protest against the governments started in Tunisia on December 17, 2010, which was later named the “Arab Spring”, the big and strong governments were forced to kneel before this public protest. The regimes of dictators Zain al-Abidin from Tunisia, Muammar Gaddafi from Libya, Hosni Mubarak from Egypt, and Ali Abdullah Saleh from Yemen ended, but when the spark of the Arab Spring reached Syria, the Syrian people were oppressed severely by the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad. The Syrians demanded the end of slavery, the freedom of the people, and the protection of their honour and dignity, but he used his full force to crush this public protest. The story is very painful.
It started in February 2011, when some schoolchildren in the Syrian city of Daraa wrote on the wall of their school, “The people want the end of the regime, and it’s your turn, O dictator (Bashar al-Assad).” The police of Daraa arrested these children and treated them with the worst brutality. When the family demanded the release of their child, the police officer replied, “Go back, forget your children, and have other children. Do it, and if you are not capable, then send your women to us.” This response ignited the public sentiments in Daraa, and public protests against the government were announced on Friday, March 18, 2011. It reached Raqqa, Aleppo, and Idlib, and the entire Syrian people began to demand the end of the government and freedom through peaceful protests, but Bashar al-Assad ordered his army to use full force to crush this popular protest. The army started firing on unsuspecting civilians, arresting youths and brutalising them.
Bashar Al Assad, the Syrian Dictator
Some soldiers refused to use weapons on the public and left the army to become part of the popular protests. On August 3, 2011, the “Free Syrian Army” was founded with public support to fight Bashar’s army and the power. An armed insurgency began to respond with force, and by the end of 2011, it had captured Idlib, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Ghouta, and Daraa.
Seeing the reins of the country come out of the hands of Alawite Bashar al-Assad, the Iranian government and the Shia militias of different countries started sending their people to Syria to help Bashar, so the Quds Force of Iran (Iranian Revolutionary Guards), the Shia of Lebanon (Hezbollah), and the Shia militia of Iraq (Hashd al-Shabi) started killing the Sunni people of Syria in an unprecedented way in history. There is no time to go into detail here.
More than half of the Syrian territory was occupied by the Free Syrian Army initially, but suddenly in 2014, ISIS emerged, and instead of confronting Bashar’s army, it opened a front against the FSA and took control of Deir al-Zor and Raqqa.
In 2015, it seemed that Bashar’s regime would end, but he asked for military help from Russia, and Russia’s military intervention changed the map of Syria. Apart from Idlib and Daraa, all cities that were under FSA control, such as Aleppo, Homs, Hama, and Ghouta, were lost away. On the other hand, the “Syrian Democratic Force” of the Syrian Kurds, with the help of the United States, opened a front against ISIS and captured all the cities that it controlled. The SDF, because in the eyes of Turkey, is an extremist group and does not want that this group has control over an area in Syria. So Turkey launched a military intervention in Syria against the SDF with the help of the FSA.
Syrian Democratic Force – SDF, a coalition of ethnic militias and rebel groups in North and East Syria.
The current situation is that the north-eastern region of Syria (Hasaka, Raqqa, and Deir ez-Zor) is under the control of the SDF with the support of the US, the northern region of Idlib, and a small area of Aleppo, is under the control of the FSA and various opposition groups with the support of Turkey. Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Sweda, Latakia, and Tartus are controlled by Russian and Iranian forces, while Bashar al-Assad is in control with the support of various Shia militias.
As a result of this war, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, 230,224 civilians have been killed so far; 154,816 civilians are imprisoned in various prisons under Bashar and are suffering from the worst persecution and torture; and as a result, 15,272 prisoners have died so far. Nearly 14 million people have lost their lives and been displaced from their homes, with a large number taking refuge in Turkey and various European and Arab countries, and a large number living in tents in FSA-controlled territory on the Turkish border. This is a brief overview of the 12 years of the Syrian revolution. The problem of Syrian Muslims is one of the most urgent problems for the Ummah, but the behaviour of the leaders of the Ummah and the world has been worst until now.
