The Assad regime’s bombings in the northern Syrian province of Idlib
In Syria, however, unlike neighboring countries, hundreds of thousands of citizens did not flood the city centers and demand the overthrow of the ruler and his regime. The shock of the torture of those students who were arrested and imprisoned in the basements of the secret police led to a major popular protest, which began in the city of Daraa in southeastern Syria and from there spread to the capital Damascus.
Thousands of citizens went out to demonstrate, demanding first and foremost governmental democratization, as well as extensive changes and reforms in the economy and system of government in the Alawite-controlled state – the testimony of dictator Bashar Assad. – Moves that could have threatened the rule and security and economic stability of the Alawite community – began with brutal moves to suppress the popular protest, which spread in the capital Damascus and in major cities and districts across the country.
Tens of thousands of Syrian army soldiers and elite units of the Presidential Guard were sent to the city streets to quell protests and cries of “the people demand the overthrow of the regime.”
Syrian intelligence and the secret police, the Mukhbarth, carried out waves of arrests, and thousands were imprisoned and executed. At one point, security forces opened fire with live ammunition on the protesters, and Syrian Air Force fighter jets bombed demonstrations of protesters, dissidents and rebels from the air.
But the popular protest was so widespread and garnered so much public support that many members of the military, police and security forces began to defect and side with the protesters. They also joined rebel groups, which began looting abandoned military bases and police stations and even received assistance with weapons and ammunition from extremist Islamist elements, who sought to overthrow the Assad regime and take over the country and its resources.
From protest to war
As more and more areas fell into the hands of the protesters, who set up “democratically elected” commissions to manage the transition to a new government, the Assad regime decided to go to war.
The new fighting between the protesters and the army, as well as the influx of defectors from the vast Syrian army, gave birth to a host of organizations and militias set up by the regime to fight the rebels.
In the first two years of the war, the rebels enjoyed great success in northern Syria, the south and the country’s major cities. The rebels managed to occupy large parts of the capital Damascus. Aleppo – the second largest city in Syria and the most populous in the country, which was the economic capital of Syria – was largely occupied by rebel groups, who also managed to take control of the border crossings between Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Jordan.
But the rebel units were never a single political unit but a mosaic of organizations, some of which were very religious and extremist, and failed to cooperate effectively – neither on the battlefield nor in caring for the Syrian public in an increasingly brutal war.
The weakness of the rebels turned the territories under their control into easy prey for ISIS, which infiltrated Syrian territory in 2013. The terrorist organization managed to occupy three large cities in the east of the country and hold territories in Damascus and Aleppo as well. The extremist organization ISIS even established an Islamic caliphate in the territories between the city of Mosul in Iraq and northeastern Syria, and declared the Syrian city of al-Raqqa in northeastern Syria the capital of the Islamic State.
The price of rebellion
As of 2016 the situation is slowly tending towards the rebels. The remnants of the Syrian army, with the increasing assistance of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, advanced neighborhood after neighborhood, house after house, and managed to recapture areas that were under the control of the various rebel organizations. The remnants of the Syrian security forces, with much assistance from their allies from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, pushed the rebel groups into a narrow strip in the northwestern province of Idlib near the border with Turkey.
The Turkish army, which sought to keep the war zones away from the Turkish border with Syria, occupied tens of kilometers on the Syrian side of the border and established a security strip under its control. The defeat of the rebels and the attempt to replace Assad seem even more tragic when one understands the price Syria paid for trying to gain freedom from the Ba’athist regime.
Foreign experts estimate that between 350,000 and 600,000 Syrians were killed during the ten years of the war. More than 5 million people left the country as refugees, and another 7 million moved out of their homes within the country as a result of the fighting. These are inconceivable numbers in a country with a population of about 20 million people. More than half of Syria’s residents have become refugees as a result of the war.
Despite the heavy price Syria paid for human life and the disintegration of the country, dictator Bashar Assad remains on the throne – despite the brutal massacres, use of chemical weapons against his people and the heavy price paid by the Syrian civilian population, which remains scarred and divided and in fact under Russian and Iranian occupation. That the operatives of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah are doing what they want in the country.