Child of Syria’s revolution fears the end is drawing near
The rebel whose teenage protest ignited Syria’s anti-assad uprising has finally conceded defeat
“IT’S over, we’re finished. They’re giving up Syria,” read the late-night message from a fighter with the Free Syrian Army.
Mouawiya Syasneh had vowed to battle on until victory or death. But the young man credited with helping spark the civil war with a small act of defiance with friends in 2011 – spraying anti-assad graffiti at his school – was now preparing for defeat.
The rebels in the south-western province of Deraa agreed last weekend to a surrender deal with the Syrian government’s Russian allies. Bashar al-assad’s army has since laid siege to the city and says it is poised to regain complete control.
The fall of the birthplace of the uprising – and the last remaining urban stronghold of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) – deals a knockout blow to the opposition.
“We’re cornered and the entire country has been handed over. We can’t do anything any more despite having weapons. [The rebel leaders] took the pay cheque,” Mr Syasneh, 23, said, accusing the FSA of selling out the revolution.
It all began when he and his classmates were arrested and tortured for the adolescent prank, prompting demonstrations for their release.
The protests set in motion a chain of events in Syria that continue to rock the world to this day.
The defeat in his hometown marks the end of a long battle for Mr Syasneh, one that has cost him just about everything but his life.
He left school at 15 to become an activist as the uprising grew, but did not pick up a gun until his father, a retired architectural engineer, was killed by a mortar on his way to the mosque in the summer of 2013.
He decided that day to join the FSA, an anti-government militia formed of mostly rank-and-file army defectors.
Many of his friends have been killed in fighting or tortured to death in Assad’s prisons. Others fled abroad.
Mr Syasneh could have left with them but said he felt it would have been a betrayal of his country’s struggle. “I’ve known nothing but war. At the beginning I was proud to fight in it for the cause, now it is hard to feel that way,” he said. Until this week he thought he would fight to the last. “I’d prefer death to reconciliation,” he said previously.
But his commanders – driven by pragmatism in the face of the Assad regime’s unstoppable forces – wrote him a different ending.
They agreed to a deal which sees the rebels hand over their weapons and submit to government control.
As part of that deal, fighters unwilling to make peace were to be allowed to evacuate to opposition-held areas in northern Syria.
But Mr Syasneh fears that he is wanted by the government and will not be able to take that option. “I am a special case because I am a child of the revolution. I am sure the Russians will hand me over to the regime,” he said.
“My fate is unknown now, I don’t know what to do. I need to leave Syria because they won’t leave me alive.”
He knows what is to come for Deraa – once the country’s breadbasket but which now lies largely in ruin. The city will come under the control of the Russian military police, who will hand it over to a newly formed local force made up of former FSA fighters. “There is a lot of fear about the fate that awaits us. We do not trust the Russians or the regime,” said Abu Shaima, an opposition spokesman in Deraa.
The terms of the so-called
‘I need to leave Syria because they won’t leave me alive. I am sure the Russians will hand me over to the regime’
reconciliation deals are not always the same, but a demand in previous deals for Aleppo and Homs was for men of military age to enlist in the army.
The hundreds of thousands of civilians who fled in recent weeks towards the closed borders with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights will now have to decide whether to come back into the government’s fold, or live in exile.
The defeat of Deraa sounds the death knell of the revolution.
The only remaining opposition stronghold is Idlib in the north, controlled by a patchwork of competing Islamist groups.
For the more moderate fighters from Deraa – the majority of whom have never lived outside the province – the prospect of joining them is not a palatable one.
Not only do the people of Deraa feel abandoned by their leaders, but by their once-loyal international backers.
The US and UK had for years supported the rebels in the south.
But Washington decided not to intervene when the Syrian government began its offensive last month, calculating that the risk of confronting Moscow outweighed any possible reward.
“We have no friends any more,” said Mr Syasneh, resigned. “This is where it all ends.”