His arrest helps fuel the uprising against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But ten years later, Bashir Abazayd wonders if the uprising was worth it.
“I sacrificed everything,” he says softly, speaking by telephone.
In the past decade, Abazayd says, he lost his brother to an air strike, his father to a broken heart ten days later and his mother and other siblings to Jordan. A conflict he unknowingly helped ignite swept away his home, his city, his friends and his youth – and ignited the Middle East.
Abazayd, 25, was just a teenager when he was arrested and accused of scratching graffiti against the government against the walls of his school in the southern Syrian city of Daraa.
“Who would have believed that the regime would kill its own people with chemicals and warplanes?” he asks, speaking from Turkey’s Samsun port in the Black Sea, where he lives, referring to chemical attacks that many accuse the Assad government of. “That it would destroy homes, hospitals, schools and markets, entire cities, that it would burn villages?”
Ten years later, the treatment by Syrian authorities of the boys responsible for the graffiti is widely regarded as the fuse that fueled the uprising against Assad and made Daraa his cradle. The war that followed was bloodier and more brutal than most people could have foreseen – killing hundreds of thousands, displacing half the population of 22 million before the war and wiping out the economy.
Abazayd says that, inspired by the mass protests that overthrew dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, he and his friends were mesmerized by the creeping Arab Spring and wanted to send a message to Assad, a British-trained ophthalmologist, whose family ruled Syria for more than four decades in that time.
During the same period, graffiti appeared on the wall of their school.
“It’s your turn, Doctor,” read the message. “Freedom.”
Over the course of three weeks, Abazayd made conflicting reports about his involvement in the graffiti. He now says that he and his friends had nothing to do with it, but that Syrian security forces did not take them with them for long anyway.
No court or prison records are publicly available in Syria to officially confirm that Abazayd was arrested in connection with the anti-Assad graffiti in 2011.
The Daraa Martyrs Documentation Office, which has been documenting civilian casualties and arrests in Daraa province since 2011, shared the names of 16 boys between the ages of 10 and 14 who were arrested, and Abazayd’s was on the list.
Two activists and a local cameraman in Daraa also confirmed that he was among the detainees.
Cradle of the revolution
Syria lies in ruins, and while entire territories remain out of government control, Assad is holding an unmistakable grip left over from a country that was once a Middle Eastern power station.
Meanwhile, the United States, shocked by its experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, has done its best not to get involved in a long and costly war again. Instead, it trained and equipped armed opposition groups and used sanctions and airstrikes to put Assad under pressure to resign or change, with little success.
Neither Abazayd nor his friends are to blame for what happened after the news of their arrests spread.
Some Syrians believe that the uprising was inevitable and that if it had not been caused in Daraa, it would have originated in another city. In early 2011, Daraa was an inconspicuous city, only important for the proximity of a major border crossing with Jordan.
Download the NBC News app for news and politics
Abazayd describes in a shaky voice how he was beaten in custody with sticks and cables until his face was unrecognizable and he wished he was dead.
The people of Daraa descended on the street to release the boys. Then, after Friday prayers on March 18, 2011, security forces opened fire on protesters, apparently killing two of them in what activists considered the first death of the insurgency.
The fuse is lit.
Protests spread like wildfire, followed by brutal repression. Soon, Assad, a descendant of the Alawite sect, was a branch of Shiite Islam, at war with its own people.
Over time, the conflict became more complicated as foreign powers, militant groups, the Kurds – a stateless ethnic group concentrated in the Middle East – and the extremist group of the Islamic State all intervened and created a web of warring parties. Russia and Iran supported the government, while the US, Arab Gulf countries and Turkey supported the rebel groups.
The US was also one of the countries that sent troops to fight ISIS, which exploited the instability to expand its self-proclaimed caliphate’s territory and supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in their fight against the militants. To date, about 900 U.S. troops in Syria are working to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS, according to the U.S. Central Command.
Despite the violence, those poor months at the beginning of the revolution were full of hope for many Syrians.
“We started having these deep conversations about democracy, about the shape of the state, about the regime, about what kind of democracy we are going to have,” said Daraa native Malath Alzoubi, a journalist who took part in the early demonstrations. in the city and now lives in London.
“We thought it was a wave and we are part of this wave,” he said, referring to the Arab Spring uprisings that took place in the Middle East.
Fading hope
The burning optimism that fueled many Syrian revolutionaries was slowly dying.
For some, it was when the Russians joined the conflict on the side of government in 2015, or when the Syrian army took control of their hometowns. For others, it gradually faded. Among a few, it continues to burn despite the devastation.
Many supporters of the opposition in Syria feel let down by the international community, which they say has not protected civilians from the Assad government. Others were bitterly disappointed with President Barack Obama’s decision not to intervene against Assad, after accusing the government of using chemical weapons against civilians, even though he said it was a “red line” for the US. would be.
In July 2018, Russian Syrian government forces hoisted the national flag over Daraa and recaptured the important border crossing with Jordan in a significant victory for Assad.
As part of an agreement reached by Moscow, rebel fighters were given the option to leave Daraa and go with their families to other parts of the country held by rebels or accept an offer of government amnesty .
Syrian government forces have also agreed not to enter the city’s main residence known as Daraa al-Balad, provided rebels there relinquish their heavy weapons, said Omar Hariri, a member of the Daraa Martyrs Documentation Office. said monitoring group.
A friend of Abazayd, who was responsible for spray-painting the anti-Assad message in February 2011, still lives in the Daraa section. The friend, who wishes to remain anonymous because he is worried Syrian troops will target him, says he is sorry he did not leave the city while he still had a chance.
The former rebel fighter, who also identified the documentation office among those arrested in 2011, believes it is only a matter of time before the government takes over the enclave and arrests or kills those inside.
“I made the wrong decision. I should have left Daraa,” he recently said by phone. “I’m a father now, and that’s making me even more worried.”
The scars of the war
Although Daraa may no longer be on the front lines of the war, life remains difficult.
The city and the wider province are plagued by targeted killings and occasional clashes between government forces and former rebels, Hariri of the documentation office said.
The violence underscores Assad’s struggle to subdue the communities long after his forces hoisted the Syrian flag in their towns and villages.
Residents say electricity is scarce and people are waiting in line for hours to buy bread. Syria’s currency has fallen due to the war and the crippling economic crisis.
More than half of the Syrian population cannot afford a basic meal; the price of basic food is more than 200 percent higher than last year, according to the United Nations.
And the prospect of anything improving will soon feel remote.
Talks in Geneva between the government, the opposition and civic groups aimed at reviewing the Syrian constitution have made little progress, and Assad is most likely a fourth consecutive term of seven years in the presidential election.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ned Price said Biden’s government would continue to promote a political settlement to end the conflict and restore US leadership in humanitarian aid to the country.
He added that the Syrian government must change its behavior if there is to be a sustainable end to the conflict, but he does not ask Assad to resign.
Meanwhile, those outside Daraa also suffered. A generation of young Syrians scattered around the world has lost their youth to the devastating conflict.
Abazayd, who previously helped on his father’s farm but now works many hours as a construction worker in Turkey, says he can barely remember life before Syria began self-destruction. Instead of a peaceful childhood, his memories are of warplanes, destruction and fear, he says.
The father of a daughter, he longs to return to Daraa to visit the graves of his brother and his father, but he is realistic that the day will not be soon.
And yet, despite all he has lost, he remains challenging.
“I am sure that the revolution will continue and that in the coming years there will be more anniversaries until the Syrians abandon Bashar Assad and his regime with the help of Western countries,” he said.
Syrian officials did not respond to a request for comment.