Manolo G. Moreno / EFE
On Sunday, a decade after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution and its subsequent culmination in a bloody war, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated the human cost of the conflict at 400,000 dead on Sunday, while its eyes focused on the last stronghold of the opposition.
The balance released by this UK-based NGO, which does not take into account another 88,000 people who lost their lives in government prisons and detention centers, has 117,388 civilian casualties, of which 22,254 were children.
Most of these citizens perished in the actions of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the leading cause of death followed by operations by opposing factions, Russian aviation and, finally, the Turkish, according to the organization, with a wide network of collaborators. at the scene.
THE BEGINNING OF DISASTER
The arrest of 15 teenagers for painting against Al Assad in southern Deraa is often considered the trigger for the March 2011 uprising, but the fact is that protests in solidarity with the demonstrations were already recorded in Damascus last month in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.
“In a way, it started in Deraa, but also in Damascus at the same time, so the question here is whether the revolution started in the center, in the capital or on the outskirts, in secondary cities like Deraa,” he said. Kheder for Efe. .? Khaddour, an analyst at Carnegie Middle East Center.
Under the slogan “A Syria without tyranny”, a cry against the Assads, who were then in power for four decades, some sectors in the east of the country found motivation in the severe drought experienced in previous years and in other points to which other factors clung. social, political and economic.
However, as in other countries raised during the so-called Arab Spring riots, there was a clear common denominator: the center of the movement was a generation of young people born in the 1980s and early 1990s. since the advent of the internet in the 2000s.
Khaddour recalls how the Arab country drank for decades from official television channels as the only source of information, “as in any authoritarian regime” and how “with the internet revolution”, a new generation had the opportunity to grow with images from outside.
Thus, the government has lost its influence as the only model of the vision of young Syrians and “in a way, the relationship between them and the central state has been broken,” he said.
THE WAR AND THE LAST FRONT
From the beginning, a number of world leaders have launched messages in support of the movement against the Syrian government, leading since 2011 to a certain degree of internationalization, which would have established over the years in the form of direct and indirect interventions.
For the summer of 2012, the concept of “liberated areas” appears, those that escape the control of Damascus and receive support from international powers, and with this assistance the opposition begins to be governed by the map that is drawn.
“From 2012 to almost 2016, most of the funding and support goes to the rebels and the opposition based on geography and not on a national agenda, so this has created borders within the country with regime zones and non-regime zones.” . Khaddour explained.
These internal divisions eventually led to an “open war”, which in 2014 would have been colored in parallel with the jihadist nuances of the self-proclaimed caliphate of the Islamic State (IS).
The northwestern province of Idlib is the last major “liberated area” ten years after the outbreak of the revolution, completed by parts of the western region of neighboring Aleppo and other areas on the border with Turkey.
For analyst Carnegie Middle East Center, this situation will no longer work in part because it has become an area dominated by Russia and Turkey and also due to the widespread presence there of the Levant Release Agency, which includes former Syrian affiliate Al Qaeda.
“I think the future of Idlib is that the regime will take more territory in the liberated areas … and the liberated areas will be just a line on the border with Turkey instead of a region,” the expert concluded.