Question

What syrian people were demanding in spring 2011?

Answer 1

This story was published in April 2011. We are repromoting it today — March 16, 2015 — the day many consider the 4-year anniversary of the Syrian conflict.

DARAA, Syria — It was the small act of defiance that catapulted Syria to the frontline of the Arab revolution.

And it came not from the organized opposition in Damascus or Aleppo or any other major Syrian city, but from the graffiti cans of school boys in a run-down border town half way to the desert.

As-Shaab / Yoreed / Eskaat el nizam!": "The people / want / to topple the regime!"

Here on March 6 the slogan of the revolutions in Cairo and Tunis, which the boys had seen played out on their TVs, came flying from their paint cans onto a wall and grain silo in Daraa, the ancient and increasingly arid farming town on Syria’s southern border with Jordan.

The local secret police soon arrested 15 boys between the ages of 10 and 15, detaining them under the control of Gen. Atef Najeeb, a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad.

In a gloomy interrogation room the children were beaten and bloodied, burned and had their fingernails pulled out by grown men working for a regime whose unchecked brutality appears increasingly to be sowing the seeds of its undoing.

On Friday, Syria saw the bloodiest day of its 5-week-old uprising, as security forces gunned down close to 100 protesters across the country. Security forces fired on mourners the following day, killing at least nine at funerals for those who died in Friday's massacre. On Monday, the violence continued. This time, security forces stormed the city of Daraa, where it all began.

The ever increasing numbers of people killed by security forces have fuelled the growing protest movement, the demands of which have intensified from simple requests for reform to the all-out ouster of Assad.

The story of Daraa is the story of the Syrian uprising: A single incident of brutality by a lawless secret police which ignited protests that swept the country.

Family blood

The disappearance of Syrian citizens, even children, inside the cells of one the state’s notorious security branches may not have been anything unusual for people accustomed to living for half a century under emergency laws.

But the arrested boys were from almost every big family of Daraa: the Baiazids, the Gawabras, the Masalmas and the Zoubis.

In the largely tribal society of Syria’s south, family loyalty and honor run deep. So when security forces opened fire on the families of the missing who had marched to the governor’s house to demand their release, the regime had started a fatal feud.

“When the people saw the blood, they went crazy. We all belong to tribes and big families and for us blood is a very, very serious issue,” said Ibrahim, a relative of one of the boys arrested.

The 200 people outside the governor's house quickly grew in number. “We were asking in a peaceful way to release the children but their reply to us was bullets,” said Ibrahim. “Now we can have no compromise with any security branches.”

Security forces prevented ambulances from ferrying the injured people to hospital, said Mohammed, a 28-year-old relative of another one of the boysi. “We will not forget that.”

Instead the injured were taken to the Omari Mosque in the heart of Old Daraa.

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