Mom whose son’s loss of life ignited Syrian revolution after Assad’s fall

If the need to oust Bashar al-Assad originated anyplace, it’s in Daraa, a small Syrian city close to the Jordanian border.

Right here, on Might 21, 2011, the tortured and mutilated physique of a 13-year-old boy Hamza al-Khatib was launched to his household a number of weeks after his arrest throughout an anti-government rally.

His loss of life and the torture of different native youngsters for writing anti-Assad graffiti sparked widespread protests and a harsh crackdown by authorities forces.

If there’s anybody in Daraa who ought to be celebrating the autumn of the Assad regime, it’s the Khatib household.

However after we visited as we speak, nobody in that home was celebrating.

They’d simply acquired screenshots of paperwork discovered within the infamous Saydnaya jail, confirming that Hamza’s older brother Omar – additionally arrested by police in 2019 – had died in custody.

The boys’ mom, Samira, trembling with grief, informed me she was ready for Omar to get out of jail.

“I assumed possibly he would come as we speak or tomorrow,” she mentioned. “In the present day I acquired the information.”

Wearing black and already in mourning for her husband who died lower than three months in the past, she requested former President Bashar al-Assad to expertise for himself what she had skilled.

“I hope he pays the worth,” she mentioned. “And that God will take vengeance on him and on his youngsters.”

His nephew, Hossam al-Khatib, mentioned the paperwork had been posted on social media by folks looking Saydnaya on the lookout for details about their kinfolk. They discovered Omar’s file and shared it on-line, understanding that he was Hamza’s brother.

Assad’s fall lifted the lid on many years of repression in Syria, and far of Daraa was within the streets Sunday, surprised by freedom, as insurgent fighters took the capital Damascus and Assad fled .

Cellphone footage reveals crowds of males working round Deraa’s central sq. in a chaotic burst of pleasure – shouting and firing weapons into the air.

This area was a key hotbed of opposition beneath Assad’s rule – heavy preventing is etched right here in faculties and houses, with village after village eaten away by tank shells and machine gun fireplace.

The opposition on this southern a part of Syria is totally different from the alliance led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which swept from the north and captured the capital final week. However they each converged on the capital on Sunday.

The Free Syrian Military (FSA) started preventing right here in 2011, when the federal government’s harsh crackdown after Hamza’s loss of life satisfied some serving officers in Assad’s military to defect and kind a insurgent pressure.

One in every of them was Ahmed al-Awda, a poet who studied English literature at college earlier than changing into a military officer, then a insurgent chief, now a militia chief in Daraa province.

“You may’t think about how glad we’re,” he informed me within the close by city of Busra. “We’ve got been crying for days. You may’t think about how we really feel. Right here in Syria, everybody misplaced their household. Everybody was struggling.”

Mr. Awda mentioned he was among the many first to enter Damascus on Sunday, together with HTS. The very first thing he did, he added, was to go to embassies and authorities buildings to guard the folks there.

“We took many civilian authorities brokers to the 4 Seasons Lodge and deployed a really massive pressure there to guard them,” he mentioned.

” it may be a loopy time, so I did my finest to guard everybody there, even the federal government guys. I do not wish to punish them, they’re Syrians.”

However he says he will not forgive Assad so simply.

“I’ll do my finest to deliver him to justice and for him to be punished, as a result of we won’t neglect what he did to the Syrian folks and the way he destroyed Syria.”

Assad’s departure has introduced fragile unity to Syria and its varied opposition forces. However they now not have a typical enemy, and with outdoors powers nonetheless invested right here, their variations could possibly be put to the take a look at.

Some concern that Syria will comply with the trail of Iraq and Libya and descend into chaos.

“We noticed what occurred in Iraq and we reject it,” Mr. Awda mentioned.

Assad’s forces weren’t the one ones he fought right here in recent times. Cells of the Islamic State (IS) group, nonetheless scattered within the east of the nation, additionally pose a menace.

Mr. Awda says he fought towards them, killing a senior IS chief, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi, two years in the past.

In the present day, Assad’s highly effective backers, Iran and Russia, are now not holding again ISIS and lots of are fearful a couple of resurgence of the regime.

Mr Awda is adamant this won’t occur. “No,” he insisted. “I kicked them out. We did not push Assad out simply to reside beneath ISIS.”

He now needs free elections, satisfied that the Syrian folks won’t ever select a dictator once more.

In Daraa’s cemetery, the plaque on Hamza’s grave lies in items – shattered by a authorities tank shell throughout preventing with insurgent forces, the household mentioned.

“They continued to beat him even when he was useless,” a cousin remarked.

Neighbors seemed silently on the Syrian opposition flag tied round Hamza’s gravestone.

Behind, the graves inform of 13 years of preventing: an airstrike, a battle, a complete household killed of their residence.

The struggle with Assad is over, however peace in Syria isn’t but gained.