An account by a partisan of the Syrian Arab Spring.
Hi Everyone ,
I am M… I am from Syria ,Idlib, Marat Alnouman. I was an English teacher in one of Idlib’s school.
In 2011 the revolution started in Syria. At that time, I was studying in Albaath University in Homs. I was there in the first demonstration of Homs in 2011. The demonstration was peaceful one, we just walked in the street with empty hands. In that demonstration, on the first day, Assad’s regime shot us and killed civilians. There were demonstrations in most cities in Syria, and Assad’s regime killed civilians everywhere. I was arrested in Homs, and I was detained for 14 days. It was so awful for me, there was all kinds of torture imaginable.
My father paid a bribe, and I was released from the jail. At that time my city Marat Alnouman was bombed a demonstration was in progress. I came back there to join the peaceful demonstrations against Assad.
FSA was created at that time to protect the civilians and a lot of parts of Syria was released from Assad. And later on ISIS and HTS appeared. They started fighting against FSA, but they didn’t fight against the Assad regime. HTS and ISIS were one part of Assad regime. They withdrew from a lot of “free” areas to allow Assad to retake control. Assad recaptured most territory with their help.
Right now, HTS are still in the city of Idlib. HTS has withdrawn from Marat Alnouman for the Assad regime. The people here in Idlib hate HTS the same way as they hate Assad. We have many demonstrations against HTS the same way as we did against Assad. Because of the so much bombing by Assad, and so many arrests, a lot of people have left Syria towards different countries. This is especially the case with Turkey who received about 3.5million refugees. Through the last four months more than one million were displaced from Northern Hamma , Southern and Eastern Idlib and Western Aleppo. This was because of the Assad regime’s and Russian warplanes which attacked and killled only the civilian population. Those one million moved near the Turkish border. Most of us live in tents inside the camps with very bad situation.
We will go back to our homes when Assad regime leaves them.