Activists in Dara’a province called on the young people to refuse to join Assad forces in response to the security crackdown launched by the regime in the province to force military-aged people to join its forces. Activists launched the ‘Dara’a Disobedience’ online campaign for this purpose.
The ‘Ahrar Houran Conglomerate’ released a statement calling on the young people to stay indoors as much as they can to avoid being detained by the Assad regime. The statement stressed that bowing to the regime’s threats would allow the regime to use them as cannon fodder in its ongoing military campaign against their fellow Syrians in northwestern Syria.
Anger has recently been building up in the province because of the daily harassment by the Assad regime’s security forces which have been rounding up people and isolating the towns and villages from one another by erecting checkpoints across the province.
On Saturday, checkpoints manned by the Assad regime forces began to stop the young people and force them to check with the recruitment branches in the province within a week under the threat of their names being circulated as draft-dodgers.
The Assad regime’s state security branch on Saturday published new lists of the names of young people wanted for the compulsory military service in the town of Inkhil northwest of Dara’a. The lists were hung on the doors of mosques in the town and contained an ultimatum for those wanted to join Assad’s army.
The Italian news agency AKI has recently published a report on the situation on the ground in Dara’a which said it described as on the verge of explosion because of the policies of the Assad regime. The agency said that Russia has recently reduced its military presence in the city and its countryside for fear of renewed insurgency, noting that the deteriorating economic conditions in the province could contribute to the return of tensions in the region.
The revolutionary movement has re-emerged in several towns and villages in the province of Dara’a in recent months following the Assad regime’s recapture of the province around a year before. The past few weeks have seen several anti-regime demonstrations condemning the crimes of the Assad regime and its backers. The demonstrators indicated that they were determined to hold more protests despite the Assad regime’s tightening of its grip on the province. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
