Assad Regime Issues Travel Ban for Half Million Military Aged Males

After three years of grueling warfare against armed opposition fighters, the Syrian regime faces a dire internal crisis not witnessed since the initial months of the conflict. Defections, desertions, and over 44,000 combat fatalities have reduced the Syrian Arab Army from a pre-war high of 325,000 soldiers to an estimated 150,000 battle-tested yet war-weary troops. Despite reinforcement from tens of thousands of foreign volunteers, Lebanese Hezbollah militants, and pro-regime militias, regime forces have proven unable to decisively overcome rebel brigades on the battlefield. Faced with both a war-weary populace and a burgeoning manpower deficit that threatens its survival, the Syrian regime has resorted to a nation-wide forced conscription campaign. Reports indicate that the avoidance of the compulsory military service has reached staggering levels. Activists in the southern Druze-majority province of as-Suwayda, for example, claimed that only 450 out of 8,000 eligible youth enrolled for military service in 2012 while only 250 out of 7,000 eligible conscripts enlisted in the reserves during the same period. Thousands of young Syrian men have gone into hiding in rural areas far from urban centers, fled to opposition-held areas to evade the reach of regime security services, or utilized the smuggling networks built by Syrian refugees in order leave the country for Lebanon, Turkey, or Egypt. On October the regime issued a general mobilization of all reservists born in or after 1984 in the city of Hama, Damascus, Latakia and Tartous, with activists reporting over 1,500 men detained for service at checkpoints or during raids over a four-day period. Activists and eyewitnesses reported that the regime conducted a similar operation in Homs city over the same time period, arresting roughly 1,200 men. The Assad regime has also complemented its reserve mobilizations with concentrated crackdowns on young men attempting to avoid compulsory military service. Military police, intelligence branch officers, and National Defense Force militia have employed mobile checkpoints and raids in regime-held areas in almost every Syrian province – from regime-held neighborhoods of Aleppo city in the north to Dara’a in the south, and from Latakia and Tartous along the coast to Hasaka in the east. These activities are not a new phenomenon: the Syrian Network for Human Rights catalogued over 5,400 arrests for military conscription during the first seven months of 2014, averaging almost 170 detainees per week. Regime forces now conduct raids on buses, cafes, and other venues frequented by young men instead of relying on fixed checkpoints. In some cases, security officials have conducted violent house-by-house searches in entire neighborhoods and detained any youths with improper documentation. Moreover, the Assad regime passed several decrees in the fall of 2014 which restricted the ability of military-aged males to leave the country and avoid mandatory service. Since the start of the uprising in 2011, the Assad regime has required that men between the ages of 18 and 42 provide a statement from a recruitment division indicating an official exemption from service before being authorized to travel abroad. However, on October 20th – concurrent with the start of major reserve mobilizations – the General Mobilization Administration of the Department of Defense banned all men born between 1985 and 1991 from exiting the country for any reason. While students had previously been able to defer military service by extending their studies, the regime has begun to erect checkpoints near universities in Damascus, Dara’a, Homs, and Latakia Provinces to detain young men for military service. Another new recruitment pool is drawn from state employees. New regulations threaten government employees with five-year prison sentences, fines, and immediate dismissal if they refuse to enroll in compulsory military service. (Source: Syrian Coalition + Syrian Network for Human Rights)