Gen. Salim Idriss, the leader of the Syrian opposition’s military wing, marked the second anniversary of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad on Friday with a brief address posted on YouTube in Arabic and English.
In his statement, General Idriss said: “As you all know the Syrian revolution started peacefully. The only thing the Syrian people asked for was freedom, justice and reform. The regime of Bashar al-Assad responded with violence, torture, killings, massacres and bombing of our cities. Today nobody is safe anymore, men and women, elderly people and children.â€
“We all know that th regime will fall,†he added, “the only question is when.â€
Given the daily bloodshed, and visceral reports of battles and suffering, it can be hard to recall that the uprising in Syria did begin with peaceful demonstrations.
As the British-Syrian video activist Rami Jarrah explained in an interview with The Lede in Cairo last year, the protest movement, inspired by the examples of Tunisia and Egypt, began haltingly in the Syrian capital, Damascus, with one demonstration on Feb. 17, 2011, and another March 15, before gaining momentum after Friday Prayers on March 18.
That the Syrian revolution would be extensively documented in video was apparent from the beginning. The very first video images of protest in Damascus posted on The Lede’s running live! blog of the Arab uprisings, showing that February demonstration, began with a sea of hands holding up mobile phones to record the scene.
From the beginning, there were also signs of the potential for conflict and a fear of sectarian division. In video of the March 15 protest in Damascus that Mr. Jarrah drew attention to on Twitter this week, supporters of the president make an appearance, but they are met with chants for the demonstration to remain “Peaceful!â€
Three days later, after Friday Prayers, there were demonstrations in several cities, including Damascus, Homs and Dara’a, where there were also reports of a violent response from the authorities and the death of at least two protesters.
What struck some observers at the time, though, was the more hopeful sign of a protester in the middle of a raucous demonstration inside the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus holding aloft placard calling for Muslim-Christian unity.
Two years later, however, with the uprising transformed into an armed insurgency, drawing strength in part from jihadist groups, even some staunch opponents of the government, like the Aleppo blogger who writes as Edward Dark, have started to despair of the effort to unseat the president through force. The blogger, who once drew attention to clips of peaceful protests across the country, now regularly documents reports of human rights violations by Islamist rebels in the city.
Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.
