Teen Who Sparked Revolt against Assad in Daraa Celebrates His Downfall

Muawiyah could not have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash. (The Independent)
Muawiyah could not have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash. (The Independent)
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Teen Who Sparked Revolt against Assad in Daraa Celebrates His Downfall

Muawiyah could not have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash. (The Independent)
Muawiyah could not have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash. (The Independent)

Angry with life under Bashar al-Assad, 16-year-old Muawiyah Syasneh and his friends spray-painted four words onto a wall in their school playground.

Four words of defiance that saw the teenagers jailed and tortured for weeks, triggering Syria’s first protests in early 2011. Four words that ignited a revolution that spiraled into one of the bloodiest civil wars of modern times. Four words that simply read: “It’s your turn, Doctor.”

It was a reference to Assad, who was an ophthalmologist in London before he returned to Syria to continue his family’s brutal regime.

“We spent 45 days under torture in prison for these words,” Muawiyah told The Independent as he stood in front of the same wall, in the city of Daraa. “It was indescribable. We were children – hung, beaten, electrocuted.”

Over his shoulder is a rifle. He ended up fighting with the Free Syrian Army and, years later, joined the Free Syrian Army that not only expelled regime forces from Daraa last week but were the first to seize the capital, Damascus.

“In 2011, after the revolution started, the entire region demanded its children back,” he said. “We are proud of what we did because adults couldn’t do it.”

Now 30 and a father himself, there was no way that the young Muawiyah could have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash.

He could never have imagined that, more than a decade later, and after fleeing the regime’s intense bombardment of Daraa and becoming a refugee, he would return and follow the Southern Operations Room rebels into Damascus to herald Assad’s downfall.

“The battle in Daraa happened so suddenly. We were surprised – in moments, we conquered the city and then Damascus, which was the first time I had ever been in the capital,” he said, showing a photo of himself in disbelief, wielding his rifle in the capital’s Martyrs’ Square.

“When we wrote those words all those years ago, we didn’t think it would lead to this. Honestly, we didn’t think it would cause all of Syria and Daraa to rise up. But we demanded our freedom, and now we remain on our homeland’s soil,” he added.

“The war was tough. Many were wounded. Many people died. We lost so many loved ones, and yet we thank God. The blood of the martyrs was not wasted. Justice prevailed, and the revolution was victorious.”

The flint strike that sparked it all took place in this small southern city that few had heard of before 2011. Located just a few miles from Syria’s border with Jordan, Daraa had a pre-war population of just 117,000 people. Before the uprising, life was hard.

Muawiyah blamed the arrival in the early 2000s of the region’s new security chief, Atef Najib. He was notorious for his oppressive laws, and for personally overseeing the imprisonment of Muawiyah and his friends.

By early 2011, the streets were strangled by police checkpoints. “You couldn’t enter or leave,” Muawiyah recalled. “We were watching protests in Egypt and Tunisia, where regimes were falling apart. So we wrote ‘It’s your turn, Doctor,’ and burned the police checkpoint.”

At least 15 boys from different families were rounded up – and badly tortured. One of them reportedly died from his wounds.

Muawiyah recalled how the authorities told their parents: “Forget about your children. Make new children. And if you’ve forgotten how to do that, bring your wives.”

By March, thousands – then, tens of thousands – began to gather regularly around the city’s neutral al-Omari Mosque, demanding the return of the children. It ignited protests by frustrated citizens across the country.

“We were surprised by what happened. Everyone demanded the return of the children – families inside Daraa, but [also] across Syria.”

Ehab Qatayfan, 50, who was among the crowds of protesters at the time, says the children’s detention was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“We were in a miserable situation, as you saw with your own eyes – the jails, the prisons, the torture machines,” he recalled from outside that same mosque, 13 years on. “We were oppressed by every single branch of the regime.”

But the protests were met with violence by the authorities, and it snowballed from there. Fighting raged for a brutal seven years, during which time regime forces laid waste to Daraa. Among the dead was Muawiyah’s own father, who was killed by regime bombs in 2014 as he went to Friday prayers.

By 2018, armed factions had surrendered and, under the terms of a deal, were forced to evacuate to the northwestern province of Idlib. Among those who fled there was Muawiyah, who then escaped onwards to Türkiye, where he endured the hardships of life as a refugee.

Desperate and broke, he eventually returned to his hometown via smuggling routes, and earlier this month – as opposition forces from Idlib swept through Aleppo, Hama, and Homs – he joined the frustrated youth of Daraa, who turned once more on the Assad regime. To everyone’s surprise, the government soldiers they had feared for so many decades appeared to melt away.

Back in Daraa, years of battle scars have gouged out swathes of the city. Children now play football in the shadows of the towering skeletons of apartment blocks. Families have tried to rebuild makeshift houses in the shells of their former homes.

There, today’s teenagers have known nothing but war.

“My home is destroyed, my father forcibly disappeared, my brother killed. I don’t remember anything before except the fighting,” said says one 16-year-old boy, watching his friends play football next to the school where Muawiyah’s graffiti started it all. “My first memory is regime soldiers shooting people,” he added grimly.

But Muawiyah, whose son is now six, has hope – not for himself, but for the youth.

“We want Syria to be better than before. But frankly, I already lost my future. The future of the next generation is what matters,” he said, clutching his assault rifle.

“I pray for them – that they won’t face the torture we faced, that they won’t have weapons, that they won’t live in wars like we did, that they will have the safety and security we all deserve.”



What Makes Greenland a Strategic Prize at a Time of Rising Tensions? And Why Now? 

A person walks on a snow covered road, ahead of the March 11 general election, in Nuuk, Greenland, March 9, 2025. (Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via Reuters) 
A person walks on a snow covered road, ahead of the March 11 general election, in Nuuk, Greenland, March 9, 2025. (Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via Reuters) 
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What Makes Greenland a Strategic Prize at a Time of Rising Tensions? And Why Now? 

A person walks on a snow covered road, ahead of the March 11 general election, in Nuuk, Greenland, March 9, 2025. (Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via Reuters) 
A person walks on a snow covered road, ahead of the March 11 general election, in Nuuk, Greenland, March 9, 2025. (Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via Reuters) 

When US President Donald Trump first suggested buying Greenland in 2019, people thought it was just a joke. No one is laughing now.

Trump’s interest in Greenland, restated vigorously soon after he returned to the White House in January, comes as part of an aggressively “America First” foreign policy platform that includes demands for Ukraine to hand over mineral rights in exchange for continued military aid, threats to take control of the Panama Canal, and suggestions that Canada should become the 51st US state.

Why Greenland? Increasing international tensions, global warming and the changing world economy have put Greenland at the heart of the debate over global trade and security, and Trump wants to make sure that the US controls this mineral-rich country that guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America.

Who does Greenland belong to? Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark, a long-time US ally that has rejected Trump’s overtures. Denmark has also recognized Greenland’s right to independence at a time of its choosing.

Amid concerns about foreign interference and demands that Greenlanders must control their own destiny, the island’s prime minister called an early parliamentary election for Tuesday.

The world’s largest island, 80% of which lies above the Arctic Circle, is home to about 56,000 mostly Inuit people who until now have been largely ignored by the rest of the world.

Why are other countries interested in Greenland? Climate change is thinning the Arctic ice, promising to create a northwest passage for international trade and reigniting the competition with Russia, China and other countries over access to the region’s mineral resources.

“Let us be clear: we are soon entering the Arctic Century, and its most defining feature will be Greenland’s meteoric rise, sustained prominence and ubiquitous influence,” said Dwayne Menezes, managing director of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative.

“Greenland — located on the crossroads between North America, Europe and Asia, and with enormous resource potential — will only become more strategically important, with all powers great and small seeking to pay court to it. One is quite keen to go a step further and buy it.”

The following are some of the factors that are driving US interest in Greenland.

Arctic competition

Following the Cold War, the Arctic was largely an area of international cooperation. But climate change, the hunt for scarce resources and increasing international tensions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are once again driving competition in the region.

Strategic importance

Greenland sits off the northeastern coast of Canada, with more than two-thirds of its territory lying within the Arctic Circle. That has made it crucial to the defense of North America since World War II, when the US occupied Greenland to ensure that it didn’t fall into the hands of Nazi Germany and to protect crucial North Atlantic shipping lanes.

The US has retained bases in Greenland since the war, and the Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Force Base, supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the US and NATO. Greenland also guards part of what is known as the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) Gap, where NATO monitors Russian naval movements in the North Atlantic.

Natural resources

Greenland has large deposits of so-called rare earth minerals that are needed to make everything from computers and smartphones to the batteries, solar and wind technologies that will power the transition away from fossil fuels. The US Geological Survey has also identified potential offshore deposits of oil and natural gas.

Greenlanders are keen to develop the resources, but they have enacted strict rules to protect the environment. There are also questions about the feasibility of extracting Greenland’s mineral wealth because of the region’s harsh climate.

Climate change

Greenland’s retreating ice cap is exposing the country’s mineral wealth and melting sea ice is opening up the once-mythical Northwest Passage through the Arctic.

Greenland sits strategically along two potential routes through the Arctic, which would reduce shipping times between the North Atlantic and Pacific and bypass the bottlenecks of the Suez and Panama canals. While the routes aren’t likely to be commercially viable for many years, they are attracting attention.

Chinese interest

In 2018, China declared itself a “near-Arctic state” in an effort to gain more influence in the region. China has also announced plans to build a “Polar Silk Road” as part of its global Belt and Road Initiative, which has created economic links with countries around the world.

Then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejected China’s move, saying: “Do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a new South China Sea, fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims?” A Chinese-backed rare earth mining project in Greenland stalled after the local government banned uranium mining in 2021.

Independence

The legislation that extended self-government to Greenland in 2009 also recognized the country’s right to independence under international law. Opinion polls show a majority of Greenlanders favor independence, though they differ on exactly when that should occur. The potential for independence raises questions about outside interference in Greenland that could threaten US interests in the country.