Compulsory Military Service Prompts Migration of Youths in Southern Syria

Crowds of youths are seen outside the Department of Immigration and Passports in Daraa. (Daraa 24 Network)
Crowds of youths are seen outside the Department of Immigration and Passports in Daraa. (Daraa 24 Network)
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Compulsory Military Service Prompts Migration of Youths in Southern Syria

Crowds of youths are seen outside the Department of Immigration and Passports in Daraa. (Daraa 24 Network)
Crowds of youths are seen outside the Department of Immigration and Passports in Daraa. (Daraa 24 Network)

Syrian youths seeking to avoid mandatory military service by the regime usually flee to the southern provinces of Daraa and Sweida where some regions are still outside the control of the regime.

The regime tried to take advantage of the situation by issuing in April 2021 a law in Daraa that grants men between the ages of 19 and 42 a one-year grace period, during which they may obtain an “administrative postponement” of their conscription.

It followed that with contradictory decisions against those exempted, such as a travel ban in May and later, an order to obtain a “travel permit” from military recruitment centers.

A member of the negotiation committees in Daraa told Asharq Al-Awsat that the youths soon rushed to obtain passports, allowing the regime to reap direct and indirect revenues from its decisions.

This, according to the source, led to an unprecedented crisis that, as always in Syria, created a black market and rampant corruption in the country’s Department of Immigration and Passports.

Youths wishing to obtain a new passport as soon as possible paid millions of Syrian pounds to flee the country.

People seeking to avoid conscription usually have two choices: flee the country through legal or illegal means, or escape to regions outside regime control.

One man in Daraa, who has rejected compulsory military service, said such practices emerged with the eruption of the anti-regime protests in the province back in 2011.

The phenomena even extended to officers who refused orders to quell the protests, he revealed.

Now, the circumstances have changed, he went on to say. He compared joining the military to one throwing himself into the unknown.

They may spend years in the military, he added, citing examples of service that stretched to ten years given the ongoing conflict in the country.

Given the situation, he said, it is understandable for youths to be at a loss. No future awaits them after spending years in mandatory service, “that is if they stayed alive.”

People seeking to flee Syria would need anywhere between USD 10,000 to 16,000 to reach countries of asylum. Some have taken the risk of selling their properties, cars and homes to raise these funds.

Activists in Sweida said mandatory conscription has created tensions between the regime and the people.

The tensions have reached such an extent that locals Daraa and Sweida are confronting regime forces that are calling up youths to enlist.

Armed groups that remain active in southern Syria are still to this day preventing the regime forces from forcibly taking youths to join the military.



What to Know about the Tensions between Iran and the US before Their Third Round of Talks

The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
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What to Know about the Tensions between Iran and the US before Their Third Round of Talks

The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)

Iran and the United States will hold talks Saturday in Oman, their third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

The talks follow a first round held in Muscat, Oman, where the two sides spoke face to face. They then met again in Rome last weekend before this scheduled meeting again in Muscat.

Trump has imposed new sanctions on Iran as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign targeting the country. He has repeatedly suggested military action against Iran remained a possibility, while emphasizing he still believed a new deal could be reached by writing a letter to Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to jumpstart these talks.

Khamenei has warned Iran would respond to any attack with an attack of its own.

Here’s what to know about the letter, Iran’s nuclear program and the tensions that have stalked relations between Tehran and Washington since the 1979 revolution.

Why did Trump write the letter? Trump dispatched the letter to Khamenei on March 5, then gave a television interview the next day in which he acknowledged sending it. He said: “I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.’”

Since returning to the White House, the president has been pushing for talks while ratcheting up sanctions and suggesting a military strike by Israel or the US could target Iranian nuclear sites.

A previous letter from Trump during his first term drew an angry retort from the supreme leader.

But Trump’s letters to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term led to face-to-face meetings, though no deals to limit Pyongyang’s atomic bombs and a missile program capable of reaching the continental US.

How did the first round go? Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, hosted the first round of talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The two men met face to face after indirect talks and immediately agreed to this second round in Rome.

Witkoff later made a television appearance in which he suggested 3.67% enrichment for Iran could be something the countries could agree on. But that’s exactly the terms set by the 2015 nuclear deal struck under US President Barack Obama, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew America.

Witkoff hours later issued a statement underlining something: “A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal.” Araghchi and Iranian officials have latched onto Witkoff’s comments in recent days as a sign that America was sending it mixed signals about the negotiations.

Yet the Rome talks ended up with the two sides agreeing to starting expert-level talks this Saturday. Analysts described that as a positive sign, though much likely remains to be agreed before reaching a tentative deal.

Why does Iran’s nuclear program worry the West? Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials increasingly threaten to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran now enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels of 60%, the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Under the original 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium up to 3.67% purity and to maintain a uranium stockpile of 300 kilograms (661 pounds). The last report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s program put its stockpile at 8,294.4 kilograms (18,286 pounds) as it enriches a fraction of it to 60% purity.

US intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, has warned in a televised interview that his country has the capability to build nuclear weapons, but it is not pursuing it and has no problem with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspections. However, he said if the US or Israel were to attack Iran over the issue, the country would have no choice but to move toward nuclear weapon development.

“If you make a mistake regarding Iran’s nuclear issue, you will force Iran to take that path, because it must defend itself,” he said.

Why are relations so bad between Iran and the US? Iran was once one of the US’s top allies in the Middle East under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA had fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. The revolution followed, led by Khomeini, and created Iran’s theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the US Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the US severed. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s saw the US back Saddam Hussein. The “Tanker War” during that conflict saw the US launch a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea, while the US later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the American military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the US have see-sawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, with relations peaking when Tehran made the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Middle East that persist today.