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I find this so heart-breaking, this perfectly reasonable hope for some element of freedom and democracy. A long read, but vivid and compelling.
Syria’s Last Bastion of Freedom
Amid the brutal civil war, a town fought off the regime and the fundamentalists—and dared to hold an election. Can its experiment in democracy survive?
By Anand Gopal
In the summer of 2017, for the first time anywhere in Syria since 1954, the residents of the town of Saraqib decided to seize control of their future—and hold a genuinely free election... The polls opened at eight-thirty. No campaign posters hung on the town’s walls, because the candidates could not afford them. Hossein hauled eight glass ballot boxes to schools that were serving as polling stations. When he was done, he waited outside al-Baneen High School, the streets droning with generators. After an hour, the first voters trickled in. He then visited al-Salam school, where a few women were forming a line. A dizzying realization set in: people were actually coming.
Hossein saw friends, relatives, and a steady stream of people he didn’t know, including a seventy-year-old man voting for the first time in his life. At noon, Hossein returned to Idlib Gate, which was now crowded. The three-star flag of the 2011 Syrian revolution hung between pillars. Plates heaped with roasted chicken, potatoes, and rice were passed around. Someone loaded a cassette by the local singer Ahmed al-Tellawi into a tape deck, and the poll workers and Hossein began to dance. By the early evening, voting lines were spilling onto the street....
The Friday crowds steadily grew. Protesters chanted, “Peaceful, peaceful,” and demanded such reforms as scrapping the emergency law. “I felt like I was born again,” the activist Manhal Bareesh told the Web site Syria Untold. “Security personnel in front of me, Baath guys behind me, but I was protesting with my people. My friends kissed me, some old people cried, I was expecting a bullet to penetrate my head anytime and to die on their shoulders. It was a strange and fabulous feeling.”
I hope Assad will settle for a federalized Syria, one where the Kurds and another groups can at least have some autonomy and examples like this article aren´t just long shot situations for the future. Time will tell.
I hope the kurds survive and rape those jihadis...with goats!
Is it Kurdish held? That explains the island of democracy. Those guys really have it tough - Syria hates them, ISIS hates them, Iran hates them, Turkey hates them, Saddam hated them so much he gassed them.
But they are really a unique component in the middle east - muslim but very secular and progressive in regards to human rights (politics actually more leaning to socialism however). They love Americans, there fighters are the toughest in the middle east (many trained by the Israeli Army or US special forces), and their women are hot (many who are actually fighting on the front lines).
The town is held by Ha'yat Tahrir al-Sham (Al Qaeda in Syria). The government's offensive to clear out the jihadists hasn't yet occurred.
I read the article, it's hard to follow all the politics and turn overs this town has had with different factions. It's clearly not the kurds holding the town (making my post above this meaningless). Wikipedia says it's Haýat Tahrir al-Sham held, the article goes to extents to say it's held by secularists, not fundamentalists, and Al-Queda and all other radical groups were thrown out. Regardless, Al-Qaeda would never allow free elections or secularism.
Who knows, the entire article could be another example of fake news.
The only thing I know is, being in Assad's Syria, the eventual fate of that town will not be good.
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