'The revolution will continue': Syrian protesters pledge ahead of 2024

SWEIDA, Syria – Last Friday, people carried red flowers, flags and banners and headed to Freedom Square in the center of the city to take part in a march full of chants and songs calling for the overthrow of the Syrian regime. "The revolution will continue and we will continue to take to the streets to fulfill our demands," 30-year-old Lubna al-Basit told Urdu Voice.

In August, the 130th daily demonstration took place. This time, there was a special festive atmosphere to celebrate the New Year.

Poor living conditions and a lack of public services led to protests in regime-controlled areas in the final years of the civil war, but the areas were never sustained or densely populated. The slogans shouted this time are reminiscent of the time when security forces brutally suppressed protests in 2011.

The year 2023, which began with the earthquake disasters in Turkey and Syria, was known for many international and regional events important to Syria. Since the beginning of the year, the Syrian pound has lost half its value against the dollar. Before the war, it traded at 47 Syrian pounds to one dollar. In early 2023, it was worth about 6,500 Syrian dollars. It has now been devalued by the central bank to just over 13,000 to the dollar in the middle of this year.

According to al-Basit, public services and living conditions were "getting worse and worse". He accused the Syrian regime of being "bankrupt" and unable to provide anything better for its people.

"These protests will continue in 2024 because there is no point in solving the Syrian problem."

Standardization and precautions

A few months before the Sweida protests last summer, the Arab League decided to bring Syria back on its side. However, this normalization of relations with the Syrian regime has not stopped the illegal trafficking of the addictive drug Captagon, which is exported from Syria to the Persian Gulf and around the world, and clashes have broken out along Syria's southern border . The Syrian people continue. Jordanian military and Syrian drug traffickers.

Albasit and other activists who participated in the Sweida protest last Friday said they were not surprised. "The Syrian crisis is of fundamental importance to the Arab world and must be resolved because President Bashar's threat transcends borders," Al Basit said.

Although relations between Syria and other Arab countries have normalized, activists still want the Syrian regime to be held accountable for its violations of the Convention against Torture through the process of the International Court of Justice. Moreover, France's arrest this year of President Bashar al-Assad for his involvement in the 2013 chemical massacre offered some hope.

Radwan al-Atrash, director of the Syrian Center for Community Development, told Urdu Voice that peaceful protesters in Syria support all accountability measures. "All of these are positive factors in finding a solution to the Syrian crisis."

The bombing and targeting of civilian areas and gatherings in northwestern Syria has not stopped, but efforts by Syrian groups to support Gaza continue.

Al-Atrash said "standing alongside those who suffered injustice" motivated him to continue the protests despite the risks. Millions are at risk

"The international community must understand that the lives of millions of Syrians are at risk," Munir Mustapha, deputy director of the Syrian Civil Defense Corps (White Helmets), told Urdu Voice. Last August, the White Helmets held a ceremony in Idlib to mark the 10th anniversary of the regime's massacre of 1,000 people with chemical weapons in the southern Syrian city of Ghouta. The regime's main target this year has been in northwestern Syria, where 1,232 attacks by the Syrian regime and its allies have been recorded this year. It killed 162 people and injured 684, half of them women and children. Mustafa said he believed the regime would step up its attacks in direct response to Sweida's protests.

"He uses the escalation as a means of reinforcing his authority and acting as a competent actor," he added. He added that the attacks targeted important facilities with internationally banned weapons. Mustafa described the impact of the ongoing bombing as "catastrophic" given the growing humanitarian crisis in the region and the lack of funding for relief efforts.

The UN Special Representative for Syria, Geir O Pedersen, spoke at a Security Council briefing on Thursday about the fighting and attacks affecting other parts of Syria in 2023. Most importantly, he said, Israel's heavy bombing of Damascus and Aleppo airports since the start of the Gaza war has disrupted the movement of civilians and UN humanitarian operations.

He said fighting between Arab tribes and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Deir ez-Zor in late August and the KDF's ongoing conflict with Turkey meant an escalation of deadly violence in Syria. "No one should be fooled into thinking this surprising new normal is permanent," Pedersen told the Security Council. He asked the Security Council to work towards the realization of the political peace process agreed eight years ago. The crisis of declining approval ratings.

The February 6 earthquake, which killed 5,900 people, injured more than 12,800 and caused extensive damage to infrastructure across Syria, led to an increase in humanitarian aid in early 2023.

Ahmed Hashem, social projects coordinator at the Ataa Humanitarian Aid Association, told Urdu Voice that it was short-lived due to "lack of funding". The approval rating is expected to drop further. In 2023, the World Food Program (WFP) announced that it would stop providing food to 5.5 million people from the beginning of 2024. Other humanitarian operations in 2023 have only received a third of the funding they need.

Hashem said local humanitarian organizations cannot bear the burden. The only solution to the Syrian crisis is effective international intervention, he said.

The United Nations already estimates that the number of Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance in 2024 will reach 16.7 million, an increase of 1.4 million from 2023.

Economic recession, high inflation and rising food prices have already increased poverty levels, but if the Syrian crisis is ignored and people's needs are ignored, the worst is yet to come, Sweida protesters said.