This Is What We Wanted


11 April 2014

As the conflict in Syria augments in brutality, it consumes the basic foundations of the civil movement in Syria, and poses a grave danger to the course of the uprising.

Coinciding with the uprising's third anniversary, Aleppo's Revolution Youth assembly, launched a campaign called “This Is What We Wanted...and This Is What Actually Happened”, to save the uprising from veering off course, and be a wake-up call to those who lost track of its legitimate goals and demands.

Activists believe that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other parties have taken advantage of the power vacuum in Syria, to impose their own agenda, and deliberately create a rift between the uprising and the people. The campaign thus, sought to lessen this gap through a set of activities, carried out by the campaign's operators. The initiative included raising the uprising's early banners, and repeating the protester's first slogans: “freedom, equality and social justice”. Activists also handed out gifts to school children in Aleppo, and organized a protest, denouncing the international silence on the carnage in Syria, in “Sheikh Fares” neighborhood.

Additionally, the activists honored the Civil Defense Brigade in Aleppo, for their prominent role in rescuing thousands of civilians trapped under rubble, in light of the continuous artillery bombardment on the city. “Those who are trying to steal the revolution from our hands, will ultimately build a dictatorship as vicious and barbaric as the Assad's,” activist Ahmad Naffakh says, “Campaigns like these, serve as a reminder of the uprising's early beginnings, when Syrians stood hand in hand demanding freedom, regardless of their ideological and ethnic affiliations.”

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Illustation by Dima Nechawi Graphic Design by Hesham Asaad