Alex Simon writes:

Until recently, some [Syrians] found solace in the notion that conflict would end and life would improve. Today that prospect feels increasingly remote. The war has purportedly been won, yet many of the country’s most acute problems endure: Conscription, disappearances, and executions persist; state-led theft of property is on the rise; and a longstanding crisis of public services is, if anything, deepening. The result is that many are still finding ways to flee, and those who choose to remain often struggle to find any reason for optimism. A friend living in the Damascus suburbs summed up the hopelessness around her:

Many older people are just in this miserable state of despair; some refuse to deal with simple things, like fixing basic problems around the house. I know one person who stopped going to the dentist. He just says, ‘I’m going to die soon anyway.’ Young people are nihilistic in a different way. If the older generation has given up on everything, the younger one has given up specifically on Syria and is just looking to leave.

Those who sacrificed for the uprising often carry an additional layer of emotional bruises. Such wounds are partly self-inflicted, as many ask themselves what went wrong and what might, conceivably, have made it go right. Such introspection is often bound up with bitter resentment toward those who claimed to represent or support the revolution: from fickle Western governments to a failed political opposition to an array of armed factions now frequently derided as no better than the system they promised to overthrow.

“The opposition factions proved themselves mercenaries,” said an activist from the southern province of Deraa, where protests first broke out in March 2011. We spoke at a Starbucks in Amman, during a period—October 2018—when the mood within the Jordan-based opposition was dark. Pro-regime forces had recently retaken southern Syria after a campaign that lasted mere weeks. The speed of the victory—accelerated by a wave of Russian-brokered “reconciliation” agreements—took almost everyone by surprise. It revealed rebel factions’ willingness to cut a deal, alongside widespread fatigue and frustration among the South’s population—directed, in large part, at the rebels themselves. The activist elaborated:

Today, people see a choice between one dictator in the regime and 20 dictators in the opposition. So, they’ll choose the regime. Everyone in the south hates Bashar. But all that hate won’t make them willing to relive the past eight years, when they were the only ones who paid the price. The kingdom of fear is back. Everyone will submit in exchange for being allowed to eat.

The themes of submission and surrender hung like a pall over every conversation on that trip to Jordan. It extends to countries like Lebanon, where Syrians are caught between punitive legal measures and a threatening political discourse. Syrians who cannot safely return must opt either for indefinitely suffering the indignity and precariousness of life in Lebanon or for some form of escape—legal or otherwise—usually to Europe. A Beirut-based acquaintance from the ravaged eastern province of Deir Ezzor described, with chilling concision, his predicament: “The phase of war is over; the phase of vengeance is beginning. It’s bad here, too. Better to be far away.” [Continue reading…]