'I sparked Syria's revolution now I'm here to finish it'

Muawiyah Syasneh was just a teenager when a simple act of rebellion lit the fuse that resulted in a civil war. Now, he talks to Bel Trew about his role in bringing the conflict to an end

- Bel Trew

Angry with life under Bashar al-Assad, 16-year-old Muawiyah Syasneh and his friends spray-painted four words onto a wall in their school playground.

Four words of defiance that saw the teenagers jailed and tortured for weeks, triggering Syria’s first protests in early 2011.

Four words that ignited a revolution that spiralled into one of the bloodiest civil wars of modern times.

Four words that simply read: “It’s your turn, Doctor.”

It was a reference to Assad, who was an ophthalmologist in London before he returned to Syria to continue his family’s brutal regime.

“We spent 45 days under torture in prison for these words,” recalls Muawiyah as he stands in front of the same wall, in the city of Daraa. “It was indescribable. We were children – hung, beaten, electrocuted.”

Over his shoulder is a rifle. He ended up fighting with the Free Syrian Army and, years later, joined the group of rebels that not only expelled regime forces from Daraa last week but were the first to seize the capital, Damascus.

“In 2011, after the revolution started, the entire region demanded its children back,” he tells The Independent. “We are proud of what we did because adults couldn’t do it.”

Now 30 and a father himself, there was no way that the young Muawiyah could have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash. He could never have imagined that, more than a decade later, and after fleeing the regime’s intense bombardment of Daraa and becoming a refugee, he would return and follow the Southern Operations Room rebels into Damascus to herald Assad’s downfall.

“The battle in Daraa happened so suddenly. We were surprised – in moments, we conquered the city and then Damascus, which was the first time I had ever been in the capital,” he says, showing a photo of himself in disbelief, wielding his rifle in the capital’s Martyrs’ Square.