Syrians within Syria and in the diaspora are wary of HTS. Syrian activists have long described Nusra and other Islamist groups as a second pole in the counterrevolution, after the Assad regime. Syrian activists for years have lifted the stories of Razan Zeitouneh, Wael Hamada, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi — four democratic activists who opposed the Assad regime as well as the Islamist groups, and were kidnapped and disappeared at the end of 2013, most likely by another, similar Islamist militia.
But Syrians have also resisted Nusra, and are likely to continue to resist HTS as well. In 2016, residents of Ma’arat al-Nu’man, a city in rural Idlib between Aleppo and Hama controlled at the time by Nusra, protested every day for over six months against Nusra and its allied Islamist groups and their reactionary crimes. After four months, the popular protest campaign in Ma’arat al-Nu’man won the release of protestors who had been arrested by Nusra.
As HTS captured the country from Assad, Syrian activists within the country and abroad voiced that they will not allow the group to oppress them as the Assad regime did for decades, restating their commitment to the 2011 revolution and the continuance of that struggle.
“We cannot have a new kind of dictator replace another,” Banah Ghadbian, a Syrian activist and professor based in the U.S., told Truthout. “Syrians have been working toward this moment for so long, we will not allow it to be coopted. We won’t let them take our revolutionary spirit away.” Ghadbian continued:
“We must hold the regime accountable for its crimes, and let the civil society organizations on the ground guide the democratic transition, rather than glorify the rebel forces who do not answer to anyone but themselves. Echoing the early slogans of the revolution, ‘We want to build a Syria for all Syrians,’ which means building a thriving democratic civil society for all minorities and ethno religious groups.”
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