Bassem Mroue And Sarah El Deeb March 16, 2021 - 11:11 PM
BEIRUT - A neglected provincial city amid the farmlands of the south, Daraa was the first place in Syria to explode into protests against the rule of President Bashar Assad in March 2011.
Daraa saw the arc of Syriaâs conflict. Protesters met by a vicious crackdown by Assadâs forces turned to armed rebellion and civil war. Opposition fighters broke free of Assadâs rule in many areas, only to be crushed by his military once his allies Iran and Russia backed it with their firepower.
Now on the 10th anniversary of those first protests, Daraa is back under government control. But only tenuously. Boiling with resentments, desperate from economic crisis and rife with armed groups, the uprisingâs birthplace still feels perched on the rim of an active volcano.