A Homecoming Trip to Salamiyeh- Syria

The previous month, on December 1, I arrived at Damascus international airport and my first impression was that the revolution is far from achieving its goal, the removal of Bashar Assad from power.
The day after I arrived, I headed to Salamiyeh whhich located near Homs and Hama,To reach Salamiyeh, I first needed to go through Homs. I passed through a number of military checkpoints. Those manning them were fully equipped with heavy arms and tanks, making it look much like a war zone. Soldiers checked the bus that I was on thoroughly but they were not looking for “terrorists” or dissidents. Instead, they were searching for young males born before 1992 in order to see if they had done their compulsory military service.
It became clear that the new wave of military-eligible youths are refusing to do their compulsory military service because they do not want to fire on and kill their own people. This is especially true for those young people from the hot points of the uprising such as Homs, Hama, Deir and Idleb. Of course, these young people do not want to be killed by armed elements within the uprising either.
In the past, the opposition camp in my town was made up of mere dozens of educated men and women. But now, the opposition movement is made up of many more activists. Earlier in August of last year, an estimated 15,000 activists from Salamiyeh participated in a protest.
But strikes and protests against the regime have not been as frequent since the beginning of September, when police, security forces and the regime thugs, the shabbiha launched an operation to uproot the protest movement from Salamiyeh. The authorities initiated a house-to-house arrest campaign that lasted for about three days.
This operation against protesters in Salamiyeh was successful because of the help of the shabbiha. In addition to serving as groups of mercenaries who are loyal to the regime who grants them money and supplies them with weapons to patrol the cities during the night, they are tasked with distributing oil to families. In Syria oil is used during the winter by most people to warm their houses.
Most of the opposition activists earn good wages. There is actually a sizeable number of regime-controlled public sector employees that are involved in the protests.
“We are not hungry, but we need our dignity back. They [the regime's prominent figures and families] have been oppressing us for 50 years and they want to keep this situation [going],” one shop owner told me.