Conscription campaigns target about half a million youth
Introduction
Areas that are not under the regime control are targets of an aerial and artillery shelling that hasn’t stopped since 2011. This ceaseless shelling is killing daily 50 victims approximately not to mention the huge destruction it causes. All of this forced about 5.9 million Syria to become refugees and more than 7.1 million Syrian to become IDPs.
Regime-controlled areas are considered more stable, as it doesn’t face the daily indiscriminate shelling and what it causes of destruction and displacement although we record a number of shelling incidents using mortar shells which killed victims. However, these incidents were limited and not on a daily basis.
Regime-controlled areas’ conditions have changed and youth exhaustion began on 15 October 2014, when government authorities made lists of names for conscription and “reserve forces” who fulfilled their mandatory military service. These lists focused on the people who specialized in tanks, artillery, and air-defense. Those lists have been sent to all the recruitment centers and division across the regime-controlled areas. Also, these names were sent to the all military checkpoints.
The main reasons behind this were:
First: To fight the huge shortage of manpower in the governmental forces on one hand, and in the foreign Shiite militias on the other, especially after a significant portion of the Iraqi militias retreated to fight Daesh.
Second: To solicit bribes and blackmail the youth who want to have their names deleted from these lists by the officers in the recruitment centers, ministry of defense, military police….
The Syrian youth are now between two choices: either join the government forces or flee to another country which empties hundreds of thousands of areas of their youth in the regime-controlled areas. Thousands of youth have already fled to Turkey from various regime-controlled areas especially from Aleppo neighborhoods.