16. Syria's Spray-Can Revolution

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/syrias-spray-can-revolution/265470/

James Harkin, the author of War Against All: The Struggle for Northern Syria, writes about the roles of children within Syria's current conflict. Harkin illustrates the terrible, brutal loss of innocence and the loss of lives of the young Syrian children. He describes the typical understanding of foreign views that the AsBasar al-Assad regime is killing thousands of innocent children for no reason. On the contrary, Harkin states that this generalization of young children as "passive victims of a tyrannical regime," greatly "underestimates their role in the revolt." In March 2011, 10 Syrian children painted "The people want to topple the regime!" on the walls of a school building in the city of Dara'a. These "spray cans of schoolchildren, and by other young people who then turned to Facebook and YouTube to get the message out" led to the start of popular demonstrations which led to everything else. Harkin demonstrates this activeness of children through his experience with Saleh and his family who are rebel supporters in refuge. Saleh demonstrates abundant knowledge about weapons "like many Syrian children," knowing "more about weaponry than the average war reporter." His small brother aging around six even answered "I will kill Basher al-Assad," when he was asked what he wanted to do to the president.

Harkin's easily comprehensible explanations and descriptions of past events, current conflicts and even weaponry terms determines a broad range of audiences without need of much prior knowledge about the war and the Syrian children. However, Harkin's purpose is to notify the general foreign public that viewing these young children as only "passive victims of a tyrannical regime" is precisely a great underestimation of their role. This indicates that the intended audience must have interest about the victims of the Syrian war, and perhaps have thought that the young children are no more than helpless innocent victims of the corruption of authority. Harkin effectively uses dialogues and personal experiences of contact with the Syrian people to provide complete evidence of his assertion that the young children may be much more actively involved in the war than they are widely perceived to be.