ALEPPO, Syria (North Press) – Syrian government military conscription has been a nightmare for university students for many years in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo.
As they are 18, fear starts to vanish their dreams and future plans.
Ahmed al-Kurdi, a third-year student at faculty of economics, Aleppo University, started thinking of the military conscription three years ago, when he had just finished his high school.
Ahmed said he’s afraid of being awarded with a weapon and a military uniform for his graduation.
He told North Press, “Military conscription is a duty imposed to us but not for ever.”
Syrian university students don’t expect good life after graduation because employment requires finishing the military service as a condition by Syrian government.
Syrian Government Forces keeps dozen thousands of recruited soldiers since March 2011, some of them have been servicing for nine years with signs for their demobilization.
Syrian Ministry of Defense never tells numbers of recruited but according to Global Firepower Nations Index the total military personnel are estimated at 140,000.
Nadim Hussein, a fourth-year student, Arabic literature, Aleppo University, told North Press that soon he would be graduated, which would be the beginning for his misery while it supposed to be his first achievement for future.
His worries start while he thinks that after graduation he will be recruited for unknown period, and these worries raise when passes a checkpoint and no employment without finishing the recruitment, which led Ahmed to think of immigration to eliminate the obsession of military conscription, which had been chasing him for a long time.
Thousands of Syrian students had left their university study and immigrated because of the military conscription which stand in the way of realizing their ambitions.
On the other hand, some students prefer to do their military recruitment while they are studying at university, such as Hassan Abdullah al-Zayat, a third-year student, Faculty of Law, University of Aleppo.
Al-Zayat told North Press that doing the military service during studying is not an easy matter, because it needs to be more hard-working and costs more.
While he is trying to reconciliate between both, but exam time is the most suffering thing to him, when he tries his best to get a leave from his military officials during exam time.
Al-Zayat said that the leave is normally according to the officer’s mood and the military situations, which are the reason for being late for exams.
Earlier, Syrian recruits lunched a campaign on the social media publishing their children photos carrying banners of ‘demobilize our fathers.’