Cú Chulainn

5-As the Syrian crisis unfolded, official mandatory military service was 21 months. Ironically, this was reduced to 18 months as the the State tried to address early discontent. In reality, things turned out differently - way differently as hardly a single male has been sent home

6-Given the state of war that the country found itself in & the shortage of manpower as many men fled the country to avoid military service, it is those that stayed who ended up bearing the brunt of the shortage. Instead of the official 18 months, they have been there for 7 yeas

7-Things have been made worse by the fact that reservists have also been called and any man under the age of 51 therefore has most likely been called for service too. Joining the service in the middle of this war has meant that those men will only return home as dead/injured

8-On my recent trip to #Syria , I was struck by two things; A-Most checkpoints were checking ID's looking for men under age 51 who can be called as reservists. B-How many fewer men appeared to be in public places compared to women. There was clear bias in ratio of women to men

9-During private conversations w Syrian families, issue of Military service was often the main topic.. It was always about a son currently serving for 4-5 years or a reservist in his late 40's who had to leave a family behind or sons who fled the country alone to avoid service

10-Why is this issue important? Because it is acting as a deterrence for many of the reconciliation deals between the state & the armed groups who are told that they have to join the army after they reconcile. In order to avoid that, those men are deciding to go to #idlib etc

11-Again, perhaps no issue is more important than this for every Syrian family with more than one son. Every man who has avoided military service thus far is likely to stay away from Syria unless the compulsory military issue is resolved comprehensively by the leadership

12-This war has proved that the current system is unsustainable. Indeed, one can argue that even before this war started, the compulsory service acted as a massive brain drain on the country. Things are made much worse now. The time has come to make a significant change