How Assad Moved to Crush Syria’s Uprising | The Regime (full documentary) | FRONTLINE (PBS)

It’s been 15 years since the rebellion in Syria against Bashar al-Assad’s government began. “The Regime” examined how the uprising started and the brutal crackdown that followed. (Aired 2011)

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On March 6, 2011, young boys painted messages on the walls of a school 60 miles south of Syria’s capital, Damascus. “Freedom, freedom and freedom, only,” read one message. “Down with the corrupt Assad,” read another.

Soon after, the boys were rounded up by the government’s secret police. Their fathers went to see the police chief, a cousin of Syria’s then-president, Bashar al-Assad, and begged him to release their children. Airing later that year, “The Regime” examined what happened to the boys, and how outrage over their fate helped to fuel the Syrian uprising.

“That very instance of repression, of torture, seemed to galvanize the town itself,” the late reporter Anthony Shadid said in the documentary. “And almost from that moment, the uprising seemed to gain momentum.”

As Syrians took to the streets to protest and to call for more freedoms, the swift and brutal response by Assad’s security forces followed a playbook for crushing dissent that his family had honed over 40 years of rule, “The Regime” reported. The film is a powerful examination of how the Assad family, part of Syria’s Alawite minority, came to and maintained power, how the Syrian rebellion began, and how Bashar al-Assad leaned on his father’s example to try to crush it.

“This is how the Assads, both father and son, deal with domestic threats,” Assad biographer David Lesch said in the documentary. “There’s this convulsive reaction to put down any sort of domestic threats, and to put them down ruthlessly.”

“The Regime” is a FRONTLINE production with Rain Media. The writer and producer is Marcela Gaviria. The film was reported with the late Anthony Shadid. The editor is Ben Howard and the senior producer is Martin Smith.

Explore additional reporting on ”The Regime,” the Syrian war and Assad’s fall in 2024 on our website

Read about Anthony Shadid’s legacy

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