Maysaloon Battle highlights Syrian struggle history and is national approach to resistance and confronting invaders

The guns fired by the French colonizer at the hero Youssef Al-Azma and his companions at the time are not different from the bullets fired by the modern colonizer and its tools from terrorist organizations for more than 11 years and until now on Syria, its people and its army with the aim of destabilizing and destroying it and stealing its resources.

On the 102nd anniversary of the Battle of Maysaloon, the Syrians celebrate this precious occasion and most of Syria enjoys safety and security.

The hero Al-Azma was aware of the great difference between the two sides in favor of the French occupation forces, as he would face about 9 thousand French soldiers backed by hundreds of armored vehicles and heavy machinery. But he and the heroic Syrians decided to confront the colonialist and record a lesson for subsequent generations.

The achievement of martyr Al-Azma  is becoming more and more firmly established among the Syrians as they have been facing an aggressive war for more than 11 years in which the international and regional forces of aggression and some Syrians who are dependent on the plans of the new colonialist have interfered.

Maysaloon completes the march of great leaders throughout history who defended their homelands. It dedicated among subsequent generations the belief that only a resistance based on solid national foundations is capable of preserving the homeland, repelling aggression and defeating the colonists, no matter how they and their methods change.

On the twenty-fourth of July, the memory of the Battle of Glory “Maysaloon” is renewed, which was led by the then Syrian Minister of War, Youssef Al-Azma, in the face of French aggression that paved the way for a French occupation that lasted 25 years.

Historically, this battle was associated with the name of Youssef Al-Azma, and despite his knowledge and appreciation that the invading forces are greater, more numerous and more powerful, Yusuf Al-Azma preferred martyrdom, rather than saying that the invading forces entered Damascus without resistance.

Al-Azma and his companions confronted the French invader to preserve the prestige and dignity of Syria’s military history. He was afraid to record in the history books that the Syrian army stopped fighting and that the occupier entered its capital without resistance.

Although the French occupiers entered Damascus, their stay there was not pleasant. The Syrian struggle lasted for about 26 years until Damascus was restored as the capital of an independent, sovereign state on the seventeenth of April 1946.

In that battle, the hero Youssef Al-Azma underlined the importance of the army, as he insisted that most of the fighters with him in the battle be from the army,  so that this would be the starting point for a new fact that established the army’s institution as a first force for the independent national state and made it a guarantee to confront the enemy, a fact that has been established in word and deed in the history of Syria until today.

Al-Azma also affirmed, by his insistence on confronting the French army, that no occupier or colonizer would enter Syria without resistance and without paying a heavy price for that.

Maysaloon still constitutes a heroic epic that gives all generations lessons of sacrifice and redemption in defense of the homeland.

Inas Abdulkareem