Just as people were enslaved during World War II to dig tunnels and build railways, young men from the Tadamon neighborhood in southern Damascus were forced to dig under threat of arms.
Underground, with no safety and no way back, they were exploited to build National Defense Forces barricades, and many of them died there, without a witness or a grave, victims of a regime that makes no distinction between murder and forced labor.
Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2012, the Tadamon area in southern Damascus has been one of the most prominent front lines. As the clashes intensified, the role of the National Defense Forces militias became prominent. They used the neighborhood as a launching point for forced recruitment operations targeting its young men, under the guise of "assistance" in digging tunnels and preparing defensive barricades around the Zahra district.
According to multiple testimonies, the militia would ascend to the Zahra district and take dozens of young men from their homes or from the streets, claiming they would participate in "temporary logistical work." However, the fate of many of them after these journeys remains unknown. These "missions" often ended either in death inside the tunnels or in arrest and enforced disappearance in the basements of security branches.
The most egregious aspect of these operations was the blatant sectarian discrimination: National Defense Forces personnel would check ID cards, and anyone found to be from the Suwaida governorate or the coastal regions was immediately exempted from the mission, while residents of Damascus and the south were forced to participate in digging and fortification work under conditions akin to forced labor.
Among the victims was Alaa al-Din al-Riyahi, who was abducted in 2014 while standing in line for bread in the Tadamon neighborhood. National Defense Forces personnel took him away under the pretext that he would help with fortification work, and he never returned home... He died under forced labor!
This pattern of forced exploitation continued until the end of the battles in Yarmouk Camp and the Tadamon neighborhood in 2018.
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