Each day, for 268 days, there have been the same videos: Syrians coming come out of the woodwork, filling alleys in previously quiescent neighborhoods. They have become experts in the art of protest, employing ornate signs and candles to call for the end of Bashar al-Assad's regime and, increasingly, the president's execution. They are killed in steadily increasing numbers -- more than 4,000 by last count, according to the United Nations.
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Who represents these protesters is a matter of dispute -- a Syrian opposition delegation was memorably pelted with eggs in Cairo last month by fellow anti-regime activists who objected to the group's apparent willingness to negotiate with the Assad regime. But who the protesters are is no mystery: They are the product of an extraordinary demographic boom in Syria that has left huge swathes of the country disenfranchised and poor. And they are very angry.
From the 1960s to the early 1990s, Syria boasted one of the most rapidly expanding populations in the world. The country's population doubled from 5.3 million in 1963 to 10.6 million in 1986, and then more than doubled again during the past quarter-century, to approximately 23 million. Before birth rates began falling in the mid-1980s, only two countries -- Yemen and Rwanda -- had higher fertility rates, according to Youssef Courbage, a researcher at the National Institute for Demographic Studies in Paris, in a paper titled "Fertility Transition in Syria."
At the peak of Syria's demographic boom, 44 Syrians were born for every 1,000 people, far exceeding the population growth in neighboring Lebanon (30 births per 1,000 people), and dwarfing that in the United States (16 births per 1,000), according to World Bank data. Population growth was also disproportionately focused in the countryside, creating a swelling class of have-nots in the new Syria.
Syria's birth rates have declined in recent years, but still remain equal to other revolutionary states in the Arab world. Twenty-four Syrians were born for every 1,000 people in 2008 -- the same as Egypt, and exceeding Tunisia's rate of 18 births per 1,000 people.
If the areas where these trends have been felt the strongest were superimposed on a map, they would largely line up with the regions of greatest unrest in Syria. From the south in Deraa, where the protests first gained momentum, to the east in Deir al-Zour, this is a revolt of the neglected countryside. It is also a revolt of long-persecuted cities such as Hama and down-and-out suburbs in Damascus and Homs -- neighborhoods that many of the migrants from the countryside call home.
The Syrian government is at least partially to blame for the country's runaway birth rates. As far back as 1956, Youssef Helbaoui, the head of economic analysis in Syria's Planning Department, argued that "A birth-control policy has no reason for being in this country. [Thomas] Malthus could not find any followers among us."
President Hafez al-Assad, who presided over the population spike of the 1980s, followed the same policies as his predecessors. As Courbage notes, he kept contraceptives scarce and argued that high growth rates "have stimulated proper socio-economic improvements." Until 1987, his government even encouraged births by awarding medals and small material gifts to families with over 10 children.
The result is that, in this era of youth revolt, Syria has one of the youngest populations in the Arab world. From the mid-1960s through the 1990s, the proportion of Syria's population below age 15 held constant at roughly half, while the percentage of Syrians older than 70 declined to a meager 3 percent. Even today, after fertility rates have declined, nearly 60 percent of Syrians are believed to be under the age of 20.
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