- I -
A so-called ‘Syrian National Council’ has been established in Istanbul recently. We have already heard about endeavours to form such a council during the past weeks. These endeavours were accompanied with various quarrels about the nature of the council, suspicions about who stands behind its idea and criticisms against this council’s formation-mechanism and its abidance with democracy. In principle, unifying the dissenting Syrian voices and coordinating their work is commendable, for it serves the good sake of Syria and the real ultimate end of the people’s revolution. One cannot but wish all the best for this council in its attempt at serving Syria. This conceded, laying aside sentimental aspirations would enable us to view this step within a broader contextual perspective. It is obvious that the western world is rushing the change in the Arab World and it wants it to proceed according to a monolithically repeated scenario. It would be easier for the involved and observing powers under such a scenario to interfere in the uprisings and to prepare itself for dealing with its, in this case easily predictable, ramifications. Some sides, whether western or Arab, could persuade the West, so it seems, that Syria is similar to Libya and that its revolution’s story is a copy of Libya’s one. Therefore, and all the questions and reservations of the Syrian people notwithstanding, the Syrian National Council has been established.
One can validly put a big question-mark here, out of sheer logical and rational stance, on the names of the personnel which this council includes: who are they? What is their background? What are their political and intellectual qualifications and calibres? On what criterion were they elected to carry upon their shoulders (as one can anticipate from the story of Libya) the responsibility of rebuilding the futural Syria; keeping in mind all the immense scientific and political abilities and qualifications this task requires? Are these people personally open-minded, dialogical, flexible, tolerant, democratic, civil and believe in the other before they believe in themselves; and are they personally all these things to the sufficient, required extent that meets the demands of the highly sophisticated, versatile and pluralist textile of the Syrian society? What was the criterion of these people’s election: was it their representative status in certain political parties and movements, about which the Syrian public-square hardly know anything? Was it their adoption as individuals by other influential Syrian businessmen and exiled figures, who enjoy an extensive network of international relations and treat Syria as part and parcel of economic deals with the west? Was the criterion their enthusiastic enmity and evident hatred to the regime, their expression of a high level of grudge to al-Assad’s family and their reflection of a readiness to enter into a blood-to-blood and force-to-force war with the president and his supporters and followers? Or, was it their brave participation in the street’s activity and readiness to die for the sake of maintaining the peacefulness of the revolution? Or what, or what? On the other hand, where is Burhan Ghalyoun this time? Why did not we hear his name in the council, though he is a Syrian figure who is venerated by all the Syrians for his personal, intellectual and ethical qualifications; the qualifications, that is, that would have fuelled our hope in the existence of a balancing, civilized, open-minded, rational and inclusivist voice within the group of the council’s members? Why also do not we read on the list of the council’s membership the names of the old, traditional and vastly politically experienced dissenters, who are supported and trusted by the majority of the people inside Syria?
Until this very moment, these remain unanswerable questions, and it seems that no one has real and reliable answers for them. Everybody seems to be enthusiastic about fulfilling the demands of the external powers in order to guarantee the continuation of these latter’s support to the revolution, as well as to guarantee that the uprising proceeds according to a scenario, according to which alone those who are interested in the Syrian issue know how to play the political game (disregarding whether this game per se is relevant to Syria’s needs and context). These are puzzling questions which one must not ignore or undermine, and I believe that many Syrians who support the revolution and oppose the regime ask them like me.
- II -
Frankly speaking, I am not sorry for arresting the army Lt. Col. Husain Harmouch (with my whole sincere humanitarian sympathy and solidarity with him against the torture and violent abuse he must be suffering from in the security forces’ prison at the moment), and I am not one of the fans of the idea of establishing a parallel, dissident army to fight the official Syrian one. Such attempts, which some dissenters supported and fostered under the name of protecting the Syrian people from persecution and violence, have damaged seriously the peaceful identity of the revolution and its realistic, non-violent nature, emptying it in fact from its essential power. This dissident army and the Lt. Col. Harmouch’s move were both orchestrated by those among the external Syrian oppositions and their non-Syrian supporters, who attempt at replicating and imposing the Libyan scenario on the Syrian soil, despite the fact that Syria is different from Libya, and regardless to the other fact that the realistic components of the Syrian uprising negates any need for such a dissenting army and recants from offering any justification to its creation.
The role of this claimed dissenting army is not in fact protecting the people in the streets or standing in-between the innocents and the regime’s forces, who kill and intimidate people excessively. Such a protection role did not actually occur, as the daily episode of killing, this dissenting army notwithstanding, continues and escalates. The real mission of this alleged ‘dissenting army’ is to control a geographical spot, any geographical spot, within the Syrian boarders, turns it into the military operations’ headquarter and kick off from it the military war that would lead eventually to the regime’s defeat and collapse. In other words, the goal is creating another Banighazi inside Syria. Such a Banighazi seems to have become the primary ambition of some external and opposing sides, who believe in counter-violence and would rejoice in proving the falsehood of the Syrian majority’s conventional belief in their nation’s unity, harmony and immunity against civil war (i.e. there is a zeal about proving that the Syrian people are as diseased with sectarianism as other Arabs). So, they support the creation of another Banighazi in Syria by all means possible.
Against this lethal ambition, I and many other Syrians have often yelled: Syria is not Libya and it must not at all become so. The Syrians inside the country, and who make the uprising a reality on the streets, do not want Banighazi, and they do not try to earn the ‘honour’ (I mean the curse and shame) of imitating Libya. Be that as it may, I personally say that the arrest of Lt. Col. Harmouch would serve the good purpose of the revolution inside the country. It will restore and preserve before the world the passive and peaceful image of the revolution. It will emphasize its heroic icon of unarmed people facing a lethal arsenal with bare chests and unrivalled bravery, of innocent and young citizens calling with an unflinching determination for freedom and change. Such a courage in front of death succeeded so far in attracting the attention of all the societies and nations around the world and in gaining the support and approval of the Arabic and western public-opinion. One can even say here that by arresting Lt-Col. Harmouch, the regime is unintentionally serving the revolution and its bright, honourable, peaceful and heroic image, let alone using its killing- machine in burying in the bud the project of ‘libyanizing’ (from Libya) Syria and ‘Banighazying’ (from Banighazi) one of its cities.
- III -
Yes, Syria is not Libya, neither sociologically, politically, demographically or even circumstantially. The similarity between the tyranny and corruption of the two ruling dictatorial regimes in them does not entail an equal similarity and affinity between the two states and their people. Tyranny has always one identity. Yet, those who suffer from tyranny are always versatile and different and distinguishable, the things that stands in stark contrast with and at the first-front against the monistic and collectivist hegemony of tyranny. I can to a certain extent understand, though never justify, that the West is a hostage of a sweeping, over-generalizing and simplistic view, which squeezes all the Arab peoples within one and the same categorical basket. But, if the West turns an ideological blind eye to the versatility and variety in the sociological, political, anthropological and cultural life-settings of the Arabs, the Syrian dissenters are not allowed or by any means expected to view or treat themselves according to the same collectivist and simplistically sweeping mentality, and they should not allow any one to decided their fate on the basis of it.
Syria is not a gathering of tribes, and its culture is not nomadic, even if it contains nomads within some spots of its territories. On the other hand, the future Syria is not allowed to be a state of Sharīʽa, a ‘state of turbans’ or a monistic hegemonic state by any means. The Libyan Transitional Council can declare that it attempts at building the state in Libya upon Islamic Sharīʽa, because the country’s societal and cultural context is dominantly Islamic in nature and it identifies itself naturally with the jurisdictional premises of this religion. Such a decision, however, is untenable and unlikely in Syria. For, Syria, like the rest of the Near Eastern Arabic countries, has a different structure and nature, and it is about time to affirm this structure and nature and to establish the futural states in the region on its basis. If the Arabs criticize harshly and object bluntly to the Israelis’ attempt at Jewdiyzing their state, it is the more demanded and expected from them to reject and stand against every attempt at Islamizing, ‘sunnitizing’ (from Sunna) or ‘shiʼitizing’ (from shiʼite) Syria or any other country in the Near East. They should do this at least for the sake of maintaining, before their own nations and the world, self-harmony image, avoiding unethical double-standard mentality and remain innocent from political and patriotic hypocrisy.
- IV -
The Syrian revolution is not mere political and popular movement. It is also an ethical example, upon which we will one day form the morals of the state. The dream is that the Syrian revolution would triumph in its children’s peacefulness and courage; according, that is, to an original scenario that stems from the heart of the Syrian public-square, and not by means of an imported irrelevant one. There might be some who dream of a Jamal conquest war in Syria that will destroy the regime and hangs the heads of its members on the swards’ tips of Muslim soldiers, who would be veil the eye of the sun with their enemies’ skulls while screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ (Allah is almighty). However, I do believe that the vast majority of the Syrian people, including many rational and wise dissenters, do not concur with this vision and do not adopt the sentiments of vengeance and grudge that drive some sides and blindfold their civil, nationalist and rational sense.
The time has come to declare clear ethical standards for the Syrian revolution and for our view of the future Syria. The revolutions that lack ethical standards turn into ferocious power-struggle arenas, wherein the allies of yesterday become the enemies of toady and try to exterminate each other by the name of the very same revolution they conducted together. Such unfortunate results happened during the French and the Russian revolutions, and this is exactly what is now happening in Egypt. In Egypt, we have a revolution that was unleashed by what it looked then as one-front opposition. This oneness was ignited then by the general and mass enmity against the regime. Yet, when the regime toppled down, the dissenting sides realized that they did not spend time to think together about what makes the Egyptians one state and nation, and upon which ethical and principal standards would they re-establish the hoped for inclusivist and pluralist state. What they realized is that in relation to some of the foundational political, jurisdictional and civil issue, the gap between each other is much wider and serious than the gap they once had with the past regime. This is why we still receive from Egypt saddening news about clashes and confrontations based on ideological, dogmatic and pragmatic narrow interests, as well as we still witness sectarian and religious persecution, as if what the falling regime took along with it is the veil but not the shortcomings and substantial rifts this veil used to conceal.
Egypt is a live and up-to-date Arabic example about the ramifications of lacking an ethical standard for the political change. The Syrian revolution needs very high ethical standards that will prevent its transformation into what it should not be. Ethical standards that can protect it from backwardly mentalities and ambitions, like the ones that aspire at turning the country back into an age of ignorance (jahiliyyah) and religiously hegemonic and ideologically discriminative ruling eras. We want Syria to entre history, not to retreat to pre-history. Without such an ethical standard, it is impossible to build a futural Syria, for no such a future is then possible. The Ethical standard alone unifies the various branches of opposition, and without it no Syrian council or representational body can in the first place work for all the Syrian population.
- V -
I was and still an ethical, humanitarian, intellectual and even theological dissenter to every monistic, hegemonic, tyrannical, discriminative, exclusivist, religionist or ideological regime. Therefore, I want with all the Syrian people democratic change and natural freedom to build the civil, democratic, pluralist, secular and human rights-based Syria. Having said that, as time proceeds I feel that the gap between me and many of the spokesmen of the Syrian opposition is growing wider. And the more I identify with the Syrian streets’ pains and with the daily, priceless sacrifices of the innocent and peaceful people, I see myself parting ways ethically, principally and conceptually with those dissenters who work around the world to ‘aid’, as they allege, the Syrian noble and brave people and to ‘protect’ the country and to defeat the regime (despite my serious reservations, I truly hope for some individuals among them all the best in their balanced and sincere and reasonable endeavours). I feel that a wide ethical, intellectual and political gap is rapidly growing between these dissenters and many Syrians like me.
I know that the regime is no less remote from the reality of Syria and the needs and the dreams of the people, and I affirm with the strongest words I can find that this regime has turned into the sole source of destruction, death and termination of the country. Yet, I feel as if the Syrian people occupy alone the streets, while both the regime and the opposition alike desert the streets’ arena, resorted to a secluded, remote corner and launched a feast-wrestling dual; one, that is, only they care about, understand and most probably they alone look forward for its results. The people, on the other hand, are left there on the streets under the mercy of death, violence and unknown fate, only allowed to wait for the result of the regime-opposition dual and to walk in the stream of the winner between them (which is not going to be the regime this time) at the end.
Do these oppositions truly represent the stance of the people? Is the troubling and disappointing condition of the opposition useful for what the youths of Syria rioted against the regime for and decided to marsh to death and freedom for the sake of? Who will answer these questions? Or even, who wants to carry the responsibility of answering them?
