The observer of the latest two months’ developments in the Syrian revolution cannot but conclude that all the political solutions for the Syrian catastrophe are seemingly doomed to failure. The voices of those who called for solving the conflict politically, or supported the exertion of international and regional, Arabic and western, diplomatic and political pressure over the regime and its opponents alike, or even those who proposed heterogeneous agreements or initiatives between the clashing sides, have all vanished in the air as the autumn leaves weather on the empty roads. The Syrian revolution has entered into a very long winter that strangled it with blood and death, with violence and counter-violence. Eighteen months ago, the revolution started as a peaceful demonstration of a nation thirsty for freedom, democracy, dignity, justice and prosperous and progressive future. Six to eight months afterward, the revolution turned into a cumbersome public suffering from a systematic tyrannical and militaristic persecution that forced the citizens to resort to desperate, obligatory and drastic measurements of life, honor, family, even sheer existence, defense, and by all the means possible, including weapons. In the past few months, nonetheless, the revolution was converted into a ferocious, terrible and open-ended war. The only voice one can hear in the Syrian air at the moment is the trumpet of battle. The only discourse one can gather from the Syrian streets is the discourse of war machines and death. The only rule that is followed by the clashing sides is the rule of ‘either killer or killed’. In the Syrian destroyed cities, there are no more ‘rebellions’ but ‘fighters’; no more ‘demonstrators’ but ‘resisting jihadis’. There is no goal for the fighting groups except demolishing the criminal, assassin and ugly regime and retaliating from it, by all means and at all expenses. To the contrary, the basic voice of the revolution, which calls for freedom, justice, democracy and civil state, has sadly been silenced by the able hands of a state of total massive destruction of Syria the country, the nation, the state and almost even the concept.
Recently, the deterioration of the revolution’s voice, in the midst of the escalation of the battle’s scream, was accompanied with a hardly missable collapse of the revolutionary, political discourse and the active and noticeable diplomatic, relational and constructive role of all the Syrian opposing bodies, sides, councils, movements and even individual figures. One can even speak about a conspicuous growing indifference, if not also distrust, in the Syrian public, Arabic and international circles to these oppositions’ public stances and discourses. This indelible recession of interest was actually created by the very own hands of these dissenters themselves, who, instead of factually protecting the revolution, tangibly backing it up and practically standing at the front row of its supervision and guiding process, have become today hardly able to stand at the back, marginal lines of the situation, trying strongly to represent themselves as just the followers and slaves of the process of converting the revolution into an open battle; this battle, wherein the innocent Syrian citizen has become the first payer of its bill from the wallet of his blood and her life, his possessions and her fate, his destiny and her living resources, if not from their very existence as Syrians as such.
Those who follow the Arabic media’s coverage of the Syrian events can easily realize a noticeable absence of the Syrian pro-political oppositions’ spokesmen from the TV talk-tanks and interviews. There seems to be a growing indifference from those who are involved or interested in the Syrian situation to listening to these oppositions’ opinions, or even paying any form of attention to any of its activities, meetings, declarations, public stances or speeches. Instead, the majority of the Arabic and international media means concentrate its attention those days on either collecting reports from the fighting militias and guerrillas on the ground, or marketing the pro-fighting discourses of the internal coordinating jihadi bodies on their ferocious battle against the regime. The jihadi phalanxes have newly become the acknowledged speakers on behalf of the rebelling Syrians, and no considerable civil voice has remained on the stage to represent the revolution any longer. There is minimal interest in any conference and gathering, which one of the internal or external pro-politics opposing bodies organize, or the stances and declarations that could be issued every now and then by their leaders. The reason of this disinterest is clear: none of these oppositions has those days any detectable or reliable presence in, or influence on, the recent daily-life scene of the Syrian situation.
I allow myself to say that the prevalence of militarization option and the control of the war-choice of the Syrian scene do not, in fact, prove that the revolution in Syria has succeeded in showing its survival ability and in maintain its unbeatable existence all these months in the face of the criminal regime. It does not really verify that the revolution managed to demonstrate before the entire world its splendid ability of withstanding the regime’s overwhelming and bloody military machine. It goes without saying that the Syrian regime as a stately structure, ruling system and political and civil influence has fallen before the great Syrian revolution: the regime lost control over almost three quarters of the country. There is no doubt in my mind that this conspicuous stately collapse has started from the eternal moment of the riot of Daraa at the very beginning of the revolution. Having that admitted, the evidence of this achievement is not to be gleaned from the recently occurring war along all the Syrian cities, villages, streets and corners between the fighting phalanxes of the so-called ‘the free Syrian Army’ and the regime’s forces.
The fundamental inquiry, to which my claim responds, is: are these phalanxes the revolution? Are the ‘militarized jihad’ and the ‘revolution’ one and the same thing; are they (as some pro-war Syrians argue) two sides for one and the same coin. Or, are they actually two substantially, conceptually and teleologically opposite options? my answer to this question is that the prevalence of the militarization option and the battle-choice in Syria announces in the first place a catastrophic and scandalous, a strategic and operational, if not also a historical, political failure of the entire Syrian opposing movements, bodies, organizations or individuals, patriotic it was or expatriate. All the Syrian opposition entities have failed irreparably in serving the revolution’s longevity or tending its political, public, national and ethical identity. Not only the opposing bodies or entities were doomed to failure because of this dereliction, but also the sheer notion of ‘political opposition’ itself has lost any tangible foothold on the stage of the Syrian public-square. This public-square has been emptied from its ‘public’, and has been turned totally into a battle ground.
It is not surprising that today we rarely hear about any new or factual political, diplomatic or revolutionary proposal, on which one can rely, from any side of the Syrian oppositions, not even from its most popular and renowned representative bodies: the Syrian National Council, and the Syrian Coordination Body. For, the SCB has drowned in the quick sands of its obsessive strife to snatch the internal and external decision-makers’ acknowledgment of its presence, influence and role in the revolution and the futural Syria. On the other hand, the SNC similarly drowned in the muddy swamp of its demagogic performance, which, to the revolution’s bad fortune, revealed the council members’ political immaturity, institutional triviality, and organizational and human scandalous unreliability and incompetence. Last but not least, the remaining opposing currents, movements and individuals could not fill-in the gap of the above mentioned opposing sides, and did not really offer the Syrian people anything except empty, useless theorization and misguided the public-opinion by egocentric sophistications that insulted the Syrians’ intelligence when it either tried to merely ignite and entice their emotions and sentiments, or to dip the head of the Syrian public opinion in a black hole of superficial, hypocritical, fawning and vague discourses and analyses about the present struggle and the future aftermath.
It is hardly escapable a fact that the international decision-makers no more give a listening ear to any of these above mentioned oppositions. The Syrian case has been altogether snatched away from the hands of those who at the beginning of the Syrian tragedy presented themselves before the whole world as the actual and sole official representatives of the Syrian revolution. The revolution is no more lingering under the wings of those who were supposed to be, actually not verbally, the political, organizational, representational, institutional, foundational and corrective patrons and leaders of the Syrian revolution. The revolution has drowned in an ocean of blood, death and mass destruction. Along with it, drowned also all the Syrian oppositions and their promises in the smashing deluge of the battle ground. In its insistence on violence, criminality and military solution, the regime succeeded in throwing itself into the abyss of its end and the bottom of the garbage-bin of history. Yet, the regime managed also to drag with him into this very same end all its dissenters, pulling its opposition and itself alike out of the equation of the futural soutions in Syria.
One of the most significant indicators of the Syrian oppositions’ collapse and its gross and abject failure is the fact that the so-called ‘Syrian Free Army’ has replaced them on the negotiation and brain-storming table inside the post-Assad’s strategizing and decision-making circle. Not a long time ago, the Free Army and the operational councils of the jihadi phalanxes came up with a comprehensive agenda for post-Assad Syria. This agenda contained political, legislative, civil, economic and stately projects and strategies that were offered by its creators to shape Syria’s ruling system during the transitional period. Today, and as an outcome of this new step, the dialogue inside the war-running chambers is actually occupied by the foreign intelligence agents and military strategists, on one side, and the Syrian defected army officers, the local and the imported jihadi (Arab and non-Arab) militia leaders, who occupy the Syrian battle-ground and excessively influence the daily-life of the Syrian citizens, on the other. The fate of Syria as such, and not only the falling regime, let alone the track Syria would trade onto in the future, is now laid fully in the hands of these jihadi phalanxes. All the duties of planning, negotiation, establishment, and operation that the political oppositions were supposed to perform, develop and attend to in order to build the alternative Syria are now being taken care of and decided by those fighting leaders’ decisions and views (let us remember that the fighter knows how to face death, not how to create life). The ‘Free Army’ and the leading councils of the jihadi phalanxes are now the actual patrons of the creation of the forthcoming Syria, and they are no more mere protectors and defenders of the Syrian public, as they announced themselves to be when they started to appear on the scene (which protection and defense one can speak of when the citizens and their houses became these phalanxes’ primary shield in their street-battles with the regime forces?!). More drastically still, the international supporters of the Syrian revolution are viewing these jihadi fighting entities (and their financial and ideological supporters, e.g. Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia primarily), not only as the only capable instruments for toppling the regime, but also as the sole, realistic, god-fathers and creators of the alternative, futural Syria. Only those, who decided to make the regime’s alternative in Syria a militarized, jihadi resistance, and who transformed the country’s rebellions into fighters, and replaced the peaceful scream of freedom of the demonstrators with a resisting and martyrdom weapon, are today the managers and directors of the Syrian tragedy.
Yes, there is no more a ‘revolution’ in the real sense of the word in Syria. There is only an open, destructive and vehement war. Yes, there is no more a scream of freedom in the Syrian air, but a scream of ‘either victory or martyrdom’. Yes, the ugly, evil regime which we knew in Syria has lost the battle of survival. It has already been defeated and it is going to collapse irreparably very soon. However, there is also no more tangible or actual presence to any reliable political and civil opposing bodies, entities or movements in the midst of the Syrian scene’s harbingers and ramifications. The regime tried to mimic the famous Old Testamental figure, Samson, and to destroy the temple on his head and the heads of his dissenters. But, the Torah’s famous saga has another version in the Syrian book: those who destroyed the temple on the heads of Samson and his opponents, if not on the heads of everyone else, were actually the temple guards; those who are supposed to protect the temple from the consequences of Samson’s nihilistically suicidal attempt at destroying the temple on the heads of all. The guards of the Syrian temple are the ones who indiscriminately demolished it on the heads of all its inhabitants. And soon we will start hearing that they are no more just its guards, but they became the temple’s new clerics, who speaks in the name of its religion and who hold the keys of its gates.
Syria walks onto a track of death and destruction, and rapidly slips into a situation of massive existential, ontological and nihilistically deferred, Dirredan-like, end; an end, that is, wherein the final stage of salvation lies always in a limbo of postponed and ungraspable fulfillment and finds its being in the delay of the Syrian people’s arrival to a state of complete perception and encounter with the eschatologically hoped-for actualization. The longer this differance situation lasts, the clearer and more evident is the fact of the deterioration and dissociation of the Syrian oppositions – and the more evident and more influential is the reinforcement of the militarized condition and its control over the entire futural political and stately Syrian scene. This scene’s newly dominating context is an anticipated march in the funeral of all the Syrian oppositions, on one hand, and the Syrian cities’ overcrowdedness with the jihadi fighters and phalanxes (instead of being congested with peaceful, the free rioters and demonstrators who started the revolution and terrified in their resilience and bravery the regime’s and destroyed forever its policy of fear), on the other. In the light of all this, me and many other Syrians, who stood by the revolution and supported its cause wholeheartedly, unreservedly and with all mind, soul, abilities and patriotic loyalty, solicitously ask ourselves: is the Syrian revolution still alive? Is the side that will triumph over the criminal, violent and corrupted regime the revolution of the heroic citizens of Syria, or the battles of the jihadis and the fights of the warriors? Is the temple going to be rebuilt by the hands of its original servants; i.e. the peaceful and free politicians and civil citizens, or, rather, by those guards, who decided to destroy it on their heads, the head of the samsonic regime, but also the heads of all who withstand their methods? Which Syria is going to emerge from the war quiver of the fighter and from the jihadis’ pockets? Which Syria is going to have birth from the womb of a jihadist battle, rather than from a revolutionary, political strife? Which Syria can the warriors establish on the rubbles of the dissenters’ failure?
I am a Syrian Christian liberal, who supports the secularization of the state; who believes in a pluralist, civil and free public-square; who calls for respecting and granting equal rights to religions, ethnicities, genders and individuals in Syria. In the futural Syria, which we all strive to create, I do not fear from political Islamism, but I fear from politicized arms; I do not fear from ideologized oppositions, I fear rather from the dogmatization of militarization; I do not fear from the rebellions and their dreams, no matter how unconventional and enthusiastic they were, I fear, instead, from the arrogance and conditions-dictation that can be exerted over Syrian by the fighters; I do not fear from competition over power or from the political victory of those who do not share my principles, ideas and imaginations about the futural Syria, I fear from those who may win this ruling status by virtue of their militarized and more successful jihadi abilities and resources. Those who no nothing except jihad and force-language do not carry agendas and do not develop visions. They exert commandments and forces rules on the numerically limited or resources-wise weak. In the futural Syria, I do not fear from the plurality, dispersal and disunity of the political agendas and projects, but I shiver from any attempt at melting, by the force of weapons or confrontational dogma, all the political views in one melting-pot and reducing them into single political or stately doctrine that is going to be coerced by those who believe that, due to their involvement in the arm-to-arm battles and their willingness to sacrifice everything in the service of their ‘holy jihad’, they have earned the country’s title-deed and they became the only decision-making side, who has solely the right to decide who should get what and who should become what in the country. I do not fear for the post-war Syria from the prevalence of monistic, collectivist or ‘neo-hegemonic’ political parties that are driven by a sweeping thirst for power. Having such parties is part and parcel of any open, democratic and free political context. I, to the contrary, fear that Syria would not manage to liberate itself from the mentality, circumstances, rules and reactions of the war-state and the logic of ‘an eye for an eye’. I do dream of the collapse of this criminal regime yesterday before tomorrow, and I do eagerly wait for its figures’ fall into the garbage-bin of history and their arrival to the court of justice. Yet, I do tremble as I glimpse upon the horizon and view the fingerprints of the nightmarish sinking of the oppositions in Syria and the failure of their revolutionary projects. The sunset of the revolution and the emergence of the dark night of battle scare me seriously. It scares me that the guards of the temple have begun preparing themselves to become its priests.
