The Syrian Christians Must Be Rescued. But, from What?

(This an English translation of an article I wrote first in Arabic to be published in Damascus Journal, London, and a shorter version of it in French translation was already published in the French Le Monde last week)

            From the very first moments of the Syrian revolution, voices from East and West were raised lamenting the Christians’ situation in the heart of the struggle, and calling for rescuing them from the war’s inferno and for protecting them from the ethnic and religious cleansing, which they are going to be exposed to when the tyrannical and criminal regime would collapse and be replaced by an Islamist, fanatic rule. Since the very first harbingers of the Syrian people’s rebellion, the Christians found themselves in the midst of riots that were pulled later on, by the regime and the extremist rebellions alike, into the square of an open, bloody war. And because Syria became an open field for settling the historical, strategic and political deals of the entire region, the Christians fell at the mercy of the choices of their clerical prelates, on one side, and the terrifying, treasoning discourse and media of the regime, on another.

            Most of the Christian (and Muslim) religious prelates have often been attached to the regime in Syria by means of a complicated network of authoritative, pragmatic, individual and mutual-interest network of connections and alliances; a network that has started during the age of Al-Assaad senior and continued during the rule of Al-Assaad junior. Therefore, and since the revolution’s kick off, these prelates resiliently proliferated before the entire world the claim that the Easter Christian public hardly sees any possible salvation and survival to itself in the East after the collapse of Al-Assad’s rule. As if the recent Assaad is the Church’s contemporary Messiah, and as if the Assaadi regime and no else is the guarantor of Eastern and Arab Christianity’s salvation; as if Christianity has never existed before it and it will never continue existing after or without it. The discourses of these clerical prelates have always been baptized with negative imaginations on the rebelling Muslim (and Christian) Syrians, which insinuate that they are the enemies of Christianity and a threat to its existence; as if the Christians have never lived side-by-side with Muslims during the 1400 years, minus forty years, and as if what happened to the Christians in Iraq is definitely the fate that is waiting for them in Syria.

On the other hand, the regime and its local and international media machine worked, from the beginning of the revolution, and at the peak of this revolution’s peacefulness and civility, on terrifying the Christians (and the Alawites) from the consequences of the revolution’s success and the replacement with a new Syria the ‘Syria’ which the regime malformed and tailored according to its own calculations. The regime worked hard on enhancing the presence of religious and confessional extremism and started to pave the paths for filling Syria with all kinds of terrorism, fanaticism and jihadism. As well as it started to exert on the silent Christians in Syria all sorts of terrorization, threatening and suppression possible; promising them of excessive harm and evil if they just thought of supporting the mere principals of the revolution or if they, merely theoretically or ethically, backed its rightful demands (as the regime itself admitted at one point). The regime has recently intensified its exploitative implementation of the Christian clerical prelates in its media and propaganda policies; opening before them all the internal and external venues to express their fear from Islam and to reveal explicitly their historical, cultural and sociological loftiness toward every non-Christian.

Yes, the Christians of Syria needs rescue. But, they need to be rescued from the two above mentioned sides, who force on them exclusivist ideologies and political and public discourses that promulgate hatred and demonization against the ‘other’ and narrows the Christians’ (and Alawites’) view of this other down to mere sociopathic complexes. The Syrian Christians need to be rescued by all of us from the regime’s exploitation of them as merely cards, no more, in the game of its own survival and existence. They must be rescued from a hegemonic regime that does not at all protect the minorities (nor the Christians among them in particular), but it rather protects itself by the minorities and use them as a shield for its own rescue. The Syrian Christians must be rescued from the false discourse of the regime’s agents among their own clerical prelates, who propagate lies on the nature of the events in Syria and its true details. They must be rescued from the disastrous choice of these church leaders, who opted for stretching their hand of alliance to the owner of power and authority and rule, instead of deciding to open their arms toward the broader Syrian society and to embrace the people’s choices and defend the oppressed, tyrannized, terrorized and killed among those, who are supposed to be the Christians’ brothers and sisters in the nation. The Christians must be rescued from this option, for rules and regimes rise and fall, and only people and their co-existence remains.

            Yes, the Syrian Christians need to be rescued from the regime’s terrorizing and tyrannizing game by making the world realize, contrary to what the regime and its agents around the world allege, that the Christians in Syria opt for whatever their siblings in the nation long for, and they dream of another Syria with no tyranny; and they do not wish that Syria would remain as it was or as it is now; and they are not innately persuaded by the theory of ethnic and religious cleansing. They do know that the revolution was not unleashed against them, but against the regime that intimidates them, by the revolution, from its collapse. The Christians must be rescued from systematized fear and intellectual suppression. We must take seriously on board that many of them participated and still in the revolution, despite their spiritual leaders’ wishes and against all the security forces’ threats.

    

            Dear westerners, Christian or non-Christian, be sure always that you hear about the true Syria, not hearing what you intrinsically or subconsciously wish to hear that the situation is. If you want truly to rescue Syrian Christianity, then please differentiate it from the lies and alliances of its clerical prelates and their submission to their Assadi messiah. If you want to rescue the Syrian Christians, know that they do not believe in the regime’s propaganda and claims about its protection of minorities. They do remain silent before these claims, not because they concede them, but because they are afraid of the oppression and punishment they will be exposed to by the regime if they withstand them. Rescue the Syrian Christians from over-projecting your Islamophobia and problems with Islam on their situation. Rescue the Syrian Christians by viewing them as the Christians in Egypt, not as the Christians in Iraq. Just like their brothers and sisters in Egypt, the Christians in Syria do support the general demands of the public and they dream with the Muslims and the secularists alike of a Syria free from terrorism, killing, blood, blaspheming, jihadism, fanaticism, backwardness, tyranny, hegemony and corruption. Rescue the Christians from the lies and loyalties of the corrupted and weak among their leaders. And, rescue them from tyranny, terrorization and intimidation, which the regime strangles them with.                               

So That the Syrians Would Pick Up the Lesser of Two Evils: What Does Jabhat al-Nussrah Do in Syria?

Everyone in the Arabic and Western media speaks about what is known as ‘jabhat alnussrah’ (the Support Front) and its phalanges, and they extensively describe the highy fighting abilities of its members, the ferociousness in battles, their first-class organized jihadi activities and their battalions’ consistence of islamist jihadi from every corner of the broad Islamic world, in its Arabic Eastern and non-Arabic Western parts alike. One also views various Syrians expressing their stark fear from the discourse of this Islamist Front and its Islamist dogmatic approach, which calls for establishing an Islamist caliphate in Syria, while other Syrians narrate sagas on their oppressive and violent conducts against the rebelling Syrian public before any other and against the revolution’s non-Islamist youths. Some even narrates how these jihadies stood withstood at some occasions the peaceful public demonstrations, which recited civil, non-religious slogans and carried the flag of the revolution instead of the Front’s one. To the contrary, one can also find other groups of Syrians, who belong to certain Syrian opposing currents in specific, either staunchly defending Jabhat al-Nussrah, or suffice with justifying its conduct and pointing at some bright aspects in its presence in Syria, noting about the Front’s respect of the non-Muslim Syrian citizens and their serious concern about these latter’s safety inside the liberated Syrian territories, or even informing us about his meeting with the fighters of the Front and their warm and intimate welcome and hospitality toward him, as well as their insistence in front of the informer to resent noticing any difference between Christians and Muslims in Syria, etc etc.

 This is what one witnesses via the textual and audio-visual media means East and West. Jabhat al-Nussrah has occupied the international opinion’s center of attention and to busy the Syrian, Arab and worldly public-squares hundred times more than the Syrian revolution per se or the suffering and misery of the Syrian people, who offers hundreds of martyrs on daily basis on the altar of freedom and the dream of deliverance from both the regime and the Front alike.

 Yet, what I would like to reflect upon in these pages is an inquiry, which I hardly find anyone on the Arab scene, who spent sufficient time and offered the necessary analytical efforts to study and attend to: why there is in the first place such a jihadi movement called ‘Jabhat al-Nussrah’ in Syria? What are the political and strategic reasons that led the Qataris and Turks to create such a Jihadi Front in Syria, the thing that makes the entire world today concentrates all the attention to this Front and channels stances of international fear and rejection towards it, without, actually, doing anything tangible to end the existence of this group on the Syrian land, and without pressurizing any side that is influential on the Syrian revolution to abhor this Front and work towards purifying the Syrian revolution from the negative and lethal traces of this jihadi phenomenon on the Revolution itself and nothing else.

 Those who follow up the news of the Syrian revolution via the internet and the social networks can realize that the Syrians have unceasingly proposed analyses and explanations for the existence of Jabhat al-Nurrah in Syria and whose side benefits from this presence. Some people suggest that the Front was imported into Syria by the regime itself. It was part of the regime’s attempt at marring the image of the revolution before the West and making this latter fear from the consequences of such a revolution that is led by Jihadis. I do believe that the regime has played a role in allowing the members of this jihadi Front to sneak into Syria, especially at the beginning of their visible appearance in the country. I also surmise that it is not unlikely that the regime released from the prisons of its security forces, during the first months of the revolution, some terrorist key-figures. Yet, I believe that the regime did this for the sake of either re-exporting them to the neighborly countries, which stood with the Syrian people and supported its freedom from the regime. Or, the regime released there terrorists and availed them as easy targets and catches for the Western secret agencies, in an attempt at cutting a last-minute deal with the West; such a deal, which the regime eagerly searched for since the very beginning of the rebellion in Syria. Having this conceded, It is far from likely, I believe, that the regime has created by itself such a ferociously, staunchly and effectively influential fighting phalanges on the ground for the mere reason of defaming the image of the revolution and intimidating the West. Doing such thing would be a suicidal action, a professionally and cunningly tyrant and terrorist regime like the Syrian one is not so stupid to commit. During the past year, Jabhat al-Nussrah has succeeded in costing the regime’s forces so highly and radically and at almost all the corners of the Syrian land, Damascus included. They cost the regime indelibly harmful loses, and it corners right now the regime’s forces in a very narrow corner in the battle ground. It is far from tenable that the regime is this suicidal and reckless to create such a powerful monster and make it turn around to face it and nearly defeat it.

 Some other Syrians do like to believe that the insurgence of Jabhat al-Nussrah is an expression of a natural reactionary response to the horrible crimes which the Syrian Nironian, criminal regime committed against the Syrian public and the armless citizens, especially the Sunnite segment of the population. This means that Jabhat al-Nussrah is the child of the spirit of solidarity and a priori human compassion with others, which characterizes the Arab Human nature and pertains to the notions of ‘supporting the Ummah’ and salvaging the bereaved and oppressed that are inherent to the Islamic religious rationale. One, actually, cannot cast aside the fact that this humanitarian solidarity aspect is one of the main causes behind the transformation of the revolution from mere public, peaceful demonstrations into armed resistance and self-defense that was launched by thousands of defected army soldiers and officers, who effused to shoot the citizens and sympathized with their freedom and decided to turn to the side of the public and protect the demonstrators in their peaceful, unarmed attempt at gaining their freedom. This is also the sheer anthropological and existential factor behind some of the civilians’ decision to carry weapons and obligatorily use arms to protect himself, his family, neighbors, relatives and clan’s members. However, this factor alone is insufficient, in my conviction, to explain the origination of fighting jihadi phalanges like the ones of Jabhat al-Nussrah in Syria, or behind making it and no other the beating-heart of the public’s armed resistance of, and its war-machine against, the regime. This existential and humanitarian factor is not enough to explain or justify the fact that these jihadi fighters conduct all their battles with the regime, no matter how lethal and destructive they were, in the midst of the civil, inhabited neighborhoods of the Syrian cities. These neighborhoods are only occupied with innocent, armless and helpless civilians, who are supposed to be protected and secured by the jihadi fighters, and not to become the first victims of these fighters’ battles. Has Jabhat al-Nussrah entered Syria to salvage and support the Muslim oppressed and brutalized in Syria, it would have not chosen to fight the regime in the heart of the cities that are inhabited with these Muslims, and it would have not permitted these inhabitants and no other pay the unbearable price of their brutal war with the regime from their own possessions, lives and souls.

 Be that as it may, why does Jabhat al-Nussrah exist in Syria; and why is it today a central and inherent part of the scene of the national and humanitarian tragedy in the country? The answer in my opinion lies in specific strategic, political and authoritarian calculations that are not related to the present situation or to the revolution in itself, but are primarily relevant to the future of politics, state and authority in post-Assad Syria. What I would like to propose here is that the creation of Jabhat al-Nssrah in Syria aims ultimately at pulling the Syrian people and making it obligatorily and choicelessly comply with the game of ‘chosing the lesser of two evils’. If the jihadi Front, jabhat al-Nussrah, along with what its Islamist fanatic thought from and logic represent, is the first evil option, the second evil option, I affirmatively note, is not here the recent Syrian regime or the possibility of its survival. The second lesser evil option in this equation is going to be, in my conviction, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and no other.

Since the very first months of the revolution, I wrote various articles and published them in the culture appendix, Nawafiz, of the Lebanese newspaper, al-Mustaqbal. I also published in last October an English book on the Arabic Spring and the Syrian revolution called And Freedom Became a Public-Square. In both writs, I stated bluntly my conviction that the decision-making chambers in the Western world have started already to express in various forms its willingness to support the Arab Muslim Brotherhood’s occupation of the power-seat in the new Arab World, as well as their readiness to avail to the Brotherhood’s Islamist project the chance to prove itself the needed alternative in the Arab World that can successfully and satisfactorily replace the falling dictatorships. I repeated this thesis in various public-lecturing occasions and also through many publications. And I do believe that the events in the Arab World, primarily in Egypt, prove that the West and America first and foremost back up the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule and would like to see yet succeed in holding the scepter of power in the Arab World for the coming decade at least. The observer cannot but realize this wish and perceives its syndromes through the unchanged support of America to the Islamists’ president Muhammad Morsy (with sending some exceptional warning messages via the media every now and then that aims at sedating the human rights’ and democracy and civil-society supporters in the international public-square) and their standing by his rule until this very moment, despite all the catastrophic and irreparable mistakes which he, his regime and party commit against democracy, human rights and civil-society in Egypt.

 It is my belief that the same wish of supporting a Muslim Brotherhood alternative in Egypt also drives the wheel of the American and Western thought with regard to Syria as well. By doing this, the West thinks, as I showed in my other writings, that it will turn the Islamists into allies, instead of foes, and would succeed in placing an effective and influential Sunnite front in the Arabic street over-against the Iranian ambition in the region (until it manages to cut a deal with Iran. America seems to have started to contemplate the items of this deal with the regime in Iran, and it tries now to send reassuring and peaceful messages that tells Iran that the Muslim Brotherhoods are a Sunnite alternative that can become a friend of Iran and not its enemy, and it is better as an alternative than any salfi-wahabi option that would certainly antagonize Iran. This message-conveying may actually be the purpose of the latest political flirting between Egypt’s Morsy and Iran’s Najad, which is occurring under an American green-light). The West also thinks that opting for this alternative would satisfy the influential Sunnite powers in the region, especially Turkey, and make them a useful, instead of a harmful, player in the Middle East.

 On the basis of the very same logic, America and Europe has supported, and still, the idea of the arrival of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria to the seat of power and their replacement of the falling Assadi regime, in a replication of the scenario of Egypt. This is why, actually, the West never backed up in any tangible or evidently reliable manner, and from the very first moment of the Syrian revolution, any of the Syrian liberal, secularist and non-Islamist opposing parties or bodies. To the contrary, it deliberately ignored them and made the Western media and public-squares almost marginalize them and hardly mention them or pay their discourse any attention, wagering that these mentioned oppositions do not have a realistic presence in the Syrian square and that they lack any noticeable civil and public influence and popularity comparing the Muslim Brotherhood. In support of the latter, some Turkish Lebanese and Gulfi sides tried to convince the American decision-makers that the Muslim Brotherhood is the sweeping public and revolutionary power on the Syrian land and that they are going definitely to gain the authority once al-Assad’s regime collapsed, and that the Islamist alternative is a regional request from all the countries of the Sunnite crescent.

 The above notwithstanding, the ensuing months of the Syrian revolution proved to the West and to the supports of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood that the rebelling Syrian street is not actually a purely Muslim Brotherhood public. They even discovered that, in fact, the dominant majority of the rebellions inside Syria recite insistently slogans, call for principles and values and express futural stately visions that are not only similar to the slogans and principles and discourses which were raised by the admirable rebellious youths in Egypt and Tunisia against the Islamists and the Brotherhoods in their countries. The Syrian rebelling youths also recite innumerable ideas and views and values, which the Intrinsic and extrinsic Syrian liberal, secular and civil dissenters have frequently verbalized before the western decision-makers, whenever these latter were ready to (very rarely) meet up with them and listen to their view on the revolution and the future of Syria. This factor revealed to the Western decision-makers that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s arrival to the seat of power in Syrian may not be as easy a task as they imagined, and these Islamists may not actually enjoy an indelible and sweeping public and civil support, as some made them think. One could even witness some very few occasions, when the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood themselves, confessed publically that they are not the only, prevalent power on the Syrian scene and they cannot rule Syria alone. This confession intensified very shortly before Jabhat al-Nussrah appears on the Syrian land. Actually, this jihadi Front fell on the Syrian soil right after the Brotherhood’s confession and the West’s realization of the realistic situation of the Syrian public’s orinetations. Then, and only then, this front spead around Syria, started to develop visible power and influence and usurped mercilessly the revolution from the civil demonstrators.

 In the light of the substantial, radical development in the Syrian scene, the Western and Arab decision-makers found themselves confronted with a new challenge: who are they going to pave the way, or furnish for, a smooth and easy arrival of the Muslim Brotherhood to the circle of rule and power in Syria, and how can they block completely the path before any other Syrian opposing option, which does not, as they believe, serve the purposes of the newly constructed strategic equation for the entire region? I propose here that the decision they opted for was finding a way to necessarily force the Syrian people into a state of complying to, or satisfactorily opting, for the choice of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, considering it ‘the least evil option’. How is this going to be achieved? By means of creating an opposite, counter-parting Islamist entity that is supposed to be much more radical, extremist and salafist than the Muslim Brotherhood. This new entity is going to be inserted into the Syrian scene, and it would be driven into playing a major and axial role in the transformation of the nature of the struggle in Syria, before this, afterwards, drives the revolution into identifying itself with the fanaticism and extremism of this option. This identification is going to be achieved by means of exerting all sorts of terrorism, intimidation, aggressiveness, and practice of all the things that would force the public to abhor this Islamist entity and part ways with it. The idea is to nudge the Syrian revolting public before any other into rejecting and abominating this new radical fanaticism and to express its rejection of allowing such an Islamist option to rule Syria in the future, publicly and explicitly.

Which option is better, then, than jihadi, salafi, armed phalanges called ‘Jabhat al-Nussrah’, enters Syria and depicts to Islamism a terrifying, abominable, violent and starkly negative image before the Syrian public; an Islamist body that does not suffice with military, jihadi operations against the regime ( the goal, which it is supposed to have had entered the country to achieve), but starts even declaring a complete political agenda for Syria in the future (as if it says that it came into the country to remain for good) that lies in establishing an Islamist caliphate and imposing shari’a Law and the rule of ‘forbidding evil and ordering good’ (al-amr bel-ma’ruf wal-nahi ‘an al-munkar); these principles which no Syrian can accept or vote for any political nominee on its basis (as all the Syrian oppositions know, including the Muslims brotherhood); and which the Syrian people have never rioted to achieve and never called for (not even the staunchest religious groups among them), neither during the first moments of the revolution, nor during its ensuing phases. The latest events in Syria, moreover, shows us that the troops of the mentioned Front have started to apply on the ground specific life-forms and practices and conducts before the Syrian public, in the area they recently occupy, that excessively freaks the public out and drive them to hate the idea of Islamist caliphate and its ramifications: what is demanded in fact from Jabhat alnussrah is nothing but push the public away from it. Which fanatic, violent, aberrating, salfi and backwardly option can be worse than the one which Jabhat al-Nussrah excels in presenting, and what other option that it can serve better the strategy of ‘choosing the lesser of two evils’ strategy? In fact, there nothing more effective than creating a Front like Jabhat al-Nussrah to stand on the opposite extreme over-against the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s attempt at presenting themselves to the public opinion in the image of the moderate, tolerant and the one who calls for a civil, plural state in Syria. There is nothing more effective and fruitful than such an Islamist contrast between to sides, that are essentially similar in dogma, yet distinguished in methods and styles, to make the Syrian public in the future says to itself: if the only options before me in the futural Syria are ‘either jabhat al-Nssrah, or the Muslim Brotherhood’, then the fire of the latter is easier and much better than the inferno of the former.

 In the light of the fatal errors and the total failure, which the Muslim Brotherhoods’ governments in the Arabic Spring countries suffer from and fall consistently into, the West can no more market and easily propagate the Brotherhood as a reliable, successful alternative in the Arabic Public-squares, and it is no more able of doing this in Syria in specific, because the Syrian people are watching vigilantly and carefully what is occurring in Egypt and Tunisia and they say to themselves: if this is what the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood is going to be like, we certainly are not going to accept it and will never stand behind it in any revolution. In their attempt at supporting the Muslim Brotherhood as an alternative of the falling regimes and marketing them as well in Syria, the West, Turkey and Qatar have no other choice but allow Jabhat al-Nussrah to exist and to continue influencing the Syrian scene and playing an axial role in the present Syrian situation, upon the hope that the comparison, which the Syrians would pursue between this Front and the other Islamist choice that is supported by the West and the powers of the region (Muslim Brotherhood) would eventually take the Syrian people toward succumbing to the option of the Brotherhood and no other as the only available solution.

 The real danger of Jabhat al-Nussrah does not only lie in its war arsenal and military force in the present time. Its real danger lies in the role that it is expected to play in the future’s political activities and developments. In the forthcoming Syrian future, and after the approaching salvation from the violent and criminal regime of al-Assad, we will witness the transformation of this jihadi Front with a strong back-up from its first patron, Qatar, who will ask the Front to surrender its weapons and arms (or hide it from the public scene) and then it will start rehabilitating this Front’s fighters and turn them from warriors into politicians and public-stately activists under the rubric of ‘the Salafist Islamist front/party in Syria’. This new party is going to be imposed on the Syrian scene as a major and influential player, whose political role would be to continue applying the strategy of ‘the lesser of two evils’, as it will continue playing a role that is similar in nature to the role of the Salafi groups in Tunisia and Egypt: standing always before the internal public opinion as a fanatic, extremely exclusivist and staunchly Islmist political alternative that is ready always to devour power, in a stark contrast to the Muslim Brotherhood, who are going to be given by the Arab world and the Western public opinion the image of the moderate, pluralist and civil Islam. The Syrian people would find themselves under the mercy of this sarcastic, insulting theatrical tragedy, which aims at pushing it always to resort against it wish to the option of the Muslim Brotherhood, upon the dream that this option is going to protect it from falling under the mercy of the new political alternative that is far more fanatic, salafi and backwardly. As the game of the ‘salafism-brotherhood’ struggle in Egypt and Tunisia succeed so far in saving the Brotherhood and injecting some more life in their failed regimes, there are some sides who believe that the same game would also work out and prosper in Syria: why not, these sides say, since the Syrians have started from now to transpire their rejection and abhorrence toward the Islamist alternative that is presented by Jabhat al-Nussrah and they must later on also refuse the fanatic, salafi political and sectarian alternative as well, let alone find themselves obliged to avail to the Muslim Brotherhood the chance, which the West before any other side wants them to have.

 The remaining question here, still, is related to the stance of the Syrian liberal and secular oppositions on such a scenario and interpretation of the creation of Jabhat al-Nussrah in the Syrian scene. Does this branch of opposition construct its imaginations of the Syrian future upon a serious consideration of the existence of such a scenario? I do wish that these Syrian liberal, secular and civil oppositions, inside and outside the country, would consider working on salvaging the Syrian people and Syrian the country alike from all the catastrophic side-effects and fatal consequences of the game of ‘choosing the lesser of the two evils’. I do wish them to appeal for unifying their front and moving beyond their disagreements, personal, privative interests and temporary ideological and pragmatic discrepancies and start to establish a Syrian, inclusivist and comprehensive ‘rescue Front’ that contains within it all the civil, liberal, secular and democratic powers and side in the Syrian scene, and to start doing this from now, so that it can confront and prevent the fall of Syria in the trap of ‘either the Muslim Brotherhood and its project’ or ‘the salafi-jihadi, like Jabhat al-Nussrah and their agenda’. Is their any listener to the voice of an insignificant Syrian citizen, who enjoys no position, or power or decision-making status?

When the Guards Destroy the Temple to Become its Priests: Syria, Revolution or War?

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.

What is the Link between the Syrian Revolution and the Stance on Political Islam?

Two very significant and implicative events took place in the Arabic Spring’s last couple of weeks. One is related to the revolution in Syria; while the other is linked to the characterizing aftermath of the post-revolution’s political developments in Tunisia and Egypt. The first event is the assault, which the supporters of the Syrian opposition that is represented by the National Transitional Council exerted against the supporters of the Syrian opposition that is represented by the National Coordination Committee in Cairo. Such assault marks deep rifts and serious discrepancies between the various Syrian dissenters’ stances on the revolution’s nature, goals and process; the disconcerting gap, that is, that all of us must probe carefully. The second event, on the other hand, is the American Secretary of Foreign Affairs Hillary Clinton’s declaration, and for the first time in such an explicit manner, that USA does not mind constructing common-interest relationships with the Islamists who are expected to replace the dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, if not the Arab world in general.

I have already published four months ago an article in Al-Mustaqbal Newspaper’s cultural Appendix, ‘Nawafiz’, wherein I argued that contrary to its traditional stance, the West is today more reconciled with the possible existence of political Islamist alternatives in the Arab world, even in the Arab countries who are neighbours to Israel. The West would, furthermore, be the primary supporter and ultimate benefactor of aiding political Islam in its authoritarian ambitions in the region. The West, as I argued, would opt for this on the basis of its belief that such a support would tame and belittle the threats of the sociological, cultural and civil ambitions of political Islam in the western societies by shifting its primary track. The western powers hope that by supporting the fulfilment of political Islam’s ambitions in the Arab world they will be able to re-orient the spears of the latter towards its homeland and drive it ultimately to give up its recent focus on the western world. Today with the secretary Clinton’s direct expression of America’s readiness to allying with any Islamist alternative in the Arab world, the western powers declare that they stand behind such an option and they reflect their readiness not only to deal with its inevitable reality, but also to frankly bargain and cut strategic deals with it, conceding all the requirements such an alliance-deal demands: committing to the give-and-take requirement and the ‘embrace-winning-and-accept-losing’ rule.

From the perspective of ‘give-and-take’ deals-cutting, the alphabets of the expected alliance and mutual-interest friendship would be as follows: the west would wait from the Islamists to establish pluralist and deliberative political systems that follow the democratic rules of political activity. By committing themselves to this precondition, the Islamists would help the decision-making centres in the west in their attempt at re-polishing the image of political Islam and justifying their (the western powers) siding with it in front of the secularist, liberal and civil public-square and civil society organizations in the western countries. By the help of the political Islam’s commitment to the democratic ruling-game, the Western decision-making centres would promise to give a deaf ear to the critical appraisals of the national and international civil society institutions, human rights activists and the organizations that defend democracy, plurality and civil society values when these latter raise their voices against these growing Islamist regimes’ expected ambitions at sociologically, culturally and jursdictionally islamizing the Arab societies.

In return of the above mentioned western lenience towards the social, cultural and jurisdictional islamization of Arab societies, these newly-born Islamist regimes are expected to pledge their commitment to the western following threefold agenda: First, they must promise that they will not threaten the existence and the security of the state of Israel, and they will, rather, cooperate in finding a solution to the Israeli-Arab struggle by succumbing to the international endeavour of reducing it into mere Palestinian-Israeli disagreement and by pushing the Palestinians into the table of negotiation, persuading them to compromise their demands and pushing them into accepting a peace-agreement which the West concedes and Israel tailors. Second, these Islamist regimes should pledge to clearly and strictly ally with the western campaign in its clash with the Iranian strategic ambitions, under the name of the Sunnite Arab world’s abhorrence of the Iranians’ Shi’ism and its ideological and dogmatic attempt at shi’izing the Near East. Third, these newly born Islamist regimes must guarantee the continuous flooding of energy to the west and would maintain the Arab countries’ status as the first weapons’ buyer in the world; the thing that would help the west in its strife for financial and economic stabilization in the midst of the recent European and American drastic economic recession, massive national debts and unprecedentedly high rate of unemployment crisis. What we should expect to witness, in other words, is an attempt at cutting geo-strategic deals with the new Islamist regimes that are very much similar in nature and content to the deals the Americans already have with Turkey and the Gulf countries. The spiral-cord of these alliances is: practice sociological, cultural, and jurisdictional islamization in your countries as you like, but stay away from islamizing the internal political situation of the stately system and also elide from any islamist approach to the regional geo-political calculations.

Now with regard to the relation of this equation to the revolution in Syria and the deep rift between the opposition’s spectrums, we have to read the Syrian revolution within the framework of the above mentioned new development in the west’s geo-political calculations and options. I do believe that it is necessary to read the Syrian internal and external opposition-branches’ continuous strategic and tactical mistakes and contradictions – especially the ones that are related to the matters of timing, performance, planning and political interactivity – as strongly demonstrative that all the branches of the Syrian oppositions have lost their chance to play the role of the primary and most influential player in the Syrian scene, let the chance to impact the final destination of the revolution. The implosion of the Syrian regime, though inevitable and impending, is no more in the hands of the National Transitional Council or the National Coordination Committee, and it might even no more be in the hands of the people on the streets either.

I am not here suggesting that the regime would survive and that it will win. The opposite is actually the truth. During the past months, the Syrian regime proved to everybody its conspicuous collapse and its tangible lack of any further control over the daily life and process of the Syrian society, despite the unflinching existence and brutality of its artillery and security forces machine and its cordoning of the people’s affairs on the streets. The head of the regime has totally failed in convincing the world about its ability to deal with the recent crisis on the basis of any political prudency and discretion or the expected wisdom and stances of the statesman. The discourse of reformation, which the president introduced himself to the Syrian public and to the world as its godfather in Syria, has radically failed and proved its falsehood, as it has been immediately displaced by demagogy, violence and coercion. By this, the regime lost the control on its fate and survival, and is destiny has become now conditioned by the general strategic calculations of the presently detectable deal between the west and political Islam in the Arab world, including Syria. Throughout the past ten years, the west has witnessed and verified the Syrian regime’s inability to be the west’s partner in achieving its threefold strategic agenda in the region; the agenda, that is, which the regime would have granted a place for itself in the new equation had it succumbed to. To the contrary, the Islamist alternative seems to be willing to show readiness to commit itself to this preconditioning strategic tripod and to cut a deal with the west on them. Therefore, the Ba’thist regime has undoubtedly lost the reasons of its existence on the futural map of the region.

To come back to the Syrian opposition’s role, it can no more, in my view, aspire at occupying the role of the main player in the Syrian revolution’s scene. And, it will not be at all the main cause of the regime’s fall-down. The National Transitional Council has failed in presenting itself as the real, let alone the only, power that is capable of toppling the regime and its rulers by means of either sheer public force, political vision, or any futural strategic view, which the Syrian public can rely on in the post-Ba’thi era. On the other hand, the National Coordination Committee, and from the very beginning, did not gain broad and influential public support inside Syria, and it did not gain any serious or reliable attention from the Wets, although its members and followers are the most prominent nationalist, historical dissenting figures inside Syria during the past four decades. In addition to this, there is a deep intellectual and strategic difference between the discourses of these two opposing movements, which fragments their approaches and views and confuses the political performance inside the circles of each; the thing that we started to perpetually witness during the past months, which lately reached its drastic climax in the embarrassing and shameful assault of the National Council’s supporters against the members of the National Coordination Committee that took place in Cairo.

From a realist and pragmatist political point of view, it is easy to expect that the opposition, most probably the National Transitional Council, would be pushed to replace the inevitably and imminently falling regime. It is also foreseeable that the creators of this Council and its supporters (the Turks and Americans, in specific) would press towards introducing this Council as the expected, and maybe unfortunately the ‘only’, political alternative in the new Syria, whether this Council gained the support of the majority of the Syrian population or it drastically did not. Yet, this should not blindfold and prevent us from realizing that the regime’s implosion and the success of the public riot were not primarily in the hands of either the opposition or the Syrian public-square. If the Syrians found themselves before the inescapable requirement of dealing with the National Transitional Council as the conjectured alternative of the falling regime, there would be a noticeable suspicion among them that the new ruling system should be called the ‘winner’, for the complexities of the Syrian scene reveal that this winner can be any side except the Syrian official opposing bodies.

What I want to conclude from the previous argument is that we have to read the scandal of the deep rift (and its ensuing aggressiveness) between the opposition segments in Syria, and the implications of these serious differences, within a broader geo-political framework that is related to the latest western stance on the rising of political Islam in the region and the west’s readiness to cut a new mutual-interest deal with this alternative. If the regime demolished in Syrian, its fall would be the outcome of this new deal, not the result of the oppositions’ or the street’s role (though the heroic Syrian public-square is the main factor and cause behind the beginning of the end of the regime). On the other hand, if a miracle beyond the boundaries of the analytical logic and available data happened to take place, namely if the president remained in rule for a transitional period, this also would not be a sign of the regime’s victory over the rioting street and the opposition. Both the regime and its fate, on one side, and the oppositions and the fate of the street’s demonstration, on another, have become part and parcel of a bigger and more complicated game; just one milestone in a longer and more curvy map-track. The increase of the oppositions’ differences and clashes was not but an outcome of a stance-change in their sponsors’, western and local, regional and international, substantial and constructive approach to political Islam and the attempt of the influential powers in the region to re-order the pawns of the Middle Eastern chess-board.

Reflections on the Revolution’s Implications

- 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?

The ‘Quiescent Majority’ is the Rest of the People in Syria

[the Arabic version of this essay was published in; http://o2publishing.com/_new1.php?FileName=20110501021040]






The latest bloody, catastrophic turn in Syria started to reveal that the Syrian people are seemingly divided into three segments: one segment is blindly supportive and ferociously defensive of the regime. It even wishes the regime to continue using an iron, terminating fist against the rioters and it lays its whole existence per se to the regime’s salvation from its plight. This segment represents a minority. On the other hand, there is another segment that is absolutely, unconditionally and unreservedly supportive of the street’s uprising. It defends this uprising in whatever form it may take at any cost the people may pay. The followers of this group appeal to the people on the streets to maintain their rebellion and they call for its raving, despite all the possible vagueness and mistakes that may stem out of such a rough and non-calculated escalation. These mobilizers opt for this counter-violent and counter-aggressive reaction because they also lay their fate on the final victory of the street’s uprising in overthrowing the regime. This segment also represents a minority that is equal in size to the size of the previous one.

The past few days, nevertheless, have unearthed the real existence of yet a third segment, which comprises in my opinion the majority of the Syrian population comparing to the other abovementioned two. I will not call this group ‘silent’, for it is not silent, though its voice is not loud or strong and its accent is not simmering or agitating in style. I will not also call it ‘neutral’, for no one can remain neutral in Syria today, and no one wants to be so, I believe. Add to this, this is not a neutral majority, but one that takes a real and sober position that lies in refusing to be partial to one of the other two sides because it believes that none of them echoes its own voice. On the other hand, this majority is not also to be construed the segment of the ‘fearful’. For, fear among the members of this group is neither different in nature nor is it more ( or less) in degree than the fear of the regime’s supporters, who are very apprehensive from the possible success of the street’s uprising and the substantial change the overthrowing of the regime would bring about, nor is it different from or lesser than the fear of the rioters and their mobilizers from the regime’s retaliation and counter-crackdown in case they decided to empty the public-squares, retreat to their houses and concede to negotiation with the regime.

The third segment, then, is not silent, or neutral or exclusively fearful. It is a group I prefer to call the ‘quiescent majority’. It is a majority that is utterly dissatisfied with the regime’s perpetual reliance on its usual tyrannical, oppressive and bloody aggressive method, its lofty and condescending attitude towards the people as well as its systematic undermining people’s rights and underestimating the ramifications and consequences of their suffering, bad conditions and tiredness from the recent ruling order. Yet, this is a majority that is equally saddened by and disappointed with the exclusivist and discriminative, simmering and agitating discourse that entices the public-square’s uprising and calls people to remain at all costs on the streets and welcome death as the passage to final victory. This is specially the case in the light of the recently growing power of the instigation and spur that is becoming more noticeably Islamist, anathematizing, condemnatory, tribalistic, sectarian and vengeful in nature. This majority is uncomfortable also with the fact that the uprising people’s vision is vague and imprecise and that those mobilizers, who ride the wave of the public-square’s opposition, are either in shortage of precise and reliable alternatives, or loaded with dangerous, disunifying and publically rejected agendas. This majority takes seriously its realization that the uprising on the street has no evidently reliable or tangible ‘alternative’ at hand, notwithstanding its equal perception and affirmation that the peoples have basic, essential and undeniable ‘demands’, which all the Syrian population aspire at and seek, and the country cannot be truly a ‘state’ without. Yet, this majority believes that these are still at the level of ‘demands’ and have not become yet tangible, complete and coherent ‘alternative’ for constructing a new republic, civil statehood that can preserve co-existence, plurality and unity in the country.

The quiescent majority stands astride two equally hard choices in Syria: either the regime’s opting for violence and political and national blindness and suicidal acrimony,on one side, or the street mobilizers’ sentimental and over-reactive, religiously- and sectarianly- energizing agitation of the population, on another. Against opting for one of them, it pleads for Syria’s release from the mercy of the mistakes of either option. It hopes that a wise, reasonable and patriotic third voice may find a chance to invite the whole population to rise above any demagogic logic and to break the three vicious circles of the physical-violence and its verbal counter-violence, the vengeful fear and its suicidal counter-fear and hatred and treason and its emotional and condemnatory counter-agitation. The quiescent majority is failed by the regime when it sees that within the ruling circle the voice of force and the logic of oppression prevail over the voice of reformation, the readiness to admit the mistakes and the intention of change. It seriously questions the conspicuous contradiction which one can spot between the president’s promises, decisions and decrees and the conducts of the governmental media and security forces and their persisting in all the procedures that defy and militate clearly against the declared reformation-decision. This majority asks in a clam yet rational voice: who rules Syria now and who decides its fate, and which clumsy game the whole country is pulled into by these authority-holders? On the other hand, the quiescent majority affirms that the rebellions’ intentions and motives are reliable and trustworthy in their nature and goal. It knows that those who occupy the public-squares in Syria’s cities are innocent and sincere, normal citizens, whose scream stems from the heart of the people’s thirst for justice, freedom, human rights, decent life, prosperity and dignity. However, this majority worries when it hears the discourse of those who ignite the population and try to dictate and orchestrate the mass’ movement, especially when they continue pressing the people to remain on the streets endlessly, despite the shed blood and the increasing amount of casualties, and prevent them from giving the regime’s reformation promises’ any trail-time, during which the people can examine and discover the sincerity or deception of the regime. The quiescent majority hears the discourse of the street’s extremist mobilizers and tremble from and abhor its exclusivist, tribalistic, divisive, vengeful and inflaming approaches that manipulate people’s sentiments and implement the noble sacrifices of their casualties and martyrs in its verbal violence and hatred.

Yes, Syria has not en masse strolled down to the streets. And yes, the majority of the Syrian population is definitely not standing beside the regime and it does not want it to remain statically the same. The majority of this country, to the contrary, is still standing in the shadow of its deep concern and sadness, resorting to its inactive position. More importantly still, many Syrian intellectuals stand within this majority’s circle because they read between the latest events’ and radical developments’ lines nothing but a vain and void struggle that does not promise any alternative and does not feature any foreseen hope. If we look to the position of Syria’s intellectuals from beyond the framework of the governmental media’s treason-mentality and the people’s arousers’ inflaming discourse, we would realize that the Syrian intellectuals were not at all silent or neutral. They just evaded both the involvement in the regime’s justification of its violence and brutality, and the endorsement of any fanatic and confrontational exploitation of the rioters’ blood and martyrdom. Many of the Syrian intellectuals, who have always been known as the first opposing-front against the regime’s corruption and hegemony, stand with the quiescent majority and stretch their hands toward the rational, objective and dialogical members among the two clashing sides. And, let every one knows, that they pay for this position a very high price, as they simultaneously suffer from the regime security forces’ intimidation and persecution, as well as face the accusations, blames and attacks of the extremist mobilizers of the riots.

Whither Syria in this situation? This is the most difficult question. Unfortunately, the events of the public-squares will alone decide the answer, despite the fact that neither the peoples on the streets nor the regime’s members can actually either tell us how these events will end, or can decide such end by themselves. The only remaining hope is to enable the public-squares to listen to a voice different from the voices of both the regime’s hard-core members and the streets’ confrontational mobilizers. This different voice is today the voice of the quiescent majority and the intellectual opposition group within it; the group. This voice, nevertheless, needs the aid of the media-centres, the thinkers and authors and the decision-making circles in the Arabic and international societies in digging its way to the ears and minds of the rioters. This voice needs a pulpit, wherefrom it can address and build mediation-bridges between the reasonable and wise people of the regime and the rioters. The noble and innocent heroes who went down to the streets need before any one else a parallel dialogical and political interaction to accompany the peaceful, patriotic and honest movement of the common citizens. Every one believes in change and freedom and future in Syria should support the voice of the quiescent majority and help the intellectuals therein to make contact with the wise and reasonable in the two other groups, so that Syria can truly step away from an impending black hole that is about to swallow the whole republic