Sometimes I think about the next generation and what they will write about us! The “nun” in “anna” doesn’t refer to the Syrian people, but rather to the Syrian intellectual, political, and cultural elites!
On the Syrian regime’s side, we find three determinants that have shaped its image:
The first determinant:
The Syrian regime’s leadership failed to deal with a popular revolution. It stood against it, opposed it, and fought it, even using all its security and intelligence power to humiliate and kill its people, until the great explosion occurred—a popular explosion in every direction and corner. The Syrian regime was unable to subjugate the Syrians by force, let alone by a lack of wisdom and policy. In the Umayyad capital, Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan established the wise theory of “the hair.” When asked about the reason for the stability of his rule despite forty years of unrest, he said: “If there was a hair between me and the people, it would not be severed! Because if they stretch it, I will leave it, and if they leave it, I will extend it!”
However, in that same country, whose rule has been handed over to the “monster/Assad” family, we find that the Syrian regime has already severed every strand of its ties with its people, even with its loyalists! It wants nothing but servants at its door, slaves who listen and obey, and a homogeneous people, regardless of their numbers. Then let the rest go to hell, and let the country and land be partitioned.
The second determinant:
flooding Syria with every destructive terrorist plot by thugs. The Syrian regime has released most of their monsters from its prisons with amnesties for their past and future crimes, on the condition that they slaughter the people and spread corruption throughout the land. These extremists have infiltrated the vacuum of chaos created by the regime itself to spread corruption and terror not only among Syrians but also the entire world.
The third determinant:
surrendering national sovereignty to external forces whenever the throne and the seat of power feel threatened. Nothing is more important to the Syrian regime than remaining in power. Assad’s policy has been based on exploiting everything to serve his own interests, regardless of its nature. This has been achieved by intimidating minorities on the one hand, strengthening the Alawite community on the other, and coopting Sunni clerics and businessmen on the third. Any action, no matter how repugnant, is considered a necessary policy for him, as long as it serves to preserve the throne, even if it leads to the fragmentation of the people, the state, and the land. His policy remains a thousand times over, washed away by the deeds of selling Syria to foreigners! It has also been about bringing in the Russian bear and the Iranian wolf to possess whatever privileges, ports, bases, crossings, and other things they desire. As for the Syrian opposition, which has had no real practice since the 1970s due to the Ba’ath Party’s authoritarian policies, its image was also shaped by three determinants:
The first determinant: the failure to lead the popular movement. Since the beginning of the collapse of the regime, the opposition has been unable to combine the emergence of hotels with the maintenance of trenches! It has been unable to truly lead the revolution! Perhaps in the future, when our current reality is rewritten from a historical perspective, we will see analyses that suggest the opposition’s failure to lead the popular movement, whether due to its own inability or a desire to do so on the part of the Syrian people, who were able to destroy but were unable to build! We have highlighted this in a study published by the Scientific Bureau/Research and Studies Department, entitled: Critique of the Syrian Mentality (The Idea of Destruction) as a Model.
The second determinant:
Although the opposition is not supposed to be a single entity (but rather a unified and unifying entity), experiences in our Syrian history, such as the “National Bloc” and others, remind us that a single word from it was enough to mobilize all of Syria. The 1960s strike is clear evidence of this! Perhaps the Syrian opposition is not a unified entity, but the presence of state figures (politicians, military personnel, diplomats, and the like), if they were able to come together, would create a realistic alternative to the Assad regime and authority! This is something that should not be disputed!
The third factor:
The Syrian opposition’s leaders have failed to create a factor of influence, leaving the reins to foreign countries, whether Turkish, American, or others. We find many figures whose only place is in virtual rooms, articles, or media interviews, while the land is divided between nationalist groups seeking to antagonize our largest neighboring country! Their goal is to create a mini-state that does not exist on maps or even in international awareness. There are also religious movements seeking to restore the Islamic Caliphate, with the ultimate goal of a corner of the world where they can impose their own visions of women’s dress, the punishment for amputating hands, and stoning. There are also groups that obey Turkish cellphone lines and whose sole concern is strengthening tribal and tribal affiliation.
My cry today is a political reading based on past experiences and a precise understanding, perhaps unknown to many elites, of the Syrian regime’s mentality and its true, deep makeup, and even the mentality of regional power brokers and their deliberations. It is a cry that sees the reality we are living through and anticipates a frightening future—a future of the final destruction of the Syrian state entity, a state founded on one people, in a unified country, represented by a single authority that exercises its sovereignty alone, without the interference of any other foreign state.
It is a cry that now sees the land torn apart, the region fragmented, and the people burdened by years of war, displacement, and loss, with a clear loss of the political compass and the certain destruction of the moral system! Nevertheless, history will record and write that a people who revolted for their freedom are a people who bear lofty values and ideals, while all authorities think only of their own survival, even if the price is tears, blood, and the destruction of the country. As for sovereignty, at its core lies a subjugation beyond the reach of all eternity!
The present data foretells that the Syrian future is frightening! So frightening that we need to raise a yellow warning card, at the very least, that the state entity is withering away, and we are about to lose the entire field! If we do not stand as true statesmen, and if we do not create from this vacuum and chaos a truly effective, balanced, and influential national bloc, such that if it were to strike the table with its hand, Ankara, Washington, and Geneva would shake, and its echo would reverberate in the remotest and smallest villages in Syria, then we are on the brink of a precipice that will leave nothing behind, and a harbinger of human destruction!! My belief is that such a thing cannot be achieved through desire, emotion, or theorizing. Statesmen are created by nothing other than their nature; they are not made.But they are being resurrected from the spirit of the concerned people at a historic moment, to create a solid nucleus capable of gathering the threads, weaving a lifeline, and achieving the impossible, within the jurisprudence of balances, understanding priorities, uniting the diaspora, and formulating policies.
Such a desire does not require an external signal, nor internal security earthquakes, nor is it subject to populist desires and calls. Rather, it requires an extraordinary, sovereign national decision, undertaken by true, seasoned statesmen. I believe that the signs of its revival are closer than ever.
We, in the Syrian Future Movement, work for it and for it, not as an option, but as the only way to preserve what remains of the Syrian state and repair what has been damaged over the past decades.
Dr. Zaher Ihsan Badrani
Presidential Office
Article
Syrian Future Movement
