Syria: Between the Loss of Statehood and the Resurrection of Its Statesmen
I sometimes think about the next generation, and what they will write about us! The ‘us’ here is not entirely the Syrian people, but the Syrian intellectual, political, and cultural elites!
From the Syrian regime’s side, three determinants have shaped its image:
The first determinant: The failure of the Syrian regime’s leadership to deal with a popular uprising, as it opposed, antagonized, and fought it, using all its security and intelligence power to humiliate and kill its people, leading to a massive explosion, a popular explosion in every direction and corner.
The regime could not subdue the Syrians by force, let alone with wisdom and policy.
In the Umayyad capital, where Muawiya bin Abi Sufyan established the wise theory of ‘the hair,’ he said when asked about the stability of his rule despite the upheavals for forty years: “If there were but a hair between me and the people, it would not break! For if they pull, I let go, and if they let go, I pull!” However, we find that in the same country, now ruled by the (Beast/Assad) family, the Syrian regime has indeed cut every hair between it and its people, even with those loyal to it. It wants only servants at its door, obedient slaves, and a homogeneous people no matter their number, while the rest can go to hell, and let the state and the land be divided.
The second determinant: Syria drowned in every destructive terrorist conspiracy, with thugs released by the Syrian regime from their prisons under amnesty for their past and subsequent crimes, provided that they wreak havoc on the people and spread corruption on the land. Extremists infiltrated in the chaos created by the regime itself to spread corruption and terror not only among Syrians but across the world.
The third determinant: Surrendering national sovereignty to foreign powers at every feeling of a shaky throne and chair, as nothing is more important to the Syrian regime than maintaining power. Assad’s policy was based on exploiting everything for the benefit of continuity, by frightening minorities on one hand, rallying the Alawites on the other, and accommodating Sunni religious and business figures on a third front. Any behavior, however distasteful, is his required policy, as long as it serves to preserve the throne, even if it leads to the fragmentation of the people, state, and land.
His policy remains washed a thousand times, about selling Syria to foreigners, about bringing the Russian bear and the Iranian wolf to own whatever they want of privileges, ports, bases, and crossings, and more.
And from the side of the Syrian opposition, which has had no real practice since the 1970s due to the authoritarian Ba’ath policy, it also drew its image with three determinants:
The first determinant: The failure in leading the popular movement, as since the beginning of the loosening of control, the opposition could not marry the appearance of hotels and the tie of trenches! It failed to lead the revolution rightly! And perhaps in the future, when our reality today is written from a historical perspective, we will see analyses that suggest the opposition failed to lead the popular movement, between its own incapacity or the people’s desire for it, who could destroy but not build!!
And we pointed this out in a study published by the Scientific Office/ Research and Studies Department, titled: Critique of the Syrian Mentality (The Idea of Destruction) as a Model.
The second determinant: Although the opposition is not supposed to be one (but unified and unifying), experiences in our Syrian history like the “National Bloc” remind us that a single word from it was enough to make all of Syria react, with the sixties strike as a clear proof! Perhaps the Syrian opposition is not one, but the presence of state figures (politicians, military leaders, diplomats, and others) if they were given a chance and gathered, would create a realistic alternative to Assad’s authority and regime!! And there should be no disagreement about this!!
The third determinant: The incapacity of Syrian opposition leaderships to create an impactful factor, leaving the steering to foreign countries, whether Turkish, American, or others, as we find many characters with no place but in virtual rooms, articles, or media interviews, while the land is divided by nationalist groups wanting to antagonize our largest neighboring country!
Their goal is to create a non-existent state on maps or even in international consciousness, and religious movements wanting to revive the Islamic Caliphate with their ultimate dream and goal being a corner of the earth where they impose their concepts of women’s clothing, amputation, stoning, and stone-throwing, and groups that comply with TURKCELL communication lines, caring only about enhancing tribal and clannish affiliations.
My cry today is a political reading based on previous experiences, and precise knowledge that many elites may not know, about the deep true nature of the
Syrian regime and the regional kitchens’ maneuvers. A cry that sees the reality we walk through, and foresees a frightening future, a future of the final destruction of the Syrian state, a state that stands on one people, in a unified country, represented by one authority, extending its sovereignty only without foreign interference.
A cry that now sees the land torn, the region fragmented, and the people burdened by years of war, refuge, and loss, with a clear absence of a political compass, and a certain destruction of the moral system! And yet, history will write and record that a people who rose for their freedom are a people who hold high values and ideals, while all authorities think only of the permanence of their existence, even if the cost is the tears, blood, and destruction of the country, and as for sovereignty, in the heart is an oppression that no alphabet can express!
The data of the present indicate that the Syrian future is frightening! Frightening to the extent that we need to raise at least a yellow warning card that the state entity is withering, and we are about to lose the entire field! And if we do not stand as true statesmen, and if we do not create from this void and chaos a real, active, and influential national bloc, by which if it struck the table, Ankara, Washington, and Geneva would tremble, and its echo would resonate in the furthest and smallest village in Syria, then we are on the brink of a cliff that will spare nothing and destroy everything!!
And I believe that such does not come by desire and emotion nor by theorizing, for statesmen are not made artificially, but are resurrected from the spirit of the people in a historical moment, to create a solid nucleus, capable of gathering the threads and weaving the lifeline, and making the impossibilities, within the jurisprudence of balances, understanding the priorities, gathering the scattered, and drawing policies.
Such a desire needs no external signal, nor does it succumb to internal security earthquakes or populist calls, but to an extraordinary national sovereign decision, risen by true, veteran statesmen, and I reckon the sparks of its resurrection are closer now than ever before.
And we in the Syrian Future Movement are working towards and on it not as an option, but as the only way to preserve what remains of the Syrian state entity, and to repair the damage it has suffered over the past few decades.
Dr. Zaher Ihssan Baadarani
Presidency office
Article
Syrian Future Movement (SFM)
