Understanding the Unthinkable War
Sadik J. Al-Azm
"There was nothing sudden about the transformation of the peaceful protests into armed “civil conflict.” It was the result of the abandonment of the protestors by the international community in spite of the escalating violence perpetrated by the Assad regime, the solidarity of Syrian soldiers with ordinary people, and the predictable influx of armed extremists to a desperate situation.
The armed counterparts of the coordinating committees, dispersed all over Syria, forced the regime’s storm troops to spread themselves thin, scattering and exhausting them as they shuttled suddenly from Dar’a in the south to the Turkish border in the north and then back south again. This is why we heard that troops invaded, occupied, and then retreated from Dar’a at least twenty times during less than fifteen months.
“Why do you bother to criticize, oppose, and protest, when you know we are invincible, with a will of steel that crushes anything and anyone that stands in its way? Find something better to do than dabbling in hopeless politics and opposition.”
The revolution has destroyed this omnipotent image both within the regime and outside of it. That is why Assad had to call on Hezbollah militias from Lebanon and paramilitary Shi’a organizations from Iraq and Iran to bolster his hold on the country. That is also why his storm troops, Hezbollah, and the other militias struggled so long to take a small, rural town such as Kusair, in spite of their far superior numbers and firepower.
In Syria the regime, state, army, and party on one side, and the popular uprising on the other, are the primary combatants. There are no indications of sectarian contest. Syria’s Druzes are not about to attack their Sunni neighbors in Hauran, nor are the Sunni preparing to invade en masse Ismaeli or Christian territories, nor are the Ismaelis readying themselves to violently settle old scores with the Alawi community and so on. Neither did any Syrian community, sect, or ethnicity mobilize itself collectively to fight on the side of the regime or to defend it.
Syria is not in a condition of generalized civil war. If a historical precedent or analogy is needed, recall Hungary’s armed revolution against the Stalinist regime there in 1956—a revolt crushed by Russian tanks much as Syrian tanks aim to crush today’s. As Hungary’s revolution unfolded, no one said that the country was in the throes of a civil war because Hungarian was killing Hungarian.
So what is trampled underfoot in Syria right now is the majority and its rights, about which no one seems to speak outside of Syria. Underlying this silence is the assumption that the Sunni majority is just waiting for the right moment to assault the minorities of the country, to persecute and oppress them. But, right now, all Syria, needs rights, protection, concern, and attention.
This international discourse about protection of Syria’s minorities takes me back to the Europe of the nineteenth century, with its famous gunboat diplomacy. Every European power worth its salt was searching for a minority in our part of the world to adopt and protect: France, the local Roman Catholics and Alawis. Russia, the Greek Orthodox. Britain, the few Anglicans and Protestants along with the Druze minority, and so on."
"There was nothing sudden about the transformation of the peaceful protests into armed “civil conflict.” It was the result of the abandonment of the protestors by the international community in spite of the escalating violence perpetrated by the Assad regime, the solidarity of Syrian soldiers with ordinary people, and the predictable influx of armed extremists to a desperate situation.
The armed counterparts of the coordinating committees, dispersed all over Syria, forced the regime’s storm troops to spread themselves thin, scattering and exhausting them as they shuttled suddenly from Dar’a in the south to the Turkish border in the north and then back south again. This is why we heard that troops invaded, occupied, and then retreated from Dar’a at least twenty times during less than fifteen months.
“Why do you bother to criticize, oppose, and protest, when you know we are invincible, with a will of steel that crushes anything and anyone that stands in its way? Find something better to do than dabbling in hopeless politics and opposition.”
The revolution has destroyed this omnipotent image both within the regime and outside of it. That is why Assad had to call on Hezbollah militias from Lebanon and paramilitary Shi’a organizations from Iraq and Iran to bolster his hold on the country. That is also why his storm troops, Hezbollah, and the other militias struggled so long to take a small, rural town such as Kusair, in spite of their far superior numbers and firepower.
In Syria the regime, state, army, and party on one side, and the popular uprising on the other, are the primary combatants. There are no indications of sectarian contest. Syria’s Druzes are not about to attack their Sunni neighbors in Hauran, nor are the Sunni preparing to invade en masse Ismaeli or Christian territories, nor are the Ismaelis readying themselves to violently settle old scores with the Alawi community and so on. Neither did any Syrian community, sect, or ethnicity mobilize itself collectively to fight on the side of the regime or to defend it.
Syria is not in a condition of generalized civil war. If a historical precedent or analogy is needed, recall Hungary’s armed revolution against the Stalinist regime there in 1956—a revolt crushed by Russian tanks much as Syrian tanks aim to crush today’s. As Hungary’s revolution unfolded, no one said that the country was in the throes of a civil war because Hungarian was killing Hungarian.
So what is trampled underfoot in Syria right now is the majority and its rights, about which no one seems to speak outside of Syria. Underlying this silence is the assumption that the Sunni majority is just waiting for the right moment to assault the minorities of the country, to persecute and oppress them. But, right now, all Syria, needs rights, protection, concern, and attention.
This international discourse about protection of Syria’s minorities takes me back to the Europe of the nineteenth century, with its famous gunboat diplomacy. Every European power worth its salt was searching for a minority in our part of the world to adopt and protect: France, the local Roman Catholics and Alawis. Russia, the Greek Orthodox. Britain, the few Anglicans and Protestants along with the Druze minority, and so on."
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