Syrian activism has changed the world

 

 Rime Allaf:

 'It must be remembered that before 2011, Syrian civil society did not exist, whether it was activism or real involvement in life in Syria. The few NGOs that there were were all controlled by the régime, like that of First Lady Asma al-Assad, the Syria Trust for Development, founded in 2001. This was very carefully presented to the public and to donors who wanted to believe that after 30 years of Hafez al-Assad's reign, there would be a movement conducive to reforming the system. When the uprising began, in the light of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the Syrians felt their time had come. Of course, we had the Damascus Spring in 2000, when Bashar al-Assad came to power. The difference between the “two Springs” was that the first one emerged with the voice of intellectuals, like Riad Seif, Riad al-Turk and Aref Dalila. Literary salons have emerged; this moment was limited and limited in time. After 30 years of dictatorship, they hoped that Bashar would be a little different.

 Spring 2011 was made up of a whole new generation of activists. I personally focused on the 10 years leading up to the revolution. It didn't come out of nowhere, it happened because these people were frustrated with their miserable living conditions. They saw that their patience was going nowhere. You have to put the pieces of the puzzle together to understand why civil society has exploded with rage: ten years of failure, despair, deterioration of the economic situation, etc. The spark that led to the Syrian revolution occurred in Daraa. It was a burst of indignation, the Syrian youth mobilized as a whole and understood that it was a turning point, a question of life or death. It is important to note that this revolution was a success, it enabled a real movement of activism to begin in the first years of the conflict, even during the régime's military assaults which immediately followed. The generation of 2011 was inspired by the ideas supported by the intellectuals of the 2000s. An important point to underline is that civil society discovered itself, by bringing down the walls of oppression. Local coordination committees have sprung up across the country.



 The smear campaign against the White Helmets, psychological warfare during the Siege of Aleppo and revisionism after the chemical attack on Ghouta, are some of the most unfortunate consequences of what I call "selective anti-imperialism". From day one, the régime's speech was to tell the world that it was the victim of a plot by the West, Israel, NATO and the Gulf countries. It is a speech that Damascus used from the start. A defense system sewn with white thread, but which has been surprisingly popularized. We assumed that many western journalists and movements would understand the Syrian revolution as they did the Egyptian revolution, the Tunisian revolution, the militants in Bahrain, etc. Instead, they started talking about "civil war" from the start. Even though they did not speak exactly like the régime, the situation was described as "complicated", "We don't know what is really going on", they said. It was scandalous. When the chemical attack occurred in August 2013, it was immediately realized that there were people who were so imbued with ideology that they would never let sincere Syrian revolutionaries speak, but that they would give credit to the counter-speech, which was de facto defending the régime, even if they claim they did not. We have many documented examples: Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, Vanessa Beeley and many more. Robert Fisk had an image of respectability, thanks to his long career as a correspondent in the Middle East. He was the reliable, independent journalist that the Western public could count on. In fact, as early as August 2012, he wrote an article after the Daraya massacre. It was a tissue of lies and denials of war crimes, a real horror. When someone claims to be a freelance journalist and gives exactly what the régime wants to read, it means that he is subservient to it.

 Thus, we clearly observe that even before the chemical attack, there was an ambiguous tendency towards the régime among some journalists. It wasn't until the chemical massacre happened that this reality came to light. It was a blatant bias, which had not happened so clearly in other revolutions. Important news organizations claimed that this information "had not been independently verified", that it was "presumed". They did not use these terms when it came to régime claims or government-controlled areas. It would have taken a lot of research to bring all of these sources together.

 As a result, the public who were not ideologically inclined to understand the situation began to form their thoughts: "It's sad, there is a civil war, nothing can be done about it". The very idea of ​​"extremists" also arose early on, presented as the main opposition to Assad. In fact, there was a very mixed combination of rebels who started fighting the head of state. We also quickly forgot the Free Syrian Army, which was made up of soldiers who defected and were immediately joined by civilians. The whole situation was blurred, also with the arrival of the al-Nusra Front and later the Islamic State group. In the end, the 2016 siege of Aleppo was presented as an equal battle between "two camps", which was not true. A whole hostile rhetoric against the Syrian opposition had taken hold.



 Documentation and archiving is the most important work to be done nowadays, due to an explicit revisionism. We live in a time when even the United Nations has retracted its old positions and is now giving the régime a new opportunity. Many people will tell you that this is the most documented conflict in history, not all of the other atrocities in Bosnia or Rwanda were on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. And yet, we still have to do some groundwork on the subject. The Collective Memory of the Syrian Revolution group has worked for years to document these things, as has The Day After, a civil society group of which I am a part. The Museum of Activism is not just about Syria. The mission of MOA is to show how activists, peaceful in essence, share the same goals: a life made up of dignity, equality, justice. And what the MOA shows is that the Syrian activists are the same as those of Black Lives Matters, Occupy Hong Kong, etc.



 Syrian militants have been fundamentally abandoned by other militant movements as well. On the other hand, we see that the Palestinian cause is supported by a number of activists from different sides. For example, when Israel bombed Gaza in May, everyone spoke out in favor of Palestine and Palestinian civilians. The Syrians did the same: they continued to defend the Palestinian cause. But the reverse has unfortunately not happened for the Syrians. When George Floyd's murder took place, Idlib activists painted a mural with the words “I can't breathe,” without this image being popularized, unlike the same type of mural drawn in Gaza that it does. , had gone viral.



 I believe that Syrian activism changed the world because first of all it brought about the emergence of a Syrian society, it changed the way a new generation thought about its life, its potential future and made it possible to say : "We deserve the same rights". It changed the way the people we talked about before - the selective “anti-imperialists” - proceeded, as they were exposed as being people who followed certain ideologies and did not follow the fundamentals of journalism. These activists refused to back down and this Syrian activism had a domino effect. I would like to add a point: we often hear now that the Syrian people are divided between people of the opposition and those who are favorable to the régime. Anyone who lives under the régime is considered pro-régime. It is nonsense to me. Residents of areas controlled by the régime are hostages of the régime as much as residents of the Idlib region. They know there is no point in trying to do anything because the world has looked away for several years. The suffering is collective.



 The current fiasco is is a direct consequence of the story that says: “Assad won, the war is over. Syria is now safe, so you can go back there ”. This analysis was propagated by elements of the extreme right in Europe. They are gaining ground and also influencing the Danish government and other European governments. Some countries have started to reopen embassies in Damascus or are considering doing so. Consequently, a person recognized as a refugee and who has applied for asylum no longer has this justification. The discourse is now focused on reconstruction and the return of the displaced. This is why the narrative and revisionism have had such a terrible impact on the Syrian people. Demonstrations are no longer enough, we need a much stronger system and an army of lawyers fighting for human rights; we must work to bring Syrian war criminals to justice, as was the case in Germany. It's just a drop in the ocean. In Denmark, the popular photo of Asma al-Natour is very revealing: either you leave Denmark immediately or you are condemned to live in a detention camp. After World War II and the “never again” it leaves a bitter taste. To the physical suffering of the refugees is now added the psychological trauma, a collective trauma that is still alive. The story of these refugees threatened to live again under the terror of the Assad régime tells us that we cannot give up the fight.'