Syrians in régime-controlled areas turn to opposition

 'A growing economic crisis in the war-torn country and compulsory military service has led Syrians in areas controlled by the Bashar Assad régime to seek refuge with the opposition.

 Ali Tartusi, who fled the régime-controlled western Tartus province said that the economic crisis has reached a level where people cannot bear it anymore.

“The economic situation in the country is terrible. The people are struggling just to get a little bit of bread. The régime cannot find fuel for the people,” he said, adding that the régime also cannot pay the salaries of civil servants.

 “Most of the people live below the poverty line. Car owners wait in line at gas stations for 48 hours. The rich, on the other side, can get fuel through bribery. Poor families spend the winter trying to get warm under blankets,” Tartusi added.

 He called on the youth living under régime-controlled areas and said: “The future of the youth in the régime areas is lost because those who go to the military service cannot get their discharge papers. There are people serving in the military for 10 years.”



 Saying that this was one of the reasons why he sought refuge in an opposition-controlled area, Tartusi pointed out that he came to the northwestern Idlib province to save his future and complete his education.

 Idlib remains the last major opposition bastion yet is still frequently targeted by Russian-backed régime forces despite a March 2020 cease-fire struck between Ankara and Moscow.

 At least 75 attacks by the Bashar Assad régime and its allies have been recorded since the cease-fire, the Syrian Network for Human Rights said last month.

 Syria's war has devastated the country's economy since 2011, plunging 80% of its people into poverty, according to the United Nations.

 Much of the economy in régime-held areas shuttered to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The World Food Programme (WFP) last year said food prices had doubled in a year to an all-time high across Syria. Over that same period, people in régime-held areas have faced fuel crises, a plummeting Syrian pound on the black market and steep price hikes. Damascus has blamed Western sanctions for its struggling economy.

 Another civilian that fled the régime, Habib Yazen, stated that the harbor and sea in Tartus is controlled by Russia, while Moscow also established several observation points and controls the country’s trade.

 “Russia is using everything in Syria for its own interests. No one can accept its country being sold to another,” Yazen said, complaining about the régime.

 “Electricity comes only two hours a day. No one receives enough bread. Products are expensive and continue to get more expensive." '

Bashar al-Assad’s Pyrrhic victory and the arrogance of power

 

 'In early 2011, even after massive social mobilisation had overthrown two longstanding strongmen in the space of a few weeks, Assad stated that those events had no relevance for Syria. He told the Wall Street Journal that "Syria was stable". Referring to what had happened in Tunisia and Egypt, the president remarked that his country was "outside of this".

 A few weeks later, Assad was facing an uprising of his own, revealing how out of touch with reality he had been. A decade on, it is still legitimate to ask why the Syrian dictator overlooked the harbingers of his own vulnerability. Three mechanisms explain this disconnect.



 The first was that the Assad family was myopic about the fact that excessive control reduced its exposure to the true workings of Syrian society, hindering its foresight. Politics is a dynamic process that involves expression, negotiation, and conflict. By 2011, the Assad régime had imposed a tight and elaborate system of control for over four decades, with tentacles throughout society.

 In having tightened its grip on power structures, security agencies, political parties, and public space, the régime had placed nearly all visible aspects of politics under its stringent authority.

 The problem with this is that the Assads failed to realise that by placing politics in a strait jacket, they pushed it into murkier recesses, so that political opinion and contestation shifted from party politics, parliamentary debates, and media outlets into private conversations and subtle forms of dissent. Small facts speak to large issues – "winks to epistemology or sheep raids to revolution". as the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz once wrote. Under the Assads, ellipses of speech, allegorical phrases, nods of desperation, exhalations of anger, or even silence, spoke volumes about what was rankling the population.

 From his palace overlooking Damascus, Bashar al-Assad saw a different picture. Silence implied loyalty, self-censorship consent. The uprising in March 2011 showed how deeply he had misread reality.



 A second mechanism also explains why Assad failed to grasp the mood in his country. Not only had Syrians concealed their true preferences in response to political pressures, they also feigned many of their reactions and support for the régime. Economist Timur Kuran has called this "preference falsification". Privately, this may mean faking a smile or compliment in a social gathering. Under authoritarian régimes, however, the practice is more consequential.

 It is telling that for both those who supported the Assads and their critics, fear was the Syrian régime’s trademark. While critics called it a "republic of fear", the régime was fond of upholding the notion of "the prestige of the state", or haybat al-dawla, albeit blended with awe and dread. Between 1970 and 2011, the politics of terror had been institutionalised in Syria. As a consequence, people acquired a knack for survival. They would bend with the wind, withdraw into their shells, go into mental exile, or simulate devotion.

 An astute poet from the early Islamic era, Abu al-Atahiya, stated it well: "If life narrows on you, silence is wider." And so a spiral of silence pervaded Syria before 2011. Yet, silence is more often a mark of patience than a sign of fidelity. Nor, because it represents a burden for individuals, does it last eternally.

 Rather than reading between the lines of silence, the Assad régime had been busy constructing a personality cult around its leader and craving eternal rule: "Assad forever" or "Al-Assad ila al-abad" was a favourite slogan. However, it took no great insight to see that sycophancy had bred arrogance.



 Thirdly, time widens the disparity between reality and fantasy. The Assad régime suffered from its longevity, so that time had effectively caged it. Often, the longer an autocrat stays in power, the greater his propensity to rely on a small coterie of confidants who share his opinions and delusions. The leader’s inner sanctum limits his exposure, so that reality becomes "like a night in which all cows are black," as the German philosopher Hegel put it.

 By early 2011, the Assads, Hafez and Bashar, had spent 40 years in an ivory tower. A former advisor to Bashar observed that the president "lives in a cocoon". In fact, Bashar was probably never fully aware of the inner workings of his own state organs, particularly the unbridled security agencies. Becoming a family heirloom had turned Syria into a compartmentalised dictatorship in which personal fiefdoms had proliferated and public institutions had been emptied of all relevance.

The Syrian uprising took the dictator by surprise, stripped him of his aura, and demonstrated that politics could not be eliminated or buried forever.'