SYRIA/ Assad’s regime is not the only danger for the country

The Syrian revolts started in March 2011. The violent repressions by Assad’s government have led to the deaths of thousands of victims, and have been taking place for all these months. Media coverage was possible despite the attempt of the regime to limit the flow of information about what was happening on the Syrian soil. This week, the Arab League decided to take measures against the Syrian regime, and its Turkish neighbours decided to intervene by establishing a no-fly zone, following the request of some exponents of the national council opposing Assad. Protecting civilians is fair and praiseworthy, and the world cannot be more relieved that the Arab League is finally taking measures to stop the Syrian bloodshed. However, it is difficult to contemplate these last developments in the area without being aware and somewhat concerned by the unfolding of certain dynamics, especially considering the history of Syria itself and its Arab neighbours.

Looking at the current events makes us wonder if the originally legitimate battle for freedom against totalitarism is not slowly turning into a long feared civil war, where old resentment and disagreements between different factions within Syria and the Arab world are re-surfacing.

Certainly the Arab Spring movement presented the revolution as being one of a vast, oppressed majority under a corrupted minority that held the power. However, in Syria’s case, part of this corrupted small minority happens to be the Alawites, who throughout Hafez Al Assad’s regime brutally “cleared” many cities from the Sunni opponents. Sunnis were and are still the largest Muslim faction in Syria.

Although the national council, headed by Dr. Burhan Ghallion, leading the revolution in Syria emphasized that this revolution is strictly bound to the freedom of the Syrian people and is comprehensive of all its factions; and although it continues to call upon unity and equality among all citizens, it is evident that the more Sunni exponents, such as most countries of the Arab League (excluding Iraq) and Turkey become involved in the struggle, the more this battle might take a different twist, an ideological one. This battle could involve too many unspoken interests, such as Turkey’s concern for refugee matters and resources, issues that were a cause of tension between the two countries in the past and for a long time.

This could become a battle for power and an opportunity for the Sunnis, with the support of neighbouring countries, to transform this into a revenge for all the years of prison, oppression and killings they had to undergo together with other opposing minorities like the Kurds.   

What can save the Syrian people from an imminent risk of civil war, is only their own capability to remember what was at the origin of this revolution: a desire for freedom; another ideological battle can only suffocate this desire.  


(Marta Zaknoun)