Syria: Turning Back the Clock on the Arab Spring
By Ahmad Barqawi
Global Research, August 27, 2012
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=32518
Whatever
genuine grievances and demands for political reform the Syrian people
might have had a year and half ago were trodden underfoot by this
stampeding sectarian drive that the Syrian opposition itself worked so
hard to foster among its own supporters.
Perhaps one of the most inglorious accomplishments of
the western-backed/Gulf-funded Syrian opposition is that it has – and
over the course of mere months - managed to inflict such a colossal,
irreparable damage to the Syrian people’s future prospects of having a
real, homegrown and genuine uprising to bring about positive change in
their own country.
Thanks to the devious Syrian National Council and the
crazed Free Syrian Army; the term ‘revolution’ has sadly lost its worth
and lustre for a sizable portion of the Syrian populace and in the Arab
world in general, as it has become marred by abhorrent stigmas of
sectarianism, religious fanaticism, succumbing to foreign agendas,
subjugation of national integrity and social disintegration. We must
concede to the SNC, the FSA and their western patrons their unrivalled
ability in transforming what was essentially a flicker of hope into an
entire landscape of desolation and ruin.
In the blink of an eye, the home country in which all
Syrians coexisted peacefully and harmoniously together for decades
became a place they do not even recognize; reciprocal kidnappings
between rival tribes, sects, ethnicities and neighbourhoods have become
the order of the day; makeshift illegal checkpoints manned by pundits
and warring militias have popped up all over Syrian cities; where ID
cards could easily get unfortunate passersby killed on the spot, the
country’s normally amicable population has been driven headfirst into a
horrible cycle of killings and reprisal killings, torture and summary
executions, and Mount Kassioun, a once picturesque and vibrant touristic
site that overlooks Damascus has become a strategic vantagepoint for
rocket launchers and artillery barrage.
Most of those dire consequences trace straight back
to the Syrian National Council’s doorstep; by handing the fate of the
Syrian uprising lock stock and barrel over to the unreliable hands of
Hillary Clinton and her deep-pocketed coterie of Gulf despots; they have
nearly completely nullified whatever credibility the rebellion might
have enjoyed when it was born on the streets of Dera’a. It ceased to be a
matter of local dissent against a brute dictatorship any more; it
quickly morphed into this disastrous foreign-induced coup d'état –
complete with mad covert and overt military operations and intelligence
work.
Not only did the Syrian opposition manage to
effectively kill the Syrian revolution in the womb by alienating vast
sectors of the public from joining the uprising; but they have willingly
chosen to systematically sectarianise Syrian society by sowing the
seeds of intolerance and confessional discord. Right from the word go;
the entire Alawite population was criminalized outright and deemed
guilty by “sectarian association” to president Bashar Al-Assad. Mass
branding them as “Shabiha” (pro government guns-for-hire) was nothing
more than a cheap albeit racist ploy to justify the prosecution of
entire Alawite communities and soften the sting of any possible
criticism that might arise in response to the FSA’s criminal practices
against innocent civilians.
Al Jazeera (especially the more vulgar Arabic branch
of the Qatari-funded news network) was - and still is - a major
instrument in furthering this deadly stereotype; the channel that once
championed (or so it seemed anyway) pan-Arab national causes such as the
Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation and the Iraqi
resistance to the Coalition invasion, is now openly and notoriously
championing what amounts to prima facie ethnic cleansing of Alawites in
Syria. This was glaringly evident in the channel’s knee-jerk attempts at
justifying the latest mass murder of several members of the Berri
family in Aleppo; insisting that the victims were plain-clothed
paramilitary thugs “armed to the teeth” fighting alongside government
forces prior to their capture and swift execution by the “good guys”.
This multi million-dollar media mammoth has been reduced to nothing more
than a mere sleazy PR office for the crooked Free Syrian Army.
Of course this blatant bigotry was not limited to the
Alawites but extended to the Shiites as well. In a bizarre reshuffle of
political cards; Syria has become a safe haven for a slew of CIA, MI6
and even Mossad operatives to roam in and out of rebel-held areas to
their hearts’ content, but not for Lebanese Shiite families and Iranian
civilians - who have become the target of a vicious witch-hunting spree
as various gangs and factions of the Free Syrian Army compete for the
honour of “hosting” (a callous euphemism for “kidnapping”, used by the
kidnappers and repeated shamelessly by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya news
channels) and humiliating these people on live television.
Case in point; on May 22, 2012, a busload of Shiite
pilgrims (including women) was intercepted at gunpoint by gangs of the
FSA near Aleppo while they were returning home to Lebanon from a
religious trip to Iran. Later, the women were released but till this
very day the fate of the remaining 11 male hostages remains uncertain
(despite a handful of badly choreographed, self-promotional televised
theatrical appearances of the kidnapper on Lebanese channels).
The kicker is that the abductors haven’t even made up
their minds yet on what their demands actually are and what will it
take to free these hostages from captivity. First they demanded the
Syrian regime to stop its military campaign against rebel-held areas in
exchange for their release. Then they tried to clumsily use the hostages
to extort an apology from Hezbollah’s chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
(apologize for what! I’m not sure; probably for the preposterous lie
which the rebels themselves created and helped peddle in the media about
Hezbollah’s alleged involvement in the Syrian government’s crackdown on
protesters). Finally they changed their tune by announcing that the
captives won’t be released till after the success of the revolution and
the election of a new democratic parliament in Syria.
Of course the recent kidnapping of 48 Iranians in
Damascus on August 4, 2012, falls also into this same sectarian bracket.
It’s enough for the rebels to declare - and without a shred of evidence
- that each and every one of the 48 hostages is a member of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard; and the mainstream media will immediately gobble
up and echo the bigoted contortions of the kidnappers as “proven facts”,
almost sight unseen.
This systematic deconstruction of the Syrian identity
to make way for a new one where religious affiliations supersede
nationalism has always been one of the main calling cards of the Muslim
Brotherhood-led Syrian opposition. And like a moth to a flame, Saudi and
Qatari-funded media went into overdrive, promoting and in effect
feeding the cancerous growth of sectarian rhetoric within the ranks of
the revolution’s public base of support.
A quick look through any of the online forums, chat
rooms and facebook pages dedicated for the support of the Syrian
Revolution will reveal the extent to which the proponents of the
opposition have been indoctrinated. Every Alawite has become an agent of
Iran. Exterminating them is fair game (or worse... a religious duty).
Hostile sentiments run rampant. Some of these pages actually advocate
the kidnapping of Alawites and Shiites while others offer death threats
or even “hit lists” containing the names of local religious clerks,
journalists, personalities loyal to the regime or just ordinary Syrian
citizens marked for death because they were caught showing support for
Al-Assad on the government-affiliated TV channel, Addunia.
Whatever genuine grievances and demands for political
reform the Syrian people might have had a year and half ago were
trodden underfoot by this stampeding sectarian drive that the Syrian
opposition itself worked so hard to foster among its own supporters.
A cursory review of the slogans the Syrian rebels
have designated for each and every major Friday demonstration since the
start of the revolution on March of 2011 (following a popular trend in
the Arab Spring of giving certain titles to Fridays to mark a major day
of mobilization and action) would be enough to reveal the chronic
sectarian, divisive and sometimes separatist undertones that has plagued
this uprising from the get go. Instead of emphasizing encompassing
themes of national unity and accord that transcend religious and ethnic
affiliations; Syrian “revolutionaries” opted for highlighting the
divisive elements within Syrian society by selecting titles that
directly spoke to the average Syrian’s most basic ethnic and sectarian
instincts. For example; on May 20, 2011 anti-government demonstrations
across the country were dubbed “Azadi Friday” in a blatant effort to
sway the country’s Kurdish population into joining the uprising against
president Bashar Al Assad (Azadi being the Kurdish word for Freedom).
Ten months later, demonstrations on March 9, 2012 were also dubbed the
“Friday of Loyalty to the Kurdish Uprising”. But if democracy, human
rights and political freedoms were in fact the main drivers for
revolting against the regime, why would there be a need to single out a
certain group of citizenry and incite a narrow sense of ethnic
nationalism within this minority?
Other major themes amounted to handing out
invitations for western powers to come and bomb the country; such as
“the Friday of International Protection” (Sep. 9, 2011), “Friday of
No-Fly Zones" (Oct. 28, 2011), "Friday of Freezing Syria's Arab League
Membership" (Nov. 11, 2011), "Friday of the Syrian Buffer Zone" (Dec. 2,
2011) and of course the “Friday of Immediate Foreign Intervention” on
March 16, 2012.
National red lines were crossed in the name of the
revolution because of this pervading warped culture of self-induced
impunity which ironically made the uprising all the more susceptible to
all kinds of foreign manipulations. Now the whole situation in Syria is
heavily skewed and perceptions are gravely altered in the public
discourse. Calling for a NATO military intervention is debated rather
than condemned outright. This is much like how the “liberation of Libya”
was brought about by American and French warplanes and aerial bombing
campaigns. We hear about the “liberation of Aleppo” in the news. Yet
these are foreign militants backed by western imperial governments that
are doing most of this “liberation” against the National Syrian Army.
Since its inception; the so-called Syrian revolution
was wrapped in a chronic aura of self-glorification, a neatly packaged
pretence of sainthood and holier-than-thou grandeur. No one was allowed
to criticize the rebels, their questionable political inclinations
(questionable at best, downright treacherous at worst) and/or the
numerous criminal acts they’ve committed under the fig leaves of freedom
and democracy. They were saints, idealists, David standing up to a
diabolical Goliath and most importantly the “civilized” west’s darlings,
armed only with mobile phones, banners and twitter accounts.
This was a reverence for an uprising on a scale
rarely seen. The Syrian opposition was given substantial media clout
exploited to the maximum extent possible. Suddenly the rebellion was
above all accusation and skepticism; anyone who would even dare to
allude to any of the numerous shenanigans, misdeeds and wrongdoings
undertaken by the FSA or the SNC would immediately be labelled an
absolute advocate of tyranny or a “Shabih” for Bashar Al-Assad. And what
takes the cake is the fact that those who oppose the Syrian
opposition’s views on democracy and the future of Syria may very well
get tossed out of third-story windows or suffer a fate that pretty much
resembles that of the Berri family’s: machine-gunned at point blank
range amidst jubilant chants of “Allahu Akbar”... democracy at its best
indeed.
Why don’t western reporters take a look at the
graphic video footage that show rebels revelling in their criminal
excesses and butchery; the latest of which comes from Aleppo, and it
shows the mutilated bodies of postal workers (of course if you’re a
public servant in Syria then you must be a Shabbih, right?) being thrown
off the Post Office building... and yes you guessed it... amidst
fervent cheers of “Allahu Akbar”, because it wouldn’t be complete
without the religious tinge, emphasizing the morbid fact that this was
actually God’s work being done.
In reality; the so-called Syrian rebels are just as
far removed from their contrived and propagandized mantra of democracy,
human rights and political pluralism as the regime they’re claiming to
revolt against; and when the United States, France and Britain become
active partners in any revolution, you know there’s something
instinctively awry with this picture.
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (the latter two far
from being the holy grails of democracy) have been working overtime
under the auspices of the imperial west to ensure that the only road
open to the Syrian crisis is the one that leads to civil war. They took
full advantage of an already laid groundwork of a previous, violent,
NATO-sponsored democracy- spreading-endeavor in Libya to plunge Syria
into this hideous orgy of mayhem and wars by proxies; romanticizing the
“way of the gun” and swaying the Syrian public into this quicksand of
internal bloodletting.
It’s as if the Syrian “revolution” has turned back
the clock on the Arab Spring which began with such utopian exuberance in
Tunisia and Egypt. Young nationalist activists have been forced into
invisibility and powerlessness while socialists and leftist dissidents
seeking real reforms have been sidelined in favour of trigger-happy
radicals and foreign Islamist militants from various Arab and Islamic
states (even western media felt that they had to concede this point
recently after sort of tap-dancing around the issue for months).
And with the heavy militarization of the revolution
(which began during the early stages of the civic movement - way earlier
than what most mainstream media outlets would have us believe), the
Syrian uprising had yet another stake driven through its heart,
especially when taking into account the sources of funding and weapons’
supplies that have been flowing into the country non-stop for the past
year and a half. The vaults of Khaleeji Sheikhdoms are wide open to
bankroll an armed insurgency aimed only at reconfiguring Syria’s pivotal
role within the geopolitical map of the region at the growing expense
of the Syrian people’s legitimate aspirations for social justice, more
political freedoms and ending state corruption.
The Syrian people didn’t ask for a redirection of
their current government’s foreign policy of supporting resistance
movements in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. The Syrian people didn’t ask
for a puppet regime aligned with the US. The Syrian people didn’t ask
for a crippling economic warfare thinly cloaked as “smart sanctions”
against the Assad regime. And they certainly didn’t ask for foreign
interventions in their name that will without a doubt have devastating
consequences on their own country, leaving it torn, ravished and in
tatters
