Exclusive – Abdalaziz “RBSS”
On the fifth anniversary of the Syrian revolution, Syrians are entering the sixth year of revolution while they are still combating one of the most brutal dictatorships in the modern era, Assad barbarian regime, which destroyed the country, caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis that was deemed as the worst crisis since World War II (five million refugees in neighboring countries and Europe and seven million internally displaced people) in addition to half a million martyrs killed by him and his allied militias, allowed other terrorist groups to control almost half of the country and left the country economy on the brink of an abyss. A question, accordingly, comes to mind, knowing that he’ll be able to burn the entire country in sake of his eternity existence, why would Syrians start a revolution against Assad.
In order to find out an answer to this question, we should go back in time to look at the situation of the country before March 2011. In 2000 after Hafez al-Assad had died, his son “Bashar” inherited the entire country. That was after an ironic theatrical play, in which the constitution was amended in record time in order to suit the age of the new young president. Syrians felt humiliated then, their country was the first republic in which a son inherits his father’s leadership. That inheritance turned the state into a “Republican Monarchy “. The promises of change and reform brought by the young president (who was claimed to be affected by Western civilization values and freedom) turned out later to be all deceptive.
Cultural and political forums, which at the time represented a kind of political freedoms, was forced to close, activists were sent in prison again and the hope in a political change was lost. On the economic front, the dominant fake-liberal approach applied by the government led to a concentration of wealth with a new bourgeoisie (made of government-allied businessmen). The government support of many goods and services stopped, the vandalism of agriculture and industry sectors; two of the most significant contributors to the Syrian economy, was so clear, besides the shift towards tourism and foreign investments at any price. All the above led to the impoverishment of the Syrian people.
According to a Syrian researcher (1) Mohammed Jamal Barot, about 22 % of the population (about 4.218 million people according to 2007 statistics or 4.536 million people according to 2010 estimates) who were classified below the upper poverty level, have gone down below the minimum poverty line, bringing the total number of those below the poverty line to approximately 7 million people, accounting for 34.3 % of Syria’s population. Apart from the high rates of unemployment, which reached 16.5% (3.4 million people) in 2009, according to the same researcher. These figures give us an overview of the fake ‘Development and Modernization’ slogans raised by Assad-Junior Regime in the first decade of his reign Regarding the social aspect, focusing on the development of major urban areas, neglecting the peripheral cities (e.g. Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Al-Hasakah provinces ) formed a depository of unemployment and poverty, and led many of these provinces’ residents to abandon their towns and villages hit by drought, and to migrate towards big cities. This fact caused squatter settlements surrounding big cities, and accumulated serious social problems boosted by policies oriented towards “liberalized” authoritarian market economy, which created a huge gap within the structure of Syrian society, and gradually terminated the middle class.
All that divided the society into a beneficiary level holds the wealth of the country, and a crushed level, deprived of all its human rights. When the public demonstrations known as “Arab Spring” began in Tunisia 2011 and moved to Egypt, Libya and Yemen, Al-Assad proudly declared that his country was immune to the wind of change that invaded the region, because “Syria is different from Egypt and Tunisia” as he claimed, and there were a union between “people” and “government”.
Yet the first combat with the government militaries was after arresting and torturing some children in Daraa, who wrote the stage slogan ((people want to down the regime)) on the walls of their schools, not to mention the arrogant way to deal with their families. The brutal solution took by the government in how to deal with people demands pushed the Syrians to revolt against the fascist regime. Based on that, Syrian people were dragged in an open conflict with the regime, which used all of its army and weapons in order to crush those who asked for their rights of dignity and freedom. So, Syrians revolted, revealing the dark side of the modern world, the world who banned thousands of refugees stuck near Europe boarders from taking their way into Europe, the world who has a blind eye on Assad frequent massacres focusing terrorism due to the fact that it was a result of his actions.
The world whose best representative is John Kerry who has recently said “Isis is committing eradication of Christians, Yazidis and Shiites in their area of control in Syria and Iraq” ignoring the fact that most od Isis victims are from Arab Sunni people who, for instance, were killed by the terrorist group in Shueitat village in Der-Ezzour suburbs, besides executing many youths of “RSS” who were trying to reveal the truth. However, in spite of all that happened and once the violence levels by the regime dropped in the country, Syrians returned to the streets again and have been demonstrating against the regime raising their early revolution slogans combating all kinds of dictatorship, whoever is applying it; the state, religious actors or even national racists.
Mustafa Aljaradie
(1) from the book the last decade in the history of Syria argumentative inertia and reform
