What Western experts got so wrong about the conflict in Syria?
If a Syrian
cannot provide a pithy assessment of the country, what does that say about
someone who makes grand claims based on a short tour with
government forces?
Loubna Mrie
Like thousands of Syrians, I joined the 2011 uprising and participated in street protests to which the government responded with live fire.
By 2012, I was forced to flee government-controlled areas for Turkey. From there, I went back to rebel-held areas, where I documented government atrocities for several media organisations.
Though I have spent time with both sides of the conflict, I could never make grand claims to be speaking on behalf of the Syrian people or the Syrian opposition. Today, Syria is a divided country with heated differences. Even within the opposition, views are heterogeneous.
Rather than making grandiose assertions about Syria, we should be more circumspect in our judgements.
When I first arrived in the United States in 2014, I was immediately surprised by how many people there made sweeping statements about the Syrian conflict.
Many experts take short trips to government controlled areas on fact-finding missions to reveal some hidden truth about Syria, though they have little to no knowledge of the countrys complexities.
Even for someone who was born and raised there, such as myself, the situation cannot be packaged in a 1,000-word newspaper article. If a Syrian cannot provide a pithy assessment of the country, what does that say about someone who makes grand claims based on a short tour with government forces?
A number of general slogans have made the rounds among those who are supposed to be helping the western reader to understand the conflict and are often called Middle East experts.
Here I analyse some of them:
It is a regime change conspiracy through a non-existent revolution sponsored by the US.
Given a brief history of the Syrian government, you will understand that this was never a regime-change conspiracy and Syrians had every reason to revolt against the Asaad government.
Hafez Al Assad, the father of Bashar Al Assad, came into power in 1970 after a military coup. After his death in 2000, Bashar became president.
So, for almost 60 years, Syrians have not known what it is like to vote. My generation, and the past several generations, dont know what its like to have a choice of candidate. Syria was always Syria Al Asaad.
Those who accuse the opposition to Al Asaad of being puppets of the West dont know what it is like to grow up in a police state where you believe that the walls have ears and anything you say might lead you to jail.
Its very important to note here that the first chants of the Syrian uprising called for fair elections and reformation of the system.However, the police brutality and the killing of protesters escalated the situation and people started to call for overthrow of the government. Then they started to take up arms to defend themselves and their towns. Its extremist Islamism against a secular government. Who do you want to rule? Al Qaeda?
Islamists are so strong today because the government has fostered them. During the early days of the revolution, it released the most hardened jihadists from prison. It targeted the secular opposition while allowing ISIL in Iraq and Syria to grow. Worse, it has colluded with it, buying oil and other commodities. Its scorched-earth policies favoured the most extreme groups that called for a war of extermination against the Alawis. This was all part of its grand plan to paint the revolution as a binary conflict between a secular government willing to work with the international community and jihadists bent on destroying it.
Examples of activists who were detained and killed by radical groups are always absent from such arguments. Government repression was a key factor in the rise of Jabhat Al Nusra, Al Qaedas main Syrian affiliate, now known as Jabhat Fateh Al Sham. President Bashar Al Assad never shied away from threatening Armageddon against those who opposed his rule. One slogan used by his supporters was and remains Assad or we burn the country.
This has largely materialised. Villages and cities that protested against the government were attacked and often experienced massacres. Al Houla in Homs provides a cogent example of this. In May 2012, almost 50 families were slaughtered.
Another example, the village of Binish in Idlib, witnessed repression as well. In 2011 many residents protested against the government. The government responded by not only raiding the village and shooting demonstrators, but also rounding up anyone whose ID card listed Binish as their hometown regardless if they were involved in protests or not.
People with Binish on their IDs no matter their political affiliations were automatically detained and jailed by the government. By mid-2012, Binish was one of the first towns to welcome Jabhat Al Nusra. It is no coincidence that a widely circulated video with civilians cheering foreign fighters singing in praise of Al Qaeda and its founder Osama bin Laden originated in Binish.
Massacres and government brutality led to many civilians embracing radical groups and their extremist message that the conflict was an existential one that required drastic measures such as ethnic cleansing and reciprocal butchery.
The media doesnt remember Syrias non-violent demonstrations or political actions like street theatre that were organised by college students to advocate for democracy and freedom.
For us, who were there at the beginning, protesting even while government soldiers shot people around us, we know what happened, we remember, and we understand the timeline. But to the rest of the world, Binish is just another infamous rebel-held area.
In the beginning, it wasnt like that. Only after the Assad regime showed its brutality, and the world watched and waited, did people in these villages seek help from the only people who could protect them.
While civilians gravitated to Jabhat Al Nusra, moderate rebel groups increasingly relied on its prowess on the battlefield.
Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions eschewed conducting suicide bombings, but they immediately realised the efficacy and potential of hardened fighters such as Jabhat Al Nusra. For example, rebels could not have captured the Minagh airbase in rural Aleppo without the waves of Nusra suicide bombers who wore down government forces.
Ahmad Al Abdo, for example, was detained by the Syrian government in 2012, when he was filming a protest in his hometown, Jisr Al Shughur. In 2015, he was detained for almost 90 days by former Al Qaeda affiliates Jabhat Fateh Al Sham.
The writer is an activist from Latakia who now lives in exile in the United State
