July 5, 2011

The only armed gangs that are attacking and killing people in Syria are the gangs which are wearing military uniform and are working for the regime. Today Hama is witnessing the beginnings of what could be another massacre - seven people killed and counting - as the regime begins to tighten down on a city that has been virtually free of security services for almost a week. This is not 1982. Even more astonishing is that in less than a week over one hundred opposition figures will meet with the regime in a conference of "National Dialogue". How exactly national dialogue is supposed to take place whilst bullets are flying and people are being tortured eludes my understanding, but then again the entire political charade that takes place under this regime also stretches the limit of my comprehension.

There is a new reality that is being created on the streets of Syria today, this reality is being shaped in the face of bullets, sticks and knives. No ideologies are driving this, instead you have average people who are sick of corruption, oppression and lies. What kind of a country is it where the police and the armed forces are there to terrorise and occupy the people rather than defend them from criminals or invaders? Some people tell us ridiculous stories that the only alternative to the Assad regime is the Muslim Brotherhood. These are the same people who believed that the only person who was qualified to rule Syria eleven years ago was an ophthalmologist who had never run for political office in his life, who was younger than the age stipulated in the constitution, and who happened to be the former president's son. This insults the intelligence of every rational human being, and it is offensive to me to hear somebody say such things.

The other fallacy that I am expected to believe is that the only protection against sectarianism in Syria is by maintaining the existing sectarian government. As one political commentator (pro-regime) said in an interview recently, Syria is an Alawite state, and like the Jews of Israel, Syria is the only country where Alawites have control over their own affairs. Well that takes the biscuit if anything does and it does put Rami Makhlouf's comments, linking the Syrian regime's stability with stability in Israel, in some kind of perspective. In all honesty, I don't know what Syria will look like if the Assad regime goes, but can anybody honestly say that a regime which is shooting protesters dead is really serious about reforms? The onus is not on the protestors to stop protesting, it is on the government to stop shooting people and start responding to people's demands. The regime so far has shown that it is incapable of doing even that, so the prospect of it leading any kind of meaningful reform are virtually non-existent. Let us stop fooling ourselves.

Will the future be better than today? Nobody knows, but at least Syrians will have a say in it for better or for worse. And I think that is a start for a better Syria.