23 May 2011
But he promised!
But they promised!
The first authorized, licensed and legal demonstration was supposed to happen today. A candlelight vigil for all our dead …
And shockingly, the regime has rescinded the permit!
Federalism: a short proposal for our Future
No one knows what will come after Assad. Maybe, civil war and massacres; maybe, peace and prosperity and a democratic future. Personally, I’m hoping for the second option and, because I am, I want to make a suggestion for what things could look like on the other side.
Ours has never been a homogeneous society. Those who fear the future know that and suggest that that will be a source of future woes. They claim that, once the iron hand is loosened from our necks, we’ll disintegrate into sectarian civil war.
I don’t think so. Instead, our diversity is itself our strength and rather than being scared of it or trying to stifle it, we should see our diversity as the way out of this mess.
After the fall of the Ottoman state, we had the supreme misfortune to be colonized by France. As everyone knows, they left us a legacy of partition and of their attempts to divide and rule.
But they also left another insidious legacy and one that merged with other imported ideas of nationalism that demanded that unity and centralization were the only way. We didn’t wish to be divided further and, so, we embraced those legacies of France that gave all power to the center, made a strong presidency and so on.
But that has caused far more problems than it solves. It leaves every minority religion, ethnicity, and opinion fearful of a majority against them, afraid of being merged into the whole. And, looking to the French, one cannot help but see a state too centralized, where Paris was everything and Occitans, Flemings, Provencals, Basques, Corsicans, Bretons, Alsatians, Huguenots, Cathars and so on all were made to follow Parisian fashion. Why would we want to emulate that?
Instead, we need to think wisely. Ours is not a homogeneous country though there is a majority culture; yes, by numbers, Arabic speaking Sunni Muslims are the majority but we are not the whole. There are whole sections where Arabic is learned only in school, others where other faiths dominate the communities. And that is something to embrace and a way out of the impasse.
If we are to peacefully transition to a democratic future, the greatest problem we face is that of assuring that minority rights will not be trampled by the mere counting of the group with the most snouts. We need to make sure that the idea of a new Syria without this regime is not too frightening for those communities that the regime has tried to frighten with the bloody shirt of sectarianism. We need – no, we must – convince the ‘average Ali’ in the Alawite hills that, when the regime goes, they, too, will gain freedom and be secure.
And, too, we must make clear to the Kurdish communities that we will not simply replace an authoritarian Arab nationalist regime that stomps on Kurdish dreams with a democratic version.
So, here is my suggestion:
Let us have a federal Syria. There are fourteen provinces in our bilad; let us make them stronger. Instead of governors appointed from Damascus, let’s have governors elected locally; local provincial assemblies that will have powers to raise some taxes, to make local laws, to do local policing, to build up their own regions.
And we will, I believe, see a varied Syria that will be a stronger Syria: in Hassake province, for instance, schools may instruct in Kurmanji and signs be bilingual; in Sweida, the Druze will be more self governing. And in Latakia, Alawis will run their own affairs. If one province chooses to restrict alcohol sales, for instance, because its population has chosen that, another one, say Latakia, may choose very different rules. And so on down the line …. But we’ll also have a common citizenship and common society; if someone wants to move from the banks of the Euphrates to the Mediterranean coast, that will be their choice.
When we draw up a new constitution, the powers of the provinces should be clear and the consent of the provinces to the constitution and to any changes will be needed. We’ll have mechanisms placed in so that central government will not be able to dictate policies to the provinces and vice versa. We’ll study closely how federalism has worked for German Lander, American and Australian states, Canadian and Indian provinces and so on.
And, should our federalism succeed, it will also help us become a shining light to draw back the lost and partitioned lands: a Syria where minorities prosper and both they and majorities enjoy full democratic freedom will make the partitions of last century look like a bad idea to more and more.
It is, in my opinion, the best way to achieve all of our dreams.
Ours has never been a homogeneous society. Those who fear the future know that and suggest that that will be a source of future woes. They claim that, once the iron hand is loosened from our necks, we’ll disintegrate into sectarian civil war.
I don’t think so. Instead, our diversity is itself our strength and rather than being scared of it or trying to stifle it, we should see our diversity as the way out of this mess.
After the fall of the Ottoman state, we had the supreme misfortune to be colonized by France. As everyone knows, they left us a legacy of partition and of their attempts to divide and rule.
But they also left another insidious legacy and one that merged with other imported ideas of nationalism that demanded that unity and centralization were the only way. We didn’t wish to be divided further and, so, we embraced those legacies of France that gave all power to the center, made a strong presidency and so on.
But that has caused far more problems than it solves. It leaves every minority religion, ethnicity, and opinion fearful of a majority against them, afraid of being merged into the whole. And, looking to the French, one cannot help but see a state too centralized, where Paris was everything and Occitans, Flemings, Provencals, Basques, Corsicans, Bretons, Alsatians, Huguenots, Cathars and so on all were made to follow Parisian fashion. Why would we want to emulate that?
Instead, we need to think wisely. Ours is not a homogeneous country though there is a majority culture; yes, by numbers, Arabic speaking Sunni Muslims are the majority but we are not the whole. There are whole sections where Arabic is learned only in school, others where other faiths dominate the communities. And that is something to embrace and a way out of the impasse.
If we are to peacefully transition to a democratic future, the greatest problem we face is that of assuring that minority rights will not be trampled by the mere counting of the group with the most snouts. We need to make sure that the idea of a new Syria without this regime is not too frightening for those communities that the regime has tried to frighten with the bloody shirt of sectarianism. We need – no, we must – convince the ‘average Ali’ in the Alawite hills that, when the regime goes, they, too, will gain freedom and be secure.
And, too, we must make clear to the Kurdish communities that we will not simply replace an authoritarian Arab nationalist regime that stomps on Kurdish dreams with a democratic version.
So, here is my suggestion:
Let us have a federal Syria. There are fourteen provinces in our bilad; let us make them stronger. Instead of governors appointed from Damascus, let’s have governors elected locally; local provincial assemblies that will have powers to raise some taxes, to make local laws, to do local policing, to build up their own regions.
And we will, I believe, see a varied Syria that will be a stronger Syria: in Hassake province, for instance, schools may instruct in Kurmanji and signs be bilingual; in Sweida, the Druze will be more self governing. And in Latakia, Alawis will run their own affairs. If one province chooses to restrict alcohol sales, for instance, because its population has chosen that, another one, say Latakia, may choose very different rules. And so on down the line …. But we’ll also have a common citizenship and common society; if someone wants to move from the banks of the Euphrates to the Mediterranean coast, that will be their choice.
When we draw up a new constitution, the powers of the provinces should be clear and the consent of the provinces to the constitution and to any changes will be needed. We’ll have mechanisms placed in so that central government will not be able to dictate policies to the provinces and vice versa. We’ll study closely how federalism has worked for German Lander, American and Australian states, Canadian and Indian provinces and so on.
And, should our federalism succeed, it will also help us become a shining light to draw back the lost and partitioned lands: a Syria where minorities prosper and both they and majorities enjoy full democratic freedom will make the partitions of last century look like a bad idea to more and more.
It is, in my opinion, the best way to achieve all of our dreams.
No stopping us until freedom
Yesterday was a day of funerals; a day for mourning the new martyrs. Friday, Azadi Friday, was a day of national unrest, of rising feeling among the people, of all of us, of Arabs and Kurds, Christians and Muslims, standing together and calling for freedom.
And a day of the regime using brutality to stomp on us. Friday looked like this:
Hardly the work of a Salafi minority, of bandits or of infiltrators!
And when we mourned our dead, they tried the only language that they know, of force and blood … and more died as martyrs for our freedom. But we will not stop until freedom. Last night:
We cannot stop now; freedom is coming … and the regime is creaking. Rumors fly and challenge their tales. Everyone seems to have heard about the martyrs of the Fourth Division, 700 or more Syrian uniformed soldiers killed by the regime for the crime of refusing to kill their brothers and sisters. They are supposed to be buried in mass graves. No one knows if it is true or just exaggerated but the point when the uprising becomes a civil war grows closer. How many of the dead police and military were killed by Party stalwarts? No one knows.
Or if they do, they refuse to say.
The day is coming … and when it comes, we will win.
The future belongs to US
Damascus Walkabout and a "too friendly" Cop
We’d come back to Damascus and were trying to go about some semblance of normal life.
It’s strange here now how one can walk down one street and life seems almost ‘normal’; businesses open even with almost no customers, pictures of the President still displayed … almost as though nothing had changed at all (as long as one didn’t look too hard at the increased wariness.) I suspect some of these streets are the places where the regime tries to insure that ‘friendly’ observers go, to get the data that ‘there is no popular opposition to Assad, just foreign spies’. Maybe. Certainly, there are some disctricts here where the people of the regime themselves live and others where the grip on power is still strong.
But then one turns a corner. And the rest of the city is seething, either openly or just below the surface.
We, my dad and I, had agreed to meet some other people in the opposition and the time and place had been arranged; at one of the older mosques, at prayer time, we’d meet them, he with some men, I with some women. And we’d then work out our next steps.
The mosques have become the meeting houses of this revolution in many places, but not because it is an Islamic revolution. Certainly, many Sunnis are involved – and I would venture the vast majority of the Sunnis are at least supportive – but the Islamic parties are not even in the leading role, even if they are all for the democratizing of society. I have sat in mosques here on Fridays and noticed that the woman to my right wears a cross while the one to my left has a star pendant. Even among the ‘muslims’, I’ve noticed these past ten weeks that many seem to barely know how to pray, following the actions of those who do but a beat behind.
We meet here not because we are Islamists but because we are revolutionists. The mosques have become the only places where one can assemble a crowd with ease, where the regime can’t simply scatter us …
But I digress …
My dad and I were on the way into a particular mosque and we’d dressed as though we were just going as simple worshippers. He was wearing one of those man dresses that one sees here and he’s been growing out his beard these past days of travel. So he looked like an old religious guy … perhaps a returned expat from the Gulf.
Me? I had gone full ninja; black robe, gloves, and hijab and veil covering all but my eyes (and contacts rather than glasses). As we walked, we made sure to act as though, rather than father and daughter, we were old man and much younger wife … just in case, as you can imagine.
When we neared the mosque, there were some police in the way. Heavily armed and checking anyone who went in, they were an obstacle. Well, we needed to be inside and they were in the way, so we plowed ahead.
They asked my dad for our id’s; he explained (using just a hint of a khaliji accent, as one might expect from someone who’d spent years there) that we’d left them in our hotel, we just needed to pray here; he wanted to show his wife all the famous places of Damascus … and so on.
And they were arguing with him with their thick Qardahan accents …
Meanwhile, I was standing a bit back and to the side. Another one of the soldiers, I’d guess barely in his twenties and smelling strongly of cigarettes and cheap cologne, says to me in a low voice,
“You look too sweet to be with that old man. Come on, I bet you need a real man to really stretch you out.”
And I felt his hand on my ass, groping me.
I did the natural thing: I squawked, let out a shriek, an oath, and a string of Quran:
“Istaq fur allah al azim! ‘Wa la y’adrib nabi’r julihina liu’Alama ma yukhfina min zinar ihina wa tubu ela Allahi jami’aan ayuhalmu, minuna la’alaykum tuflihun!”
Roman Hands jumps back, my dad turns with a look of sheer rage and I can see him holding himself back …
The head of them, the one who was arguing with my dad, glares at the other, waves a hand; we just go into the mosque and leave them be …
We meet our people and afterwards … I think about this incident. This is something new. In days of yore – ten weeks ago – the best practical argument for wearing hijab or even the full ninja kit was that this sort of thing never would happen. Maybe, if one were dressed ‘western’ and wearing revealing clothes, you might get a comment or two or an ‘accidental’ touch on the bus … but nothing like this!
This is new. This is a new mindset on their part; they no longer care about making us hate them, they no longer care about consequences.
It’s strange here now how one can walk down one street and life seems almost ‘normal’; businesses open even with almost no customers, pictures of the President still displayed … almost as though nothing had changed at all (as long as one didn’t look too hard at the increased wariness.) I suspect some of these streets are the places where the regime tries to insure that ‘friendly’ observers go, to get the data that ‘there is no popular opposition to Assad, just foreign spies’. Maybe. Certainly, there are some disctricts here where the people of the regime themselves live and others where the grip on power is still strong.
But then one turns a corner. And the rest of the city is seething, either openly or just below the surface.
We, my dad and I, had agreed to meet some other people in the opposition and the time and place had been arranged; at one of the older mosques, at prayer time, we’d meet them, he with some men, I with some women. And we’d then work out our next steps.
The mosques have become the meeting houses of this revolution in many places, but not because it is an Islamic revolution. Certainly, many Sunnis are involved – and I would venture the vast majority of the Sunnis are at least supportive – but the Islamic parties are not even in the leading role, even if they are all for the democratizing of society. I have sat in mosques here on Fridays and noticed that the woman to my right wears a cross while the one to my left has a star pendant. Even among the ‘muslims’, I’ve noticed these past ten weeks that many seem to barely know how to pray, following the actions of those who do but a beat behind.
We meet here not because we are Islamists but because we are revolutionists. The mosques have become the only places where one can assemble a crowd with ease, where the regime can’t simply scatter us …
But I digress …
My dad and I were on the way into a particular mosque and we’d dressed as though we were just going as simple worshippers. He was wearing one of those man dresses that one sees here and he’s been growing out his beard these past days of travel. So he looked like an old religious guy … perhaps a returned expat from the Gulf.
Me? I had gone full ninja; black robe, gloves, and hijab and veil covering all but my eyes (and contacts rather than glasses). As we walked, we made sure to act as though, rather than father and daughter, we were old man and much younger wife … just in case, as you can imagine.
When we neared the mosque, there were some police in the way. Heavily armed and checking anyone who went in, they were an obstacle. Well, we needed to be inside and they were in the way, so we plowed ahead.
They asked my dad for our id’s; he explained (using just a hint of a khaliji accent, as one might expect from someone who’d spent years there) that we’d left them in our hotel, we just needed to pray here; he wanted to show his wife all the famous places of Damascus … and so on.
And they were arguing with him with their thick Qardahan accents …
Meanwhile, I was standing a bit back and to the side. Another one of the soldiers, I’d guess barely in his twenties and smelling strongly of cigarettes and cheap cologne, says to me in a low voice,
“You look too sweet to be with that old man. Come on, I bet you need a real man to really stretch you out.”
And I felt his hand on my ass, groping me.
I did the natural thing: I squawked, let out a shriek, an oath, and a string of Quran:
“Istaq fur allah al azim! ‘Wa la y’adrib nabi’r julihina liu’Alama ma yukhfina min zinar ihina wa tubu ela Allahi jami’aan ayuhalmu, minuna la’alaykum tuflihun!”
Roman Hands jumps back, my dad turns with a look of sheer rage and I can see him holding himself back …
The head of them, the one who was arguing with my dad, glares at the other, waves a hand; we just go into the mosque and leave them be …
We meet our people and afterwards … I think about this incident. This is something new. In days of yore – ten weeks ago – the best practical argument for wearing hijab or even the full ninja kit was that this sort of thing never would happen. Maybe, if one were dressed ‘western’ and wearing revealing clothes, you might get a comment or two or an ‘accidental’ touch on the bus … but nothing like this!
This is new. This is a new mindset on their part; they no longer care about making us hate them, they no longer care about consequences.
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