6 May 2011

Martyrs' Day

Today was Martyrs’ Day here. That is not a new name but an old one, held both here and in Lebanon to remember the execution on May 6, 1916 in Marjeh Square (here) and in Beirut of Arab nationalists by Jamal Pasha, the Ottoman governor.
In those days, the Committee of Union and Progress – better known as the Young Turks – was ruling the Ottoman Empire and had dragged us into an increasingly unpopular war. Their policies had been to promote Turkish nationalist interests over those of the rest of the population, forcing Turcification of Arabs and, of course, instigating the massacres of Christians in Anatolia. The war meanwhile was dragging on and the war economy meant widespread famine here. Revolt and ideas of an independent Arab state were increasingly in the air.
The Turkish military junta got wind of the growth of Arab nationalism and ordered the arrest of Arab leaders, demanding that they renounce their nationalist ideals of a democratic and independent Syria. They refused and, so, on May 6, 1916, all of them were executed by hanging in Damascus and Beirut. The nationalists executed were Shukri al-Assali, Omar al-Jazairi, Rushdi al-Shamaa, Abdelhamid al-Zahrawi, Shafiq al-Muayyad, and. Abdel Wahab al-Englizi.
Today, Assad went and visited the war memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There, five paintings depict battles fought by the Arab nations: Yarmouk, Sultan Yacoub, Jebel Shaikh, Maysaloun, and Hattin.
In past years, I remember going there or to the tomb of Saladin in a somber mode, laying flowers and so on. This year though was different. Martyrs’ Day fell on a Friday and came after a great many new martyrs’ had died for the cause of freedom in Syria. The masscres and suppression of Dera’a has had us all on edge and more has been expected.
The regime has been rounding up dissidents across the country. They claim in public that the opposition is led by ‘salafis’, Islamic extremists from outside. But that’s not who they are arresting: they are arresting liberal advocates of a civil society, lawyers, journalists, lesbians … well, at least they’re looking for me!
And yes, they are arresting some ‘Islamic activists’, people like Muaz al-Khatib. He’s a preacher here who might be best known for, in recent times, repeatedly calling not for an Islamic republic or an extremist, intolerant Islam, but for the opposite. Last month, he stood shoulder to shoulder beside Araf Dalila, an Alawi, and Michel Kilo, a Christian, as they called for “freedom for every person. For every Sunni, Alawite, Ismaili and Christian, whether Arab or a member of the great Kurdish nation.” He’s preached and taught that, when the dictatorship goes, the new Syria will not replace the dictatorship of laicite with one variety of Islam but have true freedom of religion. He’s fought against sectarianism. And he’s one of those ‘enemies’ the regime must round up. So they took him in last night; otherwise, they fear, people might see through how they are trying to fuel sectarianism as a tool to hold on to power.
That’s the sort of enemy that we face here: one who lies and kills and wants sectarian strife to justify its grip on power. And we knew that all week as we organized and built for today. We knew that sooner or later the crack will come; the protests keep growing and, in my opinion, we now have the numerical majority of the population with us. Here, in Damascus, the mosques are now preaching the uprising; there are now three groups here – those on the regime’s payroll, those already in the uprising and those who support the uprising but are still afraid of being out in the street. I hear this is true through much of the country.
Today, I went into the streets; on every corner, there were security forces, party militiamen, all the thugs of the regime. Someone near me wondered if there were any apes left in the Nusayri hills. I headed to a mosque near where I have been staying for Friday prayers. (For those who care, I’ve taken to dressing rather differently than ‘myself’) The sermon was about resistance to oppression and, after wards, we issued into the streets.
“B’roh, b’dam, nifdeek ya Dera’a!” we chanted, “Our souls, our blood, we pledge to you Dera’a!”
“One One One, The People of Syria are one!”
“Freedom!”
“A million martyrs strong, we march to heaven!”
“The people want the overthrow of the regime!”
The forces of the regime met us in the street; we were maybe a thousand only and we had intention of marching towards Marjeh Square. Maybe we’d meet other groups. They shot over our heads; then they teargassed us. They grabbed people from the crowd; I guessed that they knew who they were looking for … I scattered, ending up in an alley with a complete stranger; for a few minutes as we caught our breath and recovered from teargassing together, he and I became best friends. And the weird thing was that here was I, a single woman (who, if it doesn’t sound vain, is at least average looking) and a strange man were all alone in an alley and we laughed and chatted about life without any inapprorpriate overtones … well, I would have thought it weird not that long ago here but, in this revolution, we are all getting over our hangups.
He and I ended up in a café nowhere near where we had started; we gathered news as best we could, a brief bit online, radio, gossip, everything … there were big demonstrations all over the country: Qamishli, Raqqa, Aleppo, Banyas, Zabadani … all around Dera’a … in the neighborhoods and suburbs of Damascus, there were thousands in Daraya, Saqaba … on and on …
And maybe, we wondered, the civil war has begun: in Homs, there was heavy fighting in the city … gun fire over a crowd that numbered in the tens of thousands … and at least one group of the regular army joined the protesters and fought the regime. The state media claims that ‘an armed gang’ was there, in Bab Amr, and killed 5 of the security forces but we know otherwise. Meanwhile, they killed 8 of ours. Has civil warr been declared? Maybe … or we just move closer to it …
More were killed in Hama …
As the sun set, my new friend and I parted … maybe he’s reading this now and we’ll be back tomorrow, fighting the power, ya jamal? Damascus gay girl will be there!

Has the Civil War begun?

Or the final stage of the revolution? We just heard here that the army is fighting the mukhabarat in Homs ...

There are protests everywhere ... Raqqa Qamishli Homs Hama Banyas Aleppo
everywhere around Damascus ...
we are calling for the regime to fall. A million martyrs for freedom we are pledging today, on Martyrs' Day ...

the regime has lost all legitimacy. Virtually all Sunni Arabs and Kurds, most Druze are rising ...

the end of the long night is in sight!

THAWRA HATN NASR!

It has begun; the Martyrs' Day Revolution ...

Let us make revolution and go forwards until victory!

It's Friday morning

It's Friday morning; I'm in Damascus.

Today may be the big day of the National Uprising that we have been working for.

This might be the last post on this blog.

Or the next one may be triumphant

Understanding Syria: Scorecard for a Civil War?

Scorecard for a Civil War?

I hope that the subtitle of this is just a joke in bad taste and not a prediction but … if it comes to it, I guess that’s what it is. I thought it might be useful to do a quick review of Syria’s current make up and how that might factor in to any future civil war or, hopefully, more peaceful changes.

Anyway, to start off, Syria is not a simple country: there are multiple languages and multiple sects of multiple religions and, just to make matters more complicated, multiple centers for the country … and that sort of fractionalism is inherent, even before we get on the subject of political affiliations and views!

Before I try to make some sense of the current ‘balance of forces’ (or whatever you call it) between pro-government and the opposition, I’ll run down some of the basics of who is involved.
So, to start with the easiest: most Syrians live either along the coast, in the strip between the mountains that run parallel to the Mediterranean and the desert or in the Euphrates River valley, though in the steppes and mountains and even in the desert, you’ll find people. There’s something around 21 million of us.

The country is called the Syrian Arab Republic but, while most people are Arabs (88% or so), there are real language minorities.

Arabic is the main language here and most Syrian Arabic is fairly similar. You do hear noticeable accent differences between the main cities as well as between city and country and even some sects; however, those have gotten significantly less pronounced with the steady rise of mass media and mass education over the last century. Unlike in some other Arab countries, proficiency and education in Arabic is considered a mark of a good education.

After Arabic, Kurmanji Kurdish is widely spoken in far northeast but there are sizable numbers of Kurds in all the cities; sometimes, one gets the impression that tea delivery and waitstaff are mainly Kurds. However, most Kurds who have moved to the cities have lost their language within a generation or two.

You’ll also find Armenian spoken in many of the cities; both Damascus and Aleppo have sizable Armenian communities and their distinct script is common enough on signs. There’ve been Armenians here for a long time but the largest growth was during the Armenian genocide when large numbers of them fled from Turkish and Kurdish areas to the north; for some reason, at that time, the Arabic speakers welcomed the refugees regardless of religion.

There are also considerable numbers of Turks, both in the north and scattered through the country, but over time they have been assimilating in to the Arab population. Similarly, during the Circassian genocide, a great many muslims from the North Caucasus fled here (my great grandmother was one) and while keeping a sense of their identity, the languages have all but disappeared.

One language oddity of Syria is the survival of Aramaic in Ma`lula,and two neighbouring villages, just 35 miles northeast of Damascus. That language is a Semitic one roughly medial between Arabic and Hebrew and was the common language here and in Palestine at the time of Jesus. Outside Ma’lula, it only survives as a liturgical language.

So, having briefly looked at the main language groups, we’re almost done with the simplest definitions of ethnicity: overwhelmingly Arab, with a sizable Kurdish minority and a little bit of some others. However, within the Arab population, there’s an important distinction to make before we turn to religion: refugees.

After the 1948 Palestine War, the vast majority of the Arab population was forcibly expelled from what would become the State of Israel. Many of those came here. Today, they and their descendants number around 600,000 and mainly live near the larger cities in what are designated as refugee camps. However, a visit to the largest of them, Yarmouk just outside Damascus, is hardly distinguishable from any other working class suburb except for the prevalence of Palestinian flags and names. In terms of law and practice, Palestinians in Syria have most of the same rights (or lack thereof) of everyone else except that they are not citizens. When they are drafted, they serve in all Palestinian units.

The other large refugee group though is very different; the Iraqis. Nearly all have come here since 2003 and they number somewhere between 1.5 and 5 million (which is in scale like the US taking in between 22 and 75 million refugees!). While those with money have fled largely to Jordan or Dubai or further, most of the Iraqis here were ordinary people who fled the sectarian conflict there; somewhere between a third and a half are Christian with nearly all the rest Sunni Muslim. In the past few years, this migration has had an immense impact on Syria. Iraqi slums have sprung up around most cities as well as a distinct Iraqi culture in exile (the Iraqi diaspora includes a lot of educated and skilled people, no longer wanted in the ‘New Iraq’). It’s also meant the growth of a sex industry as destitute Iraqi women have turned to prostitution. You see Iraqi beggars all the time now.

Now, to turn to the ever thorny subject of religion. Most – around 87% -- of Syrians are Muslim, while about 10% are Christians and 3% are Druze, which would be simple enough if those were the only categories.

The smallest group, the Druze, are the most coherent. There are close to 500,000 of them with the largest concentration in the Jabal al-Druze. The province of Suweida is majority Druze and, historically, the Druze have been some of the most nationalistic people in Syria. The Great National Uprising against the French occupation in 1925 was started and largely led by the Druze. There are also Druze elsewhere, mainly in the southern part of the country, and they were the only Syrians not expelled from the Jaulan after the Israeli occupation began.
The Christians are possibly the most divided amongst themselves with a host of rival patriarchates. I sometimes joke that Damascus leads the world in ‘popes’; there are currently three different Patriarchs based here – the Syriac Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, and Melkite – all of whom claim to be the legitimate heir of Antioch and equal to Constantinople and Alexandria. And there are at least half a dozen more rival indigenous Christian churches (Maronites, Jacobites, Chaldaeans, Assyrians, Armenians), most of which have their own splinter groups … as well as more modern protestant groups! Most of the Christian divisions are based on splits within the Christian Church when it had state power, between the time of the Roman Emperors Constantine and Heraclius (325-641), though further exacerbated by the Crusades. The majority of the Christians – with the exception of the Armenians and some Assyrians – identify themselves strongly as Arabs (Arab Christians preceded Islam by a long while here; Damascus, Homs, and Palmyra, for instance, were Arab towns long before Muhammad).

Formerly, there was also a significant Jewish community here and, like the Christian community, it largely self-identified as Syrian and Arab. Large scale emigration, mainly to New York City, saw it steadily shrink despite strong efforts from the rest of the community to stamp out Anti-Semitism; in 1949, after the first war with Israel, a bomb was planted in the Menarsha Synagogue here and 12 Jews were killed; the government rushed to punish the bombers and the Syrian President strongly condemned attacks on Jews and visited the wounded while the state worked to restore the syangogue. That was the Damascus Way. From that time, Jews were exempted from the draft but otehrwise had the same rights (or rather lack of rights) everyone else had. Most of the Jewish community, though, immigrated to the USA in 1992 when George Bush demanded that they leave and granted them all green cards (it was a time of severe economic crisis here so I doubt any Syrian would have refused the offer!)

Finally, we come to the Muslim population. Most of the Muslims – 74% of the total of the country – are Sunnis, including nearly all the Kurds and Turks as well as most of the Palestinians. However, despite our numeric preponderance, there has not been a Sunni head of state in nearly half a century!

The remainder self-identify as varieties of Shia; perhaps 1-2% Ismaili, less than 1% Imami (or Twelver) and the rest Alawi. The Ismailis are mainly found in a few towns like Masyaf and are theoretically led by the Agha Khan; formerly, they were known as hashishiyun – from which the English word Assassin derives – and were famous during the period of the Crusades. The Imami Shia are the same group as found in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon but are few in number here.
The Alawi, though, are perhaps the largest and possibly the oddest of Syria’s minorities. Many people debate whether their religion should really be counted as being Shia, let alone Muslim, as it deviates from other Islamic groups in many ways: they see Ali as an incarnation of the diety, believe in reincarnation, deny that women have souls, teach that the stars are incarnated believers, and other oddities. They don’t follow Islamic dietary and drinking rules and don’t fast during Ramadan though they do ceebrate Christmas. Unfortunately, they also teach that followers should always deny their religion so it is very difficult to learn what they actually believe. Alawi women are, according to their belief, not to be instructed at all in religion as they lack souls. (Oddly, Usama Bin Laden’s mother was a Syrian Alawi). Formerly, most Alawis lived in the mountains behind Tartus and Latakia but, ever since they began to dominate the society, many have moved to the cities, especially Homs and Damascus, where government jobs or contracts were available.

When it comes to a potential sectarian conflict, the key division is between the Alawis and the Sunni majority. Of course, all these groups contain quite a range of belief within them; one finds atheists and agnostics coming from every religious group as well as fanatic believers. As to Sunni Islam here, one important fact to bear in mind, in addition to its internal diversity, is that a conservative Syrian Muslim is likely to be seen by an Afghan or Saudi as a flaming liberal! Here, the burqa is a strange garment; Islamists promote education for women (for instance, when Asad introduced and repealed a ban on the niqab, the face veil, it was for teachers); there are female judges in Islamic courts and women preachers … even the most religiously strict here see the Taliban as backwards savages.

Now, one final thing before I turn to sketching the political divisions that’s worth remembering is that Syria is itself a multi-polar country. Unlike some other states in the region (iraq, Jordan, Lebanon), there is no single city that stands above the others. Damascus is the second largest city and capital but Aleppo is larger and has its own pride; never tell an Aleppine that Damascus is the best (or vice versa)! Homs is only a little bit smaller than Damascus and Latakia and Hama are both quite large. So, there’s no single city that is where ‘everything happens’ nor do they all follow the same political lines.

Finally … POLITICS!

Syria is formally a republic, though recently it has come to resemble a monarchy. The Constitution defines Syria as a secular socialist state with Islam recognised as the majority religion. There is supposed to be a president, two vice presidents, a prime minister, and a council of ministers but, since the early 1970’s at least, all power has been – allegedly – in the hands of the president. By law, the president is supposed to be a Muslim, though there is no state religion. When Hafez Asad came to power, there was some question whether he, as an Alawi, qualified; at that time, Alawis were legally recognized as Muslims, based on a 1936 Fatwa issued by Amin Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. There are ‘elections’ every seven years for the presidency but the winner has been a foregone conclusion of late.

Similarly, there are elections for the parliament but there, 2/3rds of seats are automatically given to the ruling coalition. As the constitution is currently written, Article 8 states, "the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party leads the state and society." The President is the Secretary-General of the party, and leader of the National Progressive Front, the name of the governing coalition which includes all the legal parties: the Arab Socialist Movement, Arab Socialist Union, Communist Party of Syria (Unified), Communist Party of Syria (Bakdash), Social Democratic Unionists, Socialist Unionists, Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Democratic Socialist Unionist Party, Arabic Democratic Unionist Party, National Vow Movement.

The removal of Article 8 and the guarantee of the position of government parties top the demands of most of us in the opposition: we are glad to see the lifting of emergency law and closing of state security courts, even if those are at this point just paper acts.

While officially a multi-party state – on paper – this is obviously a one party state and a dictatorship. And that is what we want to see ended.

So let’s look at the factions and start with the government side. Despite the apparent unity shown to the world, there are at least two major groupings within the regime. The first, sometimes called the ‘Old Guard’, are the people who remain from the time of Hafez Assad, the current president’s father and predecessor. As a group, they tend to be from military backgrounds, are mainly Alawi, and have opposed the opening of the economy in the last decade. Diplomatically, they tend to look more towards Iran as a key ally than anywhere else.
The other group, termed the ‘Young Guard’, includes Bashar Assad himself as well as many of the people he’s brought into the regime or promoted. These are heavily technocrats and few have military backgrounds. They include a lot of Sunnis, Christians, and other non-Alawis as well as better-educated Alawis. While they’ve repeatedly held out the promise of political reform, they’ve largely failed to deliver though the movement away from a socialist command economy has been both more visible and more successful. As a group, they’ve tended to look mre towards Turkey as an ally and as a model for both creating a successful Middle Eastern state and a robust economy.

Many of us here had great hopes in them; those are gone and increasingly it looks like that faction has lost out in the internal power struggles that are said to be happening. The military security establishment appears to be calling the shots on the government side and, in so doing, is both shedding blood and losing popular support.

The other legal parties are largely long since coopted but have played a role on both sides of the current conflict. Communist rank and file, for instance, have been active in the protest movement, particularly in Homs and Latakia while most of the others are leaning towards the opposition camp.

The opposition is as rife with division, of course, as everything else here; a complaint made by some government figures is that there is no clear leadership for them to talk to. There are Kurdish nationalists and autonomists in the opposition in large numbers, mainly in the northeast, as well as Islamists. With the Islamists, the largest single group is the Muslim Brotherhood but, even by their own admittance, they are far from being in the lead and were caught as much by surpise as anyone else. Contrary to some popular misperceptions, the Brotherhood has been publicly committed to democracy and renounced armed revolution decades ago. Of course, one result was a series of splits within it: the now dominant faction refused to take up arms against the state 30 years ago while a smaller group did. That group in turn divided between a majority group that came around to the peaceful path in the 1980’s and a small fraction that did not; that last fraction is mainly in exile and has been involved in international Jihadi groups but has almost no popular support outside the Euphrates valley.
Possibly, the largest group is the least coherent: it is made up of those who do not want to replace one ideological dictatorship with another one and want, instead, a democratic and open society. Unfortunately, because our politics emphasize that everyone should get along and oppression should be ended, we are arguably weaker though we are more numerous.
The state, even while it is rounding up liberal, civil society activists, claims that the opposition is led by extremists Jihadis; their own actions show that they know that to be a lie. However, just as elsewhere in the world, the bogeyman of Usama Bin Laden is being used to frighten people here and convince them to accept a lack of freedom as a small price … to preserve freedom. Bush, Obama, Netanyahu, Qaddafi, Mubarak, they have all tried the same game so Assad is just following in a well trod path. The regime suggests to people that the choice is between a Baathi dictatorship and the Taliban. However, the majority of Syrians reject that. So, the regime is finding its base shrinking: when putting down Deraa and Banyas, they have not been able to use the regular army (which is largely confined to base) but only heavily Alawite republican guard units and party militias. To keep those forces upbeat, the notion that the Sunni majority is waiting to massacre the Alawi minority has to be endlessly repeated. However, by carrying out attrocities, they make that more rather than less likely.

If it does come to civil war, it will happen when the regular army mutinies and turns its guns en masse against the regime. SO far, such mutinies as have happened have been of individual soldiers or small units. That may not last forever. When that happens, though, the war may go quickly, in which case the massacres will be limited. The ‘Young Guard’ and the Progressive Front parties might paly a key role in rapidly switching sides ….

On the other hand, if they don’t, it could be a long drawn out affair which, by the nature of the society, will rapidly turn into sectarian massacre. The role of Iraqi refugees may be as killers for both sides …

The best hope for everyone is for a quick end to the regime: that is the best solution for all Syria’s factions and sects …