The Sunnis, Shias, Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Armenians, Kurds, Turkmen, Ismailis, Druze, Bedouins, and Alawites and cross-cutting ethnic, cultural, linguistic, clan, and tribal groups have to transcend their erstwhile divisions and create grassroots unity while respecting their legitimate diversity.
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The way forward
The way forward is through an inclusive transitional phase to peace and democracy, in terms of UNSC Resolution No. 2254 (2015) – with ‘its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic’.
On 30 June 2012 the UN Secretary General and the League of Arab States and a few major foreign powers issued the UN Geneva Communique, in terms of which they recommitted themselves to the UN Six-Point Plan (16 March 2012):
1-Inclusive Syrian-led political process;
2-Cessation of armed violence by all parties;
3-Provision of humanitarian assistance;
4-Release of arbitrarily detained persons;
5-Freedom of movement of journalists; and
6-Freedom of association and the right to peaceful demonstration.
The transitional phase was for the preparation of the review of the constitutional order and the legal system in a transitional governing body for free and fair multiparty elections for a constituent assembly followed ultimately by a Presidential election – with full women representation in all aspects of transition.
Pursuant to the Geneva Communique (2012) the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), comprising of the Arab League and a few major powers met on 30 October 2015 in Vienna. They acknowledged the interconnection between a ceasefire and the parallel political process under UN auspices. ISSG served as ‘the central platform’ to facilitate the UN’s efforts for a lasting political settlement in Syria.
The Geneva Communique established the basis for the Syria Talk in Vienna and the UNSC Resolution 2254 of 18 December 2015.
Caveat: let voters beware
The Syrian people – residents, diaspora, refugees, displaced persons, Bedouin nomads – are primary to the transition. They were also primary to the deprivation of basic socio-economic rights, detention without trial, interrogation, torture, one-minute trial by military court, military conscription, warlordism, arbitrary execution, and numerous inhumane treatments.
They are also the primary forces with real voting powers to elect a legitimate government, around which there are many claimants to authentic political organizations. They have experienced enough hardships to have the knowledge and intuition to discern the authentic from the inauthentic.
USA Congress: Syria Study Group (SSG) Final Report
SSG issued its Final Report on 24 September 2019 on the mandate of the USA Congress. It sets out a strategy to protect and advance the USA interests in Syria.
It identified the opportunity that although the Syrian government controlled 60% of the country it had by then not won the war. The government lacked the forces to secure the areas it retook and followed up with punitive policies. It lacked the will to compromise on UNSC Resolution 2254 and the UN Geneva Process. The armed groups were lacking the foresight and ability to shift from fighting to governing. It identified ‘an updated political and social compact based on decentralized governance and equitable resource allocation.’ It saw humanitarianism like the media as a weapon of the ‘forever war’ in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
It foresaw the need for a ‘global coalition of like-minded allies and partners, (and) rallied a local partner force’. About six to twelve armed groups were coalesced into the local partner force, with their conflicting military and financial interests intact.
SSG made seven recommendations:
1-Halt the USA military withdrawal.
2-Imposition of ‘a rigorous sanctions architecture.’
3-‘Test and verify Russian willingness to support political settlements’.
4-‘Remain focused on expelling Iranian forces’ (military advisors)
5-‘Seek areas for cooperation with Turkey’.
6-‘press Turkey to facilitate the work of NGOs serving the populations.’
7-‘renewal of the UN “cross-border resolution,” (and)rally other states to fund humanitarian appeals for Syria’.
On point (2) the recommendation was made on 24 September 2019 and the harshest Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act was passed in December 2019, which included preventing it from rebuilding. The USA immediately halted its military withdrawal. It retained control of the oil fields and the wheat-growing areas.
The USA will continue to sponsor and promote impostor icons, celebrities, and organizations to contest the elections and manipulate the process and formal procedure to get its ideology and servants elected into positions of power and perpetuate neocolonialism and neoliberal democracy. The voters of Syria are apprehensive of it. There is a need for the formation and operation of a civil-society-based IT experts to prevent the electronic manipulation of the electoral system, especially, vote counting. To be aware that the system can be switched off briefly for the manipulation and to ascribe it to an act of artificial nature.
International Working Group on Sanctions (IWGS)
Prior to the SSG Report of 2019, IWGS of the Friends of the Syrian People held seven meetings in Canada, Bulgaria, Japan, Netherlands, Qatar, Washington DC, and France in the period 17 April 2012 to 25 July 2013.
Variously, forty-two countries, the League of Arab countries, the European External Action Service, and the National Coalition of the Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces attended the meetings. There was only one item on the agenda – tightening imperialist sanctions on the people of Syria.
The USA designated Syria as the ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’ in December 1979 with additional sanctions and restrictions in May 2004. Since the uprisings in March 2011 the USA ‘intensely pursued calibrated sanctions.’
(Citation: Various Executive Orders, USA departments of treasury and commerce – Syria Sanctions of the US Department of State)
No easy solutions
The period 2011-2024 proved that there were no easy solutions and optimal outcomes were buried under the rubble. This increased the human tragedy of increase in the diaspora, refugees, and internally displaced persons. The chaos bred 12-20 armed factions who contributed to the emasculation of the international law of war. Anarchy reigned. The major international and regional powers leveraged advantages to promote outcomes to serve better their own national interests and not the interests of the Syrian people. They found competing and contradictory ‘reasons’ to stay engaged regionally though they conflated means and ends. They generally lost credibility in ordinary Syrian eyes; with only one or two delivering socio- economic benefits of change. The inter-foreign power rivalry always remained flame-lit, dangerous, and even murderous.
All factions are being compelled to shift from fighting to governing with the realization that it is easier to destroy than to create.
There is a need to shift from over-centralization of power in a single icon of power to de-centralization of governance to achieve a just and fair resource allocation. Who rebuilds Syria?
It has taken 13 years (2011-2024) of chaos and struggle for the creation of conditions conducive for political solution.
The dilemma for the Global South
The dilemma for the Global South – against the background of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – was to choose between the government in power and the armed factions, some of which were supported by the long chain of imperialist countries of the Global North.
The dangers of ‘philanthropic’ capitalism
As the public purse of Syria is empty and its military infrastructure is destroyed the transitional phase or newly elected phase is (and will be) heavily dependent on foreign ‘philanthropic’ aid for the reconstruction of Syria and its people. The donors will leverage this dependence to extract constitutional, political, social, religious, and economic concessions favorable to imperialist interests –towards another neocolonialism and neoliberal democracy.
Authoritarianism rooted in history
Ironically, the Baathist government was also a neocolonial government but without its complementary neoliberal democracy. The Ba’ath Party was founded in 1943 and expanded into the Arab Socialist Ba’ath (Renaissance) Party in 1953. It was apparently opposed to imperialism and colonialism. It tried to blend Islam and nationalism through over-centralization and authoritarianism. In 1963 it assumed power and in 1970 the ‘nationalist’ faction secured control of the state from the ‘progressive’ faction. It was opposed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Kurds, and others.
The experimental union of Syria and Egypt lasted for three years (1958-61). The eleven actual and attempted coups first in Egypt and then in Syria in the period of 1949-2024 deepened the systemic crisis of Ba’athism.
The dissolution of the union weakened Pan-Arabism, especially, after President Nasser’s death, after which Pan-Arabism gave way to a fledgling ‘Islamism’. This ‘Islamism’ now proliferates through the agencies of armed factions, which have fragmented a single Islam into many sectarianisms. Their historic task now is to practice Islam as the unity of interpretive diversity, with respect for all.
The Ba’athist Promise
The Ba’athists had promised land reform and created out of the landless peasantry its social base and control of remote rural areas. It redistributed land without practical agrarian reform. The 1963 coup was followed by another Baathist coup in 1970. It halted land redistribution and provided meagre basic social welfare benefits to the poor peasantry and working class, for which they reluctantly surrendered their political rights – for survival.
In 2000 the Baathist abandoned its welfare model and adopted neoliberal ‘reform’ that transitioned Syria into a neocolonial state. With the abandonment of the social support to its constituency it alienated itself from the masses. The 2011 uprising symptomized the alienation with demands for rightful basic necessities of life – bread before ideology. The uprising took place while the state of emergency of 1963 was still in force.
The state was always apprehensive of another coup and became obsessed with its security and that of the ruling family dynasty. The descent into proto-fascism began. The imperialist forces found fertile grounds to widen political, religious, sectarian, tribal, clan, and ethnic divisions to hasten the collapse of the state from within Syrian society. They armed even well-meaning groups.
(Citation: The Economy of the Syrian Regime: Approaches and Policies 1970-2024: Abdulazim et al: Jusoor for Studies Center: October 2024)
Dealignment and Gen-Z
The global trend in the dealignment of ‘established forces’ began revealing itself in Syria as it had revealed itself in the overthrow of governments in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka – and the near overthrow of the one in Kenya –by Gen-Z.
The Sunnis, Shias, Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Armenians, Kurds, Turkmen, Ismailis, Druze, Bedouins, and Alawites and cross-cutting ethnic, cultural, linguistic, clan, and tribal groups have to transcend their erstwhile divisions and create grassroots unity while respecting their legitimate diversity. The Gen-Z in Syria have a high-level of political consciousness and militancy and are not beholden to the elders though they respect them.
In Syria all that was is no more. All that is will be no more!
Greek and Roman colonization of Syria and Palestine
‘Alexander the Great’ of Macedonia/Greece led the conquest of Syria in 330s BCE as a region, which was parceled and incorporated as ‘provinces’ of the Greek Empire. The ancient ‘provincialization’ was the modern equivalent of ‘colonization’. They created a new political system, urbanization, city planning, religious syncretism, and imposed Greek language and identity. It assumed a city-state structure, which was spread to North Syria in 4th-3rd BCE as functioning autonomous structures.
Both colonialisms treated Syria and Palestine with its Southern stretch descent into the gorge of Jordan and the Dead Sea extending into the Red Sea as parcels of colony and as a strategic node for transcontinental trade routes via Antioch, Aleppo, Palmyra, Beirut, and Damascus.
The Eastern Roman Empire included modern Greece, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey.
