Khaled Kanawat

11 May 2014

Souriatna Magazine*, Issue 138

* A weekly newspaper published by the free youths of Syrian

Syrians wonder how the inner core of the Assad’s regime has to this day maintained its cohesion and never crumbled or cracked, except in the one case when the U.S. punitive strike was imminent when we watched fleets and aircraft carriers on satellite channels. This core, which floats on a sea of Syrian blood, will only fall at once and in its entirety. Thanks to its cohesion, it controls all of the state apparatuses and institutions–most notably the military establishment—through a tight network of ideological and sectarian loyalties and self-interests. Members of this network support the regime and oppose any change in status quo in fear that it can affect their interests and bring them to trial.

Syrians then wonder about the secret behind the cohesion of the core of opposition’s formations, which were formed outside the country, and outside the revolution, before some members of the opposition inside had to join them for their belief in the need for a political front to represent the revolution and draw its path to victory, especially after all these failures. However, let’s not, at the moment, discuss the wealth of some of these formations at the expense of Syrians’ blood and their meagre sources of living and survival.

No revolution in human history has not conducted a process of revision, evaluation and analysis and then punished all those who failed and harmed the revolution or honoured all those who contributed to a political or military success and were loyal to the revolution and their people.

In the French revolution, which broke out in 1789 and laid the foundations of democracy, human and citizen rights and equality, a serious deviation occurred when a dictatorial trend led by Maximilien de Robespierre, member of the Committee of Public Safety in the executive government, emerged, killing 16,000 to 40,000 French citizens in 1793-1794 in the name of the Law of Suspects and under the pretext of protecting the gains of the revolution. However, this did not prevent the rectification of the revolution through Robespierre’s trial and execution and the enactment of a new constitution in 1795. This means that rectification becomes a necessity when the revolution deviates from its fundamental objectives advocated by revolutionaries. There are many examples of revolutions in which deviations occurred and were rectified through the dedication, genius and skill of those who can lead the situation, and not through a group of political climbers and dwarfs who seek roles to play. They were also rectified due to popular impetus that did not back down from the original objectives of its revolution.

The Syrian revolution erupted under exceptional objective circumstances, despite the lack of political awareness, which is usually provided by political parties or groups, whether overt or covert. It then turned into a popular uprising against the regime calling for its fall without seeking to replace it as a regulatory political power. This gave way to exiled political organisations to lead the political landscape of the revolutionary situation without engaging in the revolution itself due to their obvious opportunism, impotence and tyranny, which structurally refuses the different other and is based on exclusion, thereby reproducing its own version of the Assadist-Baathist monopoly over power, which these organisations had been victims of for decades,.

These forces have adopted a Machiavellian policy under the slogan “The end justifies the means”. It was clear to everyone that their end was power and their means was transforming the peaceful, civil and popular revolution into a religious one that would drive them to power as a ready alternative. However, because of their history of opportunism, they did not gain any popularity home. Therefore, they resorted to sectarianism and armament in a convergence of interests between them and the criminal regime itself, hoping they would exploit the situation to their advantage. They promised the enthusiastic youth of imminent foreign military intervention, no-fly zone enforcement and massive international support. However, when they were shocked by the calculations of Western countries, particularly the US, they started advertising for the extremist organisations exported by other countries to the Syrian soil, which was presented by the regime as a scarecrow for scaring the inside and the outside of its likely alternative. Thanks to their military experience, these organizations eventually expanded, swallowed whole areas, and started imposing their al-Qaeda agenda on the revolution and on Syrians.

The idea is that these forces, which formed the National Council and then the Coalition, still work as one hard core towards their own goals. All the failures and opportunistic policies have not led them to carry out a revision or evaluation that would restore them to the national line, had this line been one of their priorities in the first place, especially after their internationalist project in Egypt and Tunisia had flopped and Saudi Arabia, along with its friends, had stood against it. What is surprising, however, is the strong alliance between these forces and others that ideologically disagree with them, despite the spread of recordings that prove their use of some national figures and political representatives with a long history and wide popularity in Syria to compensate for what they do not have in the Syrian street.

The Syrian story is coming to dangerous turns day after day. The situation at home cannot take another truce or delay that entails extremism, corruption and opportunism. Syrians’ acceptance of a political representation abroad, regardless of its flaws, has produced overstaffed institutions that favour the self-interested and exclude qualified and revolutionary political figures. So for how long? And for the benefit of whom?

A revolution to preserve the revolution has become a national need, rather than a political luxury, to clean political institutions, particularly the coalition, from mercenaries and people who are redundant or lack experience or competency. It has become an urgent and essential issue in the revolutionary process.

Every day, a spokesman or delegate for the coalition comes out to say something superficial and humble at the scientific, political and media levels, just like any novice or amateur politician, although Syria, which today and tomorrow, needs professionals rather than amateurs, abounds with experienced and competent individuals. But as they say, bad goods drive out the good. Hence, it has become incumbent on us all to establish criteria for the selection of the coalition members, employees and delegates, requiring them to be professionals who have scientific capabilities, experience, patriotism and belief in the necessity of the revolution’s victory and the rescue of Syria. It has become everyone’s duty to reject tutelage from any funding country or opportunistic bloc to involve figures who beg for politics the way they beg for financial allocations.

Three years of floundering, bidding and messing around are enough. A Syrian public opinion campaign must be initiated as a national and moral requirement for work in the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces to be national, revolutionary, professional and under institutional as well as popular oversight and accountability. Otherwise, the tragedy will continue and the extremist octopus of tyranny will grow more powerful legitimising thereby the survival of the Assad’s regime.