A Case of Censorship: 'Syria: The Revolution That Never Was'

[Image by Freedom House via Flickr] [Image by Freedom House via Flickr]

A Case of Censorship: 'Syria: The Revolution That Never Was'

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following article was written by Asa Winstanely and originally published by Middle East Monitor on 22 Novemeber 2013. Three days later, on 25 November 2013, the editors removed the article from the website after repeated reader complaints (Click here to read the editorial note). Whatever one`s views are on the Syria question, in the past year there has been a pattern of censorship across several outlets subsequent to pieces being published.] 

What has happened in the Arab world since Tunisian icon Muhammed Bouazizi burned himself to death in protest in December 2010?

A series of popular uprisings, each feeding off the next, swept the region. From Morocco to Oman, there were varying degrees of protest against ossified regimes, demanding everything from the downfall of the regime to more simple reforms.

But we can now say with confidence that none of these uprisings has constituted a revolution. Of course, the immense struggles and sacrifices that people have made may yet sow seeds for the future.

But what is a revolution anyway, if not a struggle to completely transform the state and society? The closest any of the uprisings has come to revolution has been in Tunisia, which still faces immense internal problems.

As my colleague at the Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah has put it, Egypt is now back behind square one. The generals’ bloody coup regime is fulfilling its junior contractor roll as part of the brutal Israeli siege on Gaza far more effectively than they managed under Muhammed Morsi. The first elected Egyptian president was kidnapped by the military and now sits in their dungeons, awaiting the outcome of a farcical show trial.

Libya is an absolute disaster. Brutal militias now run the country, gunning down demonstrators, and kidnapping government ministers and security officials at will. The same militias ethnically cleansed an entire town of black Libyans and still blocks their return. These are the fruits of the NATO “liberation” campaign of bombs, which was foolishly supported by even some leftists.

I was always against NATO bombing of Libya. But if I look now back at some of my reactions on Twitter in the early part of 2011, it’s clear I, too, was over-optimistic about Egypt and elsewhere. I, too, spoke in favor of the early demonstrations against the Syrian regime, notwithstanding fears from the beginning that they would be hijacked.

Like many others, I hoped for positive change to the sweep the region. As well as the inherent value of such a change in itself, a free Arab world is best placed to confront Israel’s apartheid regime. The road to Jerusalem runs though Arab capitals, as the late Palestinian leader George Habash used to emphasize.

The American imperial power and its clients and allies were caught off guard and seemed paralyzed. But, spurred on by the Israeli-Saudi tag-team that leads the counter-revolutionary forces of the region, the hegemon soon rallied its forces and wasted little time engaging in covert operations.

And so I come to the missing part of this picture: Syria.

To say Syria is now a disaster is a massive understatement. This is a sectarian civil war which could continue for a decade if the regime’s enemies, led by the brutal Saudi tyranny, continue to wage their proxy war on the country.

The mostly widely-relied-on body-count, that of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (a group which is close to armed rebels, and whose reliability I have questioned in the past), now states that 120,000 Syrians have been killed. The Syrian Observatory claims that the majority of these are combatants — and the majority of those on have been on the pro-Assad side.

The fact of this imbalance is conveniently ignored by western media reporting, which continues with its untenable narrative about a revolution of unarmed Syrian protesters which only took up arms after being shot down by the evil Assad regime.

If that was true, why do even the Syrian Observatory’s figures not bare this picture out? There was never a revolution in Syria.

As I have said, that is also true of other countries, but there are important differences.

Firstly, pro-Western dictators like Ben Ali and Mubarak were resting on their laurels, and failed to cultivate a significant popular base. (Presumably, they foolishly thought they could rely on their American and European funders not to sell them down the river. How mistaken they were.)

This is why, for example, in the early part of 2011, you never saw anything more than small handfuls of cowed government workers in pathetic little pro-Mubarak demonstrations.

But what a difference in Syria. Yes, the regime is dictatorial and ruthless. But from the beginning of the uprising, which initially only demanded “reform,” Syria was split. Along with large anti-Assad demonstrations, there were equally huge pro-Assad demonstrations.

When demonstrations supporting a brutal tyrant are attended on such a massive scale, you shouldn’t fool yourself with the farcical BBC theory that tens of thousands of people were “forced” onto the streets.

By now, there are no demonstrations of significance on either side, and these pro-Assad mobilizations occurred before he committed some of his worst crimes. But there is no doubt this popular support freed his hand for further (and often indiscriminate) military crackdowns on the “terrorist” groups.

This is a tyrant who has (as strongly implied by UN weapons inspectors) used chemical weapons against civilians, and who has bombed whole areas indiscriminately in his fight against armed groups. And yet, Assad has a genuine support base which, almost by default, is only growing as the armed insurgents fighting him become more and more openly aligned to fanatical groups like al-Qaeda.

The always questionable “Free Syrian Army” is disintegrating, with many of its members either joining the al-Qaeda-aligned brigades such as the Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham – or even defecting back to the regime. Astonishingly, some leaders in these supposedly “moderate” brigades now no longer want Assad to leave power.

One recently told the Guardian’s reporter Ghaith Abdul-Ahad that: “I need Bashar [al-Assad] to last for two more years… It would be a disaster if the regime fell now: we would split into mini-states that would fight among each other. We’ll be massacring each other – tribes, Islamists and battalions… There will be either Alawites or Sunnis. Either them or us. Maybe in 10 years we will all be bored with fighting and learn how to coexist… In 10 years maybe, not now.”

As this sectarian hatred shows, they were never moderate anyway. Which explains why so many “FSA” units have now joined groups pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawarhari (formerly Osama bin Laden’s number two).

And herein lies the second key to the mystery of Assad’s continued support base (polarized as it is): the alternative is considered by many normal people in Syria and in the region as a whole, to be far worse.

Armed takfiri fanatics, particularly the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, now control large parts of the Syrian countryside, even as the regime’s forces are making steady gains. The only “revolution” with any current prospect of succeeding is an al-Qaeda revolution. And of course, that is no revolution at all.

This is the “revolution” which, apparently unnoticed by its Western cheerleaders, expelled Syrian Christians wholesale from the town of Qusair, long before the Lebanese resistance party Hezbollah began its divisive intervention in support of the regime there.

This is the “revolution” whose supposedly moderate “Free Army” brigades fought with al-Qaeda groups who invaded Syrian areas which they considered strongholds of the wrong religion or sect. FSA units fought with Jabhat al-Nusra when it invaded the historic Christian-majority town Ma’loula in September (until they were fought off by the regime).

The exiled and nominal head of the FSA, Salim Idriss (who is quite openly armed and funded by France, the UK and US) participated — apparently in person — in a joint FSA-al-Qaeda invasion of Latakia villages in August. This was a purely sectarian slaughter of at least 190 Alawite civilians, with not even a pretence of a military target.

An eyewitness related to the Guardian journalist Jonathan Steele: “When we got into the [Latakia-area] village of Balouta I saw a baby’s head hanging from a tree. There was a woman’s body which had been sliced in half from head to toe and each half was hanging from separate apple trees. It made me feel I wanted to do something wild.”

Idriss described this campaign as one of their “important successes and victories that our revolutionaries have gained”. Some victory.

In a November 2011 article, most controversial at the time, renowned Palestinian academic and intellectual Joseph Massad wrote that Syrians “must face up to the very difficult conclusion that they have been effectively defeated, not by the horrifying repression of their own dictatorial regime which they have valiantly resisted, but rather by the international forces that are as committed as the Syrian regime itself to deny Syrians the democracy they so deserve… the struggle to overthrow Asad may very well succeed, but the struggle to bring about a democratic regime in Syria has been thoroughly defeated.”

Unfortunately, today we can see that Massad was both right and possibly even over-optimistic.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412