The purpose of this article is to answer two very legitimate questions:
1. How can one oppose the the Syrian regime, its leader and its policies without accepting the narrative that such an opposition necessitates an agreement to American and Western ambitions to interfere in internal Syrian affairs either directly or indirectly?
2. Why is it necessary to attribute the blame to the Syrian regime first and foremost before addressing the shortcomings of the opposition, and the war crime and crimes against humanity committed by some elements in it?
The First Question
I had previously argued on my blog that an intervention in Syria is very ill-advised, for it allows a power that has absolutely no interest in advancing human rights and dignity in Syria to enter a land that it has no business being in. I have also argued that despite American denial of any interest to commit ground troops on Syrian soil, intervention is not necessarily restricted to an action of this sort. The Americans have been intervening in Syria ever since this revolution turned into a bloody conflict between the regime and the opposition over two and a half years ago. They have covertly and overtly armed groups with absolutely no attention as to who is actually receiving these weapons. And as we learned later, groups such as the Al-Qaeda affiliated ISIS and others have been on the receiving end of these weapon supplies.
Interestingly, though, those who were opposed to an American intervention in Syria only appeared around August last year. When Obama was considering a limited strike on Syria that would weaken the regime and tip the scale in favor of the opposition forces, self-proclaimed activists emerged out of nowhere in big numbers demanding that the Americans stay out of Syria. The question that was asked around that time was: where were these activists when the Americans were covertly supplying rogue elements with weapons? Why is it that they were only interested in this issue only when direct intervention became closer to becoming a reality? And could it be that their opposition to an intervention is a result of their support for the regime or a blind ideological opposition to anything American, and not a genuine interest in decreasing the death toll within civilian ranks?
In the Syrian case (and probably most cases) binaries must be wholly rejected. One can oppose the regime and oppose disingenuous American plans in Syria at the same time. Both the American military and the Syrian military share one very evident characteristic: they both have the supreme capability to sacrifice innocent civilian lives in order to advance narrowly defined egoistic interests. And in the American case we have seen that in Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos and many other areas around the world.
So if we know this, if we know that the regime, and most importantly brigades headed and commanded by Maher El-Assad, are capable of causing so much death and carnage; and if we know the American history of military interventions and invasions, why is it that big of a deal when one says that he is opposed to both the regime and the Americans at the same time?
If we are supremely opposed to any tactic that could cause more bloodshed, why does one have to be forced to choose between being supportive of the regime or being supportive of the Americans? This is an unnecessary binary, and I believe that those who demand that we make a choice are either adamantly supportive of American ambitions in the region (right wing maniacs in Washington and the Zionists) or adamantly supportive of the regime (Assadist, Baathists and some leftists in Palestine). Because this binary is unnecessary, and because the only principle that matters is the utmost rejection of death and killing at any cost, then activists should accumulate the courage to make it extremely clear that they are opposed to the Syrian regime and that they support demands to remove it without accepting the American narrative that the only way that this can be done is by using their help.
To Assad we must say “you must go” and to Obama we must say “stay out of Syria.”
The Second Question
To answer this question, I propose a principle that is generally defensible: in the modern form of a nation-state as it is generally defined, the primary responsibility of securing the welfare of its citizens falls upon the government. The government is viewed to be endowed with the responsibility of making sure that citizens are able to live free and prosperous, and that conditions must be maintained towards the attainment of such a state of living. When a government begins to violate the rights and freedoms of its citizens in order to advance the the interests of the few, the government stops being representative of the people and their aspirations, and a point can be reached whereby such a government loses legitimacy in its entirety.
In the case of Syria, the Assad regime has had over four decades in order to create such conditions. It is true that this country has had to sustain the influx of Palestinian refugees in 1948, and had to deal with an aggressive enemy to the South, and had to cope with a ‘post-colonial’ social and economic structure, and had to be one of the many battlegrounds for the proxy war between the Soviet Union and the United States. However, despite these conditions and setbacks, the Assad regime made absolutely no effort to demonstrate that they have any intention to enhance the welfare of the Syrian citizens and their Palestinian guests.
Instead the Assad regime began to: actively jail dissidents; impose restrictions upon journalists; prevent the possibility of any economic prosperity; concentrate Syrian wealth in the hands of the few (mainly the Assad and the Makhlouf families; cause the displacement of the Kurds, the Armenians, the Ismailis, the Druze and many other minorities; execute with utter disregard to all moral values the Hama massacre and many other massacres against the Palestinians in Lebanon (Tel EL-Zaater being the most prominent of which); oppress the Lebanese throughout the occupation of their country; and was, arguably, complicit in the continuation of the occupation of the Golan Heights (in fact, history demonstrates that the Assad regime made absolutely no effort to retrieve this occupied piece of Syrian land).
When the protests began in Syria over three years, there was no ISIS, or Jabhat El-Nusra, or FSA or SNC or any other form of organized opposition. There was only a group of enthusiastic Syrian men and women who wanted nothing more than reforms. To their misfortune, they were faced with bloody crackdowns that dragged the country into a bloody civil conflict.
So if the government is the one responsible for the protection of its civilians, and if the government decides that the best policy is to crush any form of opposition mounted by these civilians (before the degeneration into a bloody conflict), why should the blame be assigned to the consequences of government actions, instead of it being assigned to the government? In other words, why should we blame the opposition and bloody elements in ISIS first when these two are a direct and unfortunate result of Syrian government policy? The answer is: we should not.
No argument can be made against holding the opposition groups accountable for what they do. In fact, it is more that necessary to expose all of their shortcomings especially when that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity (for example, the beheading of armless Alawite civilians are all over the internet). However, we must realize and understand very clearly that if it was not for the regime, and its lack of competence, these elements would not even exist in the first place.
Good post. I have one nitpick–
“The question that was asked around that time was: where were these activists when the Americans were covertly supplying rogue elements with weapons? Why is it that they were only interested in this issue only when direct intervention became closer to becoming a reality? And could it be that their opposition to an intervention is a result of their support for the regime or a blind ideological opposition to anything American, and not a genuine interest in decreasing the death toll within civilian ranks? ”
Direct intervention would be worse than indirect intervention. If the US bombs a country in order to tip the scales, it becomes a matter of “credibility”–that’s how the Beltway crowd thinks. If the bombing didn’t work, either Obama looks like an ineffectual fool or he escalates. With those choices, politicians often choose escalation. So that’s why people in the antiwar left really focused on Syria when Obama was saber-rattling. But if you are saying that we should have been more strong in our opposition to American aid to Syrian rebels, while also opposing Assad, then I can’t argue with you.
RE: “How can one oppose the the Syrian regime, its leader and its policies without accepting the narrative that such an opposition necessitates an agreement to American and Western ambitions to interfere in internal Syrian affairs either directly or indirectly?” ~ Omar Chaaban
MY COMMENT: I initially supported the intervention in Libya, but soon afterwards, I began to regret my support after seeing the way the U.S. and its allies flagrantly, grotesquely, and shamelessly abused the UN Security Council resolution on Libya (authorizing member states to establish and enforce a no-fly zone) in order to instead pursue their own “regime change” agenda. Consequently, as I see it, the U.S. and its NATO allies absolutely cannot be trusted to intervene in Syria in a responsible manner.
Because the U.S and its NATO allies so badly abused “responsibility to protect” (R2P or RtoP) in regards to Libya (much like they abused the right to defend themselves by invading Iraq), I simply cannot support any intervention in Syria by the U.S. under any circumstances, no matter how seemingly deserving the purported beneficiaries of such intervention might be.
The first question is relatively easy to answer (How can one oppose Assad and also Western “meddling”). One can simply say that they are against both the secular regime and the West supplying the Opposition, and then speak out against both.
The Opposition does receive funding from the West and works together much with it. I would add that Turkey to some extent counts as the West, as it is a NATO member. In any case, the oppositionists are located in Exile in the West, get funding from there, get logistic support from there, etc. So one can oppose their decision to get this support.
A problem with this though is that without Western help, armed opposition to Assad will be much weaker. Granted, one does not have to support armed opposition.
So whether one should support Assad’s removal, or should support armed rebellion is a different question. Could someone oppose Assad based on his current policies, and yet be willing to promote reform and reconciliation with Assad? Or would that not be “opposition”? Can I oppose Obama for drone attacks and domestic spying, and push for reform within the current US political system?
As the Second Question, while you can blame Assad for the current problems before blaming the opposition, it is not necessary to do so. In terms of direct responsibility for a war crime, the responsible party is obviously the one who carried out that war crime directly, and thus can be the first one to blame.
So if Assad uses an alleged gas attack on a village where there are some fighters and causes massive casualties, then obviously Assad is responsible “first” in the direct sense. But if fundamentalist insurgents take over a village and massacre it, then the insurgents are directly responsible. So in some cases in the Syrian Civil War the regime is first and directly responsible, while in other cases insurgents are. Because of the range of crimes and their direct perpetrators, it is an “unnecessary” overgeneralization to blame the regime for them “first and foremost.”
What about the fact that Assad’s regime was in power before the insurgency? In fact, the current problems can be traced to the time before Assad, with imperial designs and conquest of the Middle East, including of Syria, the way the borders were drawn, and even to previous conflicts between Shiites and Sunnis, as well as conflicts over whether the State in Syria should be democratic, secular, religious, pro-empire, anti-imperialist, or independent.
These broader problems and range of social forces existed before Assad, and continued while he was in power. Syria is much smaller than the West and than its less secular neighbors, and Assad’s own religious group makes only a minority of Syria, and all of these factors limit Assad’s abilities for decision-making, as well as those of any government that chose to be secular and independent of the West.
Meanwhile, the opposition includes not just liberal democracy activists, but interventionists, fundamentalists, and foreign proxy forces, which pre-existed Assad’s coming to power. In fact, considering how low of a vote liberal secular groups received in Egypt, and the fact that the Local Coordinating Committees are made of 100-200 people, while the Syrian National Council is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood (I am not labeling it as extremist however), I would question how big a portion advocates of non-theocratic liberal parliamentarism are in numbers among the opposition.
So as to the chronological argument, although Assad’s regime had decades to democratize, the regime was not really the only player in determining the country’s fate. It is much easier to run a secular, independent democracy when all the foreign and domestic forces accept with your secular, independent political system. This is not to deny blame to Assad, but to say that it is not “necessary” to blame him “first and foremost.”
Here is another hit piece from Omar, a true friend to al-quada, and a concern troll for the Syrian people (and to palestinians, of course).
Same lies, distortions and and talking points promulgated by so-called “liberals” and “friends” to Palestinians, a campaign no doubt by Saudi financed well-oiled “Hasbarbara” campaign.
I can’t believe that Mondoweiss is giving AGAIN! a forum for this sleazy trojan horse – two of them today – without as much as a single nod to those who actually care about the people – Syrian, Palestinian, Kurds, lebanese.
I said, I thought, all there was for me to say, on the previous propaganda pieces, but here we are again. Will await the smart other commentators who have done so very well to debunk the disingenuous talking points before to step, one more time, into the fray, before stepping into the substance of this post, such as it is.
Phil, Adam – it is high time for an opposing piece, or is this place becoming another “Gaurdian” that has never seen a color “revolution it did not support?
What’s next? supporting the “revolution” in Ukraine? a country that dared resist the neoliberal agenda? dared to walk away from a trade deal that was bound to hurt the majority of the people?
I disagree with some of the stuff the writer has present.
1. U.S. Meddling in Syria actually started even before any blood was spilled. It’s ambassador who was appointed to Syria was seen running around the country sparking and supporting protest.
2. The writer says that the U.S. Didn’t look at who the U.S. Was arming. Actually the U.S before the war broke out sold billions of arms to the Saudis and Gulf states and it’s highly doubtful they weren’t aware as to who thee countries were going to arm. Even when reports came out extremist were being funded and armed the U.S vehemently denied it. Often times going so far to claim the Saudis were only helping the more moderate faction.
3. The writer questions the people who came out against bombing Syria? Asking where were they before when the U.S was arming the rebels? This is pretty simple to answer. They never left, and the U.S. Government kept denying they were doing such. The outrage was there and finally boiled over in which the media and government had to cover it. It’s similar to the outrage about the NSA . One like the writer could say ‘where were the people who are now protesting the NSA abuse before?”