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Revolution sweeps Syria

Simon Hardy

The Arab revolution has spread to Syria – are the Ba’ath party’s days numbered? Simon Hardy looks at the context of the movement in Syria and how it can develop

Just as the tide of democratic revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa appeared to be on the turn, with Gaddafi counter-attacking in Libya and the isolation and crushing of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Saudi Arabia, mass protests have broken out in Syria.

Like Egypt, Syria has existed under a one party state since the 1960s and its people suffer under an oppressive Emergency Law. The conditions for the resistance in Syria are similar to those for their brothers and sisters in Egypt, Tunisia or Libya. In Syria, there are religious divisions between the Sunni, the Shia and the Alawi. The Ba’ath party has ruled as a one-party state since1963. It carried out some limited economic reforms whilst ruling with an iron fist. Under Bashar al-Assad, clientelism and favouritism ensured benefits for some whilst others were cast out, just as under his father. The regime’s social base is among the Sunni merchants in the larger cities like Damascus, as well as the Alawi minority group.

The movement against the government began in January when Hassan Ali-Hakleh burnt himself to death, just as Mohammed Bouazizi had done in Tunis in December 2010. This did not lead immediately to large protests. Some smaller demonstrations were organised across the country but they were quickly repressed by the security forces. A planned day of rage on 5 February fizzled out as only a few hundred people turned out (they, too, were dealt with brutally by the police). Assad no doubt sat back and smiled; apart from a few small groups of malcontents his country appeared immune to the protests.

But small sparks began to fly across the country. A protest in Damascus against the beating of a shop keeper by police officers escalated into a serious confrontation. A protest outside the Libyan embassy against Gaddafi was eventually ended by the police with several arrests and beatings. These events no doubt began to harden people’s resolve. The police beatings were not aimed at seasoned political activists but at ordinary people and demonstrators who were simply expressing solidarity with the Libyan people.

The simmering unease and growing rage exploded into a social movement capable of bringing down the government on 6 March. Some school students wrote “the people want to overthrow the regime”, a slogan that has effectively become the motto of the Arab revolutions, on the walls around Daraa, in southern Syria. Their arrest angered people who mobilised to demand their release. Immediately the protests started, they were critical of the entire regime and demanded more democratic rights and the lifting of the Emergency Law.

The regime has pursued a dual strategy. On the one hand, it has declared the protests legitimate, even acknowledged that reforms must be made. Assad claims to be willing to listen to his people. At the same time, the security forces have been gunning people down in the street. The spokespeople of the regime have told international media that the problem is not the protests, it is that foreigners have infiltrated the protests to cause trouble. They claim that security forces have been fired on by people from the crowd. Anyone familiar with progressive struggles will know these lies when they hear them. They are the same lies that were used by the British when their soldiers shot dead Irish civil rights protesters in 1971 in the Bloody Sunday massacre. This language of “outside agitators” is always used by ruling powers. Protests in the west are also ‘infiltrated’ by ‘trouble-makers’. These are simply attempts to deny the fact that mass revolts have broken out and that more and more people are turning against the ruling regime.

Al-Assad now has the same problem that faced Mubarak and Ben Ali before him. The movement has become too big, too many people are mobilised. It would still be possible to crush it, but it would mean killing a lot of people. At least 130 people have died already, with many more arrested and detained, but this has only angered people even more. For instance some 20,000 people braved police intimidation to show their solidarity by attending the funeral of people killed on a recent demonstration.

Now the movement is becoming more radical. In the towns of Latakia and Tafas, police stations and Ba’ath party buildings have been burnt down and people are becoming more organised on the protests.

Whatever the differences in detail and circumstances, there is a lawfulness to how such popular revolutions unfold. The political struggle in Syria will follow much the same pattern as those in Tunisia and Egypt. First there is repression, then the masses lose their fear, the protests grow. The regime tries to counter this with talk of reform but this only encourages the masses until the point is reached when real concessions have to be made. This is the stage towards which Syria is now moving – Al-Assad has promised political freedoms, including the right to form political parties.

Syrians are now facing the same tasks as faced the popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt, which have already toppled governments. They can constitute a new civil society, claiming the rights of the modern capitalist age, but they will have to use revolutionary methods to achieve this. They must also learn from the problems of Egypt and Tunisia – sacrificing a president or two can still leave the old regime intact. The ruling party, and those agents of repression that it rests upon, must be brought down and their state machine must be broken up. This means fighting for a constituent assembly in Syria that can achieve the democratic reforms that people want – but it must be based on revolutionary committees of struggle to build a new kind of state from below, one that must be based on the workers and farmers of Syria.

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