Why the Syrian Internal Opposition is Afraid, Weak, and Probably Controled by the Syrian Intelligence Apparatus
Harold's List
In Syria, a sagging opposition
Dissidents see no gain in a fallen regime
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff
DAMASCUS -- Authoritarian Syria has so thoroughly quashed organized opposition that even the most committed dissidents find themselves in a depressing bind: They're willing to risk prison by speaking out against the regime but are so convinced of their own weakness that they don't want the regime to fall, fearing that only chaos would follow.
Haitham al-Maleh, a 74-year-old human rights lawyer considered one of the most influential opposition leaders, neatly sums up the plight. ''We have a problem: The opposition is weak," he said.
Despite his visceral anger at the government he calls a fascist dictatorship, he doesn't want to see it collapse, because he doesn't think there's anything to replace it.
''We believe in change step by step," Maleh said. ''We don't want to jump and break our necks."
The opposition's state of disarray and powerlessness testifies to a successful Ba'ath Party strategy under the Assad family dynasty, which after 35 years in power has left Syrians with no real political alternative. The dictatorship outlawed competing political parties and also all social and political institutions not under its direct control, from labor unions to sport clubs.
Such a dispirited opposition poses a great challenge to Syrian dissidents, internal party reformists, and US policy makers, who espouse a policy of changing the regime or its behavior but have no powerful partner in Syrian society. Proponents of regime change in Syria would have to look elsewhere -- perhaps in Syria's ruling elite, in the military, even in the underground Islamist Muslim Brotherhood -- for a strong hand to replace the Assad family clique.
Under the loose surveillance of Syria's secret police, those dissidents who aren't in prison or were recently released talk in public and on the record with surprising candor about the corruption of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Syria's dissidents have spent long terms in jail for speaking out, but despite their new high-tech tools -- cellphones, e-mail, and web logs -- they languish virtually unknown to the Syrian public and the outside world.
Dissidents are allowed to talk to the international media but not to hold meetings, organize political parties, or publish criticism inside Syria's borders.
Syrian intelligence agents tap their phones and watch their homes. But the dissidents think the government allows them to talk to the foreign media because it considers the opposition harmless and wants to present an image of political openness to the international community.
The opposition includes Ba'ath Party insiders who moderate critical websites and forums; television actors renowned for their starring roles on daytime soap operas and their veiled references to the social decay of the calcified Ba'athist culture; teenage bloggers and bearded musicians, human rights lawyers, journalists, and satellite television commentators.
But in the cafes of Damascus, as they smoke their way through hourlong tirades, many are just as likely to denounce US imperialism or Zionist conspiracies as they are the Assad regime. Many expressed fear of being seen by the Arab world as co-opted US agents, like some of the Iraqi exiles who took power in Iraq after the American invasion.
''I have always said, if I were younger I would have gone to Iraq to fight the Americans myself," said Maleh, who spent seven years in prison in the 1980s for a suspected role in the rebellion against the government by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Yassin Haj Saleh, 44, a Communist Party leader who spent 16 years in jail, also takes pains to distance himself from Washington. ''I'm against the regime, but I'm not with the United States," he said.
Since his release in 1996, Saleh's travel has been curtailed, but he has been free to speak with foreign reporters.
He's just as worried about the prospect of UN sanctions as he is about the renewed internal crackdown by the Syrian regime since it pulled out of Lebanon.
The opposition believes the government in the past three months has arrested hundreds of Syrians, many accused of being Islamic extremists.
But Saleh thinks the efforts of dissidents, and the suffering they have endured, barely registers with the Syrian public. ''I think people from the US know the reason why I was in jail more than Syrians," he said, laughing.
This defeated air is the legacy of President Assad's ''Damascus Spring," a short period of openness and political dialogue he ushered in when he took office in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad.
Now, reformers inside the party find themselves with waning influence.
Ayman Abdel Nour, a senior member of the Ba'ath Party, tried to foster the internal debate and reforms that he supports by hosting a website, www.all4syria.org. Last year, the government suddenly shut down the site.
It was one of the last turns of the screw in the government's conclusive silencing of the Damascus Spring, according to Ba'athist reformers and dissidents outside the government.
Within a year after Assad took office, authorities had arrested the 10 leading politicians and intellectuals Assad had encouraged to foster democratic dialogue.
By the time Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon was assassinated in February, provoking an international crisis that swept Damascus and Beirut, political winter had thoroughly replaced the Damascus Spring.
For insiders like Nour, that has meant an erosion of influence.
''I am a reformer. But we have no weight," Nour said. The government and the Ba'ath Party can distribute jobs, money, privileges, and controls the state media, he said. ''The opposition has nothing," he said.
At smoky coffee shops like the chic modern cafe in the Cham Palace Hotel or the nearby outdoor Rawda Cafe, with its outdoor old-fashioned Arab fountain and backgammon sets, the dissidents hop from table to table, making sweeping declarations over little cups of coffee.
They have little else to do.
''The Ba'athists decided to substitute the party for society," said Omar Amiralay, a film director who has made a scathing documentary about the party's control of Syrian life, titled ''Flood in Ba'ath Country."
''The only civil society practicing politics, culture, social activities, is the Ba'ath Party. You have to join the party to have any opportunities."
Television is the last flourishing bastion of Syria's culture of public intellectuals.
Bassam Kousa, star of a popular dramatic series broadcast throughout the Arab world, says television must avoid head-on discussion of politics but can explore many social ills -- from the unbridled power of fathers in extended families to such sensitive matters as sex and AIDS.
''I'm not optimistic, not anymore," said Omar Kouch, 47, a dissident intellectual who abandoned quantum mechanics to write about culture and politics for Arab newspapers published outside Syria.
''I think the regime has made things such that if it falls, the country will collapse," he said. ''So we can't allow the regime to fall. We are really scared of tomorrow."
The opposition's biggest move since 2001, when Assad cut short the Damascus Spring experiment, was the Oct. 16 signing of the Damascus Declaration. Normally fractious and competing groups -- Islamic and secular, Arab nationalist and non-Arab minority -- joined in calling for substantive democratic reforms, including elections, an end to the state of emergency, and the release of political prisoners.
So far it has had little impact.
Dissidents like Maleh have been banned from international travel for the past two years. Those who are party members said they have lowered any expectations of serious reform from within the Ba'ath Party.
Those on the outside, although they harbor few illusions about their level of power or organization, still fear returning to jail.
"We are under a fascist dictatorship," Maleh said. "Nothing is changing now. Most of the people are still afraid."
In Syria, a sagging opposition
Dissidents see no gain in a fallen regime
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff
DAMASCUS -- Authoritarian Syria has so thoroughly quashed organized opposition that even the most committed dissidents find themselves in a depressing bind: They're willing to risk prison by speaking out against the regime but are so convinced of their own weakness that they don't want the regime to fall, fearing that only chaos would follow.
Haitham al-Maleh, a 74-year-old human rights lawyer considered one of the most influential opposition leaders, neatly sums up the plight. ''We have a problem: The opposition is weak," he said.
Despite his visceral anger at the government he calls a fascist dictatorship, he doesn't want to see it collapse, because he doesn't think there's anything to replace it.
''We believe in change step by step," Maleh said. ''We don't want to jump and break our necks."
The opposition's state of disarray and powerlessness testifies to a successful Ba'ath Party strategy under the Assad family dynasty, which after 35 years in power has left Syrians with no real political alternative. The dictatorship outlawed competing political parties and also all social and political institutions not under its direct control, from labor unions to sport clubs.
Such a dispirited opposition poses a great challenge to Syrian dissidents, internal party reformists, and US policy makers, who espouse a policy of changing the regime or its behavior but have no powerful partner in Syrian society. Proponents of regime change in Syria would have to look elsewhere -- perhaps in Syria's ruling elite, in the military, even in the underground Islamist Muslim Brotherhood -- for a strong hand to replace the Assad family clique.
Under the loose surveillance of Syria's secret police, those dissidents who aren't in prison or were recently released talk in public and on the record with surprising candor about the corruption of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Syria's dissidents have spent long terms in jail for speaking out, but despite their new high-tech tools -- cellphones, e-mail, and web logs -- they languish virtually unknown to the Syrian public and the outside world.
Dissidents are allowed to talk to the international media but not to hold meetings, organize political parties, or publish criticism inside Syria's borders.
Syrian intelligence agents tap their phones and watch their homes. But the dissidents think the government allows them to talk to the foreign media because it considers the opposition harmless and wants to present an image of political openness to the international community.
The opposition includes Ba'ath Party insiders who moderate critical websites and forums; television actors renowned for their starring roles on daytime soap operas and their veiled references to the social decay of the calcified Ba'athist culture; teenage bloggers and bearded musicians, human rights lawyers, journalists, and satellite television commentators.
But in the cafes of Damascus, as they smoke their way through hourlong tirades, many are just as likely to denounce US imperialism or Zionist conspiracies as they are the Assad regime. Many expressed fear of being seen by the Arab world as co-opted US agents, like some of the Iraqi exiles who took power in Iraq after the American invasion.
''I have always said, if I were younger I would have gone to Iraq to fight the Americans myself," said Maleh, who spent seven years in prison in the 1980s for a suspected role in the rebellion against the government by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Yassin Haj Saleh, 44, a Communist Party leader who spent 16 years in jail, also takes pains to distance himself from Washington. ''I'm against the regime, but I'm not with the United States," he said.
Since his release in 1996, Saleh's travel has been curtailed, but he has been free to speak with foreign reporters.
He's just as worried about the prospect of UN sanctions as he is about the renewed internal crackdown by the Syrian regime since it pulled out of Lebanon.
The opposition believes the government in the past three months has arrested hundreds of Syrians, many accused of being Islamic extremists.
But Saleh thinks the efforts of dissidents, and the suffering they have endured, barely registers with the Syrian public. ''I think people from the US know the reason why I was in jail more than Syrians," he said, laughing.
This defeated air is the legacy of President Assad's ''Damascus Spring," a short period of openness and political dialogue he ushered in when he took office in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad.
Now, reformers inside the party find themselves with waning influence.
Ayman Abdel Nour, a senior member of the Ba'ath Party, tried to foster the internal debate and reforms that he supports by hosting a website, www.all4syria.org. Last year, the government suddenly shut down the site.
It was one of the last turns of the screw in the government's conclusive silencing of the Damascus Spring, according to Ba'athist reformers and dissidents outside the government.
Within a year after Assad took office, authorities had arrested the 10 leading politicians and intellectuals Assad had encouraged to foster democratic dialogue.
By the time Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon was assassinated in February, provoking an international crisis that swept Damascus and Beirut, political winter had thoroughly replaced the Damascus Spring.
For insiders like Nour, that has meant an erosion of influence.
''I am a reformer. But we have no weight," Nour said. The government and the Ba'ath Party can distribute jobs, money, privileges, and controls the state media, he said. ''The opposition has nothing," he said.
At smoky coffee shops like the chic modern cafe in the Cham Palace Hotel or the nearby outdoor Rawda Cafe, with its outdoor old-fashioned Arab fountain and backgammon sets, the dissidents hop from table to table, making sweeping declarations over little cups of coffee.
They have little else to do.
''The Ba'athists decided to substitute the party for society," said Omar Amiralay, a film director who has made a scathing documentary about the party's control of Syrian life, titled ''Flood in Ba'ath Country."
''The only civil society practicing politics, culture, social activities, is the Ba'ath Party. You have to join the party to have any opportunities."
Television is the last flourishing bastion of Syria's culture of public intellectuals.
Bassam Kousa, star of a popular dramatic series broadcast throughout the Arab world, says television must avoid head-on discussion of politics but can explore many social ills -- from the unbridled power of fathers in extended families to such sensitive matters as sex and AIDS.
''I'm not optimistic, not anymore," said Omar Kouch, 47, a dissident intellectual who abandoned quantum mechanics to write about culture and politics for Arab newspapers published outside Syria.
''I think the regime has made things such that if it falls, the country will collapse," he said. ''So we can't allow the regime to fall. We are really scared of tomorrow."
The opposition's biggest move since 2001, when Assad cut short the Damascus Spring experiment, was the Oct. 16 signing of the Damascus Declaration. Normally fractious and competing groups -- Islamic and secular, Arab nationalist and non-Arab minority -- joined in calling for substantive democratic reforms, including elections, an end to the state of emergency, and the release of political prisoners.
So far it has had little impact.
Dissidents like Maleh have been banned from international travel for the past two years. Those who are party members said they have lowered any expectations of serious reform from within the Ba'ath Party.
Those on the outside, although they harbor few illusions about their level of power or organization, still fear returning to jail.
"We are under a fascist dictatorship," Maleh said. "Nothing is changing now. Most of the people are still afraid."
posted by Marko at 11/06/2005 10:55:00 AM
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