Home > International > Middle East > Syria’s Dance To Democracy: One Step at a Time
Syria’s Dance To Democracy: One Step at a Time
By Matthew Bowlby, Sudan
A series of imposing billboards throughout the heart of Syria's capital city of Damascus serve a message to those who doubt the resolve of their beloved leader. Even more impressive lit up against the night sky, these messages leave no room for subtleties.
"For a country as diverse as Syria in a region as troubled as the Middle East, security and safety are hard to come by. So it is understandable how Syrians might equate democracy and freedom with safety and the status quo." -Matthew Bowlby
"President Bashar Al Assad and the Syrian People Don't Bend Except to God." Living in Damascus and studying Arabic however, I never thought much about the intended purpose. Indeed, I found the city to be more diverse and tolerant than any of its size in the Arab world, and I am hard pressed to remember debate more lively than the hours spent arguing politics over backgammon and puffing on Arabic water pipes with my Muslim and Christian friends. Syria is so inviting and pleasant that it even feels, well, almost free.
So free, in fact, Syrians seem unable to avoid talking politics especially with an American. Everyone from cigarette salesmen to taxi drivers lectured me on the errors of America's ways: Iraq, Osama, Palestine. And when the door is shut and the windows sealed tight, they even talk about their own politics - something that would have been unthinkable under Bashar's father regime even seven years ago.
"[During his regime] even at home alone with your parents, you didn't talk about politics. You didn't even think about it," a good friend and student at Damascus University told me. That friend, now in his mid-20s, is still old enough to have participated in the once mandatory military exercises Syrian high school boys had during which they memorized the tenants of Arab nationalism while crawling through the dirt, firing Kalashnikovs, preparing for Israeli invasions.
Today, while there are no more Russian guns at recess and the political environment is arguably more open than it has been in over 40 years, civil society in this secular Arab nation is all but nonexistent. Nowhere is this more true than in the field of human rights, where the few groups that populate the Syrian landscape are either directly run or heavily infiltrated by mukhabarat security agents. It is not unusual for activists to be thrown in jail at the very whim of their secret police masters.
After a few months in Syria I began peeling away the layers of my initial impressions of the country only to realize that freedom here is a strange thing. Indeed, a growing economy gives people an extra spring in their step which causes the onlooker to think this is a free society. Yet when you begin to poke beneath the surface you begin to see that perspective is deceiving.
Syria has operated under a state of emergency since 1963, a political tool that still justifies arrests and detentions without cause or due process. The psychological intimidation of secret agents hiding within communities has created a culture of fear. Yet many Syrians don't see that as compromising their freedom.
"What is freedom anyway?" an Alawi friend of mine asked. (Alawis are the minority sect of Shia Islam that rules the country). "In America you can't walk the streets at night without worrying about crime and getting hurt. In Syria we have security. Safety is freedom."
For a country as diverse as Syria in a region as troubled as the Middle East, security and safety are hard to come by. So it is understandable how Syrians might equate democracy and freedom with safety and the status quo.
While I was aware of the government's harsh handling of Islamic extremists and direct opponents of the regime, my conversations with young Syrians made we wonder how young people deal with life in a virtual police state.
Last year in Tartous, on Syria's western coast, a high school teacher was arrested when a student filed a report against him following a classroom discussion. Four young men were summoned to security branches and arrested in September 2006 for holding open discussion groups on bribery and corruption in Syrian society. In a more severe case, eight young men were arrested between January and March 2006 for holding university forums on issues like democracy and freedom of speech. Of those eight, six remain in prison today, over a year later, where they have been held incommunicado and without charge.
It appears as though there is no hope in sight for Syria's young generations. The government seems poised to stop at nothing to quell calls for reform, arresting young students for talking about corruption and designing a state of fear so powerful that young high schoolers run off to inform on their teachers at the slightest hint of dissent.
Yet more troubling than the fear in Syrian minds is the thought of what goes on after arrest. Just this month the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies translated their report on the treatment of political prisoners in Syria, the first of its kind and a telling indictment to the practices of torture and abuse carried out by Syria authorities on their own citizens.
Perhaps by reflex, most Syrians are quick to defend their president. "Freedom is great," a Syrian academic told me last month. "But everything has its limits. We have to balance freedom of expression with people that are trying to destabilize the country and cause chaos."
Certainly there are people out to shake up the Syrian scene and Bashar is right to be on the lookout for opposition, yet the most striking commentary is the contrast between American and Middle Eastern concepts of freedom. Arabs by and large want their freedom, but like Syrians they don't think it can come unfettered. Perhaps they're right. As America's hope for democracies in the region falls apart at the seams in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, even President Bush is beginning to wonder if democracy should come in doses.
As for me, I see nothing more inspiring than the Syrian activists getting up every day to push the political envelope. Perhaps that's the way it needs to be, step by step.
