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This Murederous Stagnancy
Hazem Saghieh Al-Hayat 2004/07/10
While Omar Amiraly's film "The Flood" was being screened on some European television channels, the human rights activist Aktham Neaise was declaring a hunger strike in his prison cell.
The film shows the system's stagnancy, from the perspective of education in the Euphrates region. Detainment, and then the food strike, declare, from the perspective of human rights, the all encompassing dilemma that is the result of the nature of stagnancy. Doors are being shut in the face of reform because the authority has shaped the society the same way that it shaped Omar Amiralay's film.
The experience of "Damascus's spring" which followed the death of Hafez Al Assad has indicated this reality at a relatively early stage, especially after the detainment of some who are still in prisons till now. The regime that has been in power since 1963 did not allow the emergence of any group that is capable of providing a basis for reform. It is true that the last decade has created a class of contractors that have social ties with the symbols of authority, yet these feel that reform threatens to promote a fairer distribution of wealth that will negatively affect them. In the context of the regime's grasp of the media and most of the economy, and the fact that the party structure remains the sole power on the national level, in addition to the "vigilant eye" of the security agencies, it seems "normal" that the "old guard" is the predominant power.
The Iraqi war, in its beginnings, was a harsh quake for the regime and it was soon followed by the tremble of the Qamishli events, nevertheless, the American troubles in Baghdad turned attention away from Damascus and allowed it to catch some of its breath. However, the political and regional relief, although not in security, that has been accomplished by the Iraqi situation in the last weeks, is threatening in the return of focus to Syria. This is what has been signaled by scattered Iraqi and American statements accompanied by Jordanian hints that are always more than just hints.
Those who like historical analogies may remember the late fifties, when the Hashemite Iraq and Jordan were allies of Britain and the United States, and Damascus had made up its mind and aligned itself with Nasserite Egypt and subsequently the Soviet Union. The Syrian-Egyptian alliance at the time was capable, with the vigor of Arab nationalism, to accomplish great victories, and so the Iraqi regime collapsed and Jordanian rule was shook. Cairo and Damascus topped their victories with their unity in 1958.
However, today is not yesterday. The American and British forces are in the region, and the revolutionary vigor is now owned by the Atlantic, while the Soviet Union is a thing of the past and Egypt does not want to be accused of being an ally of Damascus against Baghdad…and Washington.
To top it all, there is the message which is carried by Omar Amiraly's film and the detainment of Aktham Neaise, and the emergency status that has been functioning for more than four consecutive decades in addition to the Lebanese burden that is a controversial subject which Washington (and Paris) claim to have a solution for as well as 9 million Syrian teenagers whom the regime does not have a job opportunity for.
It might be said, with some truth, that it is of the bad luck of President Bashar Al Assad that he came to power with the rise of the Sharonian term and then the 11th of September until the Iraqi war. Nonetheless, not attempting to progress with the justification of external affairs makes external powers more capable of imposing a change that suits them more than it suits Syria and Syrians, people and regime.
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