generalspeaking

Days of Defiance

Say what you will about the original motivation of Arabs in confronting their repressive governments, it takes unquenchable courage to continue to defy the authority of the military's armed forces. In Syria an armed revolt in 1982 took the wholesale death of 40,000 Syrians to deliver the fearfully convincing message that any further revolutionary protests against the government would be not be tolerated.

Three decades is not all that long. It represents a living memory for many. A memory of an atrocious event that horrified the world in its unwavering determination to destroy tens of thousands of lives for the greater purpose of restoring stability to a tyrannical regime. The population has seen great existential profit in quiescent acceptance since that time. So to that extent it was a decisive victory for the father of the current president of Syria.

But Bashar al-Assad has not been shy in demonstrating his own ruthless streak as a Middle East dictator. A sectarian Shia minority giving favour to its Alawite tribe while denying to the greater Sunni majority their human rights; denying to the tens of thousands of Kurds the right to hold citizenship in their own country. Protesters argued peacefully for basic human rights.

The response was swift and determined, and counted in terms of bullets and tanks responding to unarmed protesters carrying signs stating their peaceful intent and their entreaties to their government to hear them out. So far, in various cities the military has encircled and beleaguered the population, firing on crowds, arresting and detaining thousands, killing a half-thousand.

Syrians file out of their Friday-morning prayers in mosques to call for reforms, to display their open revolt against the military regime that has ruled them under emergency rule for far too long. None of this would have occurred, there would have been no popular escalation of demands for 'freedom and peace', had the regime listened a little more carefully, heard with the ear of reason and respect.

Now there is a defiant population, determined to bring down a regime that has always despicably brutalized its population. In the final analysis, given the implacable nature of tyrants, it will all work itself out to a conclusion, one that will give no satisfaction to President al-Assad and his Alawites.

With good fortune, the face of the Middle East will eventually turn around, learning to smile rather than scowl, finding it more useful to open itself to human rights and acceptance of differences, rather than the traditional rejection of pluralist functionality.

Labels: Chaos, Conflict, Corruption, Middle East

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, May 07, 2011