Syria: A First-Hand Look

At 7.30 tonight, Tuesday, February 28th, WUPR, along with our fellow co-hosts the Muslim Students Association, will be holding the Stories from Syria: Video Chatting with Syrian Citizens event in the DUC Fun Room.

In case you do not know anything about the ongoing Syrian revolution, here’s a little lesson. Let me introduce you to the major internal players.

Bashar al-Assad’s regime is currently under heavy (but not heavy enough, apparently) international pressure over his brutal crackdown on dissenting Syrians. Following in his father Hafez al-Assad’s footsteps, the younger al-Assad utilized mass arrests and state-sponsored violence in an effort to quash the demonstrations of unarmed civilians. This was March of 2011.

Opposition members have taken up arms to defend themselves, their families, and their communities. Anywhere from 7,000 to 9,000 Syrians, depending on the source, have been killed in the uprising so far. Since three weeks ago, the Syrian Army has besieged the city of Homs, cutting its residents off from food, water, and medical supplies, and bombarding them day and night.

The Free Syrian Army is the main armed opposition force, composed primarily of Syrian military defectors who are also overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims. Their sole stated goal is to protect citizens from the onslaught of the Syrian security forces under President Bashar al-Assad. Particularly in and around the city of Homs, the FSA has been the last line of defense between civilian residents and the Syrian state security’s guns.

The FSA has also played an active role in protecting foreign journalists in Syria. Some charge that the al-Assad regime is purposely targeting journalists in an attempt to prevent their horrific stories from getting out. Yesterday, two wounded western journalists were evacuated out of Homs by the FSA and its affiliates, at the cost of at least thirteen activists killed.

Many in the West and in the Middle East are growing increasingly vocal about the importance of arming the FSA, just as weapons were provided to the Libyan rebels and eventually taking them to Tripoli. On the other hand, critics are hesitant to go ahead with such a decisive action, citing concerns over “who the FSA really is”.

The Syrian National Council, led by Dr. Burhan Ghalioun, is a loose coalition of Syrian opposition members based in Turkey. It has recently gained official recognition from the Friends of Syria conference held last week in Tunis, along with a number of sovereign governments. On the other hand, they are no Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood or the Libyan Transnational Council, and have little organizational capacity or real authority. At this point, no one truly knows what role they play in the uprising.

The Christian minority comprises 12% of Syria’s population; Shi’a, Alawi, and Druze groups comprise another 3% to the roughly 75% Sunni majority. Some have raised fears that the ongoing turmoil will collapse into a sectarian civil war, with al-Assad’s legions backed by the religious minorities who fear a Sunni reprisal if they were to take power. It is true that the Syrian security forces are largely controlled by Alawis, but this is more a result of cronyism (the al-Assad family is Alawi) rather than religious loyalties.

Although the minorities have been a source of support for al-Assad’s regime, the increasingly brutal violence means that minority civilians are suffering under its iron fist as well as Sunnis. As a result, an increasing number of Christians and Alawis are distancing themselves from the regime and are throwing their support behind the opposition. Religious minorities are defecting from the military to the FSA, indicating that the Syrian opposition is growing increasingly diverse and fully representative of Syria with each day of state-sponsored violence.

In a new constitutional referendum, many Christian Syrians were angry that a controversial article mandating a Syrian President to be Muslim was maintained from the previous constitution. Clearly, the image of al-Assad as the supposed defender of minorities against the vicious Sunni mob is far from reality. Furthermore, al-Assad likely maintained this requirement in an appeal to Sunni religious conservatives, who have long been vocal opponents of his regime. When a dictator resorts to the increasingly desperate tactics of playing off groups of his own people, he feels cornered.

We are all looking forward to hearing what our Syrian contacts have to say, I hope to see you all at the event tonight!