Wednesday 27 April 2011

The Most Trecherous of us

In the last couple of weeks we have seen those that are pro-regime call the protesters in Syria as Traitors and conspirators against their country. I have been stunned to hear from a couple of people that I talked to (some are family members) that what the regime is doing is just because these people (protesters) want to destroy the country. They call them "mukharebeen" that is people that sabotage, vandalize and to put it simply, terrorists. They say those that attack public goods like buildings and such deserve what they are getting.

What this reflects is two things, first, to these people human life is not sacred, secondly, materialism and worldly desires have blinded them so much that they have become selfish. In their eyes a nation is a place, a land, a building or a park, a road and a billboard. They are Wrong. A Nation... is a PEOPLE. People not stone or bricks, not a tree or a building. It is the people. People make up nations, they build nations.

So when you deprive your people from liberty, justice, freedom, security when you strangle their aspirations, hopes and dreams, when your doing this to your PEOPLE, your destroying your Nation; your Country.

Those that kill their people, kill their nation; those that say it is alright to kill some people for the sake of security, in fact are aiding to the destruction of their nation; and those that feel nothing when they see a person killed have no regards to their nation, they don't respect or love their people or nation. They are selfish, they are slaves to materialism. And They Are, most importantly, Traitors.

A nation is not a place, a land, a building or a park, a road and a billboard. A nation is a People.

Sunday 24 April 2011

كلام مهم

كلام مهم .. كل الإحترام إلى بسام القاضي

Wednesday 20 April 2011

الرويبضة

قال النبي - صلى الله عليه وسلم - :                                                            

سيأتي على الناس سنوات خداعات؛ يصدق فيها الكاذب؛ ويكذب فيها الصادق؛ ويؤتمن فيها الخائن؛ ويخون فيها الأمين؛ وينطق فيها الرويبضة؛

قيل‌:‌ وما الرويبضة ‌؟‌

قال‌:‌ الرجل التافه يتكلم في أمر العامة .‌

رواه الإمام أحمد وابن ماجة والحاكم وصححه الألباني (3650) في صحيح الجامع

The Prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon him) Said:
There will come a deceiving time when a liar will be believed, and the honest (sincere) will be called a liar; when the treacherous will be trusted, and a faithful (trusted) person will be called a traitor; And the Ruwaibida will speak.

They said: what is the Ruwaibida?

He Said (the prophet peace be upon him): a trivial man who speaks of public matters.

Support for regime?

In this post I will attempt to show how the Syrian regime of Bashar Al Assad has managed to gain so much support over the past couple of years, just bare with me for a couple of introductory paragraphs!

Social media has played a major role in the uprisings that have taken place across the Middle East and the North Africa region. It is without any doubt that such social media has been the instigator for people to continue their struggle; in the absence of such media those uprisings would have most probably ended in the favor of ruling regimes.

Not only are those social media websites driving and assisting people in their struggles against corrupt governments especially when acting as alternative sources of news and information, but more recently they are showing the consensus and the opinions of majorities in certain countries. For example, on facebook there is a new application that allows individuals to ask questions where other facebook users may select an answer from a number of different answers. One such question that came around a couple of days ago was:

هل انت مع توقيع سوريا لاتفاقية سلام مع اسرائيل؟؟

Do you think Syria should sign a peace treaty with Israel?


Having just checked the results so far those that said YES are 197 whereas those that said NO are 6003.

So how can this be related to the support the current regime gets from most of Syrians?

When it came to foreign policy the Syrian regime has stuck to its core principles of right to resist, righteousness of resistance movements, standing against imperialism and foreign intervention in the middle east region, and most importantly not accepting a peace treaty with Israel. Of course, those aren't simple issues and are discussed further below.

1) Right to Resist and Righteousness of resistance movements:

The Syrian regime has willingly and sometimes out of necessity, supported resistance movements in the region. As we all know they support Hizbullah of Lebanon, Hamas of Palestine and other Palestinian factions including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and for a short while openly supported Iraqi resistance and then covertly supported that resistance after 2004-2005.

When government officials were interviewed by any news outlet and were asked about resistance movements in the middle east, the made it clear that the regime supports any righteous resistance that was fighting any oppressive regime wherever it may be.

Now any Syrian, in fact any person in the world would agree to that and in the eyes of most Syrians, any movement that is fighting the Zionists state is and will always be seen as a righteous movement fighting a righteous cause. However some skeptical Syrians would ask, how come we don't have any resistance on our borders? why isn't our regime, that supports resistance movements in Lebanon and Palestine not conducting its own resistance to the occupation of the Golan Heights. And that's the point the regime failed to address.

2) Imperialism and Foreign Intervention: Not much needs to be discussed except that the regime in Syria opposed any sort of foreign intervention in the middle east most notably the invasion of Iraq even though ties between the two countries haven't been good since the Iraq-Iran war.

3) Peace with Zionist Israel:
The policy that has been carried out by the current regime has been similar to that of Hafez Al Assad. His policy was that no peace will be signed with Israel unless it was a comprehensive peace agreement between Zionist Israel and Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, while at the same time maintaining full rights including return of all occupied lands up until 1967, sovereignty over all the returned lands and other rights related to Palestine.
Having taken the same stance by Bashar Al Assad very little people were against it. However indirect talks that were reveled to the public prior to the 2008 aggression on Gaza exhibited the flexibility of the Syrian regime towards this policy. Whereby the regime defended the indirect talks by pointing out the peace treaties signed between Egypt, Jordan and Israel and justified it by saying it was all part of the comprehensive peace process and that the regime is pragmatic (it does what it can given the circumstances). The indirect peace talks (moderated by Turkey) ended after the aggression on Gaza, as a sign of protest to that aggression.

Those are the three principle foreign policies that solidified the relationship between the people and the regime. There are however other major events that cemented that relationship even further which include:

- US sanctions on Syria
- Assassination of Rafik Harriri and the International Tribunal
- Collaboration of previous Egyptian regime and Saudi Arabia with other countries to topple Syrian Regime.
- Taking in refugees from both Iraq and Lebanon
- Anti Syrian sentiment in Lebanon

(The first Three events contributed heavily to the justification by the regime in current events for the presence of a conspiracy against Syrian regime and its people)

Having considered the foreign policies mentioned above and other events we can clearly see why the majority of Syrians stand by the current regime. When it comes to domestic policies, that is where most of us will find 180 degree shift of opinion. Very few Syrians will be against the foreign policies that were upheld by the previous regime (such questions on facebook reflect this where the current numbers to the earlier mentioned question is at 6950 for NO and 229 for YES - only 6 hours later), believing that the events currently happening in Syria are a continuation of that conspiracy against the Syrian regime by foreign countries and and other entities (mainly Lebanese parties and other figures in the Gulf region).

I do believe that foreign intervention has a minor role in what is happening however the major effects that caused the current uprising happening now in Syria is a result of failed domestic policies, injustice by the regime towards the people and corruption. Will be hopefully discussed later.

Sunday 17 April 2011

Al Baida Village Response



This is the video done in response to those that have believed the new minister that said that the earlier video in Al Baida village that showed security forces humiliating the men of the village, was actually an old video in Kurdistan where the Peshmerga detained Arabs and did what everyone saw in the video.

Not so Mighty

Long has been the myth of the mighty security/intelligence forces (or mukhabarat) in Syria, that people dare not say the names of those security apparatus in public or even in phone conversations. There are 13 different security apparatus in Syria each dealing with different aspects of everyday life of the people. The most notorious of those is the Air force intelligence which works domestically as well as overseas. A security clearance is required for virtually everything anyone wants to do, whether it was to get married, start a business, travel, eat, breath... no I'm just kidding, you don't need a clearance for that.

After what has happened in the past couple of weeks from what some may call a revolution -whereas I like to call it anti-government demonstrations- the government has decided to loosen up a bit by removing security clearance procedures for many of the activities.

But honestly, this post is not about the reducing of procedures by these security/intelligence forces. Its about the following (it is related to the security/intelligence in Syria though).

Anonymous, is a person I know who works two jobs, in the morning he goes to the Governorate of Damascus where he works in the Directorate of waterways. His second job is working at the place I work in.  A couple of days ago, when there was apparently a football game taking place at the Abbasiyeen stadium, workers at the Directorate of waterways were called for an emergency. They all gathered at the Directorate, each was given a baton and were then sent to the stadium to make sure that if some people, all of a sudden, decided to protest, there would be security present to beat them up and disperse them. According to Anonymous, he said nothing happened that night and they were all sent home.

This according to anonymous has been happening regularly. Two days ago when there was a call for a demonstration in the Abbasiyeen Square, government employees were also sent to face the protesters. Anonymous told his employer that he will not go and opted to go on an inspection round to Al Assi river. He said he would never beat a fellow Syrian, and would rather be hit himself instead if put in that position.

This shows how thin the security forces have been running recently. Given that their power is mostly centralized in Damascus it seems they have been poorly distributed across the country. According to another person I have talked to, he tells me that his brother in-law who works for one of the mukhabarat branches, has been in Dera'a for weeks and that last time they talked he was heading to one of the cities in the North, could be Banyas or Homs, he tells me they still haven't heard anything from him.
This also makes it clearer what and why, what is known as "people's committees" have been created in some cities in Syria like Lattakia, Banyas, Dera'a, Homs and other areas where protests exploded in recent weeks.

And this also slightly ridicules the notion being put forth by the ever so failing Syrian media (namely the Syrian T.V. and the Al Doniya TV station) which attempted to ridicule and deny the videos of security forces beating up civilians with the most absurd and farcical of excuses. Like for example, in their attempts of delegitimizing the video where armed security forces had men from the village of Al Baida on the floor with their hands cuffed behind their backs while the security men were stomping on their heads; Al Doniya suggested that one of the security forces looked too young to be part of the security forces given that anyone wanting to join the security/intelligence must be 18 or over, hence deeming the video fabricated.

It was not until recently that the media has been slightly taking a different narrative. They nearly stopped using outlandish excuses for the failure of security forces in dealing with what has been happening, and they tuned down their attack on those that have been protesting for their rights as citizens in a country ruled by the law and by institutions rather than individuals as most claim. Furthermore, with the above in mind, it does very much seem that the security/intelligence apparatus in this country is not as mighty as one may think, it is still however not a good idea to be caught by them, you will most definitely not have a good time where ever they may take you to.

With yesterdays directions given by Bashar Al Assad, it will be interesting to see how things will unravel in the coming week and not weeks. I'll leave me impression on yesterdays 'Lecture' by the president to the new government for another post.