.....................................A Chip of the Old Block.........................
February's 'day of anger' fizzled out, but protests in Deraa show Syria's revolutionary spirit is now gathering pace
Ammar Abdulhamid
(Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian dissident and democracy activist now living in exile in Washington, DC)
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 March 2011
"What a difference six weeks make. Back in early February I was asked whether Syria would be next on the growing list of countries to witness a popular revolution. My answer, which came in the form of an article published on Comment is free, was, in essence, "not yet".....
Some might still see the current situation in Syria as too localised and/or contained to amount to a full-scale revolution. However, considering the kind of regime we're dealing with – and Bashar al-Assad's smug attitude when he declared to the Wall Street Journal shortly before this development that his regime is popular, connected to the grassroots and, hence, immune to the kind of revolutionary upheavals sweeping across the region – it is not an exaggeration to call the current situation a revolution, albeit in its early phases.
How the situation will continue to unfold is anyone's guess. But something has become patently clear: once people break the barrier of fear and take to the street in a police state like Syria, violent crackdowns will only strengthen their resolve. As one caller from Deraa told an Arab news anchor recently: "We have one demand: freedom. We will continue to pursue it until we achieve it or die trying."
And what does freedom mean to the people of Deraa? Considering that the statue of the late dictator Hafez al-Assad in downtown Deraa has been demolished, that all pictures of Assad on city walls have been defaced and often replaced with "Down With Assad", that the governor's office has been burned, that the offices of the telecommunications companies owned by Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Assad, have also been burned, your guess is as wild as mine.....
Should Assad continue to dither and be blind to the writing on the wall, more and more people will be adopting the above refrain. The situation may or may not unfold as quickly as it did in Tunisia and Egypt, but that's not too relevant. Now the barrier of fear has been broken, more and more people will be willing to shout that the emperor has no clothes and, more importantly, that the age of emperors, clothed or not, has come to an end in our part of the world and in our country. And not a moment too soon."
Ammar Abdulhamid
(Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian dissident and democracy activist now living in exile in Washington, DC)
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 March 2011
"What a difference six weeks make. Back in early February I was asked whether Syria would be next on the growing list of countries to witness a popular revolution. My answer, which came in the form of an article published on Comment is free, was, in essence, "not yet".....
Some might still see the current situation in Syria as too localised and/or contained to amount to a full-scale revolution. However, considering the kind of regime we're dealing with – and Bashar al-Assad's smug attitude when he declared to the Wall Street Journal shortly before this development that his regime is popular, connected to the grassroots and, hence, immune to the kind of revolutionary upheavals sweeping across the region – it is not an exaggeration to call the current situation a revolution, albeit in its early phases.
How the situation will continue to unfold is anyone's guess. But something has become patently clear: once people break the barrier of fear and take to the street in a police state like Syria, violent crackdowns will only strengthen their resolve. As one caller from Deraa told an Arab news anchor recently: "We have one demand: freedom. We will continue to pursue it until we achieve it or die trying."
And what does freedom mean to the people of Deraa? Considering that the statue of the late dictator Hafez al-Assad in downtown Deraa has been demolished, that all pictures of Assad on city walls have been defaced and often replaced with "Down With Assad", that the governor's office has been burned, that the offices of the telecommunications companies owned by Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Assad, have also been burned, your guess is as wild as mine.....
Should Assad continue to dither and be blind to the writing on the wall, more and more people will be adopting the above refrain. The situation may or may not unfold as quickly as it did in Tunisia and Egypt, but that's not too relevant. Now the barrier of fear has been broken, more and more people will be willing to shout that the emperor has no clothes and, more importantly, that the age of emperors, clothed or not, has come to an end in our part of the world and in our country. And not a moment too soon."
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