Monday, January 16, 2012

The professionalisation of revolution in Syria




With increasingly savvy media efforts and political lobbying, dissidents are broadening the scope of their uprising.

Larbi Sadiki
Al-Jazeera

"Cairo, Egypt - To say that the Syrian groups which are arrayed against the regime, have become "professionals" in revolution is no exaggeration.

The country's revolutionaries have reached a point of no return. The Syrian uprising has four characteristics, each of which are partly owed to its impasse and prolonged nature. It was initially popularised and then professionalised. Recently it has been militarised, and it has now entered into a phase of inevitably heightened internationalisation.

Of these four, its professionalisation is almost unique in the Arab Spring geography, with the qualified exception of the Yemeni uprising, still facing its own dreaded impasse.

The professionalisation of a revolution

The various forces and voices combining in spreading the gymnasiums of resistance all over Syria today have the knack for revolution. They have a firm grip over their revolution that come what may, the Assads will not suffocate the uprising and all they can do is delay the inevitable D-Day - when a fifth dynasty unceremoniously exits Arab history.

This professionalisation in the case of Syria's revolutionaries is the function of the tenacious, audacious and steadfast pursuit of the chief goal of ousting the Assads. But this does not come out of thin air. The Arab Spring has shown with consistency that the longer the dynasticism and the deeper the decay, the more ferocious and adamant are the protests for "freedom" and "dignity". The threshold of fear was transcended and any "aura" the "state", "power", or "authority" had in the past was long gone with Ben Ali and Mubarak and buried with Gaddafi....

The only thing Bashar may still control is how he wishes to be unseated, and there are only four possible exits: the way of Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gaddafi or al-Saleh. A fifth exit may be in the dock of the International Criminal Court.

Three crisis speeches and nearly 11 months of brutality - the brunt of which borne by civilian protesters all over Syria - have only made his compatriots, hundreds of thousands such as Fares, more adamant than ever before to unseat him.

Soon, it will be the first anniversary of the Syrian uprising. The Assads must ponder the difficult question of whether they want to stick around for a second year of futile butchery."

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