The Syrian opposition is fighting the enemy within the mind of every citizen

As the Syrian National Council unveils its new leader, it is engaged in a battle of ideas against the regime's dominant Ba'athist ideology

A GOOD COMMENT
Nadim Shehadi
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 June 2012

".....What makes these plans more difficult is that the opposition is at the same time fighting a battle of ideas against the regime's dominant Ba'athist ideology. These ideas are deeply ingrained in the minds of Syrians, including those of the opposition, and benefit from a headstart of 48 years where Ba'ath party ideology was hammered in through the media, the educational system and other government institutions.

In addition, a complex web of informants, modelled on eastern European security services, created a lack of trust and a kind of thought police where citizens were expected to report on each other. Even Syrian expats and exiles, living as far away as Texas or Paris, never felt free of these ideas or far from the atmosphere of suspicion........

The opposition to the Syrian regime in fact represents every idea that was suppressed in Syria since the 1958 declaration of the United Arab Republic and unity with Egypt, and especially since the advent of the Ba'ath party in 1958. The Arab Socialist Ba'ath party incorporates elements of Arab nationalism calling for pan-Arab unity combined with anti-imperialism and socialism. The authoritarian or even totalitarian nature of the regime evolved from a slogan that no voice can emerge above the noise of the battle against Israel and imperialism. This was consolidated through several wars and battles, both internal and external.

The ideas represented by the opposition include various facets of the antithesis of Ba'ath party teachings. Where the dominant ideology was unity, the opposition has diversity; where it has secularism you have the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious parties; where it had Arab nationalism you have Kurds and ethnic groups; where there was a one-party state you now have a multiplicity of parties. What was a strong centralised state under the Ba'ath is now a debate about various forms of administrative and political decentralisation........

Whenever an element of this ideology comes up in a meeting of the opposition, it is like hitting a brick wall. Syrians were brought up for generations with the idea that any attempts at dissent were part of a conspiracy to fragment the nation and weaken its resolve in the battlefield amounting to treason and collaboration with the enemy. While these may sound like empty rhetoric, Syrians, some of whom are discovering the practice of politics for the first time, experience these mental obstacles and realise the difficulties of surmounting them.

What the SNC hopes to achieve in the near future amounts to co-ordinating different ideas and battling a mentality that is deeply programmed in the minds of people. It is in fact a process that will take at least two generations and will last long after the regime is gone; the enemy is within the mind of each and every Syrian."