The Syrian writer and politician Rateb Shabo spent sixteen years in the prisons of Hafez al-Assad’s regime, accused of belonging to the opposition’s Communist Action Party, with several of those years in the notorious Tadmor Prison.
That harrowing experience did not prevent him from continuing his public engagement in various capacities: he is a physician, a leftist, an opposition figure, a writer, and a translator. When the Syrian revolution against Bashar al-Assad’s regime broke out in 2011, he sided with it before eventually departing to European exile as the security grip tightened.
In his interview with Malath al-Zoubi, Shabo sketches a picture of Syria today, as the first anniversary of the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime approaches.
1- More than ten months have passed since Bashar al-Assad fled and his regime fell, yet Syria today seems far from political or social stability. How do you analyze the scene?
The crux of Syria’s situation today lies in the fact that what props up the branch of the current authority is the very thing that saws off the branch of Syrian nationhood and destabilizes the country. In other words, the current authority has not merely failed to be a public, civic authority; it draws its domestic power from that very failure. That is the Syrian knot or complexity. What I mean is that the current authority has chosen to rely on a predominantly Sunni approval rooted in a feeling of “restoring the state,” following the emergence and crystallization of a Sunni sense of grievance. Such grievances are fertile soil for extremism that runs counter to national unity, especially when found among a majority, as is the case in Syria.
In fact, the new authority enjoyed broad national approval in its early days, but it opted for a sectarian path rather than a national one, and it does not appear inclined to reconsider this destructive course. It is emboldened by external backing that has repeatedly demonstrated, since March 2011, its indifference to the interests of Syrians.
The most dangerous development in Syria today is the emergence of a sectarian sentiment among Sunnis unlike anything in the country’s history. Its source is not simply the existence of an Alawite president for more than half a century—Syrians knew in 1970 that Hafez al-Assad was Alawite, and they welcomed him nonetheless. The source of Sunni sectarian feeling is the sectarian conduct that Hafez al-Assad began to entrench and exploit: infusing the state’s coercive apparatus with an Alawite sectarian esprit, and his irresponsible, un-national handling of anything that threatened his power.
The current authority is treading the same path taken earlier by the Assads, a path that enabled Hafez al-Assad to survive military coups and to use the security services and the army to commit massacres in defense of his regime, but which also made him a principal cause of Syria’s present social, political and economic destruction.
Against this background, and with a new authority of the same stamp emerging, it is difficult to nourish any real hope for a cohesive, prosperous Syria under the present regime.
If you want to understand the horizon and the “intentions” of a given regime, where it is taking the country, look first at how its instruments of coercion are built, around which creed and with what loyalties. Everything else is decorative porcelain that the authority’s “elephant” can shatter at any moment and leave as mere debris.
What is happening in Syria is the construction of a new “Assadist” authority trying to root itself through violence and intimidation. That logic closes the road to social cohesion and stability. A regime that bases itself on massacres and on alienating large swathes of Syrians with identity-based (not political) hostility will not hold together easily. Such hostility is not easily healed.
2- Concerning the Alawite community specifically: months after the March massacres, assaults that cause civilian casualties keep recurring, along with abductions of women and many other forms of violations, as if a condition of impunity has been established. Is there a prospect for changing this situation?
I believe the current structure of power does not want to change the reality of Alawite dispossession/assault. Some among the authorities may even regard that dispossession as an achievement to be preserved while denying it publicly. To date the regime and its mesmerized constituency do not acknowledge that massacres took place, and Alawites still do not dare to recount the atrocities they witnessed, to photograph mass graves, or to participate in activities that commemorate their victims.
From the first massacre under the Assad system to the latest under the new order, we have seen that Syrian “nationalism” is not sufficiently developed to constrain authorities from repeating such horrors.
Worse, the massacre has functioned not only as a means of crushing and intimidation but also as a way to win over a gullible, fearful or hate-infused audience. Shamefully, massacres in Syria “satisfy the public,” whether committed directly by regime forces or by other forces acting with the regime’s facilitation and encouragement.
The core of the new authority carries a double hostile mobilization, both political and religious, against Alawites. That hostility serves the militias and factions whose souls demand an external enemy. These factions are built on enmity, exclusivity and force. Their members feel superior by dominating “others.” In their worldview there is no place for equality or general justice; their idea of justice is whatever they declare to be just. The factional mentality that dominates Syria today is the direct opposite of state-building. To entrust the task of rebuilding a devastated Syrian state to militias is a closed contradiction at the heart of the present reality.
Hopes for change require altering the non-factional environment that supports factional rule — a process that will take time and requires activism from elites concerned with public affairs, especially Sunni elites. Frankly, the sense of “nationalism” among those elites has appeared lower than I had expected.
As for Alawites themselves, the needed response is to cling to Syrian patriotism and to utterly reject two temptations. The first is responding to current victimization with counter-violence, an impulse that already exists, and which I believe stems more from scarcity of decent options than from a deeper ideological enlightenment, though awareness does factor in. The second temptation is separatism in any form. There are rash attempts in that direction, fed by the feelings generated by current victimization among Alawites.
It is unfortunate that Syrians at large have not yet reached the conviction that national solidarity is in their common interest. Different Syrian communities do not appreciate the value of national solidarity except in moments of their own weakness. Although each community has suffered injustices and narrates its own grievances, that has not led them to recognize national solidarity as a “rope from God” that protects them from weakness and the arbitrariness of authority.
3- After the bloody summer that the country’s Druze suffered, the psychological rift of Suwayda toward the center, toward Syrian nationalism, and toward Sunni communities seems even deeper than the Alawite rift. What practical steps are possible to bridge that gap?
What happened in Suwayda was horrific and completed a picture that began to be painted by the atrocities on the coast. It revealed the narrow, aggressive political conception that governs the authorities: a practice of violence, crushing and, if possible, extermination, without regard for national or humanitarian considerations. This outlook does not build a state; it builds a factional entity without publicness or public rights. It belongs to a pre-modern conception of power.
Now, after the events on the coast and in Suwayda, one must ask whether those communities can forgive the current authority for its crimes against them, as Syrians once forgave Hafez al-Assad after the Tadmor and Hama massacres. What has the current authority done to make Alawites and Druze trust it, other than enclosing them in sectarian isolation after having been lenient toward acts of extermination against them? The regime’s relationship to the cited massacres is revealed not only by reports but by the authority’s behavior and statements after they occurred: ongoing impunity, refusal to acknowledge the massacres, failure to express sympathy or even a word of condolence to families, and continued incitement against the afflicted groups. All this shows that massacres are fostered by the regime and that the regime is an environment that produces massacres.
Addressing this catastrophe requires the current authority to acknowledge what happened and to offer an explicit, direct apology from the top, along with serious prosecution of those responsible. But that is not in the present authority’s horizon unless it is forced by internal pressure that does not seem forthcoming anytime soon; it depends on the collapse of the illusions of the regime’s current backers, just as Alawites’ faith in the Assads has already dissolved.
In my view, the rift will be very difficult to mend except through a radical change of the ruling power and through genuine accountability for senior military and security officials; something that seems impossible while an authoritarian security establishment shields its officers from accountability.
Whenever a ruling group grows arrogant and forgets that justice is the basis of rule, it helps to have a populace that has learned only to support or oppose — that curse follows us. Our fate has been that authorities “stabilize” themselves by breaking society rather than uniting it; our history is a history of ongoing disintegration.
4- Activists, journalists and writers close to the authority, or not fully estranged from it, insist on blaming Shaykh al-‘Aql (the Druze religious leader) Hikmat al-Hijri for much of the clash between the regime and Suwayda. What responsibility do you think actually falls on him?
In principle, clerics assuming political responsibilities is problematic. In principle, the public authority bears primary responsibility for everything that happens. Practically, what occurred in Suwayda is that Druze people were killed in their homes and areas, meaning they were assaulted, they were attacked and not attackers. This does not negate that some Druze fighters committed violations and atrocities that must not be overlooked. It is also true that the Sunni street saw a counter-mobilization against the Druze rooted in a political dispute with the ruling authority, and that mobilization expressed itself in unprecedented arrogance and coarseness, detached from sound judgment.
One must ask why Hikmat al-Hijri gained broad “political” popularity among Druze. My interpretation is that the regime and its supporters attacked the Druze as an identity, while al-Hijri emerged as a representative of that identity in confrontation. It is fair to ask why al-Hijri, who previously advanced national proposals, has now become separatist. I have no doubt his current political choice toward separatism is wrong. Also, from what I follow, there is a weakness in his inclination to conciliation, which likely strengthens his drift toward a divorce from Syria, a drift fed by the sense that Syria, for a long time, is governed by authorities he refuses to live under.
Regarding al-Hijri’s reported appeal for help from Israel, I am convinced he was forced into that. A very sad reality. Some people in Suwayda raising the Israeli flag reflect a narrowness of horizon and cause much pain to Syrians, but one cannot blame a person fleeing death, whatever his escape route. The blame belongs to the source of the mortal threat. The people of Suwayda, known for their patriotism, would not have accepted such measures if they had not felt existential danger.
I believe the main flaw in al-Hijri’s political choice is separating Suwayda’s issue from Syria’s general issue, a kind of surrender and a statement that he does not care if Syria, except Suwayda, remains under the rule he rejects. Under the Assad system, the reverse was true: Suwayda once carried a Syrian banner against a criminal ruling clique. This is an odd and harmful shift for Suwayda and for Syrian public affairs.
5- In parallel, a Sunni group seizes power and commits violations; a Sunni mood of grievance regards itself as entitled to predominance and monopoly of the country; this in turn produces a counter-narrative against Sunnis and a kind of implicit “alliance of minorities.” How do you view today’s dominance of sectarian and communal talk in Syrian political discourse, compared with the diminished discussion of the economy, social classes and living conditions?
Political groups that used to speak in terms of classes, social strata, economy and livelihoods have failed to seize political power for many reasons, not because they were necessarily wrong.
What has occurred for more than sixty years — a period that covers the conscious life of Syrians today — is that a military power seized rule and transformed the language of social classes into the language of sects. That power adopted an authoritarian practice that views society as confessional groups and invests in sectarian distinctions. Sectarian feelings have a particular allure for authorities seeking to perpetuate themselves, even at the cost of everything else.
Regrettably for non-identity forces, the nerve of identity is far stronger than the nerve of class or civic solidarity. Identity is the weapon the powerful use to recruit the weak and mobilize them in the powerful’s struggles. General poverty in Syria does not necessarily unite an impoverished Alawite with an impoverished Sunni; the charged identity divide triumphs over shared economic conditions. Notice today how the powerful (the new authorities with remnants of the old regime’s thugs and thieves) unite, while the poor and weak from both sides suffer under incitement engineered by the powerful and enacted by the foolish.
I do not think Syria has seen such a scale of sectarianized discrimination and dominance as it does today; the principal cause is always the authorities. They have the biggest interest and the greatest influence; they choose the identity axis because it is easy, but it is deadly. Centuries of despotic culture have supplied the authorities with what they need for that. The problem is that sectarian conflicts stir a hidden nerve in people, like quicksand that swallows and drags its victims deeper.
6- Given all this, should we seriously reconsider the Syrian polity itself?
The problem is not geographical borders but the relationships between authorities and the people. If Syria were partitioned into ten states, the same problems would arise in each. People would find lines of division on which to contest everything.
What is worrying today is that opponents of the Damascus authority are carving out geographic spheres for themselves, as if what lies outside these spheres does not concern them. In that sense, Syrian fragmentation begins with the opposition that renders its dissent into enmity. That is what is happening in Suwayda, in what is called the “Political Council of Western and Central Syria,” and also in northeast Syria.
This disease was first apparent in the absence of broad Syrian solidarity when Alawites suffered explicit sectarian massacres. There was a kind of self-deception or burying of the head in the sand about the fact that the new authority in Damascus, with its one-sided factional logic, will inevitably strike everyone with the same stick. Only when our people in Suwayda suffered what our people on the coast suffered did many awaken to this fact. One influencer from Suwayda wrote an apology to Alawites after the Suwayda massacres even though he had been inciting against them during the massacres. Unfortunately, the reaction of most Syrians during this foundational period is dominated by selfishness and short-sightedness, alternating between blind adherence to the new authority and a retreating hostility.
What the new regime in Damascus has displayed, brutality and an extreme exclusionary tendency, revealed a regression in people’s sense of common Syrian belonging and an erosion of appreciation for the value of patriotism in safeguarding their dignity and security.
Thus we descended from a general Syrian solidarity at the start of the revolution, “Ya Daraa, we are with you unto death,” to total absence of solidarity and to an attitude bordering on glee at the killing of unarmed innocent people by agents of the new authority and its supporters.
That does not negate what remnants of the previous regime did: their actions were used by Assad’s supporters to justify the massacres. Nor does it negate that supporters of the new authority fear a return of the old regime; such fears certainly existed among Alawites who saw the Assad state as protection against Islamist rule. But does that justify their support for, or silence about, the crimes of the regime?
Reconsideration is required not of the Syrian territorial entity, for borders are not the problem, but of how Syrian groups view one another and how they collectively view political authority. The key lesson for review is that rule without justice is useless; the idea of dominance among groups leads to ruin sooner or later; and the rule of lust for power, when combined with absence of justice and equality, makes our country a plaything in the hands of external actors.
7) What options do pro-democracy forces have today? And are there social groups that might support them?
In my view, democracy is not something parties “love” and work toward. A party talks about democracy only when it is out of power; its support for democracy is a partisan interest. Once it reaches power, by democratic or non-democratic means, it begins laying the groundwork to rule forever. The label “democratic” attached to a party’s name is empty; no party respects democracy except under duress. The real bet is on party pluralism, because the contest among parties is what generates and protects democracy. Above all, I trust in a general democratic consciousness—whether it takes shape as protests and cross-cutting acts of solidarity, or as civic formations that do not aim to seize power but do defend the public’s rights against the authorities, whatever their color. In our magazine Riwaq Maysaloun, we previously published a special dossier titled “Civil Struggle,” about precisely this kind of activity, the core of the “civil society” our communities sorely need.
Accordingly, one task of democratic forces is to spread democratic awareness and to free public consciousness from ideas of domination and violence that are widely diffused. Another task is to call for broad solidarity against state abuses and violations of the rights of those who are supposed to be citizens. Political forces are duty-bound to preserve their independence from the authorities—i.e., not to become appendages of power, as did the parties of Assad’s “National Progressive Front.” In that way, the contest among independent parties can restrain authoritarian excess and state overreach.
As for public-minded intellectuals with a national outlook, the stratum or “national elite,” if you will—their responsibility is fundamental at this stage: to safeguard the spirit of national solidarity as a shared interest. They abdicate that responsibility when they look at events through the eyes of the authorities rather than through the eyes of the people. Many among them, swayed by their pro-regime inclinations, call massacres “incidents” or “violations.” You even find some who condemn “violations” without condemning the perpetrators, and who refuse to recognize the environment that produces this succession of “events.”
8) A final question, this time about the regime’s conduct outward: what options does Damascus have in the face of repeated Israeli strikes and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to impose a new reality in southern Syria whether in terms of influence or effective control over new swaths of Syrian territory?
The problem is not that Syria cannot confront Israel militarily; much could be said there. It is also understandable that the new authority seeks de-escalation given current weakness. The problem is adopting policies that weaken your own domestic front, working to strengthen your hold on power instead of strengthening the country. The problem is building a “regime’s army” rather than a national army. The problem is constantly reassuring Israel while spreading fear among your own people, driving them to seek Israel’s protection. The Assad system dulled Syrians’ reactions to Israeli strikes—even made some welcome them, thinking they weakened the regime. Sadly, the post-Assad system has followed the same path, having shown itself to be a factional, domineering regime like its predecessor.
It goes without saying that the first option in facing external threats is to strengthen ties with the inside. I do not consider it “nationally minded” to erase the memory of the October 6 war, a moment of the first and last effective Arab solidarity, featuring notable Syrian and Egyptian valor, and the only commemoration we have tied to confronting the Israeli occupation. Nor is it helpful, in a confrontation with Israel (which relies on conscription), to abolish conscription in Syria in favor of creating an army whose structure, doctrine, and loyalty make it a Praetorian Guard rather than a national army.
Do Syrians—who have long extolled the supposed wisdom, cunning, and exceptionalism of the leaders “God blessed them with”—ever ask themselves how, despite such “genius leadership,” they keep falling behind on every front when faced with a country whose prime minister is an ordinary man, against whose policies people demonstrate, who is sued, awaits the courts, and might end up in prison?
