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Posted on 08 February 2012 |
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Syria, Assad and democracy
Sushil Bhan examines how an elected government could end the political crisis in Syria
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Illustration: Tanmaya Tyagi |
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DO YOU need guns, tanks and secret police to work with 20 million Syrians? Inexcusable. Despite Syria’s advanced culture, geographic proximity to affluent Europe and all that, it has a leadership that has effectively pushed Syrians back into the Stone Age. There is little that can explain why Syrians were forced to lose the plot so miserably. A future has been hijacked. Bashar al-Assad must immediately call for internationally-monitored general election and prepare to hand over power to a fairly elected Syrian government. Forty years of manipulations to hog power is too much. The international community must rise to bring sense to the Syrian establishment and make it see reason.
The problem of Syria is its reprehensive state machinery and not merely its head -- the president. A deadly political combine has chewed Syrians to the bone over the last four decades. Whether or not its suave president recognises it, the loyalist keeping him in power have done so by using every bit of their authority to kill, until the ordinary Syrian stands stripped of any power over his future. The disenfranchised in Syria are fighting because they have nothing left to protect and nothing left to lose. Their determination has a solid reason fed, by their feeling of hopelessness.
After 40 years of torture, Syrians want end to the insidious crony-run state machinery with its president. As far as the people are concerned, anything from hereon will be better, and believably, a war worth fighting. A time comes in oppression when people find themselves willing to risk everything. Syria is there. Syrians are out in the street powered by a belief that political change must take effect. Their determination to overthrow a tyrannical regime for once matches the determination with which misrule has been imposed upon them for the past four decades.
The thought of dismantling the draconian system would have crossed the young leaders’ minds when Bashar al-Assad, married to a lady born and raised in the UK, assumed power in 2000. He brought no political and social reform. There was some pillow talk on what was wrong with Syrian politics. Assad didn’t pay heed to it. The first couple looks trendy enough and would have hobnobbed with libertarians all around the world, to know what political sounds were gravitating in Syria. Assad turned a deaf ear. They have three young children.
Marriage and children should have made the president mature enough to sense that his government was not ruling in the correct manner – it was going down the morally wrong path. Assad kept going against reason. That Syria needed healing would have been no secret to the Assads. Unfortunately, secret it was, because as recently as 2007, the president and the first lady celebrated the rigged referendum that won Assad 97 per cent of the votes. The fact is that in the Syrian president the nation does not have someone with modern promise. When a family and a single political party manage to gridlock presidency for 40 straight years, there is something terribly wrong. Syria’s trade partners, its neighbours and certainly international agencies should have warned Assad of the dangers of his style of governance. The problem is that the world governments did not attach any priority to solve Syria’s problem. The world must have fallen for young Assad’s suave and was been deceived by his superficialities.
In 2000, when Assad came to power, had he been sensitised to instil democratisation, the stakes for his ouster would not have reached the overbearing levels they have acquired today. Had he behaved with the rationality that an educated 34-year-old normally would, he could have easily been a fairly elected president that Syria would love. Today, Syria burns and will rest only when Assad and his loyalists grow a conscience.
BECAUSE THE world left Syria to its own devices in 2000, there is no question that Assad had little choice but to play the game according to the rules handed down by his father. Even a trivial intervention would have advised him to transform Syria into a genuine democracy, had the world been suggestive. Assad had a golden opportunity in 2000 to convert his position to be endorsed by a democratic Syria, but nobody made him understand this. Even when Assad knew that the chain of command below him had no currency with the people, he steered Syria and himself for another 12 years towards a worthless destination.
He should have been empowered to make a course correction back then. In times when a Syria-like situations fester everywhere across the world, the global community must present transitional solutions that dictators find compellingly alluring. Had this been done in 2000, both Assad and Syria could have avoided the bloody impasse that exists today. The United Nations (UN) must act with perception to help leaderships make proper choices if we are to gear up for a century with less war and reduced human suffering.
When Assad goes, there is serious concern that the innocents belonging to the minorities that are alleged to be his power source will face the brunt of the people’s wrath. By prolonging his non-negotiating stance, Assad is setting Syria up for a civil war along ethnic lines. By pretending to be the saviour of minorities, Assad is making it inevitable for the population to take sides, pitting Syrian against Syrian. The world, and especially the UN must make the Syrian regime understand that there is no choice now but to hold an internationally monitored general election without further delay. If Assad can bring himself to disengage from his local power base and add volume to the call for democracy, he can still reserve a place for himself in the future of a resurgent Syria.
Democracy will befall by persisting with the rationalist side of Assad. India’s smallest state has the population of more than 2 crore people. When we can live democratically, Syrians can too. President Assad can become a champion of democracy. This will save both – Syria as well as its leadership.
Sushil Bhan, a strategy and technical operations veteran of 25 years, is an FW Oped columnist.
captbhan@yahoo.com
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