A damaged poster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Idleb, March 28, 2015. (Credit: Reuters / Ammar Abdallah)
“Ejek el dor ya doctor” (Your turn has come, doctor). Spray painted on a wall in Daraa during the Arab spring, the symbolic phrase foreshadowed what was to become of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
It is February 2011. Ben Ali has fallen, Mubarak has fallen. The Arab world is in turmoil, with demonstrations breaking out across the region, from Yemen, and Libya, to Algeria, Bahrain and soon Morocco.
Everything seems unreal, yet everything becomes possible.
The euphoria reaches Daraa, a city in southern Syria, where a group of kids manage to break the wall of fear with just a few words. With simple graffiti, they ignite a spark of hope. The mukhabarat (intelligence services) quickly intervene to arrest the 15 or so children involved. They whip them with electric cables until bloodied, and tear off their fingernails.
The Syrian revolution is born, full of hope and pain.
“Ejek el dor ya doctor.” Twelve years later, these words continue to carry the same symbolism and violence of the Syrian Spring. They explain why the revolution erupted and how it was crushed, revealing decades of terror, repression, and silence. They recount the stories of arrests, disappearances, torture, and bombings.
“Ejek el dor ya doctor.” Twelve years later, Bashar al-Assad makes his triumphant return to the “Arab house.” The doctor has emerged victorious, and the revolution lies buried. Syria has become the graveyard of the Arab Spring, and a laboratory for the most heartless and inhumane affair of the 21st century.
Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities against his own people stand unmatched in recent decades.
Despite attempts to qualify, relativize, and “geopoliticise” the situation, the facts are clear: the leader of this regime has destroyed entire cities, forced half of his population into exile, bombed markets, schools, and hospitals for years on end, and used chemical weapons against men, women, and children alike, on multiple occasions.
Even for regional leaders —who are far from being exemplars of human rights themselves — Assad’s actions have gone too far. So much so that he was expelled from the “club of dictators” known as the “Arab League.”
Assad’s recent return to the Arab League says less about his victory and more about the moral and political decay of the regimes that now seek to re-establish ties with him.
The worst of them
Arab countries have a good reason to want to change their approach toward Syria. Instead of weakening the regime, the current status quo is causing immense suffering to the Syrian population. It is a boon for drug traffickers, militias, and Iran, and is not conducive to any resolution of the crisis or the return of Syrian refugees.
However, of all the options available, the Arabs have chosen the worst. Bashar al-Assad has every reason to celebrate. He has been reinstated without having to make any concessions. He can now peddle his narrative, painting the Syrian war as a conspiracy orchestrated by the very countries that are now welcoming him with open arms. He can depict himself as a “resistor” who has valiantly defended his people and protected his territory.
Even if the Arab League serves no purpose other than to showcase the rivalries between its members, the “doctor’s” reinstatement holds significant symbolism.
The Arab states have declared that the Syrian war is over.
They do not seem to care that a third of Syria’s territory is beyond the regime’s control, or that half the country’s population is displaced. They do not seem to care that Russian, Iranian, Turkish, and American soldiers maintain their presence in the country, or that militias continue to rule the land in which over 100,000 people remain missing. They continue to turn a blind eye to the fact that Syria is still in shambles.
By facilitating the return of the Assad regime, the Arab states are committing a double moral and strategic blunder. They will only receive hollow promises from the regime and will not be able to remove it from Iran’s sphere of influence if that is their objective.
Iran has invested billions and sacrificed its soldiers to keep Bashar al-Assad in power — it is not willing to abandon its stake, which it now has the chance to reclaim. The recent visit of Ebrahim Raissi [president of Iran] to Damascus is evidence of this.
Normalizing Assad’s regime will only consolidate Arab legitimacy to the Iranian presence in Syria.
By reinstating Bashar al-Assad, the league’s members want to definitively close the door on the Arab Spring and return to what they consider the natural order of things.
All of them, at different levels and for different reasons, have supported the counter-revolutions throughout the region. They are all terrified that the winds of revolt will spread to their territories.
But blowing on the flames does not put out a fire. The Arab Spring’s revolutions have been stifled, but the spirit that animates them is still alive. What happened in Lebanon in 2019, as well as what happened in Algeria, Sudan and Iraq, and the developments unfolding in all Arab societies, are proof of this.
Rather than intelligently supporting the necessary transitions, the leaders of these countries are attempting to suppress them. However, in the medium and long term, their actions will pose a much greater risk to their stability.
How can they hope to maintain their power when all they offer is propaganda and repression? How can Mohammed bin Salman [Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia], who sees himself as the region’s new Nasser, claim to embody the Arab revival while whitewashing the crimes of the Damascus tyrant? And how can they expect to be taken seriously when they speak of the Palestinian cause and the double standards of the West in the same breath?
“Ejek el dor ya doctor.” Twelve years later, Bashar al-Assad is still in power and speaking to Arab leaders once again.
Tomorrow, he will speak to the Turks, and the day after that, to the Westerner countries. The only thing preventing Assad’s complete rehabilitation is Caesar’s Law — the last bulwark before the worst capitulation of our time.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Sahar Ghoussoub.
