In December, Syrians breathed a collective sigh of relief as the Assad regime was finally deposed. The following weeks were filled with celebration: the green flag of the revolution flew at gatherings across the country, and family chat groups buzzed with news of long-exiled relatives planning their return to Syria. Six months on, cautious optimism remains, but so do immense challenges.

The violence that erupted along the coast in March exposed the country’s fragility. Sparked by remnants of the Assad regime, including senior military and intelligence officials, targeted attacks were launched against transitional government security forces. In response, several militias and Islamist groups went on a rampage, carrying out indiscriminate sectarian reprisals, primarily against Alawites.

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), 1,334 people were massacred in Latakia, Tartous, and Hama, including 60 children. Of these, 889 were killed by armed forces nominally aligned with the transitional authorities; the rest by regime loyalists. Reports emerged of sectarian incitement, kidnappings, forced displacement, and videos of Alawite civilians being humiliated.

The transitional government condemned the violence and set up a fact-finding committee, pledging to prosecute those responsible, but no results have yet materialised. Armed clashes with Druze factions in Jaramana, Sahnaya, and Sweida have deepened fears among minority communities. A campaign of disinformation, including AI-generated videos of massacres and recycled footage of past atrocities, is fueling this anxiety.

The open-source platform Verify Syria has traced much of the content to Iranian networks. Many Syrians have taken to social media to debunk false reports of their own deaths. Fabricated claims of Christian massacres, amplified by high-profile Western figures like Elon Musk, have been publicly refuted by religious leaders. Both Iran and Israel are exploiting communal fears for geopolitical leverage.

The transitional government has sought to reassure minorities by appointing ministers from the Alawite, Christian, Druze, and Kurdish communities. It is also in dialogue with Kurdish and Druze representatives, who seek greater community autonomy within a decentralised Syria.

While these are encouraging signs, many remain sceptical that a leader who began his career in Al Qaeda will deliver on promises of a democratic transition or meaningfully address minority concerns.

The National Dialogue Conference on February 25 drew criticism for being unrepresentative and rushed. Invitations were issued just two days prior, excluding many potential attendees, and notably, there was no participation from the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

Still, a genuine democratic space has opened. Across the country, citizen initiatives are emerging, and public debates are widely attended.

After years of revolutionary struggle, Syrians are not likely to relinquish hard-won freedoms. Returnees from exile bring fresh political ideas and civic cultures shaped abroad, enriching the evolving landscape.

Ahmad al-Sharaa remains widely popular, seen as responsive to public pressure. Yet the transitional government’s failure to arrest key figures from the Assad regime is a major source of public anger. This lack of accountability is eroding trust and threatening civil peace, as some victims may seek revenge on their own.

In April, outrage erupted after a photo went viral of Justice Minister Mazhar al-Wais shaking hands with Judge Ammar Bilal, the former chief prosecutor of Assad’s Counter Terrorism Court — infamous for jailing dissidents and overseeing mass torture.

As mass graves continue to be uncovered, such moments deepen public fury.

High-profile war criminals like Fadi Saqr, former leader of the regime’s National Defence Militia and a key figure in the Tadamon massacre, have been granted amnesty and remain free. Saqr even visited the massacre site, sparking protests from victims’ families.

Despite his record, he has taken part in national dialogue efforts and serves on civil peace committees liaising with coastal communities.

Justice for the victims of Assad-era crimes is essential. Families cannot be asked to forgive or forget in the name of national unity or moving on.

Transitional justice is the first step toward reconciliation, and crucial to ensuring that minority communities, especially Alawites, are not collectively blamed for the regime’s crimes.

Accountability must apply to all perpetrators, regardless of sect or allegiance. Without justice, there can be no true reconciliation or healing in a society scarred by decades of trauma and sectarian manipulation.

Rebuilding Syria is an immense challenge. My visit in April made the scale of destruction painfully clear — miles of bombed-out suburbs around Damascus speak to the enormity of what’s been lost.

Reconstruction is estimated to cost between $250 and $400 billion. Without homes or jobs, millions of Syrians abroad cannot return, while those inside the country face daily hardship, with 90 percent living below the poverty line.

News that the US, EU, and UK have lifted most sanctions has opened new opportunities for trade and investment. Syria has already signed a $7 billion energy deal with Qatari, Turkish, and US companies to revive its energy sector. In Damascus, where residents currently receive just two hours of electricity a day, such developments are a welcome relief. Celebrations erupted across the country in response.

But to ensure this progress benefits the broader population, not just a handful of crony capitalists, strong civil society and popular oversight are essential. Cronyism was a hallmark of the old regime and a root cause of the 2011 uprising. Syria’s national wealth must not fall into foreign hands.

Nowhere is foreign interference more blatant than in Israel’s escalating military campaign. Since Assad’s fall, Israel has intensified strikes on Syrian military infrastructure, carried out incursions in the south, seized territory, and even kidnapped Syrian farmers. It views the new government as a threat and is using this moment to pursue its regional ambitions.

The transitional government, weak and fragmented, with no air force and limited capacity, is unable to respond. Ahmad al-Sharaa has tried to reassure Israel that Syria poses no threat and now relies on the protection of Turkey, the Gulf, and the US. Meanwhile, Syrians have taken to the streets in protest against the occupation, and in solidarity with Gaza.

Building a free and just Syria after five decades of totalitarian rule, in a region rife with instability and foreign meddling, was never going to be easy. The challenges are immense. But so too are the reasons for hope. We can wait and see what unfolds, or we can engage, support, and help shape the movements working for a democratic and just Syria for all its people.

This was first published in Al Jumhuriya

On 19 December, photos circulated on social media of a protest in Umayyad Square in Damascus calling for a secular, civil and democratic state. The photos stood out immediately because, unlike other mass gatherings in Syria in recent days, very few revolutionary flags could be seen in the crowd. As the day went on, it transpired that many of those participating in the demonstration had in fact been regime partisans, those who had previously expressed their support for Assad’s militias, barrel bombs and chemical attacks. Revolutionary Syrians were understandably outraged to see such people exercising the rights they had long denied to others.

Yet I also took some hope from this protest. The demonstration was permitted by the new transitional government, no-one was arrested, no-one was shot. An armed fighter from the HTS-led Military Operations Administration spoke at the demonstration. Amongst the crowd’s chants of “secularism, secularism” – a goal he clearly didn’t share – he eloquently expressed the need to stand united against sectarianism.

Impassioned debates erupted over social media and in Syrian chat groups between supporters of secularism and supporters of a state utilizing an Islamic framework. A feeling of unease swept over me as revolutionaries argued amongst themselves. It’s much easier to be united when you are standing against something than when you must articulate what you are standing for. But then I realized that this was precisely the Syria that revolutionaries had been fighting for: a country where debates could be had together in the public sphere, sharing differing opinions, and listening to each other respectfully. The hard work of political co-construction has just begun.

The debates, however, largely missed the point. The dividing line in Syria was never between religion and secularism, but between authoritarianism and democracy.

Syria has a large Sunni majority, comprising some 70 percent of the population. It is understandable that religious Muslims want to organize their societies and politics in accordance with their own culture, values and traditions. In the West, Islamism is seen as a monolith of reaction – associated with enforced gender segregation and severe punishments for transgression – but to most Muslims it means a just government and a clean social space free of corruption. Islamism can have many faces: it can be liberation theology, bourgeois democracy, dictatorship, or apocalyptic nihilism. It should not be assumed that democracy in the Middle East will resemble liberal Western democracy, which – following the full backing many Western states have given to Israel’s genocide in Gaza – has lost what little credibility it still had.

As a result of the former regime enforcing its own vision of ‘secularism’ on the population – as a means of social control up to and including genocide – many Syrians cannot help but feel antipathy towards the concept. The regime played on sectarian divisions and pitted communities against each other – divisions which revolutionary Syrians worked hard to overcome. On Twitter, a young woman posted a photo of herself, her bright blue hair tied up in a ponytail, wearing a leather bomber jacket emblazoned with the free Syria flag. “I’m a young, unveiled, free Syrian woman,” she wrote, “and I’d rather be ruled by conservative God-fearing Muslims than by Assad’s genocidal militias.” Someone else commented in a chat group, “Seriously, whether Syria is Muslim or secular, I just want a country with electricity, food, reasonable prices, no corruption, unity, safety; a country I can actually be proud of and call home.”

Today, a large part of the secular, democratic opposition are either outside the country or were slaughtered in Assad’s gulags, and the organized opposition in exile has limited popular legitimacy on the ground. The divide also has a clear class dimension: the Sunni majority were among those who suffered most under the rule of both Hafez and Bashar Al Assad, as minority groups rose to positions of power. The Syrian revolution started on the peripheries, including amongst more socially and religiously conservative communities. Those who took up arms and sacrificed their lives played a key role in liberating Syria from a tyrant, and they rightfully want to participate in the future direction of the country. The question is to what extent they will allow others to participate too, support the transition to civilian rule, and not divide power between various warlords. Anyone who claims to represent Syrians must prove it at the ballot box.

The West, meanwhile, has been displaying its Islamophobia. In a BBC interview with Ahmed al-Sharaa (al-Jolani) one of Jeremy Bowen’s first questions was whether the new Syria includes “tolerance for people who drink alcohol.” Meanwhile, mass graves are still being unearthed around the country, Syrian mothers are still frantically trying to search for news of their detained loved ones, and Israel occupies more territory on Syria’s southern borders. Likewise, white feminists began expressing concern over women’s clothing – some of whom had never said a word about the regime’s organized rape campaigns targeting dissident communities, or the women whose bodies were abused and slaughtered in prison. Assad’s supporters in the West expressed their concern about minorities – the same people who remained silent as Assad systematically exterminated those who opposed his rule.

There are clear double standards on display. Representative democracy (if that is what Syrians achieve) represents the aspirations of the majority and excludes dissident minorities. The Christian Democrats in Germany do not represent Germany’s sizable Muslim population, yet no one suggests that they should not play a role in the country’s politics. On the other hand, representative democracy can also lead to authoritarianism. Syrians should take care not to repeat the same mistakes as Trump’s America, where authoritarian, conservative, religious factions are gaining strength and consolidating power, infringing on women’s rights, threatening the rights of minorities, eroding the democratic space, and leaving less room to organize an alternative.

For the sake of clarity, it is my personal belief that a secular society can best represent Syria’s diverse social fabric. Secularism is the separation of state and religion. It does not seek to stop people practicing religion; it respects their wishes to practice or not practice as they see fit. It does not impose its vision on society or grant one religious group privileges over another. Minority groups do not want to be paternalistically bestowed a few rights, they want an equal chance to participate in their country’s political, cultural and economic life.

Secularists in Syria are not one homogenous group. They include supporters of the regime and members of the opposition, and that secular opposition is further divided into numerous political leanings: leftists, liberals, conservatives, and people of different religious faiths, including many Sunni Muslims. Conversely, many Sunni Muslims, in Syria and around the world, supported the Assad regime.

But in order to be credible, the discourse of secularism must be reclaimed from the Assadists and not co-opted by counter-revolutionary forces. Secularists must learn the lessons of Egypt, where Egyptians – in opposition to any form of Islamist democracy, however imperfect – ushered back in a ‘secular’ fascism that is now worse than under Mubarak. Islamists too must ask whether the Islamic state they defend is one which could really guarantee the values of the revolution, dismantle the repressive structures of the state and not replicate authoritarianism under another name; one which could truly represent all of Syria’s diverse communities and not lead to feelings of exclusion and create further political instability. Indeed, fundamentalist visions of Islam may threaten Sunni Muslims above all: those who do not conform to the interpretations expressed by those in power are at risk of accusations of apostasy. Every step towards greater freedoms should be encouraged, every step backwards fiercely resisted.

Some condescendingly proclaim that Syrians are not ready for democracy. Yet the last 13 years have seen a rich Syrian democratic legacy take shape. The Local Coordination Committees which organized protests against the regime were horizontally organized bodies which included women and men from all of Syria’s diverse communities. In liberated areas, communities self-organized and established Local Councils to administer services to the population, and in many cases held democratic elections to choose their representatives. This was a democratic system that could contain people of many different faiths, and people of none: a grassroots democracy that allowed communities the autonomy to organize in accordance with their own local values and traditions. This community autonomy does not equate to territorial division, but can in fact create a more organic unity – united, but not homogenous. Further, revolutionary Syrians defended these hard-won gains from authoritarians and were quick to protest against anyone who impinged on the people’s freedoms, including people who today hold positions of power.

Syrians face many challenges. It will take a long time to bring the country back from political and economic destruction. There must be justice and accountability, and a period of reconciliation. There must be time to rebuild a vibrant civil society and political culture. Syria now faces many counter-revolutionary threats. Syrians need not look to grand ideologies to frame their future. They should look at their recent experience and continue the revolution, which was always about more than toppling a tyrant. The authoritarian legacy the Assad regime left behind must be dismantled, and the democratic space must be defended at all costs.

Eight years after Aleppo was subjected to a brutal starvation siege, pounded by the Assad regime, Russian and Iranian bombs and thousands of its residents massacred or forcibly displaced, the Free Syria flag flies over the citadel.

The rebel advance and consequent crumbling of regime forces took everyone by surprise, rapidly changing the map of power across northern Syria which had remained largely frozen since 2020 power-sharing agreements between Russia, Turkey and Iran.

In a few days Aleppo and Idlib province came under the control of rebel groups dominated by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS).

The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army meanwhile launched an offensive in and around Tel Rifaat, under the control of the Kurdish-led, and US-backed, Syrian Democratic Forces.

Clashes were reported between opposition factions and the regime in the southern province of Daraa, whilst in Druze-dominated Suwayda, popular protests were held in support of Syrians in the north.
 Syrians inside the country and abroad, were taken by surprise.

Many celebrated – whilst holding their breath, not daring to hope that this could signal the endgame for the regime.

For years, Assad has raped, tortured, starved, bombed and gassed the populace into submission. He’s been kept in power by foreign support and foreign bombs. But today Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Iranian military infrastructure in Syria (including its proxy Hezbollah) has been decimated by Israeli strikes.

In recent days, Assad, isolated and no doubt panicking, has been frantically calling upon his Gulf allies for support.

By contrast, the rebels, seizing on this moment of weakness, look stronger and more unified than ever before, using new drone weaponry and capturing weapons stores from retreating regime forces who have put up little resistance.

Assad’s vengeance: When, not if

The rapid liberation of territory has given millions of Syrians hope that they may soon return home, and some already are. Syrians were filled with emotion to see videos circulated of prisoners, including many women, liberated from regime prisons. Over 100,000 remain in Assad’s gulag or disappeared.

But Syrians are also fearful. They fear regime reprisals against civilians. The regime and Russia are now bombing hospitals and camps for the displaced in Aleppo and Idlib in retaliation.

Doctors at a hospital in Aleppo appealed for support as they lacked capacity to deal with the influx of injured.

There are reports Iranian-backed Shia militia are entering the country from Iraq to bolster Assad’s forces.

Syrians also fear what may come next. There is no longer an organised democratic opposition inside the country – Assad made sure of that. The militias that are reclaiming territory are diverse in their composition but include authoritarian, extremist and in some cases foreign backed groups. They don’t represent Syrian’s revolutionary aspirations.

The rebels which advanced out of Idlib united under Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS).

HTS is an authoritarian Islamist militia, dominant in northern Syria. It has its roots in Al Qaeda but has significantly moderated in recent years and is a Syrian nationalist, not foreign jihadist, organisation.

It is the de facto local administration in Idlib running institutions, services and humanitarian assistance through the Syrian Salvation Government.

There have been constant wide-spread popular protests against the militia and its leader Mohammed al-Johani for their abuses and authoritarian rule.

Those who wield arms do not represent the aspirations of the majority. Regardless, supporters of the regime repeatedly slander all opposition to Assad as ‘terrorists’ using cut and paste War on Terror, Islamophobic and Zionist narratives to dehumanise them, reduce their diverse struggle to its most authoritarian components and legitimise regime violence against them.

Minority groups in particular are fearful, despite attempts by the alliance to reassure them; issuing statements ensuring the protection of minorities and calling for unity amongst all Syrians.

HTS has even set up a hotline for citizens in Aleppo and Idlib, so they can report any abuses or security incidents.

So far, religious minorities have been unmolested and Christians in Aleppo as well as religious leaders such as Bishop Ephrem Maalouli have issued statements that they are currently safe and prayers continue in churches.

Syrian Kurds, meanwhile, fear the advances of Turkish-backed forces and threats to their hard-won autonomy, especially given concerns over an anticipated American withdrawal leaving them vulnerable and isolated. Already, disturbing videos have circulated showing abuses against Kurdish-led forces.

Turkish-backed groups are unpopular amongst Syrians in general due to corruption, abuses and constant infighting. The Turkish state, once seen as an ally of the revolution, is now viewed with disdain due to its efforts to normalise with Assad and the surge of xenophobic attacks on Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Once again dominant ‘left’ narratives seek to deny Syrians any agency and view all events through a never-changing geo-political lens. Conspiracies circulate of foreign machinations behind recent events.

But foreign states are not interested in the overthrow of the regime, much less in Syrian self-determination.

The US, despite its anti-regime rhetoric, has only given partial support to rebels, enough to pressure Assad to the negotiating table not change the balance of power. US military intervention focused on defeating ISIS, not the regime.

Israel has a useful partner in a regime which, despite its anti-Israel rhetoric, only ever used its weapons to crush domestic opposition (and in many cases Palestinian resistance) rather than liberate Syrian territory from Israeli occupation.

Turkey’s interests focus on crushing Kurdish autonomy and returning refugees. Undoubtably, all of these states will now scramble to influence the course of events, ensuring their interests are protected and any outcome works in their favour.

Syrians are under no illusions; whatever comes after Assad will be a mess. The whole region is engulfed in flames.

But for millions of Syrians nothing can be worse than this genocidal fascist regime which has murdered hundreds of thousands, completely destroyed the country, handed it over to foreign powers, devastated the economy, caused half the population to flee their homes, and which now runs the country as a drugs cartel exporting the amphetamine Captagon.   

Should the regime fall, millions of Syrians will be able to return home, allowing civil activism to resume once more. If Assad falls, there is a chance to hope, and hope has been in short supply amongst Syrians.

If I were granted paradise

I would not wish to have it alone

May no clouds rain on me and my land

That do not cover the whole country

When Riad al-Turk, the veteran dissident known affectionately as “the old man of the Syrian opposition,” died on New Year’s Day 2024 in exile in France at the age of 93, his family took the unusual step of starting his death notice not with a religious quote but with the above lines by the 11th-century Syrian poet, philosopher and freethinker Abu al-Alaa al-Maarri. The egalitarian spirit of the verse captures much of the essence of Riad, who lived a life of great personal sacrifice in the struggle for a free and democratic Syria. He suffered immensely but was not broken. He leaves behind a rich legacy.

When I first met Riad, I had recently arrived in Damascus from Britain. It was the year 2000. It was a mild autumn, but all the talk was of a “Damascus Spring.” Hafez al-Assad had just died, after three decades of totalitarian dictatorship, and his son Bashar had inherited the presidency. The new president seemed to be an outward-looking modernizer. Many Syrians at home and abroad believed his presidency would usher in a new democratic age. My father was one of many political dissidents who seized the moment to return from exile. He took me with him.

Riad al-Turk was a close friend and former comrade of my father’s. He used to visit our house in Tiliani, behind the Italian Hospital from which the district takes its name. I saw my father truly come alive on those evenings when they sat with other friends in a smoke-filled room, a glass of arak or whisky in hand, voices raised, hands gesturing. During those visits my father re-lived the escapades of his youth. He could also engage in the animated political discussions he’d missed so much in exile.

I was young, and my interest in Syrian politics was limited. I had come to Damascus to spend time with family. I had recently graduated with a master’s degree in human rights and had dreams of working in South Asia. Did I want to work on human rights in Syria? Riad asked me. A short while later, I found myself attending a meeting of a human rights monitoring center, one of the newly formed independent civil society organizations that had sprung up following Hafez al-Assad’s death. The meeting was held in an old stone building in Damascus’s Baramkeh neighborhood. I was introduced that day to a young lawyer called Razan Zaitouneh. We were the same age, both of us were passionate about human rights and social justice, and we quickly developed a strong friendship. At the time, I was largely oblivious to the risks such work entailed.

I never made it to South Asia, and I saw a great deal more of Riad.

Riad al-Turk was born in Homs in 1930. He grew up in an orphanage. Maybe it was his early childhood experience that imbued him with the strong sense of injustice and the determination to resist it that would define his life. He became politically active while in law school, and in 1952 he joined the Syrian Communist Party. His first short stint in prison was the same year. This was punishment for opposing the military coup led by Adib al-Shishakli, one of a series of coups that followed Syria’s formal independence from France. Then he was imprisoned again in 1958 and held for 16 months for opposing the short-lived United Arab Republic, which brought the Syrian and Egyptian states together under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rule. Both the Shishakli coup and the Nasserist dictatorship significantly eroded Syrian democracy, giving the military and security services a central role in political life. It was this assault on democracy — and, specifically, Nasser’s banning of the Syrian Communist Party — that provoked the opposition of Riad and his comrades. He was a democrat to his core. And by now he had suffered grievous torture, which didn’t subdue his fervor for justice — on the contrary, it deepened and made it more visceral. He refused to back down.

He served as secretary general of the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau) from its foundation in 1973 until 2005. The party was formed following a split in the Syrian Communist Party (SCP) over several key disagreements. The breakaway Political Bureau wanted the Arabs to play a role independent of the Soviet Union and opposed the SCP’s authoritarian leadership under Khaled Bakdash. In 1972, they rejected the SCP’s decision to join the pro-regime National Progressive Front, which provided a facade of political pluralism while the reality was absolute subservience to the ruling Baath Party and the Hafez al-Assad cult. The Political Bureau was able to operate at first, although with restrictions. But the regime cracked down on the party after it strongly condemned Syria’s intervention in Lebanon in 1976, in which Assad supported pro-Israel Falangist militias against the Palestinian-leftist alliance. All party activity was severely repressed. In October 1980, Riad was arrested.

On this occasion, he was imprisoned for almost 18 years, spending the whole time in solitary confinement. For the first 10 years he didn’t have a bed to sleep on. As well as the psychological torment, he was subjected to extreme physical torture. He refused repeated attempts to co-opt him in return for his release.

He was isolated from the outside world entirely. It was only in the final months that he was allowed books, newspapers or mail. I once asked him how he managed not to lose his mind after such a long period in solitary confinement. He told me how he used to collect lentils from his meals to turn into artworks. This story became well known among Syrians in part through two films made by Mohammed Ali al Atassi about Riad’s life: “Ibn al-Amm” (The Cousin, 2001) and “Ibn al-Amm Online” (The Cousin Online, 2012).

His long periods in prison, and his unwavering commitment to a free Syria, earned him comparisons to Nelson Mandela. I was often in awe not just of Riad, but of other former prisoners who, despite years of incarceration and brutal treatment, resumed their political activism when they were released. I suppose they’d had everything else taken from them — the chance of a life lived with family, of raising children — and knew that once your eyes are opened to tyranny and injustice, remaining silent is also a political choice.

Riad was released in May 1998. Hafez al-Assad died in 2000.

When I arrived in Syria in the fall of 2000, the “Damascus Spring” was in full swing. In the supposed political opening of Bashar’s nascent reign, a number of forums were being set up, primarily in Damascus but also in other towns. In these forums, dissidents gathered to discuss ideas of political reform. It was by no means a radical movement — its demands were modest — yet it represented a significant change in a polity where, for decades, all criticism was forbidden and brutally suppressed. Once more, Riad became a prominent critic of the regime. In an interview on Al Jazeera in August 2001, he declared, “the dictator has died.” The regime was angered. Riad was arrested, was tried by the State Security Court and spent another 15 months in prison.

At the human rights organization where I worked, one of our main areas of focus was political prisoners and prisoners of conscience — those from a wide variety of backgrounds and political beliefs who were imprisoned because they opposed the regime and advocated for a free and democratic Syria. As the “Damascus Spring” turned to winter, we were increasingly advocating for friends and colleagues who had been incarcerated by the regime. Riad was one of them. It had now become apparent that Bashar al-Assad would continue his father’s authoritarian rule.

In 2005 the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau) moved away from its Marxist-Leninist roots. Adopting a social democratic orientation, it became the Syrian Democratic People’s Party. Riad stepped down as party secretary, but remained an active and influential member. In October of that year, he was one of the signatories to the Damascus Declaration. This attempt to unify the political opposition called for a multiparty democracy based on free periodic elections, respect for the rule of law, equality and human rights. (In 2011, the Syrian Democratic People’s Party joined the Syrian National Council through its participation in the Damascus Declaration.)

But Riad was aware that a lack of political freedoms was not the only challenge people faced. The neoliberal economic reforms introduced by Bashar al-Assad and his regime’s rampant corruption and crony capitalism were impoverishing large sections of the population. In a 2005 interview, Riad observed:

   “The issues that concern people are the issues that affect their daily lives. The average salary, for example, is less than 6,000 lira (about $115) per month. It’s not enough; they need to pay rent and put food on the table and most families have at least five people. … The average citizen may work two or three jobs and there is no time for anything else. How is he supposed to get active in politics? It’s not possible because the mafia-like rulers have continuously impoverished the people of this country.“

Riad al-Turk was a man of quiet and unassuming dignity. He was a profoundly intelligent man and one of considered words. He exuded warmth despite the sadness in his eyes that hinted at the ocean of pain he must have carried within.

At our office in Baramkeh, a delicious cooked lunch was prepared every afternoon. We were often joined by various figures of the Syrian opposition — human rights defenders, political activists and journalists. As Razan Zaitouneh and I were the two young women in a group of older men, the task of clearing away the dishes often fell to us. The exception was Riad. This elderly, frail gentleman, whose iconic status and history of hardship should have exempted him from any mundane tasks, always got up to help us.

He was also generous in spirit. I still have two gifts from Riad, one a beautiful simple silver box for tobacco (he found my smoking roll-ups amusing) and the other a set of beads strung by political prisoners during their incarceration.

When the Syrian revolution erupted in 2011, of course Riad openly supported it. He believed the revolution belonged to the youth, and he was critical of the traditional opposition from which he himself came. In a 2011 interview, he told the Syrian filmmaker Mohammed Ali al Atassi:

  ”Revolutions are not made by statements and television interviews but by action on the ground. … Today, we face a people emerging from their silence, developing their own language, inventing their slogans and forms of action. Let us listen to them carefully, walk with them and not ahead of them and refrain from hijacking their voices to our benefit.“

In the early days of the revolution, he went into hiding, at first staying in Damascus to avoid arrest as the regime was rounding up thousands of pro-democracy protesters and opposition activists. He was close to the young activists of the local coordination committees co-founded by Razan Zaitouneh that organized the protest movement and engaged in media work. He moved throughout the liberated areas encouraging the youth to join the rebellion against the regime’s tyranny. Although not himself a member, he was influential in the Syrian National Council (the opposition body in exile) when it was formed in Istanbul in August 2011. In 2018, in deteriorating health, he left his beloved Syria and fled via Turkey to France, to be with his daughters following his wife’s death.

Some rare people who enter your life are teachers — people who, through their friendship, change you forever. Riad al-Turk was such a person for me. So was Razan Zaitouneh, the young woman he introduced me to all those years ago. (Razan was kidnapped in the Syrian city of Douma in 2013, most likely by the Islamist militia Jaish al-Islam, along with three other activists — Samira al-Khalil, Wael Hammadeh and Nazem Hammadi — collectively known since their disappearance as the Douma Four.) Riad and Razan taught me the same lesson: that political struggle is not an abstract, elite or intellectual endeavor. Political struggle starts and ends with people — it stands by them, and walks together with them. Riad al-Turk liked to be called by the affectionate term “Ibn al-Amm” (cousin) by his friends and comrades. But to me he was always “Ammo” (uncle). The best way we can honor his legacy is by continuing to strive for the Syria he gave his life to achieve.

This edited version, which contains a new introduction appeared in New Lines Magazine.

On April 1, 2023, a conference was held in Lyon, France, under the title “Syria and Its Allies on the March Towards a Multipolar World.” It was held by Egalite et Reconciliation (Equality and Reconciliation), a think tank founded by Alain Soral, a former member of France’s right-wing National Front party (rebranded in 2018 as the “National Rally”). Soral was imprisoned in 2019 for racism, antisemitism and Holocaust denial. The syncretic think tank he founded, whose motto is “left-wing on labor, right-wing on values,” combines social and economic ideas from the left with values around family and nation traditionally associated with the right.

The conference brought together members of the far right to update them on the current situation in Syria and thank the country for “its war on terrorism.” At first sight, it may seem strange that European fascists are organizing to stand in solidarity with an Arab dictator. But in fact, President Bashar al-Assad’s war on the Syrian people who rose up against him appeals to fascist sensibilities across the globe.

James Alex Fields Jr. was 20 years old when he drove his car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 12, 2017, killing the 32-year-old protester Heather Heyer and injuring numerous others. Fields had long been public with his far-right views, and efforts by his alleged colleagues in the fascist group Vanguard America to disavow his allegiance were unconvincing. In seeking to understand Fields’ motives, the many journalists and others who checked his Facebook account were greeted by an image of Assad with the word “Undefeated.” Why, they found themselves asking, would an American white nationalist celebrate an Arab leader from a majority-Muslim country, and what might this say about the movement from which he emerged?

Fields is not the only far-right activist to display admiration for Assad. A number of other attendees of the “Unite the Right” rally expressed similar sympathies. One protester boasted a T-shirt emblazoned with the words, “Bashar’s Barrel Delivery Co.,” in reference to the improvised bombs that have caused thousands of civilian deaths and turned whole Syrian cities into rubble. Another declared, “Support the Syrian Arab Army … fight against the globalists!” to which the alt-right YouTuber Baked Alaska responded, “Assad did nothing wrong, right?”

Far-right figures expressing common cause with the Syrian dictator long predates this rally. As far back as 2005, the Klansman-cum-state legislator David Duke visited Damascus and declared in a speech aired on Syrian state television that “part of my country is occupied by Zionists, just as part of your country, the Golan Heights, is occupied by Zionists. The Zionists occupy most of the American media and now control much of the American government.” Assad’s regime has only increased in popularity with the far right since.

Adoration of Assad is, indeed, widespread among the far right. Some of this support mirrors more commonly held notions about Assad: that he is the only force effectively fighting the Islamic State group, that he is somehow holding the country and region together or that he is protecting Christians and other religious minorities. (This is the basis on which one far-right Christian nongovernmental organization, known as SOS Chretiens d’Orient, has supported the Syrian dictator. It is now under investigation in France, where it is based, after New Lines published an expose of its activities.) Many other groups, however, demonstrate clearly fascist motives.

On March 3, 2018, Justin Burger, a “major” in the now-defunct Traditionalist Worker Party in Georgia, and “Rock,” one of his comrades, had a conversation on the #tradworker Discord channel, subsequently leaked by Unicorn Riot (a non-profit media collective that reports on far-right organizations). In the conversation, Burger takes offense at a meme showing a swastika among other symbols opposed to Assad:

 “JUSTIN BURGER: Assad is a Ba’athist, the closest still living incarnation to NATSOC. … Cyprian Blamires claims that “Ba’athism may have been a Middle Eastern variant of fascism.” According to him, the Ba’ath movement shared several characteristics with the European fascist movements such as “the attempt to synthesize radical, illiberal nationalism and non-Marxist socialism, a romantic, mythopoetic, and elitist ‘revolutionary’ vision, the desire both to create a ‘new man’ and to restore past greatness, a centralised authoritarian party divided into ‘Right Wing’ and ‘left-wing’ factions and so forth; several close associates later admitted that Aflaq had been directly inspired by certain fascist and Nazi theorists.”
ROCK: Can we just admit that Assad is our guy
Hecc they even get sworn in by doing the Roman salute I believe.“

Burger’s claim that the Baath Party manifests a historical continuity with National Socialism contains a kernel of truth. The Syrian regime’s authoritarianism and cult of personality around the president reflect in many ways the totalitarian regimes (both fascist and communist) of the 20th century. This, coupled with the Syrian regime’s strong nationalist identity, holds appeal for many on the contemporary far right.

The Arab Socialist Baath Party came to power in 1963 through a military coup. It was founded on an ideology incorporating elements of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, both witnessing a popular resurgence in the wave of decolonization. Its early ideologues — Michel Aflaq (a Christian), Salah al-Din al-Bitar (a Sunni Muslim) and Zaki al-Arsuzi (an Alawite) — advocated a renaissance of Arab culture and values and the unification of the Arab countries into one Arab state led by a Baath revolutionary vanguard. Syria’s 1973 constitution declared the Baath Party to be “the leading party in the society and the state,” indicating a level of consolidation of state power under the party reminiscent of the model of Vladimir Lenin or, equally, that of Benito Mussolini.

From the outset, Baathist ideology sought to mythologize the “Arab Nation,” a notion imbued with a romantic vision of past greatness, which would both counter the humiliations wrought by French and British colonial rule and help to build a new nationalist identity. A fiercely secular movement in many respects, which attracted the support of minority groups, the Baathists reworked religious symbolism in service to Arab nationalist goals. They paid tribute to the role of Islam in Arab society — especially its contributions to Arab culture, values and thought. The slogan of the Baath Party — “One Arab Nation, Bearing an Eternal Message” — has obvious religious connotations, particularly the play on the word “message” (risala), the term used for the message revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the word “nation” (umma), which is usually used to refer to the global Muslim community. Aflaq envisioned a sublimation of religion into a more modern, nationalist identity: “Europe is as fearful of Islam today as she has been in the past. She knows that the strength of Islam, which in the past expressed that of the Arabs, has been reborn and has appeared in a new form: Arab nationalism.”

The Baath Party advocated socialist economics but rejected the Marxist conception of class struggle. Aflaq believed that all classes among the Arabs were united in opposing capitalist domination by imperial powers, proposing that nations themselves, rather than social groups within and across nations, constituted the real subjects of struggle against domination. On coming to power, the Baath Party pursued top-down economic planning based on the Soviet model. It nationalized major industries, engaged in large infrastructural modernization that contributed to building the nation-state, redistributed land away from the landowning class, and improved rural conditions. These populist policies brought the party a measure of cross-sectarian peasant support. At the same time, leftists were purged from the Baath Party early on, and later all leftist opposition would be either co-opted or crushed. Following the corporatist model, independent associations of workers, students and producers were repressed and new parastatal organizations said to represent their interests emerged.

Hafez al-Assad rose from modest origins to become the state personified. He came to power in 1970 in an internal coup directed against the left-wing faction of the Baath Party. Under his rule, Syria became a totalitarian police state based on the tripartite control of the party, security apparatus and military, yet power was centralized in the presidency. He reigned supreme as “the Eternal Leader” or “the Sanctified One.” His portrait and statues decorated buildings and the main squares of cities and towns. From schools to national events, carefully choreographed spectacles of public worship were used to reinforce the cult of the president and enforce the conformity and submission of the populace, without ever needing to win over individuals’ private thoughts or convictions.

In an article for the publication SyriaUntold, Rahaf Aldoughli, a lecturer in Middle East and North African studies at Lancaster University, argues that nationalism and the “cult of Baathism” formed part of the indoctrination of the Syrian citizen from an early age and went hand in hand with the normalization of militarism, enforcing both masculinity and physical power as key markers of identity and constructing the image of the heroic Arab man as the ideal citizen. Schoolchildren — both boys and girls, and without exception — faced compulsory conscription into two Baath-affiliated organizations: the Baath Vanguards Organization (during primary school) and the Revolutionary Youth Union (during secondary school). Aldoughli argues that these “two organizations mobilize children through enforced training and membership in paramilitary groups that perpetuate ideals of masculinist militarism, conceptualizing them as expressions of nationhood.” During enforced mass marches, schoolchildren were taught to chant, “With blood and soul, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Hafez.” Today, the same slogan is chanted in support of his son.

In Hafez al-Assad’s Syria, all political expression and opposition were severely repressed, to the extent that the country became, in the words of the leftist dissident Riad al-Turk, “a kingdom of silence.” The prison system and the entire security apparatus acted as the primary means of social control through both the perpetuation of fear and the delivery of punishment for acts of transgression. The brutalization of political opponents through the system of incarceration is powerfully portrayed in prison memoirs such as “The Shell” by Mustafa Khalifa — a haunting presentation of unimaginable physical and emotional suffering — and accounts by the poet Faraj Bayrakdar and leftist dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh. For political prisoners, torture was a key feature of detention. In 2017, it emerged that the Syrian leadership had gained some of its interrogation and torture techniques from the former Schutzstaffel commander Alois Brunner, the man described by Adolf Eichmann as the architect of the “Final Solution.” The Nazi war criminal was given safe haven by the Assad regime and died in Damascus in 2001. Unmitigated brutality was used by the military to crush uprisings against the Baathists in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1980 and 1982, culminating in the massacre in Hama, where between 20,000 and 40,000 citizens were killed and much of the ancient Old City was leveled by the air force.

When Bashar al-Assad inherited the dictatorship from his father in 2000, the few changes were cosmetic and rhetorical. The arbitrary detention, torture and summary execution of dissidents continued, while prisons were filled with leftists, communists, Kurdish opposition protesters, Muslim Brotherhood members and human rights activists. The economic situation worsened because of the increasing neoliberalization of the economy, which continued to concentrate wealth in the hands of the crony-capitalist class of those loyal to, or related to, the president — a feature of his father’s rule.

For example, Assad’s maternal cousin Rami Makhlouf was known to wield substantial control of the Syrian economy for many years through extensive business ventures, including mobile phone monopolies, tourism, real estate, banking and construction. Meanwhile, ordinary Syrians became increasingly impoverished as subsidies and welfare were dismantled and unemployment rates soared, particularly among the youth. It was both political repression and this desperate socioeconomic situation that led to the uprising in 2011, which arrived in the context of a transnational revolutionary wave sweeping the wider region.

Assad’s response to the uprising was to wage what the United Nations has termed a state policy of “extermination” against those who demanded democracy and dignity. Since 2011, Syrians have been bombed, gassed, raped, starved, tortured and driven from their homes. Some 400,000 people had been killed by 2016, according to a U.N. estimate, and many more will have died since then, given the scale of ongoing violence. Tens of thousands have been imprisoned, suffering the most sadistic forms of torture, practiced on an industrial scale. More than half of the Syrian people no longer live in their own homes, having fled barrel bombs, chemical massacres and starvation sieges carried out by the regime with the assistance of its allies, Russia and Iran. Herein lies a key appeal for the international far right: an authoritarian strongman prepared to unleash violence on an unimaginable scale to crush dissent, while avoiding any accountability.

If there is one characteristic that distinguishes historical fascism from other political ideologies, it is the explicit embrace of mass violence as a means to achieve political goals, particularly the systematic implementation of mass murder of internal populations. Although both capitalist and state-communist regimes have repeatedly employed mass murder as a political tool, fascism has been unique in ideologically defining itself through its reliance on internal mass violence, even as an end in itself. As the fascism scholar Robert Paxton explains in his book “The Anatomy of Fascism” (2004):

 ”The legitimation of violence against a demonized internal enemy brings us close to the heart of fascism. … It was the genius of fascism to wager that many an orderly bourgeois (or even bourgeoisie) would take some vicarious satisfaction in a carefully selective violence, directed only against “terrorists” and “enemies of the people.”“

Whereas Josef Stalin’s followers long denied his mass murder campaigns, Adolf Hitler’s followers have been more likely to embrace their history of mass violence as justified and emblematic of their beliefs.

The scale of violence in Syria is shocking, even by the dismal standards of our day: casualties number well over half a million. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, 93% of civilians killed in the conflict were killed by regime forces. The large majority of these deaths have been due to the intensive, yearslong shelling of cramped residential neighborhoods, hunger sieges and the targeting of schools and medical and other survival infrastructure. However, a notable proportion was caused by the industrial-scale implementation of torture within Syria’s extensive incarceration network. Although many supporters of Assad attempt to deny or minimize these crimes against humanity, it is precisely this cruelty that appeals to so much of the far right and likely lies behind much of its support.

In his book “The Syrian Revolution: Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death” (2020), the sociologist Yasser Munif describes how the Assad regime has instrumentalized violence to the extent that it has actually created an innovative system of governance. Munif builds on Achille Mbembe’s notion of “necropolitics,” which “operates by deploying its lethal power and making decisions about who can live and who must die.” However, in Munif’s reading, the concept of necropolitics (which Mbembe was applying to the practices of postcolonial violence) focuses too much on diffuse, often nonstate violence used to exploit and enslave, which he feels fails to encapsulate the Syrian situation. Munif introduces the category of “thanatocracy” as a subset of necropolitics, which emanates predominantly from a state or sovereign power seeking to preserve its position, and which has more interest in the extermination of those who threaten the survival of the despotic order than exploitation. Assad’s regime has, by this definition, been exemplary, and indeed its murderous conduct in successfully preserving its position throughout the Syrian conflict has opened space globally for the politics of thanatocracy. In addition, the asymmetric nature of Assad’s thanatocracy satisfies fascist fantasies of complete state power, as in its “absolute control over vertical power. … Their air forces can hit any target anywhere in Syria and cause immediate death.”

A further appeal for the international far right may lie in Assad’s successful demonizing of his opponents as the “other,” whether foreign agents or Islamist terrorists, to legitimize their liquidation in the eyes of his supporters. From the first days of the uprising, the regime attempted to portray a diverse, popular protest movement calling for democracy and social justice as a conspiracy against Syria, directed by outside countries and religious extremists who worked to undermine the stability of the country. In Duke’s view, “Assad is a modern day hero standing up to demonic forces seeking to destroy his people and nation.” One post on the white supremacist site Stormfront affirms Assad’s rhetoric that the uprising is simply a state-sponsored Islamic fundamentalist conspiracy, whatever its liberatory claims: “Al-Assad has done a good job keeping out the muslim [sic] extremists. The current uprising is orchestred by muslim extremism and disguised as a ‘fight for freedom and democracy,’ funded by Saudi Arabia scum.”

Ironically, Assad himself is at least partly responsible for the rise of Islamist extremism used to dismiss his opponents, and not only due to the chaos and trauma he unleashed upon the country, which provided a fertile breeding ground for extremism to thrive. As the regime was rounding up thousands of pro-democracy protesters for probable death by torture, it released numerous Islamist extremists from detention — many of them former state-sponsored saboteurs sent into Iraq by Assad in the early and mid-2000s to undermine the U.S. invasion there. Following their release, they went on to establish some of the most hardline militant groups, which came to dominate the field of battle. Assad hoped that the specter of Islamist extremism would both frighten Syrian minority communities into loyalty and silence the West’s opposition to what the regime would now frame as part of the global “War on Terror,” a term that Assad had been attempting to appropriate ever since the Bush administration introduced it in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. It is a strategy that has had considerable success.

As al-Haj Saleh argues, the U.S.-led global prioritization of the War on Terror and the “securitization of politics” became very useful for the Syrian regime in its counterrevolutionary war. He argues that this “priority given to terrorism isn’t merely a function of the genuine security threat it poses, but also its usefulness in consolidating the prevailing system, and indeed uniting the ranks behind its leading elites in confronting a formless menace.” It also serves to mobilize the public against the “terrorist enemy,” which is equated both in Syria and globally with Islam. This “combined genocratic effect of the securitization of politics and the Islamization of terrorism” makes Western leaders “liable to cooperate with, or at least tolerate genocidal regimes that exclusively murder their Muslim subjects.” State violence is seen as the antidote to anything labeled as Islamic terrorism, whether real or imagined, conferring legitimacy on the existing state and “paving the path for genocide,” while “by contrast, all resistance to tyranny or genocidal states is relegated to illegitimacy.” This legitimization of state violence against any dissent or resistance provides an ideal precedent for fascist politics, even in quite different contexts.

The deeply Islamophobic far right has certainly embraced the War on Terror narrative and its acceptance of mass violence against Muslims. That Assad himself is a Muslim (from the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam) is only occasionally a cause for passing consternation. For example, “Flaxxer” (on the Traditionalist Worker Discord channel) explains, using derogatory slang, that “Shias are typically less Muzzie. Assad is a Shia.” Others prefer to envisage Assad as a secular leader fighting Islamic extremists who pose a threat to the (white) Christian world. As the far-right Twitter user @iWillRedPillYou (account suspended at the time of writing) claimed in an interview, “Without Assad Muslims would conquer and likely decimate those remaining Christians.” Assad’s own racial and religious affiliations matter less than his willingness to use racialized dehumanization as a justification for murder; this willingness works to qualify him as effectively white in the eyes of his Western fascist followers.

It can be argued that, in fascism, individuals seek to achieve “freedom” through complete identification with a state unfettered in its exercise of violence. The Syrian state, even before its repression of the uprising, has been exemplary in this regard. One blogger by the name Jules Etjim explains the state-constituting role of transgression in the widespread use of torture in the 1970s and early 1980s. Not only were potential opponents terrified into submission; complicit subjects were invited into a sort of freedom-through-the-state by identifying with this transgression of “long established social boundaries”:

 “The “lesson” of torture was intended to be internalised by everyone including the torturer who was transformed into a willing instrument of the “torture state.” The transition to exterminatory torture — in our terms, the transition to thanatocracy — was part of a genocidal continuum that disclosed the state had obtained “absolute freedom” to overstep human standards and boundaries without any normative or ethical limit other than the practical limit.”

Such “absolute freedom” of the state, realized by transcending all normative and ethical limits, presents an unparalleled fantasy fulfillment for those who identify their own desires with the exercise of state violence.

The purposeful, instrumental, systematic application of extreme violence is central to our cultural memory of fascism, and Nazism in particular. This memory finds chilling rejuvenation in Assad’s state. Munif relays the account of one former prisoner, who “explains that every prison is required to deliver, on a weekly basis, a specific number of corpses. If on a given week the Branch does not meet the required number of dead prisoners, then some individuals are selected to receive an air injection in their arterial lines and die quickly.” Although such cruel practices may seem arbitrary, the entire range of violence serves directly to solidify and reproduce the thanatocratic state. “The spectrum of violence starts with the fear of being arbitrarily arrested and subjugated to torture. It includes sieges and subsequent starvation. It involves the various ways Syrians are tortured and indiscriminately killed. In many of these cases, torture is not performed to gain information, but rather to actualize state power,” Munif writes in “The Syrian Revolution.” Such systematicity is often very purposefully utilized to shape the social imaginary, making social alternatives unthinkable, for example by crushing areas where autonomous self-organization (through the establishment of local councils and independent civil society networks) is the strongest. According to Munif:

 “There is often a strong correlation between a neighborhood or village’s ability to develop successful grassroots politics and the level of punishment it receives. The more inhabitants are able to produce autonomous politics, the more they are perceived as a threat to sovereign power, and as a result, are punished.”

As the Syrian regime has made use of such ruthless means to crush alternatives and retain its hold on power, it has also provided the U.S. far right with a promising precedent. Justifying its systemic mass violence by appropriating the American discourse of an ongoing War on Terror, the Assad regime has succeeded, for the most part, in deflecting serious criticism, and has shown that systematic practices of thanatocracy can be enacted in our day with relative impunity. It is no wonder that those aiming to institute such practices find his precedent inspiring.

Not all current proponents of far-right politics openly embrace murderous violence. The alt-right, as a movement, has defined itself by embracing a veneer of respectability, especially by disavowing the swastika-sporting neo-Nazi crowd and the mass violence they openly advocate. Readers may recognize the alt-right activist Richard Spencer’s talk of “peaceful ethnic cleansing” as an oxymoron and not be fooled by his hipster haircut and tailored suit. Yet if many people can still only recognize Nazis as boneheads screaming “Sieg Heil” from trembling necks laden with 1488 tattoos, then this suggests that polite, groomed, articulate young men and women couldn’t possibly harbor fascist beliefs.

Respectability politics within the U.S. far right did not begin with Spencer and the alt-right. In 1989, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK, or simply “Klan”) leader Duke won a seat in the Louisiana state legislature by leaving his swastikas and Klan robes in the dresser. Fresh out of prison for tax fraud, Duke convened a 2004 meeting around the “New Orleans Protocol,” which a number of prominent far-right leaders signed up to, consisting of the following three points: “1) Zero tolerance for violence. 2) Honorable and ethical behavior in relations with other signatory groups. … 3) Maintaining a high tone in our arguments and public presentations.” By playing down the inevitable violent consequences of fascist politics, the far right presents a more palatable face to the broader public, denying fascist violence while normalizing the discourse that inspires it.

Assad presents a remarkably successful model for emulation for movements that seek to shift the “Overton window” and reframe the politics of cruelty as a reasonable option within mainstream discourse. According to al-Haj Saleh, Syrians fighting for liberation and survival are forced to fight simultaneously against two guises of fascism: “Against the Assadist necktie fascists and against the Islamist long-bearded fascists.” The tie-wearing variety have gained much more sympathy in the West because of their apparent containment of fascists of the bearded variety — even if the regime is actually responsible for much greater mass violence and destruction, not to mention the cultivation and enabling of many of the Islamist terrorists it purports to fight. Spencer, enthused by Assad’s necktie presentability, notes that he was educated in the West and offers “a civilized variant of Islam. … His wife is a very beautiful and sophisticated woman as well.” Spencer’s mention of Assad’s wife Asma al-Assad is telling: As a former financial services professional with a computer science degree, born and raised in London, England, she was once featured in a Vogue magazine article titled “A Rose in the Desert.” As Spencer notes, she presents a promising example for anyone hoping to make murderous politics respectable.

In February 2013, at a march in support of the Assad regime in Sacramento, California, one of the attendees, the French far-right leader Serge Ayoub, was asked why he was pro-Assad. He replied:

 “Of course, it is our duty to support their cause! Syria is a nation, a homeland, a socialist country with national supremacy. They are fighting for secularism, and they are subject to an attack by imperialist America, globalization and its salafist servants and Qatari and Saudi mercenaries. The purpose is to destroy the state.”

At first glance, Ayoub’s analysis might seem uncharacteristic of fascist discourse and more typical of its political opposite. Aren’t leftists usually the ones to protest against “an attack by imperialist America” on “a socialist country”?

Yet objections to “Western imperialism” have never been exclusive to the radical left. Historically, and up to the present, far-right opposition to “globalism” and the entanglements of empire has been foundational, often serving to separate the far right from establishment conservatives. It is important to remember that the largest pro-fascist organization in U.S. history, the America First Committee, which counted nearly 1 million members, existed for the sole purpose of opposing U.S. military intervention in World War II. As the America First spokesman and famed aviator Charles Lindbergh made clear at the time, the far right can have its own reasons to oppose empire:

 “It is time to turn from our quarrels and to build our White ramparts again. This alliance with foreign races means nothing but death to us. It is our turn to guard our heritage from Mongol and Persian and Moor, before we become engulfed in a limitless foreign sea.”

Lindbergh went on to blame Jewish ownership of media and control of government for the U.S. interest in intervention.

The mistaken belief that any opposition to foreign policy entanglements is somehow leftist leads to the view that any right-wing talk of “anti-imperialism” is only an insincere ploy meant to infiltrate left spaces and discourse. However, this reading does not tell the whole story. As much as the far right does sometimes poach from the far left to bolster its rhetoric and numbers, criticism of and opposition to imperialism per se has a long — and authentic — history on the far right. As Matthew N. Lyons says in his book “Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire” (2018):

 “Far Right anti-imperialism doesn’t fit old school leftist assumptions that opposition to empire is inherently liberatory or progressive, that Far Rightists always promote military expansionism, or that fascists are basically tools of the ruling class. These assumptions weren’t true in the 1930s or the 1960s, and they’re certainly not true now. As the 9-11 attacks in 2001 made clear, some of the most committed and important opponents of U.S. global power are on the Far Right.”

Fascists have long proffered strong criticism of imperialist military ventures as imperial ventures. Notably, when fascists came to power in Italy and Germany, these countries had come to exist as states only decades earlier, and their imperial power had been short-lived and limited when compared with that of Spain, France or Britain, for example. As they tried to catch up with their own colonial projects, they were quick to claim their colonialism as “anti-imperialist.” Enrico Corradini, the author of the fascist geopolitical approach that formed the basis of Mussolini’s foreign policy, borrowed from left theories of class and adapted them to fascism’s ultranationalism: “The class struggle,” said Corradini, “was real enough, but it pitted not workers against capitalists within the nation, but poor proletarian nations against rich plutocratic nations on the international plane.” The formulation is strikingly similar to Lenin’s maxim that “under imperialism the division of nations into oppressing and oppressed ones is a fundamental, most important and inevitable fact.” However, whereas Lenin was clearly advocating for colonized and economically exploited lands to determine their own fates against the colonizing and exploitative habits of empires, an idea which itself never ultimately superseded class struggle, Corradini was arguing for the “right” of less-developed European nations to their own respective plunder of presumably non-European nations — particularly Italy’s “right” to plunder Libya and Ethiopia — and that such national priorities supplanted internal social conflict. This interpretation of “class struggle” in nationalist and geopolitical terms, with all its ambiguities, became a foundational move for Baathism.

The mutual admiration between Assad and the far right in the West was perhaps inevitable. After all, within the Nazi Party of the 1930s, Gregor and Otto Strasser proposed to unite with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics against imperial Britain and France, and the party later worked with both Indian and Arab independence movements to undermine imperial British rule. After World War II, Johann von Leers, who had worked in Joseph Goebbels’s Nazi Propaganda Ministry, moved to Egypt along with thousands of other Nazi Party members. In 1958, he wrote: “One thing is clear — more and more patriot Germans join the great Arab revolution against beastly imperialism. … Our place as an oppressed nation under the execrable Western colonialist Bonn government must be on the side of the Arab nationalist revolt against the West.” The American fascist Francis Parker Yockey determined that, under Cold War conditions, the U.S. had become the primary opponent of the fascist movement and advocated that fascists join with the USSR and Third World liberation movements as the most effective means of fighting American power. In Italy, members of the fascistic Third Position movement also advocated the simultaneous fight against capitalism and communism, including calling for alliance with the far left. And let us not forget the Third Positionists in the U.K., who were supportive of Libya’s dictator Moammar Gadhafi as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran and Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. What we see today is merely a continuation of a long and deeply held tradition among the far right and fascism, no matter the geography or ethno-racial details.

Yesterday, 25 August, the revolution flag flew high in villages, towns and cities across Syria. In Sweida, Dera’a, Aleppo, Idlib, Raqqa, Hasakeh and Deir Al Zour, thousands were on the streets reviving the chants of the revolution.

Protests erupted in the south of the country a few days ago, in regime-held Sweida and Dera’a. They were triggered by the cost-of-living crisis, especially the recent increase in fuel prices as subsidies were cut. People are struggling to meet their basic needs – one of the reasons many are still fleeing the country. More than 90 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and half of the population are food insecure. A Syrian state employee currently earns around $10 per month, no where near enough to provide for a family as basic food items spiral in price. It is the regime which has brought the country to ruin. Protests triggered by socio-economic demands soon escalated to renewed calls for Assad’s downfall.

In Druze-majority Sweida the clerical establishment has voiced support for the protests, signaling a shift in a region which has previously maintained a position of neutrality through the revolution. Druze protesters sang revolutionary songs “Syria is ours, not Assad’s”, they chanted. They also chanted the anti-sectarian slogan “one, one, one, the Syrian people are one” and Bedouin Sunni tribesmen joined them sending a clear message of unity in spite of the regime’s ongoing attempt to ferment sectarian division. One symbolic demonstration raised a revolution flag at the tomb of Sultan Prasha Al Atrash, a Druze hero of the anti-colonial struggle against the French. Syrians are once again struggling for national liberation – from a criminal regime which has no popular legitimacy.

Since 16 August more than 52 locations in the south have witnessed protests and other acts of civil disobedience. On 20August a general strike led by public transport drivers, which also saw shops and businesses close, was widely observed. A number of regime buildings have been attacked. On Wednesday, angry protestors ransacked the local offices of the Baath Party in Sweida. In addition to deteriorating living conditions protesters also voiced their rage against rampant corruption and called for a crackdown on the drugs trade. Warlords and regime cronies have been amassing wealth and power through smuggling the amphetamine-like Captagon, which has led to a deteriorating security situation in the south.

On Friday, protests spread around the country with people taking to the streets under the banner “Friday of Accountability for Assad”. In scenes reminiscent of the early days of the revolution, women and men from all different social backgrounds were calling for the fall of the regime. Many chants and banners also demanded Assad’s imperial backers – Russia and Iran – leave. Protestors in the north chanted in solidarity with their compatriots in the south. In Idlib, and Atarib in the Aleppo countryside, the flags of the Druze and Kurdish communities were raised alongside the revolution flag. And there were numerous displays of solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance. In the camp of Mashhad Ruhin in Idlib where people displaced by Assad’s terror now live, the crowds gathered and chanted “the people want the fall of the regime”. Children, who were not even born when Syria’s revolution began, knew the words to every revolutionary song. Even members of the Alawite community, Assad’s loyalist base, have been taking to social media in recent days voicing their anger at the regime which has destroyed the country.

In Sweida women led protests calling for the release of political prisoners – a key demand of all Free Syrians. More than 130,000 individuals have been detained or forcibly disappeared by the regime since 2011. Posters demanded the release of Ayman Fares, a son of Lattakia, who released a video which went viral a few days ago criticizing the regime and was arrested whilst trying to flee to Sweida. The regime deals with dissent in the only way it knows – with severe repression. In both Aleppo and Dera’a there have been reports of security forces firing on protestors with two civilians reported killed in Al-Fardous neighborhood of Aleppo city. The Syrian Network for Human Rights reports that 57 civilians have been arrested in connection with the protests over the last few days. And the bombing has not stopped. Just this morning regime and Russian warplanes targeted two schools in Idlib province – continuing their relentless campaign against civilians safe in the knowledge that the international community will fail to meaningfully respond to ongoing war crimes.

In recent days coordinated campaigns have appeared on social media with a list of demands and calls to protest. One is the 10 August Movement which, amongst other things, calls for the establishment of a transitional government in line with UN Security Council resolution 2254 (2015), an end to sectarian division, an end to foreign occupation and external intervention, the release of all detainees and the prosecution of war criminals.

These courageous women and men across the country have shown that the regime cannot bomb, starve, torture, gas and rape the Syrian people into submission. Despite everything they have been through, and in the absence of meaningful solidarity with their struggle, the dream of a free Syria is alive. The world may choose to normalize with Assad, but Free Syrians have time and again made clear they will never accept his rule.

At first the image didn’t make much sense: tanks bunched together, red flags flying and a line of soldiers in Yemeni-style red berets. The scene was set in the shadows of bombed-out apartment buildings that, confusingly, didn’t look much like Yemen.

The scene was fake, a photo of the set of “Home Operation,” a film produced by Jackie Chan and inspired by a Chinese mission to evacuate Chinese and foreign nationals from Yemen in 2015. The apartment buildings were real, but not in Yemen. Filming started last month in Hajar al-Aswad, a southern suburb of Damascus, Syria, that used to be home to thousands of people.

In the photo Hajar al-Aswad looks like an old ruin from an old conflict, repurposed as background for the heroics of Chinese film stars. But when the Syrian revolution began, in 2011, Hajar al-Aswad was an opposition stronghold. It was captured by the Islamic State around 2015 and then retaken in 2018 by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The bombardment almost completely leveled it. Now it is the longed-for neighborhood of the inhabitants who were forced to abandon it.

Filming a Chinese blockbuster in an area destroyed by Mr. al-Assad is a cinematic looting that, we can assume, benefits the man who bombed it in the first place — who can film in the suburbs of Damascus without the permission of the regime? Mr. al-Assad would like to paint a picture of a post-conflict Syria and even hopes the world will buy it. The trouble is, it’s not the real one.

Rebels still hold much of the northwest of Syria, where many of the internally displaced live in camps, and the regime and Russia bombs the area regularly. The regime is also still battling an insurgency in Dara’a, the southern city where the anti-government uprising began in 2011.

Elsewhere in the country life is far from normal. The U.N. estimates that over 300,000 civilians have been killed in Syria since 2011, around 1.5 percent of the population and most likely an underestimate. Mr. al-Assad’s scorched-earth policy has driven millions from their homes; most are internally displaced but many have fled abroad. The country’s infrastructure and economy are destroyed, and the price of basic foods is estimated to have risen by 800 percent since 2011.

This is Syria in 2022, but you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. “Home Operation” is just the latest iteration of the regime’s campaign to get the world to see the country in a different light.

As the setting for Ahmad Ghossein’s 2019 film “All This Victory,” for example, about the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war in Lebanon. Some scenes for “All This Victory” were filmed in Zabadani, a city in south-west Syria that was besieged and occupied by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia allied with Mr. al-Assad. The dark irony of depicting Hezbollah resisting Israeli aggression on these sites was apparently lost on some — the film scooped three awards, including best film, at Venice Critics’ Week, an offshoot of the Venice Film Festival.

The regime’s other attempts at image overhaul have been a little scrappier: It has relied on travel video bloggers, or vloggers, and influencers to portray a safe, sanitized Syria and to discuss the war in — at best — ambiguous terms.

Consider the Japanese vlogger who visited Saidnaya, a city north of Damascus, in 2019 and toured its famous monastery but failed to mention its famous prison, a regime facility that Amnesty International has called a “human slaughterhouse” and that is still in operation even now. In June an anonymous defector and former gravedigger told U.S. senators that he received the bodies of victims of torture in Saidnaya twice a week.

Or the Irish vlogger who toured a food market in Aleppo and sampled bread and pastries, then walked through a vast demolished neighborhood to visit a soap factory.

The footage that makes it to social media suggests that the influencers who are allowed to enter the country are those who reliably parrot what they are told by their assigned guides. Their videos may reach thousands of people, but “Home Operation” is a little different. It is evidence, maybe, that Mr. al-Assad’s attempts to improve his image abroad are starting to bear real fruit.

“Home Operation” is produced by SYX Pictures, a Chinese company in the United Arab Emirates. China’s outgoing ambassador to Syria, Feng Biao, was photographed on the film set — near a red banner hanging from a Chinese tank that read “love and peace.” China is one of the few countries that has maintained diplomatic ties with Syria, but the U.A.E. has recently taken steps to normalize relations. Mr. al-Assad visited the Emirates in March — his first official visit to anywhere other than Russia and Iran since 2011 — and met with its president, Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Ostensibly the Western consensus is still that relations with Mr. al-Assad cannot be resumed. But some international bodies are welcoming his government back into the fold, and each accreditation seems more ludicrous than the last. In June last year the World Health Organization appointed Syria to its executive board, even though the regime has repeatedly targeted health care facilities; UNESCO recently invited Syria to its Transforming Education Summit, despite the fact that the U.N. itself has documented almost 700 attacks on education facilities in Syria in the past decade; and in June, Interpol invited representatives of the regime to a conference on regional efforts to combat the drug trade. Syria has a thriving illegal drug industry, run by friends and relatives of the president.

If the hope is that cultural or diplomatic re-engagement will make Mr. al-Assad’s government change its behavior, there has been no evidence so far that that is the case. Only pressure could do that, but for now Syria is nowhere near the top of the West’s list of priorities.

Instead, it seems as though Mr. al-Assad is to be allowed to keep trying to make the world believe that the war in Syria is over and that his regime is its legitimate government. If he succeeds, the message to authoritarians elsewhere couldn’t be clearer: The world might not forgive, but wait long enough, the world will forget.

It’s difficult to recollect the euphoria of the early days of the 2011 uprising in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Reflecting on that time, Syrians speak of the breaking of the “fear barrier”—the suffocating authoritarianism and repression that had silenced them for decades. At the protests calling for freedom that sprung up across the country that spring, there was a carnivalesque atmosphere replete with dance and song. Over time, as land was liberated from state control, Syrians collectively built a creative and vibrant revolutionary culture and planted the seeds for a new democratic society. Syrians both at home and abroad were optimistic for the future. We believed the regime would fall. We thought our just struggle would win.

A decade later, pain, trauma, and despair define the Syrian experience. Much of the territory has returned to regime control. The country lies in ruins. Over half the population no longer live in their own homes, and over six million have fled the country. Many of those who remain live in dire conditions, without housing, livelihoods, or access to basic services. The “kingdom of fear” has been reinstated, not only in the form of continuing state repression, and in some areas continuing conflict, but also as a result of the power struggle between various warlords. Yet, while the revolutionary movement appears subject to savage defeat, at least for now, it is by no means clear that “Assad has won.”

Assad’s tenuous grip on power is maintained by foreign forces. Since the start of the conflict, Russia has provided military aid to the regime, and it was Russia’s direct military involvement in 2015 that profoundly altered the dynamics on the ground, at a time when the regime was close to collapse. While Moscow initially claimed to be targeting terrorist groups such as the Islamic State, Russian air strikes prioritized opposition-held areas and repeatedly targeted civilian infrastructure, including hospitals. This intervention, which turned the liberated areas into death zones, saw large swaths of the country return to regime control.

Russia has also been Assad’s key political ally, providing the diplomatic weight needed to protect the regime from international accountability. Today, Russian power vastly eclipses that of the United States in relation to Syria, and Moscow has established itself as a dominant player in the region. The economic cost to Russia has been great, but it has been rewarded with lucrative contracts for gas and oil. The Russian company Stroytransgaz, owned by a Kremlin-linked oligarch, has been granted 70 percent of all revenues from phosphate production for the next fifty years, probably amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars or more. (Syria is estimated to have one of the world’s largest reserves of phosphates, used for making fertilizers.) The company has also been granted control over the commercial port in Tartus, necessary for its export.

However, it is Iran that poses the greatest threat to any hope of Syrian self-determination. In parts of the country, Syrians are now effectively living under Iranian occupation. Tehran, which has backed the Assad regime from the outset, sees Syria as a key part of the so-called “axis of resistance” against the United States and Israel, and as a strategically important link in the Shia bloc that connects Iran and Iraq with Lebanon and the Mediterranean. Tehran has supported large numbers of fighters in Syria, arranging for sectarian Shia militias from Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and has established numerous military bases in Syria (some of which are prime targets for air strikes by Israel, which fears an entrenched Iranian presence on its northern border).

Iran has been the main backer of the regime financially and economically. Since 2013, Tehran has provided Syria with credit lines to import fuel and other goods and is a major trading partner. Business forums have been established to improve bilateral economic relations and trade. Just as Russia’s reward for its loyalty is Syria’s natural resources, Iran’s is real estate, which it is buying up in Damascus, Homs, Deir al-Zour, and Aleppo. Iranian companies, often with links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, have been awarded lucrative contracts for reconstruction and infrastructure projects. By cementing its presence economically, Iran ensures that it will maintain influence in the event of a peace deal that calls upon foreign militias to leave.

In these ways, Iran is expanding its presence in Syria and seeks to embed itself in Syrian society in a way that Russia does not. In an attempt to build a local constituency, it purchases loyalty by paying Syrian youth high salaries (up to $700 per month) to join Iranian militias, and has established cultural and education centers and mosques to spread Iranian culture and Shiism. In Damascus, people report a noticeable change in demographics in neighborhoods such as Bab Touma and Bab Sharqi, which were previously home to a large Christian community and are now populated by members of Iranian-backed militia. Properties belonging to Syrians displaced by the conflict are now inhabited by militia members and their families. In Hama and southern Idlib, agricultural land seized by the regime has been auctioned off at symbolic prices, and the main buyers are militia members. Shop signs and adverts are often written in Farsi. While many Syrians cannot return to their home country, the regime has fast-tracked naturalization of foreigners to ensure that Iranians and others can become citizens. The forced displacement of communities supportive of the opposition and the re-population of those areas with communities perceived as loyal is part of a deliberate strategy by the regime to change demographics to ensure an obedient constituency in areas it controls. As Assad himself said in a speech in 2015, “Syria is not for those who hold its passport or reside in it; Syria is for those who defend it.” One reason why a political solution has not yet been reached may be that the regime is stalling while it creates “facts on the ground” that will strengthen its hand in negotiations.

As a result of such blatant expropriation and collusion, anti-Iranian sentiment in Syria is at an all-time high. In both Deir al-Zour and the Deraa countryside, protests regularly break out calling for an end to Iranian hegemony and the expulsion of Iranian militias. The alliance between the supposedly secular Arab nationalist Assad regime and theocratic Iran was always pragmatic rather than religious. Yet the increasing presence of Shia Muslims linked to Iran (in a country with a Sunni majority) and its policies (both in Syria and the wider region) has vastly increased the sense of victimhood among Sunnis—a contributing factor in increasing sectarianism and the rise of groups such as Islamic State.

The desperate socio-economic situation in the country is another factor causing widespread criticism of the regime, even among communities perceived as loyal. Over 80 percent of the population lives in poverty, struggling to make ends meet, and 60 percent are food insecure. The United Nations World Food Programme reports that food prices increased by 376 percent between October 2019 and February 2021. There are shortages of staple foods, medicine, and fuel. People queue for hours at bakeries and petrol stations, and still sometimes return home empty-handed. Electricity blackouts are common and have caused local businesses to close, further exacerbating high levels of unemployment. The collapse of the currency means that the salary of a state employee is now equivalent to around $20 per month, as opposed to $400 in March 2011. Many are forced to take second jobs, if they can find them, just to put food on the table. Meanwhile, those with regime connections (and warlords) not only profit off people’s misery, but flaunt their wealth and privileged lifestyles, showing off their luxury cars and properties on social media.

The primary reason for this miserable situation is, of course, the full-scale destruction of the country by the regime and its Russian ally, including physical infrastructure, housing, agricultural land, and production facilities. The economic and financial crisis in Lebanon, on which the Syrian economy and banking system is dependent, has seen conditions worsen dramatically. Regime corruption and a rampant crony capitalism that lines the pockets of the well-connected further exacerbate the situation. At the bottom, state employees demand bribes for basic services and merchants inflate the prices of their goods. At the top, regime loyalists or family members of the president are awarded advantageous contracts to construct high-end residential apartments and luxury malls, when many don’t have access to basic housing. The regime’s plans for reconstruction will therefore further exacerbate social inequalities and prevent the return of those displaced from low-income backgrounds—those who formed the core of the opposition.

A secondary factor has been the expansion of sanctions since Washington implemented the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019. Unlike previous sanctions, which targeted those individuals affiliated with the regime—either political, military, or security figures—these sanctions are more controversial as they also target businesses and sectors dealing in oil, electricity, and infrastructure reconstruction, thus contributing to a shortage of goods and services and negatively impacting the civilian population. While humanitarian aid is exempt from the sanctions, non-governmental organizations have reported experiencing negative effects, as people are now nervous to do business in Syria. In March 2021, 14 Syrian organizations (both in Syria and abroad) released a statement calling on the Syrian regime to end sanctions by engaging in the UN-led political process, ending human rights violations, and submitting to justice mechanisms.

People are both hungry and angry. Protests have broken out against deteriorating living conditions, the prohibitive costs of basic goods, and corruption in regime-held areas such as Sweida, Damascus, and even Latakia (in the regime’s heartland). On social media, even regime loyalists have voiced complaints for which a number of them have been arrested under the Cybercrime Law of 2018, enacted to clamp down on such dissent. These include Syrian state television presenter Hala al-Jarf, who made posts on Facebook criticizing living conditions and shortages of basic goods. Following her January 2021 arrest, she was subsequently released in an amnesty aimed at appeasing regime supporters ahead of the May presidential election. Wissam al-Tair, editor of the hugely popular pro-regime Facebook page Damascus Now, was arrested in December 2018—likely for his criticism of the conditions endured by army conscripts and the fuel crisis—and has not been heard from since.

Indeed, many believe the Assad regime is unable to handle the crisis, even those who can’t envisage an alternative. This broad-based mistrust has been compounded by the regime’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly its inability (or refusal) to furnish reliable information regarding the number of cases and the shortages of oxygen supplies, hospital beds, and vaccines. Hope for the future is also in short supply.

In the midst of the crisis, the regime held presidential elections on May 26. This charade, designed to give the regime a veneer of legitimacy in an attempt to attract funds for reconstruction efforts, made a mockery of the Syrian people’s demands for democratic transition. Presidential candidates were required to have been living in Syria for the past ten years—a rule that automatically excluded refugees and key opposition members in exile. They were also required to have the support of 35 members of parliament, which meant they had to be rubber-stamped by the regime. Syrians living abroad had to go to embassies to vote, which many didn’t do for fear of reprisals, and they had to possess a valid Syrian passport and exit stamp, which many do not have. Those living in the 30 percent of territory that lies outside regime control, including Idlib and the Kurdish- and Turkish-controlled areas, did not participate. The Kurdish-led autonomous administration in northeastern Syria refused to hold elections due to the regime’s ongoing refusal to recognize its government. In regime-controlled Deraa, activists and public figures called for a boycott. No mechanisms were established to guarantee people could vote without fear of intimidation by security services, and there was no monitoring by United Nations observers. What was the point of voting anyway, when the result had been pre-decided?

This regime will never be seen as legitimate in the eyes of free Syrians. Assad has regained a form of power in much of the country through brute force, foreign sponsorship, and an absence of international solidarity with democratic alternatives. The regime will not reform itself; it continues to savagely repress any dissent and to carry out war crimes with impunity. It is unable to respond to economic problems or attract funds for desperately needed reconstruction. Most Syrians living outside the country will not voluntarily return while Assad remains in power and do not trust regime assurances of their safety. Areas of Syria outside of regime control remain beset by humanitarian crisis, physical insecurity, and the presence of militias opposed by large segments of the population. What was once a dynamic revolutionary movement has been shattered, fragmented, and exhausted. A political solution to the conflict, a prerequisite for free and fair elections, is nowhere in sight. The future, like the present, looks bleak.

“We are no less than the Paris commune workers: they resisted for 70 days and we are still going on for a year and a half.” Omar Aziz, 2012

On 18 March 2021 people around the globe will be commemorating the 150^th anniversary of the Paris Commune. On this date, ordinary men and women claimed power for themselves, took control of their city and ran their own affairs independently from the state for over two months before being crushed in a Bloody Week by the French government in Versailles. The Communards’ experiment in autonomous, democratic self-organisation, as a means to both resist state tyranny and to create a radical alternative to it, holds an important place in the collective imaginary and has provided inspiration for generations of revolutionaries. 

On 18 March another anniversary will pass, but surely to much less acclaim worldwide. On this date a decade ago, large scale protests were held in the southern Syrian city of Dera’a in response to the arrest and torture of a group of school children who had painted anti-government graffiti on a wall. Security forces opened fire on the protesters, killing at least four, provoking wide-spread public anger. Over the next few days protests spread across the country, transforming into a revolutionary movement demanding freedom from the four-decade dictatorship of the Assad regime. In the following years, as people took up arms and forced the state to retreat from their communities, Syrians engaged in remarkable experiments in autonomous self-organisation despite the brutality of the counter-revolution unleashed upon them. As early as 2012, Omar Aziz a Syrian economist, public intellectual and anarchist dissident, compared the first of these experiments to the Paris Commune.

Omar Aziz was not a mere bystander to the events underway in Syria. Living and working in exile, he returned to his native Damascus in 2011, at the age of 63, to participate in the insurrection against the regime. He became involved in revolutionary organizing and providing assistance to families displaced from the Damascus suburbs under regime assault. Aziz was inspired by the movement’s level of self-organisation in its resistance to the regime. In towns and neighbourhoods across the country, revolutionaries had formed local coordinating committees. These were horizontally organised forums through which they would plan protests and share information regarding both the accomplishments of the revolution and the brutal repression the movement faced. They promoted non-violent civil disobedience and were inclusive to women and men from all social, religious and ethnic groups. Revolutionaries were also organising the provision of food baskets to those in need and setting up medical centres to tend to injured protesters who feared going to hospitals due to risk of arrest.

Aziz believed that whilst such activities were an important means to resist the regime and had indeed challenged its authority, they did not go far enough. Through their organisation, revolutionaries were developing new relationships independently of the state based on solidarity, cooperation and mutual aid, yet were still dependent on the state for most of their needs, including employment, food, education, and healthcare. This reality enabled the regime to maintain its legitimacy and perpetuate its power despite people’s wide-spread opposition to it. In two papers published in October 2011 and February 2012, when the revolution was still largely peaceful and most of the Syrian territory remained under regime-control, Aziz began advocating for the establishment of Local Councils. He saw these as grass-roots forums through which people could collaborate collectively to address their needs, gain full autonomy from the state, and achieve individual and community freedom from structures of domination. He believed that building autonomous, self-governing communes, linked regionally and nationally through a network of cooperation and mutual aid, was the path towards social revolution. According to Aziz, “the more self-organizing is able to spread … the more the revolution will have laid the groundwork for victory.”

Aziz was not concerned with seizing state power and did not advocate for a vanguard party to lead the revolution. Like the Communards, he believed in the innate ability of people to govern themselves without the need for coercive authority. In his view the new self-organised social formations that were emerging would “allow people to take autonomous control over their own lives, to demonstrate that this autonomy is what freedom is made of.” Aziz envisaged that the role of the Local Councils would be to support and deepen this process of independence from state institutions. Their priority would be working together with other popular initiatives to ensure the fulfilment of basic needs such as access to housing, education and healthcare; collecting information on the fate of detainees and providing support to their families; coordinating with humanitarian organisations; defending land from expropriation by the state; supporting and developing economic and social activities; and coordinating with recently formed Free Army militias to ensure security and community defence. For Aziz, the most powerful form of resistance to the state was a refusal to collaborate with it through building alternatives in the present that prefigured an emancipatory future.

In November 2012, much like so many of Syria’s revolutionaries, Omar Aziz was arrested and died in prison a short while later. Yet, before his arrest, he helped found four local councils in the working class suburbs of Damascus. The first was in Zabadani, an agricultural and touristic town surrounded by mountains, some 50 kilometres from the capital. The town was quick to join the uprising in March 2011, holding regular demonstrations calling for freedom and the release of detainees. By June, young men and women had formed a local coordination committee to organize demonstrations and carry out media work to communicate what was happening in the town to the outside world. Like the female Communards of Paris, the women of Zabadani also created their own forums. In mid- 2011 the Collective of Zabadani Female Revolutionaries was formed. They participated in demonstrations in huge numbers and called for peaceful civil disobedience. They played a leading role in the Dignity Strike in December 2011, a nation-wide general strike that attempted to place economic pressure on the regime. In January 2012 they established Oxygen Magazine, a bi-monthly printed magazine providing analysis of the revolution and promoting peaceful resistance.  The group later evolved into the Damma women’s network, which continues to work to support women to build resilience and alleviate the impact of violence in conflict affected communities, as well as providing education and psychological support for children.

Zabadani was liberated by local Free Army militias in January 2012. Barricades were set up and the town was brought under the control of its residents. A local council was established to fill the vacuum created by the regime’s departure. The town’s Sunni and Christian residents came together to elect the council’s 28 members from respected individuals within the community and to choose a president. This was Syria’s first experience of democracy in decades. The council established a number of departments to administer daily civil life, including for health care and humanitarian assistance, as well as a political committee involved in negotiating with the regime, and a court to resolve local conflicts. A military committee supervised the Free Army battalions to ensure security. Whilst the council representatives were all men, the Collective of Zabadani Female Revolutionaries played an important role in supporting the Council’s activities. Like the Communards of Paris, the people of Zabadani, who dreamt of a free and just society, managed to creatively self-organise their community independently from centralized state control.

Local autonomy and grass roots democracy was seen by the regime as its greatest threat. As the government of Versailles, which had refused to fight against the Prussians, turned their weapons on the Communards, so the Syrian regime directed all of its might against the people of Zabadani. The town was subjected to a siege, enforced by the regime and its ally the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, and daily bombing led to a dramatic worsening of humanitarian conditions. Inside the town, revolutionaries also faced challenges from extremist Islamist battalions which gained in prominence over time and finally wrested control from the local council in 2014. After a number of failed cease-fire agreements the regime regained control of Zabadani in April 2017, after which many of its residents were forcibly evacuated.

The experience of Zabadani was remarkable, but not unique. Over the course of the Syrian revolution, land was liberated to such an extent that, by 2013, the regime had lost control of around four-fifths of the national territory. In the absence of the state, it was people’s self organisation which kept communities functioning and allowed them to resist the regime, in some cases for years. Hundreds of local councils were established in the newly created autonomous zones providing essential public services such as water and electricity supplies, rubbish collection, and supporting schools and hospitals to keep operating. In some areas they grew and distributed food. People also worked together to set up humanitarian organisations, human rights monitoring centres, and independent media associations. Women’s centres were founded to encourage women to be politically and economically active and to challenge patriarchal mores. One example is the Mazaya centre in Kafranbel, Idlib, which taught vocational skills to women, held discussions on women’s rights issues, and challenged the threats posed by extremist Islamist groups. Unions were established for students, journalists and health workers. In the northern city of Manbij, revolutionaries established Syria’s first free trade union, which campaigned for better wages. Cultural activities flourished, including independent film collectives, art galleries and theatre groups. In the liberated town of Daraya, close to Damascus, revolutionaries built an underground library from books they salvaged from people’s destroyed homes.

After 2011, before the counter-revolution ground them down, communities across Syria lived in freedom from the tyranny of the regime. Power was brought down to the local level and people worked together for their mutual benefit, often in extremely challenging circumstances, to build a pluralistic, diverse, inclusive and democratic society that was the very antithesis of the state’s totalitarianism. They were not motivated by any grand ideologies, nor led by any one faction or party. They were driven by necessity. Their very existence challenged the myth propagated by the state that its survival was necessary to ensure the fulfillment of basic needs and stability. Syrians showed that they were more than capable of organising their communities in the absence of centralised, coercive authority by building egalitarian social structures and recreating social bonds of solidarity, cooperation and mutual respect. There was no one model or blueprint. Each community organised in accordance with its own needs, unique local circumstances and values – the very essence of self-determination – essential in a country which is as socially and culturally diverse as Syria. What they shared was a desire for autonomy from the regime and a commitment to decentralized, self-managed forms of organisation.

Whilst the experience of the Paris commune is well known and celebrated in the West, we must ask why similar experiments happening in our own time in Syria are not – why they have usually failed to attract even the most basic forms of solidarity. Whilst much radical theory holds pretentions to universalism, it often pays little attention to other, non-Western contexts or cultures. When leftists in the West think of Syria they often think of foreign state intervention, extremist Islamist groups, and numerous armed brigades jostling and competing for power and territory. Little attention is given to ordinary men and women and their courageous acts of defiance against a tyrannical, genocidal regime. These people formed the backbone of Syria’s civil resistance. They not only resisted the regime but built a viable, beautiful alternative to it. Their struggle became multi-faceted. They defended their hard-won autonomy from the regime and later numerous foreign forces and extremist groups that saw their existence as the greatest threat. They were shunned and often slandered by the international community, including by people who consider themselves part of the anti-imperialist left. Their existence became an inconvenience to the grand narratives people wanted to indulge in regarding Syria’s revolution and counter-revolutionary war. Epistemological imperialism left little room for Syrian’s lived realities.

As with the Paris Commune, there is much to be learnt from Syria’s revolutionary experience. In times of insurrection or at times of crisis, new ways of organising often emerge which provide alternatives to the hierarchical, coercive and exploitative systems practiced by both capitalism and the state. Through decentralised self-organisation, without the need for leaders or bosses, but through voluntary association, cooperation and the sharing of resources, people can transform social relations and effect radical social change. They show us that emancipatory futures can be built in the here and now, even in the shadow of the state.

*****

All quotes are taken from the English translation of Omar Aziz’s two papers on The Formation of Local Councils by Bordered by Silence, except for the introductory quote which came from Twitter, now deleted.

Residents of Yarmouk queue to receive aid. January 2014. Photo credit: UNRWA

Originally published at The New Arab

Yarmouk refugee camp, on the southern outskirts of Damascus, was once known as the ‘capital of the Palestinian diaspora’.

Ravaged by Syria’s counter-revolutionary war, more than two years after the cessation of local fighting the camp still lies in ruins.

Residents who were forcibly displaced are yet to return, and a new reconstruction plan threatens to make their displacement permanent.

Yarmouk is one of several formally oppositional communities in which a series of housing, land and property laws and re-development plans are being used to expropriate the property of the original inhabitants and change demographics.

Yarmouk Camp was established in 1957 to accommodate Palestinian refugees who had fled the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

While not officially recognised as a camp, it was home to the largest concentration of Palestinian refugees outside their native land, and was a cultural, political and intellectual hub for Palestinian life in exile.

Over time it grew into a densely populated residential neighbourhood which, prior to the Syrian revolution, housed some 160,000 Palestinians and tens of thousands of Syrians. A bustling commercial centre, people from across Damascus would visit Yarmouk’s vibrant markets.

Due to their precarious status as refugees, Palestinian civil society and political factions in Yarmouk decided to maintain a position of neutrality when the revolution broke out. The camp remained relatively calm and provided safe haven for Syrians fleeing regime repression elsewhere. The turning point came on 15 May 2011.

The Syrian regime had encouraged Palestinian youths to demonstrate on the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to commemorate the Nakba. Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live bullets at demonstrators resulting in hundreds of injuries and 17 deaths as Syrian soldiers stood by without intervening and prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded.

Many believed that the regime had used them to deflect attention from the uprising. Funerals for the dead turned into the first of many anti-regime demonstrations.

In December 2012, MiG war planes shelled the Abdel Qadir Al-Husseini mosque in the heart of the camp, where internally displaced people were sheltering.  Dozens were killed. This resulted in the entry of opposition militia fighting the regime.

Palestinian factions joined both sides. Some 80 percent of the population fled and a partial siege was imposed by the regime and the loyalist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

The humanitarian situation dramatically worsened in July 2013 as a full siege was enforced by the regime, preventing the entry of food and humanitarian aid for the 18,000 civilians trapped inside. Fatwas (religious edicts) were issued permitting the consumption of cats and dogs (prohibited in Islam) to fend off starvation.

A lack of medical supplies and the regime’s destruction of medical facilities meant that those injured by the constant shelling, or those with chronic illnesses, faced a death sentence. In order to survive, people planted rooftop gardens. When the regime finally permitted UNRWA to enter in January 2014, photos of emaciated residents queuing for food amongst an apocalyptic wasteland of bombed-out buildings shocked the world.

The Syrian regime has portrayed itself as defender of the Palestinian cause. Yet no mercy was shown to the people of Yarmouk who were collectively punished for the ‘crime’ of providing shelter to the displaced and later joining Syria’s struggle for freedom and social justice.

The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) documents 1,458 Palestinians from Yarmouk killed since 2011. This includes 496 who died due to shelling of the camp, 208 who died from starvation or medical neglect due to the siege and 215 tortured to death in the regime’s detention centres.

Despite the regime’s control of entry points to the camp, in April 2015 the Islamic State (IS) captured over 60 percent of Yarmouk. It brought with it a new reign of terror, clamping down on civil society activists and independent voices and carrying out floggings and executions. At this point 3,000 civilians remained under IS occupation.

The regime and its allies launched an all-out assault on the camp to oust IS in April 2018. A month of intensive bombing left some 80 percent of the camp’s buildings and infrastructure destroyed.  A Russian sponsored deal saw IS members and their families evacuated to the desert east of Suweida and the remaining civilian population was forcibly displaced as the regime re-took control.

Just two months later, IS carried out a string of attacks in Suweida targeting the Druze minority population. Many believed the regime facilitated the assault – a cynical ploy to re-impose control over the province.

Following the ceasefire many families attempted to return to Yarmouk but were prevented. Some were permitted brief entry to inspect their homes after receiving security clearance and paying bribes. In the following days photos circulated on social media of regime-affiliated militia looting the property of former residents.

Rami, whose family hails from Suweida, is one of many Syrians who call Yarmouk home. He fled the camp in June 2018, just six days before the regime entered. He was devastated to see his home being looted live on Al-Akhbariya (Syrian state TV). “They stole everything,” he says. “Even my father’s extensive library. They took my telescope, the handmade carpet my late grandmother made. I have no single photo left from my childhood. These things are irreplaceable.”

Despite statements by regime officials and the leaders of Palestinian factions that residents will be permitted to return once the rubble is cleared and basic services restored, many fear their displacement is permanent and that the camp’s identity is being irrevocably altered.

Yarmouk, previously managed by a local committee under the Syrian Ministry of Local Administration, has recently been incorporated into Damascus Governorate, ending its unofficial status as a camp. In June a reconstruction plan was issued by the Damascus Governorate. Residents were given 30 days to prove property ownership and submit objections. Many residents do not possess ownership documents.

Others have lost their documents in the course of the conflict or are currently residing outside the country. According to Rami “even people who can get the paperwork don’t want to do it because they don’t trust the system, there’s too much risk of arrest or they can’t afford the expense of paying the bribes.”

Under the plan, residents from just 40 percent of the camp which suffered mild damage can return. The remaining 60 percent will undergo re-development with contracts likely awarded to those closely affiliated to the regime, as has happened elsewhere. No compensation or alternative housing is offered except for small shares for those able to prove ownership.

According to the AGPS, “The new plan will remarkably change the demographic and architectural identity of the camp. Several buildings and facilities will be removed, which will lead to a mass displacement of refugee families and a further deterioration of their humanitarian condition. It is believed that if the plan is implemented, over half the residents will not be able to return to their homes.”

Over 10,000 objections have been submitted by residents and 3,000 signed a petition demanding the rehabilitation of the camp and their immediate return, offering to carry out reconstruction work themselves.

“I lost my home once when I had to flee for my life,” Rami says. “I lost it again when I saw it being looted by the Syrian army live on TV … and here I lose it once more to this legalised usurpation of our land.”

As elsewhere ‘reconstruction’ is used as a tool to facilitate the transfer of property from its previous owners to corrupt regime-affiliated businessmen and to ensure that the population of ‘oppositional’ communities is permanently displaced.

Yet given that Yarmouk was home to large numbers of Palestinian refugees, the displacement has wider implications. Prominent Syrian-Palestinian intellectual Salameh Kaileh argues that what happened in Yarmouk was a premeditated strategy to end the ‘refugee problem’ or the Palestinian presence in Syria, doing untold damage to the wider Palestinian cause.

In his view the regime facilitated the entry of weapons to drag the camp into the conflict, and the entry of extremist groups to serve as a pretext for intensive bombing and starvation siege, both to systematically destroy the camp and to empty it of its inhabitants. Even worse than regime actions, Kaileh condemns those who have defended the regime, and betrayed the Palestinian cause “under the illusion of fighting imperialism.”