The Syrian War on Terror

Over two and half years, the theory of "combating terrorism" came ahead of all else when it came to the discourse of the Syrian regime in its war against its people. The theory of defending "Arabism" appeared from the outset to be fragile and ridiculous, not only because it clashed with an overwhelming majority of the Arabs that sympathized with the revolution, but also because of its inherent conflicts, as it was accompanied with a dose of racism against other Arabs and "Bedouins." More fragile and ridiculous still was the claim about defending "true Islam," which died at the moment of its birth. As for the claim about resisting Israel, this, instead of helping out the regime, dinted its ally Hezbollah's credibility, as the Shiite group set out to look for Israel's specter in the streets of Homs and Qusair.

In truth, "combating terrorism," unlike all other claims, is a profitable claim as many a local and Western observer noticed. To be sure, this claim builds a bridge between the Syrian regime and Western public opinion, and another bridge that connects the regime to a point of intersection between Russia and America. It also reassures the Israelis, especially after chemical weapons are dismantled, and presents Bashar al-Assad as one of the faces of security and stability in the region and the world. This is why the regime has clung to this claim, and sought to develop it into a coherent argument that proofs raced to rescue.

The war on terror, as we know, is one of the inventions of the administration of George W. Bush, and was especially associated with the neoconservatives. But this notion, since its inception, suffered from a deficient theoretical basis and weak practical achievements. But perhaps the worst part about this theory was that it adopted a narrow security approach, all the way to waging wars, instead of seeking a broader understanding of the communities in question, with their local histories, economies, and cultures, and hence of their ability to assimilate the kind of democracy that the Bush administration advocated as the cure to terrorism.

However, the terror in question exists, and on September 11 - and before that and after - it staged painful attacks on many capitals around the world.

We all recall that Damascus, at the time, coupled its security coordination with the Americans against terror to a discourse that accused the Americans of being themselves the terrorists, with many parentheses placed around the word terror, as if to suggest that it was not indeed what it was.

In other words, the Syrian regime is borrowing a weak and contradictory lexicon to apply it even more weakly and contradictorily, especially since it is not the regime that was attacked on September 11, but a regime that for years sponsored the Latin American Carlos the Jackal, the Syrian-Palestinian Ahmed Jibril, and a large number of nameless Lebanese, as well as helping terrorists, including many takfiris and jihadists, cross into the heart of Iraq.

This, once again, puts us face to face with a machine of lies that does not tire, a machine that sees Arabism, Islam, Palestine, and terrorism, and every other claim equally, according to the needs of each season, to increase the regime's longevity. But what is astounding is that the regime has succeeded, despite its lies, in importing the maximum of this claim, while the opposition, and we believe it is honest, has failed to import the bare minimum, and even a trimmed version of this theory. Here, the public opinion was not sought after, nor intersection with the concerns and battles of the rest of the world, the same world being asked to stand alongside the Syrians in their concerns and battles.

Dar Al-Hayat