Syrian connection

My buddy and his girl were down here for the weekend, taking a detour actually in their week long stay in India. Instead of staying in and around Delhi all the time, they planned a few days in Mumbai so we could hang out, and it was great fun to have them over.

Even though it didn't stop raining the entire time they were here, I was still very keen to take them to the Elephanta caves, as much for the ferry ride as for the caves. On the ferry ride towards Elephanta island and the caves, we met a gentleman who happened to be a professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC, United States. Realizing that he had some things in common with us, he chatted with us about the places to visit and things to do in Mumbai in one day. I helped him the best I could, considering my own knowledge of Mumbai is too elementary in my own opinion, but eventually our conversation moved onto global issues. I think it started with a comment on how differently China and India are going about this whole development scenario, with China being able to boast of shiny new infrastructure, but as we both agreed, with a totally dumbed down citizenary. A thought that had just struck me as I talked to him was that the Chinese people could not talk about the issues any person in a free society could talk about not because freedom of speech was clamped upon, but they simply couldn't.

As we talked about the politics in the United States and politics in India, we realized that the Chinese people simply don't know how to talk about politics because they've never done it for the past many decades because at least in my opinion, and even if it sounds sinister, they have for decades been systematically made to think of the state as the ultimate (just like North Korea) and the party as the only truth. Basically a society is created where doubting the party, which is only working towards making China a great nation, is doubting China, and doubting China is next to treason!

Eventually he mentioned he is originally from Syria (I had guessed Isreal) and I started talking to him about the current affairs in the Middle East region. The talk shifted to the Middle East when we talked about how China supported all the bad regimes in the world to prop itself up in that country, including a host of little states in Asia such as the Pakistan military, the Burmese Junta, and now even Bangladesh. He said that the most unfortunate part is that the world's oldest democracy has been doing it in Syria for all this while, constantly propping up the regime of Basher al-Assad, which continues to fight against its people.

The reason I wanted to write about this episode and more about whats going on in Syria is because this morning, one of the first headlines that came on was that the Syrian Army had massacred 100 anti-government civilians in the city of Hama that Assad's forces were trying to reclaim from the protestors. Various news sources put this figure between 80 to 140.

"Unlike" in Egypt, where the Army did not support Mobarak and instead chose to remain neutral and did not attack the civilians, the forces in Syria have been used brutally and extensively to fight against the Syrian people. The same was seen in Bahrain as well. The only difference between Egypt and Syria in this matter is that the Syrian Army is firmly under the command and control of Basher al-Assad.

Like others before him in Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere, the Assad family has been trying to make parlays with the protestors, allowing more democratic activities such as forming political parties that will compete with Assad's Baath party, but when the country is baying for their dictator to step down, such "reforms" look like a handful of sand trying to put out a bushfire. According to the news item from The New York Times....

Mr. Assad’s arrival in power in 2000 was met with broad popular expectations of reform. He carried out some steps to overhaul the economy, but retained at least the framework of the authoritarian state built by his father, who had ruled Syria for three decades. There was another burst of optimism in 2005, when intellectuals and activists tried, unsuccessfully, to organize in Damascus and elsewhere.

Rights activists said that at least 1,600 people have been killed since the demonstrations started and that hundreds of protesters are in jail, most without being charged.

Mr. Assad’s other steps, described by the government as concessions since the uprising began, included issuing several pardons, lifting the decades-old emergency rule and granting thousands of Kurds, a minority group, Syrian nationality.

What did the Syrians want from Assad? They wanted reforms, change and personal freedom, and it seems to me that like most dictators, he thought he could simply crush the grumbling population with force. But then, as we all repeat that cliche, "power corrupts...". No dictator would want to give up any power, unless absolutely forced to do so. Of course, we know from history that most of the times, when dictators are forced to give up power, they are basically made to give up everything. Unless of course they are supposed by the United States or other powers in Europe and elsewhere.

Very predictably, Assad also raises the bogey of Islamic fundamentalism, that the people who want to topple his regime are fundamentalists, obviously directed at the US and the rest of the white world. So when his offerings of peace do not work, Assad falls back to the shock and awe tactic that his father used a long time ago on the same city. Its quite a co-incidence that Libya has a city too that has historically been against the country's dictator and Gaddafi has been trying to run that place down.

Coming back to the Professor, I told him that considering its been so many months and these fires are still raging in the region, perhaps the movement for more freedom and some demo'crazy has gained some critical mass. While the Europeans are not allowing Gaddafi to bomb his own people any more, Assad still has no international intervention, at least on the ground, with governments and the United Nations only still condemning the actions of the dictator.

I do hope a clearer picture emerges in the Middle East, and these regions do get to witness greater political and personal power in the hands of the people, and hopefully, hopefully, without any of these enforcers of democracy butting in and setting up a puppet democratic government there. In the long term, well, i'll see what happens in the ME as the oil starts to run out.