Get Used to It - Assad's Not Going
Anywhere!
The Western public just has to get used
to it - Assad's not going anywhere, and
not because of what Russia or Iran says,
but because he's Syrians' choice
By David Macilwain
December 22, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
- "RI"
- On Sunday Syria's President
Bashar al Assad went with his wife Asma
to a Christmas Mass concert in Damascus.
For many people in the West, the photos
that soon appeared of Bashar and Asma
hugging and being hugged by small
children, old men and young women would
probably cause consternation or apoplexy
- if they were to see them.
But this is unlikely, as Western media
would exercise its duty of care to
protect people from such an upsetting
sight, and the public disorder that
might result. It shouldn't worry however
that people's perception of the Syrian
leader might change for the better; it
is simply not possible for this to
happen, any more than it is possible
that Syrians would change their minds
about President Assad.
The Western media apparatus has strange
standards of propriety - often finding
it necessary to obscure the images of
the wrong people. When some footage
emerged of the now infamous
'heart-eating rebel', it was
not his face which was blurred out to
protect his identity but the body of the
poor Syrian soldier this 'freedom
fighter' had just disembowelled.
Showing how little things have changed
in the two years since that event - one
that should have been a 'wake-up call'
for the 'Free Syrian Army's' Western
cheers squads - we saw a repeat of it
only weeks ago following the shooting
down of Russia's bomber by Turkey. In
deeply shocking footage of the Turkish
insurgents celebrating over the bloodied
body of the Russian pilot they had just
murdered, it was his identity our media
chose to protect us from. And those
media - CNN Turk and Fox news - had no
compunctions about revealing the
identity of the leader of this group
despite it spoiling their whole story,
as he was immediately identified as not
even Syrian, and anything but a
'moderate rebel'.
Again this echoed the story of 'Abu the
organ-eater' - who was interviewed at
the time by Paul Wood of the BBC, and
given rather a sympathetic hearing for
his beliefs - that 'all of Bashar's
Alawite dogs' should meet the same fate
as his victim.
When we consider how it is, how on earth
it can be - that such false and
misleading narratives about President
Assad and the nature of the Syrian war
still persist, we are examining the
heart of the conflict. Maybe the very
simplicity of this narrative is the key,
as it is one which could so easily
take hold in the minds of the unthinking
masses. No amount of argument or
reasoning, or even the evidence of their
own eyes seems able to dislodge it from
the collective psyche.
It
is not just a simple, but rather a
simplistic narrative, like one in a
fairy tale - 'once there was a big and
very very bad tyrant who lived in an
ancient castle with his terrible family,
and rained down fire upon his
unfortunate subjects, who only wanted to
be free to practice their faith...' And
it is a fairy tale. Bashar al Assad's
family are Alawite muslims, like a
million others in Syria, and millions
more across the border in Turkey. But
Syria has long been a proudly secular
society - the Syrian 'Arab Republic' -
where such distinctions of religion or
ethnicity are not a basis for
discrimination. Until the stirring up of
sectarian tensions by the foreign
fomenters of the armed insurgency many
Syrians didn't even know, or care about
their neighbours' religious affiliation
- much as in the secular democracies of
the West.
Emphasising this secular character of
Syrian society, and quite contrary to
the pervasive western fairy tales, the
religious affiliations of both
government and army members broadly
reflect that of the community as a
whole, with a majority being Sunni
muslim. And apart from leading a
government which is not 'Alawite',
President Assad has led by example - his
wife Asma is a Sunni muslim too.
Considering the attention given to
'peace talks' and plans for a 'political
solution' to the Syrian conflict by
Western governments, media and NGOs over
the last four years, the passing of last
week's UNSC resolution with a 'road-map'
for Syria's future received
astonishingly little attention. The
actual details of what was agreed
received even less, and we might imagine
this was partly because some parties
agreed under duress and were loathe to
admit that they had actually agreed to a
plan they had previously rejected. (The
'duress' could have been following
Russia's laying down the rules on who
gets targeted in Syria, when the
deployment of its SA-17 air defence
system grounded US bombers supporting
their 'rebel forces fighing Da'esh'.)
Betraying the reality of the new plan,
the media wasted no time in returning to
familiar themes. 'Russia was bombing
'moderate rebels' instead of Islamic
State.' 'Russia was just propping up
Assad'. 'Assad was killing civilians
again'. But we also had new
interpretations on what had been agreed,
before the ink was even dry on the
paper, and before Kerry had time to
contradict what he'd last said.
And one by one the leaders and
representatives of the US, UK, France
and Germany got back into the familiar
groove - 'Assad has lost all legtimacy'
- 'a man who has killed his own people
cannot be leader' - 'Assad can be part
of the transitional government, before
leaving'. How soon they forgot what even
they had repeated, - as some great
democratic aspiration - that 'Syrians
should decide who will be their leader'.
Which is of course what Sergei Lavrov,
Vladimir Putin and Bashar al Assad
himself have been saying for years. And
Syrians have already decided - Assad is
their man, for now and into the future,
helping to rebuild the society he has
worked so hard to save from the
terrorist armies of the 'Western
allies'.
Syrians know that their survival
is because of Assad - not in spite of
him.