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Thursday 4 December 2008

Syria shouldn’t be demonised

Ignore the hype: Syria shouldn’t be demonised

The Asad regime is not as wicked as US sources argue

This was an astonishingly foolish statement, even by neocon standards of Middle Eastern ignorance. Wurmser is apparently unaware that Syria is in fact one of the last secular states in the region, and unlike such US allies as Israel or Saudi Arabia does not privilege any religion; indeed, its Allawite rulers are regarded by many orthodox Sunnis as outright heretics.

With the Pentagon already drawing up plans to destabilise Syria, while Iraq lies in post-war anarchy, and with the Taleban resurgent in Afghanistan, it is well to consider exactly what would be lost if Asad’s regime were to be deposed. The Middle East is not a place where simplistic notions of Good Guys and Bad Guys make much sense. It is a place of murky moral greys. Torture, repression of minorities, and the abuse of human rights happen every bit as frequently within states ruled by allies such as Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, as they do in states such as Syria, now deemed to be part of the ‘Axis of Evil’, and Iran, a founder member. Indeed with many of the more repressive allies now acting as outhousing torture chambers for the US, the moral balance has been still further muddied.

Certainly few would deny that Syria has much to reform. It is a one-party Baathist state where Islamists and political activists are suppressed, and the secret police arrest political prisoners, many of who will never come before a judge. Violent opposition to the regime is met with brutal force, most dramatically in the case of the armed rising of the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama in 1982: the city was sealed off and at least 10,000 people were killed, in a similar operation to that later undertaken by the US and its allies in Falluja.

Yet the balance sheet is not entirely one-sided. For if Syria is a one-party police state, it is a police state that tends to leave its citizens alone as long as they keep out of politics. And if political freedoms have been often brutally restricted, Asad’s regime does allow people widespread cultural and religious freedoms — in striking contrast to, say, Saudi Arabia. Today these freedoms give Syria’s minorities a security and stability far greater than anywhere else in the region. This is particularly true of Syria’s ancient Christian communities.

More articles from: William Dalrymple | this section

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