Jamal Khashoggi
By Jamal Khashoggi
I needed to go to Washington to find out once again the reality of Syrian revolution after its image was distorted.
American-Syrian Association invited me for its annual conference that pulled a huge crowd of Syrian community in US.
A movie “Little Gandhi” was screened as part of the activities of the event. The movie was about a Syrian youth dreaming for freedom. The youth believed that he could convince the soldiers of Bashar Al Asad and his mercenaries belonged to same nation. so his freedom is considered as their freedom and distributed bottles of water and white roses to them as gifts. But they were not convinced and killed the boy. It happened at the beginning of the revolution.
The killing of Ghayath Matar who was called little Gandhi by his friends and fans, was spark of the revolution and a valid reason to turn a peaceful revolution into an armed struggle as a reaction to the action of the regime that did not leave any other option for them.
However, the companions of youth in the movie and panelists in the conference were discussing whether it could be possible to make the revolution peaceful.
Obviously, they wished for peaceful revolution but there was no option. They lived under heavy bombardments. Dariya city was attacked by heavy artilleries then fighter planes and explosive barrels as it was a war front. Finally, the city was besieged and citizens faced starvation. But it is still resisting, despite decreasing number of residents amid shortage of weapons and other resources.
Regime tried to use the armed fighters of Islamic State (IS) who made sabotage last week. They did not believe at all for any peaceful protests, even the dram of Gayath for a plural democratic system in Syria including the supporters of the President. But they failed to penetrate Dariya city.
When I was watching the movie I was assured that three facts will draw the map of Syrian crises in the coming days.
First piont is that the revolution will back to its first stage (boyhood) as a dream of Arab spring and its ambitions, peaceful revolution, slogans of freedom in the protests that returned to Syrian cities freed from the hands of both regime and IS. These things could not be seen in the areas under regime or those replaced by IS. Both regime and IS are same for being tyrant genetically even if they have different images in ugliness.
Second point was separation from Al Nosra front that kept pace with revolution on battleground and become different when the revolution move towards peace process. Protests were organised in Marrat Al Numan and Idlib, the stronghold of Al Nusra Front.
The protesters did not demand Nosra to go but they declared freedom because spirit of Arab Sprig refuse all forms of tyrants even from those who claimed supporting the revolution. The freedom as defined by protesters is not to impose life style on anyone and how he must lead his life. Oh! Al Nosra the followers, you are free to chose what you wants for your life. You can make restriction for yourself and your poor family members but you do not have right to impose your narrow-ideology on others.
This differentiation is important because that moment is going to come when gunship firing became silence. And the wise leaders will sit at negotiation table to draft a roadmap for the future of Syria based on pluralism, completely free from the vision of Bashar, IS, Al Nusra and code for a Muslim.
Third point is withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria and seriousness of Geneva talks and ceasefire first of all. It is right these things did not happen completely. Russia is still supporting the regime, talks is moving slowly and the regime is trying to escape from what it deserve, an inevitable quit. Regime is still violating ceasefire but all these indicate that the revolution back to its early stage because the revolution did not want to become armed.
Go, go Bashar, same cheers used against Mubarak in Egypt, Saleh of Yemen, Bin Ali of Tunisia and Gaddafi in Libya. It is new Arab Spring and despite of the bloodsheds and frustrations it is still beating.
The first scene of the revolution was Ghayath offering water battle and flowers to the regime’s thugs. Many scenes spanned overall the nation, his talks, dream, mutilation of his body, his funeral which attended by many Western ambassadors and there were no Arab diplomat among them. More scenes of the revolution included youth speaking about armed resistance, other opposed the idea, the countryside came out of regime control and people came out cheering for freedom, fear and hesitations disappeared then the regime responded with artillery and amid the smokes the scene of Ghayath’s peaceful revolution disappeared.
The head of the regime described demonstrators as armed gangs and continued killing them. He talked about foreign conspiracy (terrorism, Saudis, Turkish, Qataris…) while there were no one except the criminal regime and victims. The regime was trying to hide his crimes and tens of thousands killed by him. Under continuous killings and reactions and denounces and Paris and London meetings on the cause we forgot all scenes of the peaceful demonstrations and armed revolution engulfed the country.
The scene of freedom cheers and flowers disappeared and we began to talk about maps of Syria and colours of flags in a country divided between the free Army, the regime and other factions where the ugly face of sectarianism appeared and Da’esh with its black flag making the scene darker.
The revolution begun to gain less attention in writers articles and interviews that begun to focus on proxy wars, Saudi-Irani competitions and these wrong analysis reached its peak when Obama begun to repeat it in his interviews.
On the third and fourth year of the revolution all forgot Ghayath and Hamaza Al Khateeb the symbols of the revolution.
The issue now summed up in waiting outcomes of meetings of foreign ministers of US and Russia or Saudi and Turkish as major actors. Some of the analysts consider the whole issue as mere anger and revenge from Bashar who described Arab leaders as half-men in one of the summits. A third analyst consider it dispute over oil and gas pipe linking Gulf and Europe.
Syria again became on top of world events but all dreams and sacrifices made to achieve social peace and freedom foiled because of alliance between dictatorship, sectarianism and rebels but revolution still alive.
Ghayath reminded me with Wael Ghneim one of the leaders of January 25th revolution, released when Mubarak resigned. Ghneim was hosted at TV program al ashera masaa and when the presenter Muna Shazali showed bodies of tens of Egyptian youth killed during the revolution against Mubarak, Ghneim collapsed crying and fainted because he did not want any to die.
Today and after prevalence of death and destructions overall the Syria, no one could cry even hundreds of thousands of youth have died and the only fear today is not to see the motherland itself dying.
