.New Loyalties and Old Feuds Collide in Syria
HOMS, Syria — On the birth of his daughter this month, a young activist in this central city bestowed on her a name that had little resonance until not so long ago. Dara’a, he called her, the namesake of the southern Syrian town where the antigovernment uprising began.
Syria is awash in such stories of solidarity these days, bridging traditional divides that have colored the country’s politics for generations. But far from disappearing, the old divisions of geography, class and, in particular, religious sect are deepening.
Syrians offer different explanations. Protesters blame the cynical manipulation of a government bent on divide and rule, and the government points to Islamist zealots seeking to impose a tyranny of the majority.
Which prevails — new loyalties born of revolution, or old rivalries entrenched in smaller identities — may decide the fate of Syria’s four-month revolt.
Colliding along the front lines of the uprising, and especially here in Homs, these forces suggest a grim reality of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad: the longer his government remains in power, the less chance Syria has to avoid civil strife, sectarian cleansing and the kind of communal violence that killed at least two dozen people in Homs last week. Unlike in Egypt, and despite the protesters’ hope and optimism, time is not necessarily on their side, a point that some of them admit.
“If the government keeps playing the sectarian card, they’re going to get what they want,” said Iyad, 27, the activist who named his daughter after the cradle of the uprising. “If this regime lasts, there’s absolutely going to be a civil war, absolutely.”
That is not to say that anyone really knows what kind of state the protesters want. In Homs last week, pious activists debated the differences between an Islamic and civil state, both of which they said should rely on religious law. Minorities fear militant currents within the Sunni Muslim majority. Sunnis seethe at the injustice of living for decades under a state endowed with a remarkable capacity for violence and led by the Alawite minority, a heterodox Muslim sect. Even some activists celebrating the unity that the revolt has brought warn that repression is breeding strife.
“The government is going to push us in the direction of violence,” said a former Republican Guard officer who has joined the ranks of protesters in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, with a Sunni majority and Alawite minority. “A lot of guys think it’s almost over, but I don’t. The situation, very regrettably, is going to become a crisis,” by which he meant bloodshed.
As was the case in Iraq, a sectarian lens is often unfairly imposed on Syria’s diversity, with its sizable communities of Christians, Alawites and ethnic Kurds. Other divisions are no less pronounced — between cities like Damascus and Aleppo, among classes, between the countryside and urban areas and within extended clans, especially in eastern Syria. Residents of Hama said they long felt discriminated against, especially in the military, which carried out a brutal crackdown there in 1982. Hama and Homs were traditional rivals in central Syria.
These days, chants ring out in protests that suggest a growing sense of nationalism, often reinforced by virtual communities that disseminate information.
At the Khalid bin Walid mosque, a center of dissent in Homs, protesters chant, “With our souls and blood, we sacrifice for you, Dara’a.” Solidarity with Homs, the scene of a persistent crackdown, is heard in Hama, where activists say they have sometimes traveled back and forth in an effort to build what one activist called “a culture of protest.”
“This is the beauty of the revolution,” said Ahmed, a 28-year-old smuggler and protester, sitting with others in a safe house near Homs. “He didn’t know him, he didn’t know him and he didn’t know him before the protests,” he said, pointing to his friends. “This is the result of the regime’s oppression. Now we’re ready to defend each other.”
Activists often repeat that Syria’s uprising is “a revolution of orphans,” and young activists take pride in the fact that they are organizing themselves by neighborhood for the fight against Mr. Assad’s leadership. But the term also points to divisions that are emerging, where sectarian tension intersects with other resentments.
Many in Homs and Hama feel anger at what they see as American, European and Turkish acquiescence to Mr. Assad staying in power. They often express resentment at Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, which has remained relatively quiet.
“There’s anger at Aleppo, there really is,” said a young activist in Hama who gave his name as Mustafa. A friend, Bassem, nodded, as they sat in a clubhouse turned hideout. “Aleppo benefits from the regime and business with the leadership,” he said.
Perhaps most pronounced is the anger at Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim militant movement in Lebanon that has bluntly supported Mr. Assad’s government. Hezbollah was widely popular in Syria, where sentiments against Israel and longstanding American dominance of the region run deep. But Hezbollah’s backing for Mr. Assad has unleashed a sense of betrayal at a movement that celebrates the idea of resistance. At times, it has also given rise to chauvinism among Syrian Sunnis against Hezbollah’s Shiite constituency.
“We’ve started to hate them more than we hate Israel,” said Maher, a young father and protester in Hama, sitting with a friend who gave his name as Abu Mohammed.
Abu Mohammed said that in the 2006 war fought between Hezbollah and Israel, which forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, he sheltered 40 Shiite families for as long as a month. “Food, drink, and I accepted nothing in return,” he said. “Now they’re with the regime, but it wasn’t the regime who opened the doors of their homes to them.”
In almost every conversation, Syrians stress that their country lacks the sectarian divisions of neighboring Iraq and Lebanon, which both fought brutal civil wars. In Hama, residents last week were still celebrating a visit in June by six Alawites from nearby villages, who joined their huge demonstrations in Assi Square. The Alawites offered lines of a song, known to everyone.
“I take your hand in mine,” they declared to the jubilant crowd. “I kiss the ground under the soles of your shoes, and I say I will sacrifice myself for you.”
To many residents in Homs and Hama, the government is behind every incitement, its hand visible in any provocation, however convoluted the conspiracy. Residents insisted that after an especially bloody Friday in June, security forces dropped off bags of Kalashnikovs and ammunition in the streets of Hadir, a neighborhood in Hama home to most of the victims, trying to goad residents into an armed fight they would lose.
“No one came close to them,” said a young activist who gave his name as Abdel-Razzaq. “They knew to leave them alone. They knew this was the regime’s game.”
A few weeks later, the government helped organize a pro-Assad demonstration in a city where nearly every family claims someone killed, wounded, arrested or disappeared in the crackdown of 1982, ordered by Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez. Several residents insisted that the loyalists chanted, “Oh Hafez, repeat 1982. They didn’t learn their lesson.”
“When they said this, no one could control themselves,” another activist recalled.
Within minutes, residents said, enraged crowds who had kept their distance set upon the demonstrators’ vehicles, burning cars and a bus that helped bring them to the city.
But even protesters themselves acknowledge the way sectarian tensions have deepened, especially along fault lines of Sunni and Alawite communities, as in Homs, especially in its countryside. Some Facebook pages, ostensibly affiliated with the uprising, give voice to vulgar bigotry against Alawites, who are far from monolithic in their support for the government and, historically as peasants, were the most exploited and downtrodden of Syria’s people.
Protesters speak of the importance of reaching out to Christians and Alawites, while in the same conversation warning that Alawites in the countryside will face retribution from Sunnis insistent on exacting revenge for the security forces’ crimes. Complaints are rife in Homs that government agents search only Sunni homes.
In the bloodletting in Homs this past week, which bore an indelible sectarian stamp, another incident went largely unnoticed. An Alawite was killed Sunday in the town of Aqrabiyah, near the Lebanese border. In the ensuing hours, security forces poured into the region, and Sunnis from nearby Burhaniyya stayed indoors. Though joined by a road, no one dared to drive through the other’s village. Everyone seemed to expect more killing.
“One death is enough to create hatred,” said Iyad, the young father of Dara’a.
NYT
Syria is awash in such stories of solidarity these days, bridging traditional divides that have colored the country’s politics for generations. But far from disappearing, the old divisions of geography, class and, in particular, religious sect are deepening.
Syrians offer different explanations. Protesters blame the cynical manipulation of a government bent on divide and rule, and the government points to Islamist zealots seeking to impose a tyranny of the majority.
Which prevails — new loyalties born of revolution, or old rivalries entrenched in smaller identities — may decide the fate of Syria’s four-month revolt.
Colliding along the front lines of the uprising, and especially here in Homs, these forces suggest a grim reality of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad: the longer his government remains in power, the less chance Syria has to avoid civil strife, sectarian cleansing and the kind of communal violence that killed at least two dozen people in Homs last week. Unlike in Egypt, and despite the protesters’ hope and optimism, time is not necessarily on their side, a point that some of them admit.
“If the government keeps playing the sectarian card, they’re going to get what they want,” said Iyad, 27, the activist who named his daughter after the cradle of the uprising. “If this regime lasts, there’s absolutely going to be a civil war, absolutely.”
That is not to say that anyone really knows what kind of state the protesters want. In Homs last week, pious activists debated the differences between an Islamic and civil state, both of which they said should rely on religious law. Minorities fear militant currents within the Sunni Muslim majority. Sunnis seethe at the injustice of living for decades under a state endowed with a remarkable capacity for violence and led by the Alawite minority, a heterodox Muslim sect. Even some activists celebrating the unity that the revolt has brought warn that repression is breeding strife.
“The government is going to push us in the direction of violence,” said a former Republican Guard officer who has joined the ranks of protesters in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, with a Sunni majority and Alawite minority. “A lot of guys think it’s almost over, but I don’t. The situation, very regrettably, is going to become a crisis,” by which he meant bloodshed.
As was the case in Iraq, a sectarian lens is often unfairly imposed on Syria’s diversity, with its sizable communities of Christians, Alawites and ethnic Kurds. Other divisions are no less pronounced — between cities like Damascus and Aleppo, among classes, between the countryside and urban areas and within extended clans, especially in eastern Syria. Residents of Hama said they long felt discriminated against, especially in the military, which carried out a brutal crackdown there in 1982. Hama and Homs were traditional rivals in central Syria.
These days, chants ring out in protests that suggest a growing sense of nationalism, often reinforced by virtual communities that disseminate information.
At the Khalid bin Walid mosque, a center of dissent in Homs, protesters chant, “With our souls and blood, we sacrifice for you, Dara’a.” Solidarity with Homs, the scene of a persistent crackdown, is heard in Hama, where activists say they have sometimes traveled back and forth in an effort to build what one activist called “a culture of protest.”
“This is the beauty of the revolution,” said Ahmed, a 28-year-old smuggler and protester, sitting with others in a safe house near Homs. “He didn’t know him, he didn’t know him and he didn’t know him before the protests,” he said, pointing to his friends. “This is the result of the regime’s oppression. Now we’re ready to defend each other.”
Activists often repeat that Syria’s uprising is “a revolution of orphans,” and young activists take pride in the fact that they are organizing themselves by neighborhood for the fight against Mr. Assad’s leadership. But the term also points to divisions that are emerging, where sectarian tension intersects with other resentments.
Many in Homs and Hama feel anger at what they see as American, European and Turkish acquiescence to Mr. Assad staying in power. They often express resentment at Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, which has remained relatively quiet.
“There’s anger at Aleppo, there really is,” said a young activist in Hama who gave his name as Mustafa. A friend, Bassem, nodded, as they sat in a clubhouse turned hideout. “Aleppo benefits from the regime and business with the leadership,” he said.
Perhaps most pronounced is the anger at Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim militant movement in Lebanon that has bluntly supported Mr. Assad’s government. Hezbollah was widely popular in Syria, where sentiments against Israel and longstanding American dominance of the region run deep. But Hezbollah’s backing for Mr. Assad has unleashed a sense of betrayal at a movement that celebrates the idea of resistance. At times, it has also given rise to chauvinism among Syrian Sunnis against Hezbollah’s Shiite constituency.
“We’ve started to hate them more than we hate Israel,” said Maher, a young father and protester in Hama, sitting with a friend who gave his name as Abu Mohammed.
Abu Mohammed said that in the 2006 war fought between Hezbollah and Israel, which forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, he sheltered 40 Shiite families for as long as a month. “Food, drink, and I accepted nothing in return,” he said. “Now they’re with the regime, but it wasn’t the regime who opened the doors of their homes to them.”
In almost every conversation, Syrians stress that their country lacks the sectarian divisions of neighboring Iraq and Lebanon, which both fought brutal civil wars. In Hama, residents last week were still celebrating a visit in June by six Alawites from nearby villages, who joined their huge demonstrations in Assi Square. The Alawites offered lines of a song, known to everyone.
“I take your hand in mine,” they declared to the jubilant crowd. “I kiss the ground under the soles of your shoes, and I say I will sacrifice myself for you.”
To many residents in Homs and Hama, the government is behind every incitement, its hand visible in any provocation, however convoluted the conspiracy. Residents insisted that after an especially bloody Friday in June, security forces dropped off bags of Kalashnikovs and ammunition in the streets of Hadir, a neighborhood in Hama home to most of the victims, trying to goad residents into an armed fight they would lose.
“No one came close to them,” said a young activist who gave his name as Abdel-Razzaq. “They knew to leave them alone. They knew this was the regime’s game.”
A few weeks later, the government helped organize a pro-Assad demonstration in a city where nearly every family claims someone killed, wounded, arrested or disappeared in the crackdown of 1982, ordered by Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez. Several residents insisted that the loyalists chanted, “Oh Hafez, repeat 1982. They didn’t learn their lesson.”
“When they said this, no one could control themselves,” another activist recalled.
Within minutes, residents said, enraged crowds who had kept their distance set upon the demonstrators’ vehicles, burning cars and a bus that helped bring them to the city.
But even protesters themselves acknowledge the way sectarian tensions have deepened, especially along fault lines of Sunni and Alawite communities, as in Homs, especially in its countryside. Some Facebook pages, ostensibly affiliated with the uprising, give voice to vulgar bigotry against Alawites, who are far from monolithic in their support for the government and, historically as peasants, were the most exploited and downtrodden of Syria’s people.
Protesters speak of the importance of reaching out to Christians and Alawites, while in the same conversation warning that Alawites in the countryside will face retribution from Sunnis insistent on exacting revenge for the security forces’ crimes. Complaints are rife in Homs that government agents search only Sunni homes.
In the bloodletting in Homs this past week, which bore an indelible sectarian stamp, another incident went largely unnoticed. An Alawite was killed Sunday in the town of Aqrabiyah, near the Lebanese border. In the ensuing hours, security forces poured into the region, and Sunnis from nearby Burhaniyya stayed indoors. Though joined by a road, no one dared to drive through the other’s village. Everyone seemed to expect more killing.
“One death is enough to create hatred,” said Iyad, the young father of Dara’a.
NYT
posted by madtom at 10:21 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home