00:00 Joseph Daher: The Syrian revolution has been analysed for three years from a geopolitical and a sectarian perspective. Geopolitical, meaning for example that Syria is [placed] in an anti-imperialist axis with Iran and Hezbollah against the imperialist countries of the West and the other countries like the Gulf countries, Israel. [In] the other, sectarian, perspective, we have the Sunnis on one side fighting the Alawi minorities inside Syria.
00:30 So this has been the main analysis of the media for three years on Syria, and this has been reinforced in the past year with the growing importance of jihadi groups, without understanding the dynamics of these jihadi groups.
00:30 So my first section — because this is the title of this panel — will be to explain the roots of the revolution, because I think it's really important to go back to the roots of this popular revolution, which is rooted in the popular revolutions of the region. We cannot separate the Syrian revolution from the Egyptian, the Tunisian, the Bahraini revolution, or the revolutions in the region. It's the same reasons that pushed the Syrians to go out in the streets and to continue the revolution for more than three years, despite the killing machine of the regime. And I will speak also about the counter-revolutionary groups that are emerging.
01:31 The roots of the revolution are based on the lies of a regime that has been ruling Syria for forty years. The roots are the total absence of democracy. The Syrian regime can only be compared to the Saddam Hussein regime of Iraq in its strength of repression and authoritarianism. The only regime that really could be compared to the Syrian regime is the Saddam regime, and its killing machine.
02:01 The absence of democracy was a very important reason in the beginning of the Syrian revolution. People asking for reforms in Syria, without challenging the place of the dictator Bashar al-Assad, were put in prison. You have numerous examples, like Michel Kilo and others, who were basically reformists, not asking for the downfall of the regime — even before the revolution they were put in prison.
02:33 The second thing was the socio-economic reasons. In general the popular revolutions of the region cannot be separated [from] the authoritarian nature of these regimes and the socio-economic roots: the increasing social injustice in these societies, based on thirty years in some countries of neoliberal policy, especially in Egypt and Tunisia, and in Syria accelerated with the arrival of Bashar al-Assad to power in 2000.
03:04 So basically, before the beginning of the revolution you had nearly sixty per cent of the population of Syria living under the poverty line, or just above [it]. You had privatisation touching the whole of society, injustices booming all over Syria, especially in the countryside, and in some regions that were boycotted by the regime or put aside — like the Jazira, north-east of Syria, mostly populated by Kurds — and even different countrysides.
03:37 And this is where you see the nature of this revolution: the popular classes were the main people participating in it, especially Deraa and the countryside of Deraa, the popular neighbourhoods of Deraa, of Damascus, and also rural regions [inaudible] that were well known to be agricultural lands and that were left out, because the regime started a process of privatisation that was very bad for the peasantry in general.
04:09 So: the roots [are] the absence of democracy and increasing social injustice. And this is where it comes to the lies of the regime, which has been presented as anti-imperialist, secular and socialist.
04:09 Socialist — it was the socialism of the Assad family. You had sixty per cent of the wealth of Syria controlled by the Assad family, through Rami Makhlouf, his cousin, [and his] financial institutions. So it was a socialism of the Assad family. I don't know how they shared everything, I don't have the details, but this was the socialism of Syria — when we talk about seventy per cent of the economy being in private hands and sixty per cent of the wealth of Syria in the Assad family's [hands]. So it was a bourgeois state par excellence.
04:40 Second of all, a secular state. A secular state — I don't know what the meaning of it is in Syria. Hafez al-Assad in 1970, when the new constitution was proposed to the Syrian people without the religion of the president [specified], refused this constitution and added that the president of the republic must be a Muslim. Also, for thirty years, Syria under Assad built more mosques than Saudi Arabia [?]. This is the secular regime of Assad.
05:13 And also [there are] the allies of Bashar al-Assad — Hezbollah [?] — that was encouraged and grew because the Syrian regime wanted to put an end to the Palestinian and national resistance in Lebanon; and Hamas and others. We'll come back to this.
05:44 And the secular nature can be put in doubt [by] the sectarian practices that have been going on for thirty years. The Assad regime has institutionalised sectarianism inside Syria, and it is the first [party] responsible for the sectarianism in Syria — and I can develop this later — but also [responsible] for racism, for example between Arabs and Kurds, especially in the Jazira in the north-east: policies of colonisation of the Jazira, and other policies.
06:15 So it has never been a protector of the minorities. You should note that in Syria, before Assad came to power, the prime minister was a Christian; the first ambassador to the UN for Syria was also a Christian; and other communities [as well] — I can develop this later.
06:15 And the last one, which is the best one, is the anti-imperialist nature of the regime. This regime has killed more Palestinians than any other regime in the region. This is the regime that entered Lebanon to crush the Palestinians and the national resistance and the left. This is the regime that collaborated with US imperialism for the first war, the war in Iraq in 1991, and collaborated [in] the war on terror launched by Bush. And as you know, before the revolution the first investor in Syria was Saudi Arabia. So as an anti-imperialist regime, you can do I think a bit better than these kinds of [things]. I can develop this later.
07:19 Chair: Two minutes left.
07:19 Joseph Daher: Okay, so I will now speak [about] the importance of the grassroots. Some people forget that the basic way to the emancipation of the people is them organising themselves. And in Syria, since the beginning of the revolution, it's the Syrian people that have been organising — in liberated regions and also in the regime-occupied regions. For example, you had popular councils organising since the beginning: for education, for relief, for how to organise the demonstrations. You have the university students organising since the beginning; independent unions, to counter the unions controlled by the regime, which were basically playing the role of shabiha [?] — they were kicking people, militias.
07:50 And the importance of the self-organisation of the people is that women were included since the beginning. They played a humongous role in the popular movement, demonstrating, breaking also some kind of conservative values that are present in Syria. For example, you had in Salamiyah [?] the women's council deciding to participate in different demonstrations following the deaths of martyrs, which was not allowed before, which was not accepted. So they participated in different demonstrations there and in Damascus as well.
08:21 And for example in Raqqa, which is a provincial capital that was liberated from the regime in March 2013, the women played a humongous role in challenging different Islamist groups like [inaudible]. They were demonstrating against the prisons of [inaudible] to have their husbands and friends freed. And they were the ones, when in 2013 the church of [inaudible] was occupied by the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, [who] demonstrated with a big cross across the city to show solidarity with the Christians of the city.
09:23 The first to have fought against sectarianism in Syria is the Syrian people — just as the ones that have fought against these jihadist groups [are] not the regime, that encouraged them since the beginning. [The regime] has a long relationship with jihadist groups, since 2003 in Iraq — they were founding [them] and everything. It was the Syrian people; and at the beginning of 2014 it was the same people that kicked out ISIS [inaudible] from different areas of Syria.
09:55 And I will finish on this. The key issue, [and] why the self-organisation of the people in Syria is the most important: this is who we have to support, because they are the basis for this popular revolution, they are the basis for the self-emancipation of the people. And they face the regime and also the counter-revolution. They are the people that are facing the different counter-revolutionary groups that want to impose certain practices on the people.
10:26 You have different counter-revolutionary groups. You have first of all, of course, the regime, which is the most dangerous and the biggest enemy of the people. But you have also the different jihadist groups, which were never targeted by the regime — they were let [alone and] developed by the regime, whereas all the democrats, all the people from the coordination committees, were attacked by the Syrian regime. And they hold the future of Syria, to respect and to uphold the objectives of the revolution, which are democracy, social justice and the rejection of sectarianism.
11:00 So the self-organisation of the people is still present in Syria despite all the difficulties, despite the repression. And, as the Syrian people say, death rather than humiliation. And this is why the Syrian revolution is still continuing, and it will continue until it realises the objectives of the revolution: democracy, social justice and rejection of sectarianism. Thank you.
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