Essay: The Syrian conflict

The Syrian Arab Republic came forth as an autonomous country during the Second World War after a period of French rule and nationalist agitation in the wake of the First World War. Before that, the dominion that now consist Syria was allotted by the Ottoman Empire and had initially been a significant stage for major events in the unravelling of Christianity and Islam, Muslim-Christian battles during the Crusades, and the standoff of the Mongol invasion of the Middle East. The country’s strategic, central location made it an avenue for powerful and regional competition during the Cold War era, and its present religious, ethnic, political, economic, and environmental challenges mirror those of some other countries in the Middle East.
Way back before the present conflict, Syrians strived with problems that have bred deep dissatisfaction in other Arab autarchy, with increased level of unemployment, inflation, limited upward mobility, rampant mismanagement of public resoruces, lack of political freewill, and repressive security forces. These factors fired some opposition to Syria’s authoritarian rule, which has been dominated by the Baath (Renaissance) Party since 1963, and the Al Asad family since 1970. President Bashar al Asad’s biological father—Hafiz al Asad— dominated the country as president from 1971 until his death in 2000. Donee of both the Asad family’s regime and the economic and social status quo were drawn from across Syria’s diverse citizenry; also, they offered support to the administration, helping it to manage, defuse, or repress dissent.
The Syrian population, also like those of many other Middle East countries, includes different ethnic and religious groups. For years, the Asad administration’s strict political monopoly prevented these differences from playing an overtly divisive role in political or social life, whereas French and Ottoman regimes of Syria had at times manipulated popular divisions. A majority of Syrians, roughly 85% of the population, are ethnic Arabs; however, the country consists of small ethnic minorities, notably Kurds, the country’s largest distinct ethnic/linguistic minority (7%-10% of the total population). Of significance in Syria are religious sectarian differences. Also, to the majority Sunni Muslims, who comprise over 65% of the population, Syria consists of several religious sectarian minorities, including three lowly populated Muslim sects (Alawites, Druze, and Ismailis) and various Christian denominations.
The Asad family are members of the minority Alawite sect (roughly 12% of the population), which has its roots in Shiite Islam. In spite of the secular nature of the ruling Baath party, religious sects have been necessary to some Syrians as symbols of group identity and epitope of political enlightenment. The Asads and the Baath party have cultivated Alawites as a key base of support, and elite security forces have long been led in large part by Alawites, although some officers and most rank and file military personnel have been absorbed from the majority Sunni Arab population and other minority groups. The government violently inhibited an armed uprising led by the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, killing thousands of Sunni Muslims and others.
Religious, ethnic, geographic, and economic identities overlap in affecting the perceptions and choices of Syrians about the current conflict. Within ethnic and sectarian societies are important tribal and familial groupings that often provide the underpinning for political coalition and commercial relationships. Socioeconomic differences abound among farmers, laborers, middle-class wage earners, public sector employees, military officials, and the political and commercial elite. Many rural, less privileged Syrians originally affirmed the opposition movement, while urban, more wealth Syrians show to have mixed views.
The brutality of the conflict and the devastation it has placed to large areas of the country has further redefined the views of members of these various groups. Local and tribal adherence also affect some Syrians, as seen in contentions between the two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, in differences between rural agricultural societies and urban areas, and in the absorption of some sectarian and ethnic societies in distinct areas. Despite being authoritarian, Syrian leaders over the years often discovered it important to adopt policies and strategies that accommodated, to some degree, various power centers within the country’s diverse population and reduced the potential for communal identities to lighten up conflict.
That need is likely to remain, if not intensify, after the current conflict insofar as the conflict has imparted to a hardening of sectarian identities. While sectarian considerations cannot fully buttress power relationships in Syria or forecast the future kinetics of the conflict, accounts from Syria strongly recommend that sectarian and ethnic diversions have developed deeper since 2011. Members of the Sunni Arab majority were at the forefront of the original protest movement in 2011, and pre-eminently Sunni Arab armed groups have involved themselves in most of the fighting against the security forces of the Alawite-led government. Support for the Asad administration from foreign Shiite fighters has galvanized some Sunnis’ opinions of the regime as non-retrievable sectarian. Nonetheless, much of the daily crisis happens between Sunni armed oppositionists and a Syrian military force consisted largely of Sunni conscripts.
Syria’s Christians, members of other minority groups, and civilians from some Sunni and Alawite communities have been caught between their parallel fears of what violent political change could mean for their communities and the knowledge that their failure to actively support rebellion may result in their being associated with Asad’s crackdown and suffering retaliation. The Alawite led administration of the Syrian government and its allies in other sects show to comprehend the mostly Sunni Arab developing as an existential threat to the Baath party’s close to five-decade at the center of administration. At the popular level, some Alawites and members of other sects may feel caught between the regime’s demands for loyalty and their fears of vengeance from others in the event of regime change or a post-Asad civil war.
During the past year, many peaceful protests in Syria asking political, social and economic reforms have developed into a full-scale civil war, becoming one of the major problems on the international agenda. The chief perpetrator for the violent turn of events is Syria’s authoritarian regime, which tried to quell demonstrations by resorting to increasingly violent measures and repressions. According to UN reports, the Syrian regime involved in taxonomic and far-flung human rights violations, including violations of the rights to food and health, more than enough use of force against protesters, arbitrary arrests, summary executions, abductions, enforced disappearance, torture and rxxx as a matter of policy. These reports had confirmed that some of the actions taken by regime constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes. Members of the international community reacted to the conflict by growingly, if somewhat sluggishly, mounting up pressure on the regime to stop gross human rights violations by smart sanctions, embargoes, recalling ambassadors and closure of embassies, as well as building up and sponsoring camps for the increasing stream of refugees from Syria. Nonetheless, while some countries went beyond that by providing support for the insurgents, the actions of the international community at large have not been able to force the Syrian regime to alter its approach or its leadership to step down.
CIVIL HUMAN RIGHT VIOLATION
By the end of 2014 the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry (CoI) had printed nine major accounts documenting high human rights abuses perpetrated in Syria. The CoI has presented that pro-government forces “continue to conduct widespread attacks on civilians, systematically committing murder, torture, rxxx and enforced disappearance as crimes against humanity” and have also committed extensive war crimes. The CoI also accounted on war crimes committed by some armed opposition groups, as well as “murder, execution without following the rule of law, torture, hostage taking,” as well as widespread violations of international humanitarian law.
The human cost has been astounding. According to one major study, as of November 2013 among the then estimated 130,000 dead from the Syrian conflict were 11,000 children below the age of 17, 389 children were shot dead by snipers. Both the government and armed rebels went further to commit mass atrocity crimes. Syrian government forces have made use of aircraft, tanks, heavy artillery and cluster ammunitions to terrify and kill anyone pre-signify to be assisting the regime’s opponents, including civilians living in opposition-controlled areas of Aleppo, Damascus, Daraa, Idlib and Ar-Raqqah governorates. For instance, Human Rights Watch documented 56 attacks using incendiary bombs between November 2012 and September 2013, including an intentional air strike on a school in a rebel-held area of Aleppo that burned to death a significant number of teenagers who are students. On 17 February 2013 government forces launched four ballistic missiles into residential areas of Aleppo, killing a whole lots of residents which included 71 children.
According to the CoI:
Attacks on villages and towns in Idlib governorate are too much to account for. The region of Jabal Al-Zawiya and, especially, the towns of Saraqib, Kafr Nabl and Maarat Al-Numan, came under intense aerial bombardment between July and October [2013], including by barrel bombs. On 21 July, a market in Ariha was bombarded, resulting in mass civilian casualties.
On the stand of government troops and cooperating militias have conducted massacres of unarmed civilians. Reported cases include plenty killings in Idlib and Homs governates, including at Houla, a cluster of villages northwest of Homs City, where entire families were killed with guns and knives by forces that went door-to-door on a nine-hour killing spree on 25 May 2012. Among the perpetrators, some wore army uniforms, but others wore civilian clothing and named their victims by name before killing them. Houla was not an episode of wanton bloodlust, but a systematic attempt to decimate the familial and communal backup based upon which the mainly Sunni armed rebels relied.
Other reported unlawful killings include the targeting of wounded combatants and injured civilians by state forces. This includes cases documented by the CoI:
In mid-September (2013), persons incurring treatment for nonlife- threatening injuries in Mowasat Hospital were discovered dead after soldiers accede their operating rooms. One male relative who was around the event when it happened, saw that the soldiers were asked for identification and shot upon discovery of his family ties to the victims. On 24 October, Free Syrian Army fighters were escorting a convoy of injured civilians and fighters out of Al-Nashabeyah when they were ambushed. Soldiers from the 22nd Brigade approached and killed the wounded at close range.
Government snipers are also routinely distributed to terrorise, murder or maim civilians. Doctors in Aleppo told the CoI that they think that in some cases civilians were being used “for target practice” with “a clear pattern to sniper injuries” on some special days. According to the CoI:
Government forces are conducting a sniper campaign in Bustan al-Qasr (Aleppo). On one day alone in October 2013, doctors treated five men shot in the groin. The same month, six pregnant women were shot in the abdomen.
Sniper victims are often ignored to bleed to death in the street as civilians who advance to assist them are also killed.
Medical practitioners in opposition-controlled areas have also been pointed at. Research gathered by Physicians for Human Rights showed that, “government forces committed 90 percent of the confirmed 150 astrocities on 124 facilities between March 2011 and March 2014, which have desolated the country’s health system.” Such attacks killed more than 450 civilian health workers, including 160 doctors and 90 nurses, by March 2014 and still counting. The CoI similarly accounted:
Hospitals in Aleppo city and Al Bab came under sustained shelling and aerial bombardments. In July 2013, Juban hospital in Aleppo city was destroyed. On 11 September, a jet fired a missile at Al Bab field hospital, killing 15 people, including a doctor, 4 paramedics and 8 patients, and injuring many others. The hospital had moved its location three times owing to shelling attacks.
Troops and militias confederate to the government are also forcefully guiding against medical supplies to civilians in attacked areas, in direct infraction of the Geneva Conventions. With regard to detainees, government forces went further to commit “torture and other forms of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment as part of a general attack targeted against civilian population, indicating the existence of an organizational policy.”
This also includes sexual offences of adults of both genders, as well as the torture of children. Responding to the CoI’s outcomes, on 2 December 2013 the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, uttered that it gave evidence of “responsibility at the highest level of government” in Syria for the commission of mass atrocity crimes against civilian and human right.
Armed opposition sectarians have also committed war crimes, including deadly reprisals against minority communities, defilement and demolition of religious sites and extrajudicial execution of bewitched government soldiers. Foreign funding, high access to arms and an inflow of alien fighters have helped the capabilities of a growing number of radical Islamist armed groups, including the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIL. In the city of Al-Raqqah, public beheadings, crucifixion and other gross violations of human rights have been inflicted upon civilians opposed to ISIL’s rule as well as caught by government soldiers and members of rival armed groups.
Some armed opposition groups on a regular basis carried out war crimes against civilians on the basis of their religious affiliation and predetermined political loyalties. In cases documented by the CoI, for instance, Alawite farmers in the Al-Ghab Valley were “routinely kidnaped and executed” by armed opposition groups operating from nearby Sunni villages. Also, in Damascus, civilians were illegally detained and tortured for their religion alone.
The proclivity of ISIL and some other armed groups for systematically perpetrating mass atrocities against Alawite, Christian and Kurdish communities has so far only been contained by a lack of military opportunity. For instance, Human Rights Watch elaborated an organised campaign by ISIL and allied armed groups against ten Alawite villages in Latakia during August 2013. Examiners gathered evidence of opposition fighters killing at least 200 unarmed civilians, including 60 women and 19 children, as they overran the villages. In some cases entire families were gunned down. Witnesses also testified that they had seen corpses of civilians that had been decapitated by the fighters.
Several armed opposition groups operating in eastern Damascus have aroused improvised rockets and artillery into government-controlled communities, indiscriminately wiping out civilians. On 19 November 2013, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the lobby of a government-controlled hospital in Deir Atiyah and there have been other unlawful attacks on medical workers and health facilities. Some armed groups have also besieged civilians from religious minority communities living in outlying pro-government villages and towns. In September 2014 ISIL launched a major military offensive against Kurdish controlled areas in Syria, besieging the border town of Kobane and targeting civilians.
After apprising the Security Council on 8 April 2014, High Commissioner Pillay disclosed that disdain the appalling war crimes committed by some armed opposition groups, the Syrian government should be held responsible for gross human rights violations that were still of a far greater scale and scope. However, as the CoI has argued with regard to the present violations of international humanitarian law in Syria, it is the Security Council that bears responsibility for giving the warring parties the liberty to violate these rules with impunity.
International political divisions over Syria have had deadly results. The Security Council has not only failed to accomplish its basic function – the maintenance of international peace and security – it has also dismally betrayed in upholding its responsibility to protect the Syrian people.
Far away from the Security Council’s chamber in New York, during August a high-level commission from the three IBSA countries also visited a part of Syria, Damascus and met with President Assad and Walid Al-Moualem, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Press releases conveyed how the IBSA representatives had voiced concerns over the violence and that in return Assad ceded that some errors had been made by the security forces in the initial stages of the unrest and that efforts were underway to prevent their recurrence. Moualem ingeminate that Syria will be a free, pluralistic and multi-party democracy before the end of the year.
It was not clear if the exemplum of the IBSA governments were genuinely assured, but all three countries subsequently desisted on an October 2011 draft Security Council resolution aimed at holding the Assad government responsible for crimes that had already killed close to 200,000 people.
REGIONAL EFFECTS OF SYRIAN CIVIL WAR
Fighting has already spilled over to Syria’s notoriously and unstable neighbours Lebanon and Iraq, where living ethnic-confessional conflict have been aggravated. Occasional fighting is coming up between local Alawite and Sunni-Islamist parties in the North Lebanese harbor city of Tripoli. Growing anti-government protests of an increasingly confessional nature in the Sunni dominated areas of Iraq as well as a new wave of terrorist attacks mostly against Shiite aims are often conceived to be indirect effects of the events in Syria. In addition, the governments and opposition of both countries have been affirming corresponding forces in the Syrian conflict – by rhetoric, financially and, at least partly, by sending combatants. While the Lebanese Hezbollah and the government of Iraq side with the Syrian regime, Sunni politicians in Lebanon as well as Sunni clans and Sunni-Jihadist groups in Iraq side with the rebels. This could well lead to a monolithic destabilization of both countries and may even draw them into another civil war in Syria.
While Israel had first shown restraint with regard to the current crisis in Syria, it intervened in the conflict in January 2013 and again in early May 2013 by bombing arms conveyed and depots near Damascus, supposedly to interdict transfer of advanced arms to the Lebanese Hezbollah. This conflict dimension carries the danger of a serious regional step-up, especially in conjunction with the conflict over the Iranian nuclear program. Turkey, as host of the oppositional Syrian National Council and operational basis for the Free Syrian Army, had become a part to the conflict initially, and considers itself directly endangered by the developments in Syria. As a result, Turkey’s parliament passed the bills of operations in neighbouring countries in early October 2012. In January 2013, NATO (Germany, the United States and the Netherlands) stationed Patriot defense systems at the border with Syria. In their current mission, these systems are solely targeted to defend Turkey against direct attacks from Syrian aircraft or missiles. Initially, this shows symbolic support for NATO partner Turkey and the Turkish government which, due to its Syria policy, is pressed hard in its domestic areas. The Patriots neither have a full direct effect on the conflict dynamics in Syria nor do they defend the Syrian civilian population. As has been spotlighted by bomb attacks in the border town of Reyhanli in early May 2013, Turkey advanced to be directly affected by fighting and instability along its border with Syria, with an inherent and serious potential for blow up.
Above all, however, Turkey felt threatened that yet another independent Kurdish region (besides the one in northern Iraq) could form directly behind the border, which could give new impulses to separatist tendencies in Turkey’s own Kurdish population or could offer a refuge for the PKK. Indeed, since the onset of the crisis in Syria, attacks by the PKK increased markedly and the structures of a factual autonomy under the control of the PYD, which is closely correlated with the PKK, have amalgamated. Yet, thus far there is no proof for a link between both developments, or for PKK attacks deriving from Syria in particular. While the ceasefire pronounced by Abdullah Ocalan in March 2013 and the planned disengagement of PKK fighters from Turkey to northern Iraq (and their disarmament at a later stage) would probably assuage Turkish concerns, that process in turns remains fraught with uncertainty, as hardliners on both sides may want to subvert it.
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN SYRIA
Forced dispersion
The widget insecurity and the devastating economic contraction, especially in conflict zones, have forced millions of Syrians to vacate their homes and resettle both inside and outside the country. Extensive displacement has increased the suffering of the population who already face great challenges to meet their basic human needs. This is especially traumatic for those who lost relatives, properties, businesses etc. Most overwhelming is the plight of those who have become so desperate as to place their lives and fortunes at risk in the hands of illegal traffickers in the hope of reaching safe-have on European shores in terms of refugee. The forced dispersion of Syrian population during the crisis had major social, political and economic impact on the dismissed population and created economic, political and social tension in welcoming societies. This effect includes changes in labour markets, production processes, expenditure patterns, social relations and the formal and informal institutional structure of the economy. In general, these alterations have produced a considerable economic burden on the receiving nations and their communities.
Moreover, the forces let loosed by armed conflict and economic crisis advanced to translate the demography of Syria through population redistribution and movement both inside and outside the country. The increasing number of migrants, refugees, and the bestriding toll of conflict-related deaths are hollowing out the residential population. While the population of Syria was 20.87 million in 2010, by mid- 2014 it is approximated to have fallen to 18.02 million inhabitants, which by the end of 2014 is forecasted to fall to 17.65 million. Consequently, the population growth remained negative in 2014, reducing by 5.9 per cent in 2014-Q1, by 5.5 per cent in 2014-Q2, by 4.0 per cent in 2014- Q3 and by 4.0 per cent in 2014-Q4 in comparison to parallel quarters in 2013.
By the end of 2014, Turkey replaced Lebanon as the main horde of Syrian refugees, with 35.1 per cent of all refugees sheltering there. This changing posts was mainly due to growing armed-conflict in the northern region of Syria, which was particularly violent in the fourth quarter as ISIS mounted attacks in the fourth quarter. Close geographic closeness was the primary reason why these forced refugees chose Turkey as their destination. Following closely behind, Lebanon continued to host a significant Syrian refugee population, hosting a total of 34.5 per cent of Syrian refugees, while at the same time accommodating a long-term Palestine refugee population of 500,000 residents in 12 refugee camps. The Lebanese government adjudicated in October 2014 to ban the influx of Syrian refugees except for cases approved by the Ministry of Social Affairs. Another 18.7 per cent of Syrian refugees are hosted in Jordan, and 6.9 per cent of Syrian refugees have found shelter in Iraq. (UNHCR, 2014).
The rise in non-refugee migrants, especially middle-class professional, who have left Syria to find regular work and residence in other countries also contributed to the declining population in Syria. Most of these migrants left early in the conflict, such that the pace of this migration declined significantly in 2014 as the most that were able and willing to travel had already deviated. By the end of 2014, the total number of migrants reported for 1.55 million departing Syrians (Ismail, 2013), with 163,000 persons departing during 2014 compared to 524,000 in 2013. Migration from Syria was a common phenomenon before the conflict and driven by economic purpose. However, during the crisis, migration increased significantly, especially among wealthy and professional people who left to escape the decreasing socioeconomic situation, insecurity and violence, as they saw little hope for their future within the country. The loss of this population consisted a very significant brain drain.
At the end of 2014, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Syria is approximated at 6.80 million people, which is an increase from 5.99 million at the end of 2013. Most of IDPs fled conflict zones or areas that were badly destroyed. As they fled many left their household resources and assets behind. Most are in need of basic services, goods, and assistance. The government has been able to provide shelters and support for less than 5 per cent of IDPs, with most living in host communities throughout the country. The advancement of the crisis has deepened the complexity of relations between IDPs and host communities within Syria. While the majority of these communities have provided tremendous moral and physical support to IDPs, they themselves have suffered from economic hardship, lowering of incomes and insecurity and there is increasing feeling of fear and hostility within the polarised environment.
Deprivation for all
The report utilises developed national poverty lines to estimate and measure the incidence of poverty, including the extreme and poverty gaps across governorates. The projections used in this report are based on the Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HIES), augmented by using the counterfactual methodology to forecast real private per capita consumption growth in the period 2010-2014 through a micro-simulation method.
During 2014 poverty continued to deepen throughout the country as a result of: rising prices for goods and services; job loss and growing unemployment; swelling numbers of IDPs who lost their properties and assets; in addition with a stinging economic recession and the liberalisation of fuel and food subsidies that pushed up prices during the second half of 2014. This was also compounded by the direct impact of violence in many areas of the country. Thus, by the end of 2014, 82.5 per cent of Syrians lived in poverty, suffering from multidimensional deprivation and not just the money metric one that reported in this section (World Bank, 2014).
Assuming no change in expenditure distribution within each governorate, and taking into consideration the change in the structure of the prices between governorates compared to 2009, it is estimated that the overall poverty rate reached 82.5 per cent by the end of 2014 compared to 64.8 per cent in 2013. While poverty varies among regions, those governorates that witnessed intensive conflict and had higher historical rates of poverty suffered most from poverty. Thus, people in Ar-Raqqa were the poorest with 89 per cent of residents falling below the overall poverty line, while those in Idleb, Deir Ezzor, Rural Damascus and Homs also suffered from high rates of overall poverty. There were few people in these regions that were not poor. While the poverty rate increased in all governorates since the last reporting period, the lowest rate was in Lattakia at 72 per cent, followed by Sweida, and Damascus respectively. But even in the regions with the lowest incidence of poverty, the majority of the populace was poor.
A subset of the overall poor is the set of extremely poor people, defined by using the lower national poverty line. It is estimated that those living in extreme poverty reached 64.7 per cent of the population by the end of 2014 compared to 40.9 per cent in 2013, with those living in conflict-affected regions showing the highest incidence of extreme poverty. The population of Idleb was most affected by extreme poverty, with 76 per cent, households struggling to meet their households’ basic food and non-food items to survive in 2014, with Ar-Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Al-Hassakeh following closely.
The lowest rates of extreme poverty were in those areas of the country that had been least affected by direct military actions. Thus, both Lattakia and Sweida witnessed the lowest incidence of extreme poverty, which affected 43 per cent and 48 per cent of the population respectively. Intensifying military operations and blockades in several areas within Syria dramatically increased the prices and the scarcity of basic goods, particularly food items. This is reflected in the sharp increase in the abject poverty rate, which reached 30 per cent by the end of 2014. At this level of poverty people find great difficulty to provide for the non-food items required by the household. Such excessive levels of deprivation put life at risk, which is reflected in the increasing number of tragic cases of death due to malnutrition and starvation, especially besieged and isolated places. People and households in Idleb, Deir Ezzor and Aleppo were poorest with the highest rates of abject poverty, with households finding great difficulty to meet the basic food needs required to sustain bare life. Households in the safer areas of Lattakia, Damascus, and Sweida experienced the lowest incidence of abject poverty, although abject poverty was not uncommon among these populations.
The substantial increase in poverty between 2013 and 2014 reflects the extreme and deepening suffering of the Syrian families due to the continuation of armed conflict, which caused a dramatic collapse in socioeconomic conditions. This has been accompanied by the increasing absence of human security, the deterioration of the rule of law and increasing of inequality in accessing basic goods and services. Moreover, the prolonged nature of the conflict is diminishing the resilience, self-reliance and empowerment of Syrian households that are increasing exposed to violence, discrimination and abuse. While the substantial provision of humanitarian assistance from multiple parties has helped mitigate some of the worst situations and provided a lifeline for millions of households, its scale, form and content remains far below the needs of people within the present catastrophic situation.
Alienation and violence
The social movement which began in March 2011 produced a sense of optimism among those interested in positive change; those who had hoped to build new institutions in order to go beyond the state of deadlock. The movement has proposed values that were at the heart of the desired change to promote freedom and dignity. However, the subjugating powers, both at the local and international levels, resisted change, while the situation turned into confrontation and armed-conflict that was a deviation from its purpose. The increasing violence created deep frustration among Syrians, who experienced a boundless gap between their aspirations and reality, where dignity, personality and humanity were squandered. Their alienation became even more profound as a consequence of the catastrophic results of the conflict in which destruction, displacement, looting, killing, kidnapping and rxxx were all too common. This is especially troubling as these results have been produced by their own “institutions”.
The subjugating powers continue to undermine the potential for positive interaction and participation by Syrians to reach agreement on a new social contract. One that honours the potential of citizens to integrate and become part of political and social institutions that help empower them and realise their creative and productive capabilities in manner that respects their rights, personality, dignity, freedom, diversity and self-determination.
However, the state of alienation and estrangement has led to the eruption of unprecedented levels of violence among Syrians, leading to increasing reliance on institutions that are alien to them from both inside and outside the country. This has fermented social disintegration and aggravated hatred and fanaticism. On the one side, security institutions have become overtly predominant, while on the other side, traditional institutions have abused religion. Both attempt to dominate the human being and the resources and capacities of society.
The squandering of consciousness and status of the human being that was practiced before the crisis has increased manifold, even to the level of eradication of the human being’s right to life. The subjugating powers have taken advantage of the state of violence to instil a culture of fear, terror, polarization and submission. They have mobilised local economic resources to fuel the machinery of violence, where they have been deployed as incentives to feed the conflict and economies of violence. Within this state of exception, the remaining economic powers have been leveraged to continue the conflict. The tools used by the parties to the conflict to serve their ends are not ones that are available to those who seek positive change through non-violent means. All of this could not have been sustained without substantive external support to the conflict parties. Cultural symbols, media and local forces have been utilized to reinforce violence amongst members of the same society, resulting in polarization and rejection of others and the destruction of human values such as solidarity, cooperation and trust. The political powers involved in the armed conflict have predominated and repressed other voices based on using “times of war” as a justification to prevent real participation by Syrians.