Syria: where do you think we are heading?

The news on the uprising in Syria has been confusing for me to follow and recently becoming frustrating for me to follow.

I feel that I should to go into a time line for those of you who have not been following, but I myself feel muddled about it at best. I read different numbers here and there, unverified videos and out of my own personal experience, feel skeptical about any genuine uprising or grassroots movement.

At first when demonstrations started on March 15, I was weary because I didn’t know if I was waiting for the uprisings to reach Syria or wanted to see if they were going to, or wanted to be assured that they weren’t going to. Also, that they started in mid March with my capstone paper on Syria due end of March complicated things for me.

Now, some of you might want to call me a conspiracy theorist, but yes when I knew that the protests started in Dar’aa I was skeptical, but nevertheless I said I will wait and see, and if I am mistaken and Syrians do not want Bashar then it is only a matter of time before the demonstrations will pick up pace and Syrians in major cities will follow suite, like what happened in Egypt. That didn’t happen; we only started seeing pro-Assad demonstrations by the thousands in Damascus and Aleppo. I am also skeptical because of the much reading that I have done about Syria’s past and present and about Bashar himself and the things he has done. With what I have read and my own personal experience, I am convinced and truly believe that even though Bashar is technically from the same “ruling party” he is not a Bonapartist dictator of his father’s time and he truly wants genuine change for Syria, in fact I found out that the changes I have been noticing in Syria through my visits started happening when Bashar came to office in 2000 but I was much younger then to understand politics. He has been implementing reforms and he has been opening the country, not that more cannot be done. But Bashar is aware of the need of change domestically, of unemployment levels rising and economy declining.

I think it is important to take every situation/country within its own context and look at it with its own dynamics. It is important to keep in mind that Syria is a muti ethnic country and stability is of crucial importance to Syrians. Bashar has been trying hard to improve Syria’s economy and Syrians’ standard of living. Sure people in Syria want political reforms and would like to have more political freedoms and dignity and to this I think every Syrian would attest, but the right to vote etc. is not the pressing issue now, but it is to have a decent living standard, education and work. I feel that I am not expressing myself enough here, partly because I feel I have said all that I have to say in my paper, which I had to go over and over before submitting and so I feel that I have exhausted the topic for myself. For those of you who might be interested in getting an overview of Syria and more specifically Bashar’s reforms domestically and what I am talking about, I am more than happy to share my paper. It provides an overview of the reforms that Bashar has implemented since he came to office and an idea for his vision along with the obstacles he faces. However, there is a whole international aspect to Syria’s position that adds a deeper insight that I had to scratch out given that I was limited with space. The paper is only 10 pages and an easy read.

Though I am saying this, I am in no way advocating that it is ok to kill people, yes people had demands and they have been met. I sincerely believe that the protests were needed to give Bashar that push to finally implement the political reforms that he has been talking about but has been hesitant to implement either because he is too soft, as some people call him, or because of the old guard.

Nevertheless, currently my stance on the situation is that yes there must be infiltrators who have started these protests and provocations in Dar’aa. The fact that they are STILL contained in Dar’aa says a lot; a town in southern Syria, bordering Jordan and mainly inhabited by villages and uneducated people of different religious sects. Why aren’t people in other major provinces saying anything? It is because Syria needs to looked at as a specific case as a country and as Bashar its president. The protests haven’t spread because Syrians don’t want it and they do not want chaos. Now, I might find out that I am completely wrong and protests might spread and I will not be upset, but currently I do not think that Bashar is stupid enough to ask the security officers to kill and spill blood. He knows it won’t help. Recently we have been hearing that his brother might be heading what is happening and what the security officers are doing.

I think it is mostly appalling to me when the U.S. yet again manages to be very contradictory with its position as an advocate for democracy. It condemns Syria and wants to implement sanctions yet saying nothing about Bahrain who has detained protesters to death. And I tell you I was sincerely surprised when I read this. Especially that I had heard that the same thing has been happening in South America. Here is a look from Al-Jazeera

Backed by neo-conservative hawks who have long sought regime change in Damascus, they have urged the administration to follow the same path it trod in isolating Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, beginning with a UN resolution referring Assad to the International Criminal Court and the appointing of a special rapporteur to investigate alleged abuses by his security forces.

Basing its story on recently released Wikileaks cables, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the US state department had provided about six million dollars to opposition groups since 2006, when US-Syrian relations were at their lowest ebb under former president George Bush.

Much of the money has reportedly been spent on Barada TV, a satellite network run by Syrian expatriates allegedly linked to the Movement for Justice and Development (MJD), described in one cable as a "moderate Islamist organisation that eschews any ideological agenda aside from ending the Asad regime through democratic reform".

Despite Obama’s official policy of engaging Damascus, Barada TV began broadcasting in April 2009 and recently ramped up its operations and now broadcasts 24 hours a day, although various sources said it was virtually unknown within Syria.

In his remarks Tuesday, Toner insisted that US support for Barada and civil-society groups in Syria was "no different" from similar "democracy-promotion" programmes it supports in other countries around the world.