In Damascus, leftists continue to organise

Red Flag’s Omar Hassan, a longstanding supporter of the Syrian revolution and a Palestine solidarity activist, is in Syria to report on the situation after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship. This is the fourth in his series of reports, the complete list of which can be found in our Syria After Assad section.

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“Field executions and random killings [have become] a daily occurrence. Among the most affected areas, the provinces of Hama and Homs were at the forefront of these crimes ... followed by the Syrian coast, particularly in Latakia and Tartous.” These chilling lines are taken from a bulletin by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released on 3 January.

It’s a stark reminder that the situation in Damascus, where stability reigns and the right to protest and gather peacefully is fairly unchallenged, is not the experience of all Syrians at this time.

Footage and reports from a four-day siege of the town of Khirbet Al-Ma’azzah went viral in the days before Christmas. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had subjected its people to daily searches, harassment and interrogations. It was eventually lifted, but only after an entirely apolitical employee of the state electricity company was found shot dead in his house.

Meanwhile, in Homs, residents have been subjected to door-to-door searches by armed HTS militants. The most terrifying rumours about what was going on quickly spread, some of which were confirmed in a definitive statement released by the Homs Civil Peace group. In careful and nuanced language, they accepted the principle of the operation, which is to arrest and punish senior figures from the Assad regime, but condemned its heavy-handed approach.

They described incidents of arbitrary destruction of property, physical and verbal assaults of civilians, forcing people to bark like dogs, harassment of some women found not wearing the hijab, arrests conducted without explanation or chance for appeal, and the deployment of tanks in civilian areas.

Stories of these outrages spread throughout Syria primarily via Facebook, which I’ve noticed is not hobbled by the same censorship that has driven English-speaking activists to other platforms. Posts written in Arabic routinely receive hundreds if not thousands of reactions, followed by furious debate in the comment section.

At times, these debates can fall into sectarian patterns and discourses. Syria has vast regional variations in economic conditions, ethnic and religious compositions, languages and accents. The old regime expertly pitted groups against each other to expand its profits and power.

For instance, it is widely understood, both externally and within Syria itself, that the Assad dynasty was a sectarian Alawi operation. There is an element of truth to that, as many key posts in the state and public institutions were given to fellow members of the Assad family and those from its community. This then tended to cascade down in the form of nepotistic hiring practices and so on, which in turn led to hostility from other communities towards the Alawi.

While the top leaders of the transitional government have been careful to avoid saying anything explicitly bigoted, their cadres and supporters have been less restrained. Calls to “cleanse” Syria of supporters of the former regime can sometimes be code for wider attacks on the Alawi community.

But Nour, a young comrade from the Syrian Revolutionary Left Current (RLC), has a different perspective: “People talk as if the Assad regime was defined by its sectarianism, but that’s wrong; its only religious commitment was to wealth”. This is an important point. Assad’s most consistent supporters were the largely Sunni bourgeoisie of Damascus. There are huge economic, social and political divisions within the Alawi community, as with all others. A number of courageous efforts were made to organise resistance to the regime by Alawis themselves, and the left is filled with figures from that community who rejected the regime for the same reasons as everyone else.

She made these comments at a public meeting of RLC, in the relatively clean-cut Damascus suburb of Sahnaya. It was a young and dynamic crowd, with women a slight majority of the 35 people present. Nour kicked off proceedings, explaining that it was the first public meeting the group had held since the fall of the regime. The meeting was held in the back room of a house that had been used for illegal meetings through the years of dictatorship.

British socialist and Middle East expert Anne Alexander addressed the audience on lessons from the Arab Spring, her face projected onto a cardboard screen.

Later, I attended a meeting organised by the Nissan Women’s Group in the Jaramana Social Forum, previously the local HQ of the ruling Syrian Ba’ath Party. I’m told that Jaramana itself is an interesting part of Damascus, with a strong alternative subculture and a more liberal attitude to relationships and women’s rights. On this night, about 100 people, much older and with more men than the earlier meeting, showed up for what turned out to be fairly technical talks on macroeconomic policy in Syria.

It was clear, however, that the attendees at both events were far more interested in discussing concrete perspectives and proposals than historical and theoretical issues. Where the talks had a somewhat abstract flavour, especially in Jaramana, audience members wanted to know how to take forward the fight for social and economic justice in Syria today.

Both meetings saw repeated complaints that there had been no shift in the approach to decision-making from the old regime. “We can sit here and talk about what we would like, but they’re not listening to us”, one man complained in Jaramana. “How do we turn that around?” One young radical responded by arguing forcefully, if optimistically, for a general strike: “It’s the only way to force them to listen”.

In Sahnaya, attendees expressed similar concerns: “Do [HTS] really need 3-4 years to write a constitution, or is that just a tactic to stall until they have all the power?”, someone asked. Another pointed to the elephant in the room: “How do we mobilise to defend our rights without provoking another civil war?” No easy answers.

Alexander stressed the need to build and strengthen independent unions that can use their power at the point of production to discipline bourgeois forces like HTS. Such a project is well beyond the capacities of this small group of young revolutionaries at this stage but it helped point the way forward.

Lines are quickly being drawn between supporters and opponents of the new government. For now, its critics are mostly on the back foot, responding to specific incidents and policies rather than setting the agenda. They’re racing to establish institutions and spaces that can allow them to think, organise and resist collectively.

On the other side, HTS are taking full advantage of their status as the only nationally organised force in Syria. Governing in Idlib gave them time and space to consolidate their political and military machine, assisted by extensive foreign donations. Their leaders are intelligent and battle-tested and are learning to enjoy being at the helm of the Syrian state while being wooed by global capital.

To justify their unilateral assumption of power, HTS use the slogan, “Those that did the liberating get to do the decision-making”. It would be a lie to say this argument, as anti-democratic as it is, has no purchase among the broader Syrian public. But HTS’s reactionary program—and the brutal, anti-revolutionary actions of many of its leaders during the civil war and its reign in Idlib—mean that many remain wary.

For now, the majority of Syrians are watching and waiting to see what comes next, willing to give the new government a chance. But that could change at any moment, triggered by an overreach or some other crisis. The transition from a 54-year dictatorship will take months, if not years, to unfold, and there will be many shifts in momentum and the balance of forces.

As we leave the meeting in Jaramana, my companion, an experienced journalist who has thrown herself into democratic organising, seems a bit down. She asks me what I think will happen to Syria. I tell her I have no idea, but that’s a positive in and of itself. Under Assad, it was guaranteed misery from here to eternity.