Asma and Complicated Syria (by SYRIAN HAMSTER)

Word from OFF THE WALL

This post by SYRIAN HAMSTER also appeared as a comment titled “Complicated Syria” response to an article on Syria Comment titled “in Defense of Asma al-Assad,” by an Anonymous Syrian writing under the name Cicero with S.H’s intent to also publish it on 7ee6an if I agreed to  cross posting.  There are only a few editorial corrections including a slight change of the title by SYRIAN HAMSTER in this post.

Complicated Syria

Regime promoters always attach a paragraph about Syria being a complicated country with rich heritage …. and so on. Take for example the first segment of this paragraph from the above “defense of Asma”

Syria is a complicated country, with a rich cultural heritage that is the result of the intermingling of the many religions and ethnicities, customs, beliefs, habits, ideas and values left behind by all the civilizations that have passed through and made Syria their home over thousands of years.

Further reading, shows the real objective of this paragraph which follows

It is at the nexus of the most heated schism our world faces today, between Iran, and Saudi Arabia, between Christianity and Islam, between East and West, and between Arabs and Israelis.

A logical link between the first and second segments is possible if one argues that 1. Syria is culturally diverse, 2. Syrians are connected, then it may follow that Syria is place where regional and global powers and cultures face each others through Syrians. This of course assumes good intention on the writer’s side. But when such argument is put forth by a regime loyalist in defense of Asma Al-Assad, it is used as an attempt to de-legitimize the revolution and to insinuate that what we see is merely the result of external forces using Syrians as if Syrians themselves have no choice or hand in their uprising and as if those dying are merely agents of external schism. The untold conclusion–premise of defense would then become: “Bashar is defending the country against these powers, and by extension, Asma is.”

Asma’s past deeds, some of which may be laudable had they reflected anything other than a PR campaign, are irrelevant to her current and recent actions. Furthermore, it is natural and common to say that she “embarked” on this or that project, but giving her the credit for the projects is a neither fair, nor accurate and it reflects a grave misunderstanding of how NGOs work. NGO activists are the real ones who design these projects, they manage them, they implement them, but to promote these projects, it is part if their work to find a “celebrity patron” to give the project visibility, and in the case of a brutal, money grabbing regime such as the Assad Mafia, some opbtain protection from the little mafiosi and some “oiling” of the machinery of the security apparatus to reduce the obstructive rejectionism so permeates the psych of the machinery. Asma Al-Assad received her rewards for playing along: a propagation of a false image of her husband and his brutal regime as a reform-minded regime, and an acceptance, and I may add, a rationalization of dealing with the regime while ignoring its continuing, but slightly lower-intensity brutality against opposition and against any attempt to establish a real powerful civil society. Not only that, she received a prime seat in the regime as its “civilized and modern” facade.

It is also well known that NGO’s approach wealthy people to serve as patrons for their projects. Some of these wealthy people are true philanthropists, and some play along for PR purposes, but in both cases, they donate money along with their celebrity status. NGOs are not shy about this, and why should they be, it is one way to provide benefit and some return to society. We are yet to find the level of Asma’s own financial contributions to her “wide network of” NGOs, knowing that her family gained significantly financially and in influence as well.

Asma’s “rose of the desert” veneer was relatively thin. It did not survive the heat produced by the first bullet her husband thugs fired at protesters. All what the email scandal did was to finish peeling off the last few specks of paint, which were more like tabloid play on speculations about whether she supports her husband or not and whether she is tormented by what he has been ordering his thugs to do. What we see is a careless woman, a woman who is fully behind her husband, and a woman fully out of touch with the multiple layers of misery her partner is causing to the people of Syria. A woman who has no qualm saying “i am the real dictator”, which reflects both bad taste and cold heart, even if said jokingly.

Her media rise as a “reform minded” “western educated” woman should in reality rile those who protest “orientalism”. Conditioning the progress of Syria on her “western” outlook (i would argue appearance) reduces Syrians to mere recipients of the “goodwill” of their “western-oriented” rulers and plays into the hand of the autocrats themselves. Not surprisingly, an anonymous regime loyalist, playing a hyper-nationalist tone, rushed to attack the anonymous Turk, who objected to one more attempt to rehabilitate an unworthy image and showed real respect for Syrians. The insult to Syrians posed by the west’s celebration of this fake image does not register on their radar despite of their constant stream of attacks on the west and “its evil plans” against Syria.

It would have been more appropriate to blast the EU for the ineffectiveness of these sanctions as real support to freedom and dignity seeking Syrians as far as the Syrian Revolution goes. The sanctions are worst than being symbolic. They are primarily at attempt to whitewash the “play along” policy over the past decade, and the propagation of the fraudulent image of the Assad mafia chieftain in hope of wooing him not cause further problem in the region. It is the west compensating itself for not challenging her and her husband to put their money where their mouths were. For that, these sanction may be condemned but never for the goodness of her heart.

The worst offense of the article is not the defense of Asma, but it is in its  last few words, which attempted to tie the fate of poor women in Syria to Asma’s inability to shop. That was bad taste, a really really bad taste.