The transitional authority in Damascus is racing against time to tighten its grip on the Sunni Arab component through a series of mobilization policies and measures. These policies begin with incitement against non-Arab Syrian components (the Kurds) and non-Sunni Arab components (the Alawites and Druze), portraying them as outside the \u201cauthority\/state\u201d and rebellious against it. They then move to reframe the state, imposing it as a unit based on a narrow, highly centralized identity that refuses any identities or particularities outside the umbrella of \u201cSunni Arabs.\u201d<\/p>\n
These efforts culminate in official, public calls for participation in ethnic and sectarian cleansing campaigns such as \u201cgeneral mobilization\u201d and \u201ctribal mobilization.\u201d All this \u201cimplication\u201d of Syria\u2019s largest nationalist and sectarian component is based on the hope of legitimizing this authority (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) to rule and to eliminate the isolation it currently feels, as it did previously when it governed Idlib. This isolation stems from its being an ideologically driven faction created across borders, refusing to recognize nationalism or popular sovereignty. It is rooted in a Salafi-jihadist interpretation, whose visions are unpopular among Syrians and lack any support base that believes in and defends its ideas.<\/p>\n
The goal is to shape Syria as a majority and minority society. The majority should be a single, cohesive group united behind the authority, obedient and submissive to its commands, while the \u201cminorities\u201d appear scattered, besieged, exhausted, and out of balance. To achieve this, the regime seeks to intensify sectarian nationalist rhetoric and amplify media propaganda in one direction, always relying on multiple narratives that it presents as unquestionable facts. All this aims to radicalize the Sunni Arab segment and entrench it behind the \u201cstate.\u201d Concurrently, the regime continues to bury the legacy of the Syrian political opposition by excluding historic national parties and forces from the scene and erasing them from official political and media discourse. It also works to prevent the rise of civil society, to marginalize women, and to hinder their emergence within inclusive Syrian frameworks that transcend regional, sectarian, and national boundaries\u2014thus thwarting efforts to establish a genuine national civil political life. The regime\u2019s goal is to forge an \u201cincubator\u201d by engaging with the most basic social relationships and descending to the lowest societal levels, where it re-establishes clans and sheikhdoms as its structures and bases\u2014both as a foundation\u2014and as tools of repression and intimidation against its political opponents.<\/p>\n
What the regime currently lacks, however, is a stable base of support. It recognizes its own isolation and lack of roots within Syrian society.\u00a0That is why they turn to marginalized peripheries\u2014sectarian audiences with poor backgrounds, whose circumstances of war and life in refugee camps have deprived them of education, exposure to the values of citizenship, coexistence, and acceptance of difference and diversity.<\/p>\n
Besides the ideological burden of media hype, mobilization, and incitement aimed at subjugating and radicalizing the Sunni Arab component, the regime resorts to practical measures to bolster its political and media narrative. An example of this is what happened in Suwayda, where attacks targeted Druze citizens, along with the use of the \u201ctribal card\u201d by mobilizing lawless groups outside the bounds of Arab tribal custom and law (some led by local warlords who, only months earlier, were commanders of militias formed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard) to attack Jabal al-Druze and abuse the Syrian Druze community. It was by no means innocent for the authorities to agree to expel Sunni Bedouin families from Sweida, in full view of the Syrian people and Arab public opinion.<\/p>\n
The approval of the displacement of the Bedouins from Sweida serves the regime\u2019s narrative of a \u201cethnic minority conspiracy\u201d against the \u201cSunni majority.\u201d It is part of the sectarian and ethnic segregation narrative\/plan pursued by the authorities, aimed at creating homogeneous and \u201cpure\u201d areas in which the regime can \u201creplace\u201d its loyalist base in place of minorities it considers disloyal to the centralized, single-colored state that it is working\u2014along with external actors\u2014to shape and firmly establish.<\/p>\n
There is no doubt the regime struggles to recruit the Sunni Arab community, especially in major cities and urban centers (Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hama), within the frameworks it has outlined. These plans seem strikingly influenced by the \u201cmanagement of savagery\u201d methodology developed by jihadist theorist Abu Bakr Naji. The regime appears to be operating in the first phase of this approach: the phase of \u201cvexation and exhaustion,\u201d where crises are deliberately created to destabilize local communities and push them toward a state of \u201clawlessness,\u201d with the aim of intervening forcefully to manage the ensuing chaos in line with the rules outlined in that infamous jihadist manifesto.<\/p>\n
The regime\u2019s plans also clash with a series of heinous violations committed against Sunni Arab citizens\u2014ranging from arrests and extrajudicial killings, to storming mosques to \u201ccorrect\u201d worship, prayer rituals, and Qur\u2019an recitation, and extending to the disruption of wedding celebrations, assaults on attendees, and abuse of singers and members of musical groups. These violations are casting a shadow over Sunni Arab communities, fueling unrest and resentment toward an authority that seeks to impose its extremist vision and dark ideology on people who have practiced a moderate, locally rooted religious practice all their lives.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the minimal\u2014even microscopic\u2014popular participation in regime-led demonstrations intended to showcase public support highlights the extent of anger toward the regime\u2019s policies and actions. This regime barely exits conflict with one Syrian community before entering into confrontation with another, not to mention the continuous repression of Sunni Syrians in major cities and urban centers.<\/p>\n
As usual, the regime evades reality and distorts facts (e.g., the Fact-Finding Committee report on the coastal events, the official narrative on Sweida, etc.), resorting to external diplomatic contacts and visits as supposed achievements for Syrians engulfed in internal conflicts, ongoing confrontations, and insecurity.<\/p>\n
The regime also resorts to ceremonies and occasions\u2014now almost daily\u2014for signing multi-billion-dollar construction contracts (a metro system, expansion of Damascus International Airport, the construction of towering skyscrapers in the capital, etc.) in order to project an image of having resolved all internal problems, established a state of law and institutions that respect local specificities, and achieved smooth, transparent decentralization, with nothing left but grand, luxurious projects of towers and airports\u2014following the so-called \u201cgreat achievement\u201d of establishing the state\u2019s \u201cprestigious visual identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
In reality, the regime\u2019s show of being absorbed in reconstruction is nothing more than an escape from the major obligations it faces: ending the systematic abuse of Syrians and the massacres committed against them, moving out of the transitional phase, and accepting a national consensus conference to define the features of the existing state\u2014away from the \u201cempowerment\u201d methodology it enforces, and which it seeks to drag the Syrian Sunni Arab component into, turning it into a tool for achieving and solidifying that empowerment.<\/p>\n
It seems that the rhetoric of mobilizing and inciting the Sunni Arab component\u2014following the \u201cgeneral mobilization\u201d and \u201ctribal uprising\u201d\u2014and the transitional president\u2019s gratitude toward the \u201csupporting\u201d groups that attacked the Druze in Sweida, killing and humiliating civilians, has become an explicit and covert policy of the authorities.<\/p>\n
As a result of this rethoric, ISIS cells have begun to openly appear with their symbols and slogans within the waves of raids launched and ongoing by the regime in the coastal areas, Damascus countryside, and Sweida. Additionally, more extremist groups are also emerging, openly calling for ethnic cleansing and liquidation. An\u00a0 example is the \u201cAnsar al-Sunna\u201d group, a splinter faction from Hay\u2019at Tahrir al-Sham, which claimed responsibility for the bombing of Mar Elias Church in Damascus and began spreading propaganda on jihadist channels inciting fighters against religious and sectarian groups, accusing the regime of \u201capostasy and submission to the tyrant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amidst all this, and to achieve its ultimate goal of remaining in power, the regime continues\u2014and desperately clings\u2014to its favorite policy: operating as a functional apparatus that skillfully, or so it believes, manages relations with countries and alliances whose interests and agendas conflict with the Syrian nation and people\u2019s well-being.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The transitional authority in Damascus is racing against time to tighten its grip on the Sunni Arab component through a series of mobilization policies and measures. These policies begin with incitement against non-Arab Syrian components (the Kurds) and non-Sunni Arab components (the Alawites and Druze), portraying them as outside the \u201cauthority\/state\u201d and rebellious against it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1249,"featured_media":6260,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,61],"tags":[1094,908,38,1163,40],"ppma_author":[904],"class_list":["post-6259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-slider","tag-druze","tag-hayat-tahrir-al-sham","tag-isis","tag-sweida","tag-syria"],"authors":[{"term_id":904,"user_id":1249,"is_guest":0,"slug":"tariq-hamo","display_name":"Tariq Hemo","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Tariq-Hamo-2.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Tariq-Hamo-2.jpg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6261,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6259\/revisions\/6261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6259"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=6259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}