Syrians have flown the cage. We must not lose our freedom again
Like a bird that has just flown its cage, Ahmad rides on his motorbike, navigating every small road in Homs. The tears on his face are not only the result of cold wind - but also of joy. For he is not only rejoicing the fall of the authoritarian regime of the Assad family, but also finally enjoying the fresh change of scenery after seven years of what might be fairly described as house arrest.
Like hundreds of thousands of young men who were subject to the compulsory military draft, his movement was confined to an area of less than two sq km around his parental home, where he lives, to avoid being pulled at a security check and sucked into the "service".
The service was, until Bashar al-Assad was toppled, one of the most dreaded fates a Syrian could meet. Under Assad, the connotations of that service meant that young men were set against their own kin; if you were a soldier, the chances were you would be ordered to kill one of your own, anytime the superiors decided to label him or her an enemy.
If not in combat, then you might be ordered to collect arbitrary fees or confiscate properties randomly and unjustly. The word also meant that you were sentenced endlessly to put your life and livelihood on hold; it could last as long as "seen necessary".
It also meant that your family would have to pay a steady income to your superiors in the army, depending on your family’s earnings.
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So, the families sent whatever they had under the terrible economy as bribes for their sons’ essential rights and needs. The payments were not just the exaggerated cost of those needs, but also the price of access to those rights and essentials, which is determined by how greedy the superiors were.
For a handsome price, a drafted man could "buy" his way back to his vocation. In the case of, let's say, a carpenter, he might be allowed back occasionally to work at his workshop, as long as he paid a monthly income to his superior, which could be up to 80 percent of his earnings.
Alternatively, young men like Ahmad would spend the years of their youth on the run, avoiding capture, for no lesser price than life itself.
Mother of all freedoms
Overnight, all those young men were free again - as were the Syrian people.
It’s a novel sensation for most Syrians. Almost like "the king has a pair of donkey’s ears", whether you choose to listen to children in the street trying new slurs with Bashar’s name, or heed commercial transactions pronouncing the prohibited word “dollar” (traders used to say "green" or "parsley" for black-market transactions to avoid the all-listening ears of the security services), you sense the eeriness of this new freedom.
Living under oppressive regimes means that you are always being watched, listened to and sentenced. This also means that society has no room to grow, to self-express, or to regulate itself properly.
The mother of all freedoms belongs to the people now being released from Assad’s political prisons, such as Sednaya, aka the "slaughterhouse", 30km north of Damascus.
Reportedly designed by the Austrian Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner - the right-hand man to Adolf Eichmann and commander of the Drancy internment camp - who went to Syria after the defeat of the Nazis and eventually became an adviser to President Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, the Baathists and the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate.
The forbidding German architecture of the prison, along with its hidden secret codes and invisible doors, has left the teams who have just finished extracting the prisoners from the underground floors in a hectic race against time in their attempt to reach the detainees before they die from lack of air or water.
Chaotic scenes are also being captured of the looting and vandalism of the presidential palace, designed by the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. More alarmingly, there has also been looting and vandalism of public institutions such as the immigration centre, defence ministry, central bank and universities.
None of this should come as a surprise, as an entire generation has been brought up in war; not only deprived of freedom, but also of parenting and education.
Up for grabs
Hostilities have already begun, with Israel losing no time in encroaching further in the south of Syria under the pretext of the vacuum created by Syrian army forces fleeing from their positions on the border.
It has also continued its illegitimate air strikes, conducting over 300 in less than 48 hours, including the destruction of 70-80 percent of the Syria's air defences, naval fleets and military airports. The Israelis’ pseudo-argument is the same old pretext that "these weapons will fall into the wrong hand".
We must be very careful as we walk a fine line between anarchy and dictatorship. All around us are examples to avoid and none to follow
But it doesn’t take much to see that Syria at the moment is like that empty presidential palace: up for grabs, whether by Israel in the south, the US forces and their affiliates in the east, or Turkey in the north. Russia is already on the western coast, however fragile its position.
Nonetheless, Syrians hold on to "cautious hope" (to use UN Syria envoy Geir Pederson’s terminology). Their hope is not without grounds; the declared policy of HTS is "no revenge", "Syria for all Syrians" and "state institutions are red lines". This has created an atmosphere of "cautious" relief among people of all sects and backgrounds.
The fact that little blood was shed during the process made people look at this transition as a step in the right direction.
But we must be very careful as we walk a fine line between anarchy and dictatorship. All around us are examples to avoid and none to follow. Egypt replaced the Mubarak dictatorship (after a brief transitional period of democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood rule) with the dictatorship of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, which has destroyed the economy and much more, drowning the country in debt and furthering the social fragmentation between classes.
Libya and Yemen have disappeared from the international news radar, both now divided and floundering territories, while Iraq and Lebanon struggle with endless sectarian fragmentation and simmering internal conflicts.
Divide and conquer
In a recent address, Israeli officials spoke openly about their wishes to see a divided Syria as a "solution" to accommodate the different minorities. Ever since Sykes-Picot in 1916, the dividing of the people of this region has always been the aim of the colonial powers.
The argument of "protecting the minorities" has always been their pretext since the last days of the Ottomans - deliberately forgetting that these lands have always been multicultural and that "minorities" were dispensed with "favours", which were nothing but divide and conquer policies.
In the aftermath of the last days of the Ottomans, which ended with the Arab revolt (facilitated by the notorious Lawrence of Arabia), there was a similar sense of rejoicing and hope as today’s, with the Arabs indeed free from the corrupt sultanate.
But their days of freedom were numbered. While they celebrated, the French and the British gathered in Switzerland over a map to divide and steal their lands, topple their identity and create occupations.
The so-called independent states, which followed their departure, left us with those authoritarian regimes which were no more than client servants to the colonial powers. Today, one of the last standing and most vicious of those regimes has finally fallen.
Powers such as Israel, Russia, Iran, Turkey and the US may still be gathering around maps, deciding the fate of us Syrians so that we might fall into fragmentation and further conflict.
Nonetheless, in Syria, hope of rebuilding is intoxicating. People want to be in the "service", defend and rebuild because they have finally tasted what it means to belong.
It is a spider-thread-thin attachment; born just yesterday to a place that could be ours.
But if we are to rebuild a place, a country to belong to, a generation of health and awareness, we must regulate.
We must invest in rebuilding universities and schools, repairing infrastructure - including our military defences -and restoring the environment. We must remember that we don't need foreign architects to build us prisons and palaces.
We must not wait for foreign investment and growth, but work towards retrieving value where it was lost, and order where it is required.
Today, at this crucial hour of euphoric celebration and cautious hope, the question is: will the newly hatching chick of freedom be allowed to grow wings and soar like Ahmad, or will it be squeezed and crushed by the encroaching and sinister forces bringing us all back to the cage?
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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