In the Face of Syria’s Suffering, Basma al-Khatib Calls for Silence from the Bystanders and Naysayers

 

“The least we can do at this critical historical moment is to respect the suffering of the Syrians (and the suffering of everyone who was tortured by the Syrian Baath regime, regardless of their nationality) and to remain silent for a while. To come to grips with all this suffering, pain, loss of reason, and torture, we perhaps need a long time,” writes Basma Al-Khatib, a Lebanese writer and novelist.  

 

“Twofold silence — one out of respect for Syria and the other for our sake, to atone for our guilt.” As to what we, Lebanese, and maybe others are guilty of and must atone for, Khatib explains, “We have been bystanders to the conditions of the country for decades.”

 

Our ‘sin’ comes from watching Syrians in prisons, detention centers, purgatory, and hell, in burial graves, burnings, refugee camps, electric chairs, and on beaches that spewed up the bodies of fugitives. It is our sin to have lived alongside those who claim that “the tyrant's tyranny is a private and internal matter,” those who considered individual rights violations as less critical than “major ideological issues" like the East-West conflict or socialism versus capitalism.

 

"The least we can do is remain silent. There must be a resolute silence that serves no other purpose than to maintain silence so as not to disrupt the cries of those liberated from detention centers, the screams of those returning to their families, the calls of praise and thanks, the rivers of unending tears flowing from refugee camps to the motherland," states Khatib, adding, “If not now, when else will we remain silent in the face of all these tears?” 

 

Khatib's loud cry for Syria is shared by many, especially the Lebanese. It could be that the Lebanese, among Syria's neighbors, find it appropriate to "cry." Beyond geography, language, and culture, the Lebanese have shared common suffering with the Syrians, a bond, or perhaps debt, that Khatib expresses clearly: "We will never be able to repay you, but it will always remain around our necks." She adds, "We owe it to you, oh cities of Syria, its villages, countryside, shrines, monasteries, beaches, mountains, gardens, and deserts."

 

Throughout her blog post, Khatib evokes memories of the horrors of the Baathist regime. It is a long list that does not shy away from exposing brutality, describing sarin and chemical massacres, the use of nitrate bombs, the dropping of barrel bombs on Syrian towns and villages, the incarceration of hundreds of thousands and subjecting them to torture and rape, the defeatist conduct of the army in the 1967 war on the Golan Heights, the call for foreign powers to suppress the 2011 revolution, which killed hundreds of thousands, displaced half of the country's population within and among neighboring countries, fueled sectarian strife, disrupted Syria's demographic map, looted its wealth, and fed opposition to the lions of those in power. 

 

In an attempt to spoil the Syrian people's jubilation following Assad's fall, some partisans claim the winning side has surrendered the country’s future to outside forces. Khatib refutes this reasoning and emphasizes that even during his tyranny, Assad could not have survived without foreign troops, bases, and fleets.

 

Instead of streams of legitimate ideologies, extremism and Islamism are used as fear tactics against the forces that toppled the Assad regime. Khatib rebuts with a question, "Who does not fear extremism?" Her response is straightforward: "We all do." She continues,  "Has it [the Arab world] ever been free from religious extremism?" Religion has always been part of Syrian politics, and she reminds the apologists that it is nothing new and can be seen even in the early days of the Syrian revolution, when protesters used to chant, “Oh God, we have no one but You, Oh God.” 

 

Ultimately,  Khatib offers friendly advice to bystanders of the revolution who have become “presumptuous” in its aftermath — to refrain from assuming that the revolution has finished and reached its end. “It is not over,” she writes, “Perhaps it has just begun. The Syrian people know their way." Thus, "there is no need to threaten the Syrians with regret and lecture them on what others have done in neighboring countries, for it is not often that we witness a tyrannical regime collapsing. "History does not witness the fall of an authoritarian regime every day, every year, or even every decade. The contemporaneity of the fall of tyrants is unparalleled. It is not possible to ask about those who witnessed the fall of Franco, or the fall of Mussolini, or Nero... those were in other chapters of our history. Chapters that we missed."

The original Arabic article, "In the Presence of Syria's Suffering... Let Us Be Silent" by Basma al-Khatib, appeared in Al Modon.