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Syrian Novelist Nihad Sirees: ‘Creative Writing is Stalled Today’

Many thanks to Max Weiss for translating this excellent interview with novelist Nihad Sirees for Jadaliyya and for bringing it to my attention. It was originally published in Al-Safir as “Nihad Sirees: I am with fundamental change but I am afraid of revolutions.” In it, Sirees — who recently decided that he must leave Aleppo, Syria – agrees with Ahdaf Soueif about it not being a time for fiction:

Creative writing is stalled today. Not just for me, but for many other writers. The imagination withdraws to an interest in tangible reality. The superstars of writing today are those who write articles about “the events in Syria” or “the Syrian crisis” and, finally, “the Syrian revolution.” People have come to prefer reading posts on Facebook, the latest breaking news, or even a rumor to reading a story, even if its subject matter is the revolution. People are nervous about the country, about reality itself. They rush to read any article analyzing or interpreting what is going on. The best thing one can do is to be brief, and to cast some light on what is happening. I have written some stories and conducted a few interviews about the revolution, publishing some of them here in Egypt. When I posted one or two of them to Facebook, I noticed that this is not the time for imagination but for analytical and journalistic talk. Moreover, the matter concerns me personally and so my mind is now consumed by the latest news story and by trying to understand what is happening and by predicting what is going to happen much more than literary or artistic creation.

Sirees also talks about his novel, The Silence and the Roar (2004), which is being translated by Weiss and will isA come out from Pushkin Press in January of next year. He said:

The German translation.

It observes the phenomenon of authoritarianism. I diagnosed it and wondered about its origin. I purposefully made fun of the dictator in order to participate in tearing off his halo of veneration and then to topple him. Publishing that novel was an act surrounded with danger but I was not worried because that is my role as a writer. Some of those who read it knew how bold it was. In fact, a diplomat who knew Arabic well asked me whether the men of the regime even read literature in Syria! But I never sent it to Syrian publishing houses, which I was supposed to do first in order to get official permission, sending it straight away instead to Dar al-Adab (in Beirut), which published it without any hesitation.

The novel has attracted attention in a number of different countries and languages, and Sirees read an excerpt in German translation at a recent Swiss literary festival. However, when the Syrian official news reported on it:

The broadcast by the Syrian state news agency about my reading reported I had read selections from my novel, State of Passion, which is completely different in subject matter. That novel looks at a situation of female-female love in Aleppo. I think that the news agency, as usual, wanted to say that everything in Syria was fine and that our esteemed writers continue to be interested in matters of love.

Sirees also talks about the relationship between artist and regime, which is interesting to think about with any sort of regime or government, and any sort of artist:

Furthermore, the regime provided huge subsidies for art, especially television drama, and it became concerned with the interests of artists. So its representatives forged friendships with them. A large proportion of those who work in this sector are close to men of the regime and the security apparatus. Intellectuals in Aleppo are no different from their counterparts in Damascus but as a result of the shrinking cultural and artistic voice of the city, you do not hear their opinions clearly. I understand you are referring to one writer in particular who worked after March 2011 to implement the policies of the regime, a writer for whom the regime had done huge favors and now he had to return them. Generally speaking, this is how the regime functions.

Sirees in English:

A translation of Sirees’s حالة شـغف (here called A Case of Passion, here A State of Passion) both times by Khaled al-Jbaili.

Sirees’s twitter feed (@nihadsirees), often in English, mostly news links of late, as you might expect from above.

The Silence and the Roar:

The first three chapters of ”الصمت والصخب” on Sirees’s website.

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Dead journalists and Sister Agnes-Mariam

The Committee for the Protection of Journalists has an important report up by Dahlia El Zein. The attacks on media personnel affiliated with the Syrian regime has been rightly condemned. But not enough is said about the regime’s more systematic policy to co-opt and in some cases deliberately trap journalists for propaganda purposes. Most shocking however is the role of Sister Agnes-Mariam, the regime-affiliated nun who has been feted both by the far left and the Christian right. The nun has already been condemned by Father Paolo Dell’Oglio, who was expelled by the regime for his criticisms after spending 30 years of his life in the country. The following story is further indictment.

Evidence of government targeting in the deaths of the international journalists is circumstantial, although the journalists on the ground perceived that they were under attack. CPJ spoke with Sid Ahmed Hammouche, a reporter with the Swiss daily La Liberté who participated in the government-sponsored trip that ended in Jacquier’s death. He said he believes the government laid a trap for the reporters.

Gilles Jacquier (AFP)Gilles Jacquier (AFP)

Hammouche and Jacquier were among a group of 15 journalists allowed into Syria on government-issued visas facilitated bySister Agnes-Mariam de la Croix, a Lebanese nun of Palestinian origin with close relations to the Assad regime. Sister Agnes had helped arrange a reporting trip to Homs on January 11, although she declined to accompany the group, saying her absence would help them move freely. Jacquier resisted the Homs trip, believing it unsafe, but Sister Agnes urged him to go or risk losing the opportunity to renew his visa beyond the initial four-day period, Hammouche told CPJ in an account consistent with news reports.

Once they arrived in Homs, the journalists divided into two groups, one with journalists from CNN, CBS, and BBC who were led by the Ministry of Information to visit a local hospital. The other contingent included Hammouche, three French journalists, including Jacquier, his wife, Caroline Poiron, Jacquier’s cameraman, Christophe Kenck; and Swiss and Belgian journalists. That group was escorted by 20 Syrian soldiers dressed in military fatigues and in plainclothes. This group was also supposed to visit the hospital but they were detoured without explanation to a pro-Assad neighborhood, Hammouche said, where they interviewed residents. As they left the area, the group encountered a pro-Assad march and heard an explosion.

To his surprise, Hammouche said, the soldiers took no evident action to protect the journalists or respond to the explosion; instead, most of the soldiers dispersed without explanation, leaving four escorts who appeared relaxed and dismissed the noise as a “sound explosion.” Hammouche said the soldiers urged the journalists to go toward the explosions to investigate. Hammouche said he and a Swiss colleague refused, remaining in one of two government vehicles, but Jacquier and the others traveled toward the source of the initial explosion.

More explosions followed, Hammouche recounted: “There were four explosions total in a 10-minute period. And that’s it. We didn’t hear a sound after that.”

Kenck, Jacquier’s cameraman, rushed back. The reporter, he said, appeared to have died in the explosions. At a local clinic where the body was taken, Hammoche recounted, Syrian authorities were insistent that the journalists give statements blaming the attack on “terrorists.” They also urged Caroline Poiron to give her husband’s body over to Syrian authorities for what they termed an autopsy, pressure so strong that she, Hammouche, Kenck felt compelled to stand guard over the body for several hours before it could be given to French officials.

French authorities later began a criminal investigation; no autopsy details have been disclosed. The Syrian government blamed the strike on opposition forces, labeling it a “terrorist” attack.

A deadly attack, professional resolve

Marie Colvin (AFP)Marie Colvin (AFP)

The worst episode for the press came on February 22, when several government shells struck a makeshift media center in a three-story building in the Baba Amr neighborhood. Conroy, a former target acquisition/communications operative in the British Royal Artillery, said he believed the attack was deliberate because the pattern of repeated shelling on the center was intended to cause massive damage and take out its target. He told CBS news that the February 22 shelling did not fit earlier patterns, which appeared indiscriminate. This time, he said, the strike appeared to have military coordination: “The first shots hit wide. A second round narrowed their target. The third set of shots hit the house–’fire for effect,’ it’s called–and they fired for effect and killed two very good people, wounded a few others, and destroyed the building.”Jean-Pierre Perrin, a journalist for the Paris-based daily Libération who was with Colvin and Conroy in Baba Amr before leaving days earlier, told CPJ that government forces could have easily picked out the building since it was the only one in the area with consistent electricity, which was provided by a generator that worked through the night amid an otherwise darkened neighborhood. Reports also suggest Syrian authorities could have picked up the satellite phone signals the journalists used to communicate with the outside world, a tactic similar to one used by the Russians in the conflict in Chechnya. Technology experts have told CPJ that satellite phones can be tracked with relative ease.

For those who survived, like Espinosa of the Spanish daily El Mundo, the effect was profound. “It makes you feel that you can be also a victim of the conflict,” Espinosa told CPJ. “But I always compare my situation with that of the civilians living around me. And always we, the foreign journalists, are a type of VIP in those conflicts so we have a duty to keep reporting. For the local citizen journalists in Baba Amr, it was also the same. They did not stop working because some of their team was killed. In fact, one was working even after being wounded.”

Said Hammouche: “We are witnesses. We serve as witnesses to the brutal oppression. And if we let them scare us away, then they have won.”

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A Syrian voice

From Syria Comment : 21. Juergen :

someone just posted this on facebook:

Having heard a lot of accusations and allegations against our Revolution, I wanted to apologize officially today at the Assad supporters and the world community.

We are sorry!
We are sorry that we, ordinary Syrians have gone for our freedom on the streets. Without permission of the Super Powers.
We are sorry that we have thwarted your plans for Syria and that we dared to havesome of our own.

We are sorry that we wanted human rights for us.

We are sorry that we have exposed your lies, cold-heartedness and the hypocrisy.

We are sorry that we have turned with our Revolution Uncle Bashar into a monster and we feel not ashamed for it.

We are sorry that the sight of our tattered bodies arent suitable for your tv screens and your sensitive eye .

We are sorry that we have asked for humanitarian and medical aid.

We are sorry that we have become refugees, begging on the streets and disrupt the city.

We are sorry that the blood of our children is not red enough to reach the conscience of many leftists.

We are sorry that we have dared to defend ourselves after months of steady killing.

We are sorry that our strive for freedom will not fit into your concepts.

We are sorry that we will not accept your apology.

August 2012

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“If My Blood Was Oil” poem

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Syria: Face to face with the spy who nearly killed me

Captured by the Free Syrian Army, the spy cut a pitiful figure. Yet a fortnight ago, he almost managed to kill Richard Spencer, who spoke to him in prison.

Malik Al Saidi, 27 a pro-regime spy is seen at Mari High School, which is being used as a prison by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), in Mari, Syria on Aug. 13, 2012.

Malik Al Saidi, 27 a pro-regime spy is seen at Mari High School, which is being used as a prison by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), in Mari, Syria  Photo: ADAM DEAN
Richard Spencer

By , Aleppo

8:00AM BST 19 Aug 2012

Revolutionaries fear spies and informers more than anything, particularly when taking on the sort of Arab dictators who themselves thrived for decades on paranoia and conspiracy.

In the flesh, the spies that cause so much trepidation are usually more wretched than their reputation.

So it was for Malik Saidi, no James Bond but a nervous, shaven-headed young man of 27 who spoke with head bowed and an apologetic look in his eye.

There was great excitement at the Free Syrian Army headquarters in Aleppo when Saidi was arrested. That afternoon, August 6, the base was attacked by regime fighter jets firing missiles, and though the rebel soldiers had been expecting to be targeted, the explosions sent a shiver of panic through the men sleeping and preparing their weapons there.

“We have caught a spy,” said Lt Abdullah Yassin, an FSA officer, shortly afterwards. “He gave information to the regime for air strikes on our base. He has been handed over to interrogators and has confessed.

“He will be executed. He has been sent to prison, and he will be judged. But I think he will be executed.”

Journalists should not interpose themselves into their stories, but it would be remiss not to declare an interest here. I was standing on the steps of the FSA base when the air strike Saidi called in struck and, if it had not missed, I too would probably be dead.

He was the spy who nearly killed me, then, and it is hard to deny that this added an extra layer of curiosity when, after more than a week of trying, I discovered where Saidi was being held and persuaded his jailors to allow me to meet him.

He was a sorry character. He was wearing the regulation uniform of the rebels’ prisoners, grey sweat-pants and a vest. He said he had been well-treated and he bore no obvious signs of brutality, except for marks around his wrist suggesting he had been shackled tightly for some considerable time.

He walked with head bowed, and spoke in a monotone, but clearly and without contradiction.

He was not a very professional or well-trained spy. Already a member of the Shabiha, the thuggish pro-regime militia recruited to brutalise the opposition by Syria’s security services from the start of the revolution, he had been sent to infiltrate the FSA base by paymasters from what was once the Air Force Intelligence barracks not far away.

He lasted just nine days before, predictably enough, a civilian neighbour of the barracks who knew him as one of its Shabiha spotted him with rebel troops and asked what he was doing there.

“He knew I worked for Air Force Intelligence,” he said. “He and the people with him started to attack me, punching me and hitting me with sticks. Then they handed me over to the FSA.”

It was a well-timed arrest — too well-timed, perhaps, to be entirely credible — but for the families killed in the strike, the Kayalis and the Katabs, not well-timed enough. For he had already triggered the bomb attack that was to obliterate them.

Since he had “joined” the FSA he had regularly phoned in intelligence on what they were doing, and had finally been asked to place a signalling device, he said, in their base. He had put one in one of the unused classrooms of the school the FSA were using that morning, and activated it.

“I was supposed to run away beforehand,” he said. “But then I was captured.” The air strike took place 20 minutes later.

Although it missed the base, his turned out to be no victimless crime. As with so many regime air strikes, it was ordinary Aleppines who paid the price of the inaccuracy of old Russian weaponry, and the Katab and Kayali families who shared the house behind the base were destroyed instantaneously.

Three children, their mother and another woman, and four men had no idea that they were about to be attacked. An hour later, an angry crowd began digging out the bodies: only pieces of bodies, really, piled respectfully on the pavement.

It is hard to know what to make of Saidi’s story. On the one hand, it seems far too convenient that someone arrested so soon before a highly damaging air strike should so easily confess to having “called it in”. On the other hand, the fact of his arrest slipped out accidentally and no-one volunteered him to speak to the media.

On the contrary, it took several days of persuasion to set the interview up.

He was one of a number of Shabiha prisoners introduced to the press over the last two weeks at the prison where they are being held in the town of Mari, north of Aleppo, that is home to the leader of rebel forces fighting in the city, Abdulqadr Saleh al-Hajji.

Whatever the truth of their individual confessions, their background gives some indication of the regime’s methods in recruiting them.

While the core of the Shabiha are said to be smugglers and petty criminals from the Alawi, the Shia offshoot sect to which the Assad regime belongs, many are from a class of poorly-educated, government-dependent Sunnis hired by money and threats.

Saidi worked at a factory dyeing clothes before losing his job and becoming a driving instructor. This brought him into contact with the police who targeted him for the Shabiha when the uprising started, threatening his livelihood and family if he didn’t agree to join and offering money if he did.

He was assigned to a 20-strong squad led by Ahmed Fadel Aswad, whom we met separately. Aswad, 35, said that in his year of service, his men beat and occasionally killed protesters, raped women – including girls seized after protests at Aleppo University – and planted bombs whose destruction could be blamed on “terrorists”.

Again, not all he says is convincing – at least one of the bomb attacks he said he carried out was also claimed by Jubhat al-Nusra, a jihadist group which is certainly now fighting in conjunction with the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo. But the thrust of his story was believable and the main details were not as extreme as a propagandist might want to construct.

Another member of the gang, Firaz Hadid, whose story was also consistent with the others’, said he personally had not done anything “really bad” at all – he had neither killed nor raped anyone, just wielded a machete on protesters.

Like the others, Hadid was full of remorse, and said he had only joined up because he ran an illegal fruit and vegetable stall and had been threatened with his livelihood by police. He had been jailed before because of his stall and was frightened to go back.

Contrary to Lt Yassin’s expectations, the rebels are promising that none of the men will be executed. FSA leaders are aware that a recent spate of killings by rebels across northern Syria – most spectacularly, the shooting 20 days ago of four members of a Shabiha family in the playground of the same Aleppo school-cum-FSA base – has alarmed human rights groups and the wider western world.

At a time when they are more hopeful that some sort of western intervention, perhaps a no-fly zone, could be brought into play, they are suddenly keen to demonstrate that they are not a bunch of rogue guerrillas.

In Aleppo, a crude judicial system is being set up. Those arrested in the city, like the three Shabiha, are brought before the FSA’s senior civilian leader, a black-turbaned former businessman who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Suleiman and spent 15 years in Dubai before returning to Syria.

After a preliminary investigation of any accusations, Abu Suleiman decides whether to release them or hold them. Petty criminals are often banged up in the makeshift jail at the base for a brief period – accompanied, in the case of three teenage shoplifters whose arrest was witnessed by The Sunday Telegraph, by a quick whipping with knotted rope.

More serious offenders – mainly Shabiha – are transferred to Mari to await trial.

There, the man responsible for civil affairs on the rebels’ local coordination committee said, they are assured of good treatment and, some time in the future, a court hearing with lawyers.

“We are still working on the details,” the official, Abu Hatem, said. “But there will be no death penalty. We do not believe in capital punishment here. We will not treat them the way they treated us.”

The 250 men in the Mari prison do not look overconfident of their fate, spending most of their days in classroom cells staring at their feet. On their two periods of exercise a day, they run sharply to it when their jailors shout.

In a rebel prison in a neighbouring town, Tal Rifaat, the local sharia council has confirmed to journalists and to a Human Rights Watch team that light beating with hands on the back is an accepted form of punishment, and beating of the feet to extract information.

On the other hand, an unannounced evening visit to Mari found prisoners in nothing worse than a prayer session. Abu Hatem said that in Mari, at least, the court system he was setting up would follow a form of civil law, not Sharia.

Keen to promote his humanitarian credentials further, he also refused permission for photographs to be taken that showed any of the prisoners’ faces, citing the Geneva Convention.

Saidi said he had been told by his bosses that if he was caught by the FSA he would be killed. “But the FSA didn’t kill me, though those neighbours wanted to,” he said. “They have given me medical treatment.”

He said – perhaps inevitably – that he had confessed because he felt “guilty” about what he had done. He did add, though, that he had only started to feel guilty the moment he was arrested.

As for the victims of his spying – not me, of course, but the nine people from two families who were blown to pieces – he offered just a brief, but formal, apology. “I am very sorry,” he said.

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Nun on Irish visit accused of peddling ‘regime lies’ about crisis in Syria

MARY FITZGERALD, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

AN ITALIAN Jesuit expelled from Syria in June due to his outspoken criticism of government violence has accused a controversial nun who visited Ireland last week of peddling “regime lies” about the crisis there.

Fr Paolo Dall’Oglio, who lived in Syria for 30 years and has been heavily involved in interfaith work in the country, described Mother Agnes Mariam as “an instrument” of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. “She has been consistent in assuming and spreading the lies of the regime, and promoting it through the power of her religious persona,” he told The Irish Times yesterday. “She knows how to cover up the brutality of the regime.”

During her four-day visit to Ireland last week, Mother Agnes Mariam, who is superior at the Melkite Greek Catholic monastery in Syria, gave media interviews in which she claimed Christians in Syria were facing “extinction” and that rebels battling Assad were predominantly foreigners linked with al-Qaeda.

Fr Dall’Oglio, who has spent time with opposition activists in several restive parts of Syria, said these claims were “ridiculous” and constituted regime propaganda.

“I have been there, I know the people, including the youth, who are working for the revolution, and I know that what she is saying is insane. It corresponds with the regime version of the facts,” he said.

Mother Agnes Mariam, who visited Dublin and Belfast, had separate meetings with representatives of the Irish Bishops Conference justice and peace committee, Sinn Féin TD Seán Crowe, Nobel peace laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire, and an official from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

One of her interlocutors here was taken aback when the nun claimed during their meeting that the Houla massacre, in which more than 100 civilians, more than half of them children, were killed, was an elaborate hoax concocted by rebels. This week a UN commission of inquiry concluded that Syrian government forces and the pro-Assad militia known as shabiha were responsible for the massacre.

In March, Mother Agnes Mariam was accused of running a “misinformation campaign” by a US-based Syrian opposition group called Syrian Christians for Democracy.

It said she maintains “close ties” to the Assad family and alleged she had fed selected visiting journalists “distorted facts and fake testimonies for the sole purpose of tarnishing the opposition’s image”.

The group referred to the role of a number of Christians in the Syrian uprising.

“Mother Agnes and those helping her are harming the Syrian people by disseminating negative pro-Assad propaganda and tearing at Syria’s social and religious fabrics,” it said. “The Christians in Syria, as well as the rest of the population, are in need of undivided support, backing, and funding. They do not need divisive rumours and the propagation of inaccurate information.”

Mother Agnes Mariam’s trip to Ireland was organised by Alan Lonergan, who acts as churches liaison officer with Sadaka, an Irish pro-Palestinian advocacy group, though he arranged the visit in a personal capacity.

“The impression people have of what is happening in Syria is very black and white,” he said. “We need to examine more of the grey area.”

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A Syrian Voice

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[youtube http://youtu.be/TxZ3WXkzoHs?]

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Inside the Free Syrian Army: A trip to the front lines – Fast Forward

[youtube http://youtu.be/nbKq-PMPLCs?]
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History will not be kind to the Syrian regime…

The great Palestinian philosopher and former MK Azmi Bishara on the Syrian revolution.

1) Let’s suppose that impoverishment of the people and the suppression of their freedoms are marginal when placed in the context of a grander goal, such as defending the homeland. That would only make sense, however, during limited periods of time, such as during wars. Anyway, such claims do not justify the way in which the people have to share out the misery between them, while the rulers enjoy the riches. Nor does such sloganeering justify the institutionalized, systematic denial of the rights of their people. There is no justification for the tyranny and corruption of the rulers, and their appropriation of the fruits of the masses’ labour. Trying to exploit a cause held dearly by both the people and the regime to achieve this is the beginning of demagoguery, and it is a tool used solely to preserve the existence of the corrupt, tyrannical regime. None of this, of course, takes away from the righteousness of the cause being exploited, but it does serve to bestow legitimacy on an illegitimate regime. Rebellion against this tyranny will necessarily place the removal of that regime as its first target, but the sanctity of the just causes which the regime exploits must also be preserved. This applies when the question comes to US plans to dominate our region, seeking to design the policies of Arab states with Israeli interests at heart, as well as the question of Palestine and the duty to resist the occupation at every turn.

2) No people, anywhere in the world, would accept torture, false imprisonment, financial corruption and the muzzling of the media for generation after generation, regardless of the justification. Nor does anybody to have the right that those being persecuted remain quiet for the sake of grander concerns, without hopes for a change, all to placate commentators who seem to think that the suffering of the people is secondary to the “Central Question”, especially as all the evidence that no progress on that same “Central Question” in the first place.

3) Nobody has the right to just claim to have “understood” the people’s pain and the righteousness of their claims, and then ask those people to simply stay on the sidelines while the leaders undertake some reforms. No human likes being shot at and bombed, but you cannot expect that people who get shot at while protesting peacefully to take it sitting down. If you cannot compel the regime to deal peacefully with peaceful protests, then [any demands that the rebellion end] are demands that the people accept that they should be killed, that their losses for the revolution thus far have been in vain.

4) History will not be kind to the Syrian regime for the way it ordered soldiers to fire on peaceful protestors. Those peaceful protests had been the regime’s greatest fear, and so they worked to quell them in the cradle.

5) It seems inevitable that, if you are being bombed, driven from your home and your possessions looted, that you will reach out to anybody who stretches his hand out to you. Those who abandoned the revolutionaries at their time of need have no right to lecture them on who their sources of support are, especially if nobody is able to persuade the regime to carry out any kind of meaningful process of reform towards democracy, or even to hand over power gradually.

6) There is no fault in the people seeking their own dignity and freedom; there is no sin for those youth who have taken up arms in the face of the regime’s barbarity. The only culprit here is the regime. Writing off the earliest protests as a foreign conspiracy, and dismissing Arab diplomatic moves for a gradual transfer of power—such as the now seemingly fanciful August, 2011 plan for a National Unity Government which would usher in Presidential elections in 2014, and a January, 2012 plan for power to be handed over to the Vice-President –this regime refused them all. None of these proposals ever sought to undo Syria’s army, or to undermine the army’s morale.

7) The duty of the revolution’s leadership and the political opposition at this point is to remain vigilant with regards to those powers which are supporting their efforts, and the political ends for which they do this. It falls on this revolutionary leadership to preserve the sovereignty and identity of Syria, preventing foreign support for their revolution from turning into a bridgehead for those foreign powers’ ulterior plans.

8) In spite of all of the above, I can understand the confusion and anguish felt by a wide number of Arab patriots about the events presently unfolding in Syria. It is not only the anguish shared by those who are shocked by the fate of large swathes of this part of the Arab homeland, at the way the regime has chosen to go with the Samson option, but rather a more nuanced, political anguish. Looking at those states which presently support the Syrian revolution, or at least claim to, one can see countries which have never been democratic, and have in fact stood in the way of all of the other Arab revolutions. Doubtlessly, these states are doing so for an entirely different set of reasons: Syria’s foreign policy and the country’s long-standing support for the resistance movements in Palestine and Lebanon. The use of sectarianism to fan the flames of the revolution are also here, deeply troubling: in our part of the world, sectarianism is not only disgusting, it is deadly. Yet no matter how anguished and confused an outside observer feels on these issues, anguish and confusion cannot be the policy of the Syrian people, and the Syrian revolution. The Syrian people are not an outside observer, they must choose between either moving forward, or falling back and having to deal with an emboldened, despicable new set of thugs. The Syrian people cannot afford to fret over the identity of those supporting their revolution, their only worries are about the limited number of those supporters, and the limited, cautious nature of that support.

9) A truly patriotic intellectual committed to democratic values must never shirk from explaining the dangers of a potential sectarianism, making clear what the real components of a democratic state based on citizenship and social justice are, on the need to avoid replacing one form of tyranny with another. Nor must we forget the historic role played by Syria in the Palestinian cause and in the wider Arab sphere. Yet this enthusiasm must be based, first and foremost, on concern and support for the Syrian people, and a defense of their revolution against tyranny. Singing the praises of Assad’s regime is an unforgivable sin, and will only serve to discredit the causes for which, ostensibly, this support for the Syrian regime is built.

10) As far as the Syrian people are concerned, no cause can be more sacred than the defense of the life of their children; no cause, for them, can be more urgent than the need to topple the Assad regime and replace it with the democratic government which they deserve.

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