I grew up in Syria. In state-run schools, we were reminded daily that we received free education thanks to the Ba’ath party’s revolution in 1963. We should be grateful, our teachers told us. In the fourth grade, like millions of students across Syria, I memorized songs praising the Ba’ath Party and its leader, Hafez al-Assad: We shine like the morning, we carry the gun / Our blood will water the soil. A loyal Syrian must recite quotes by the party leader, quotes memorized from a 150-page book entitled Nationality. In exams, one could be penalized for misremembering a single word. [...]
I grew up believing that all other ethnic groups might kill us if they had the chance. And then, one day in eighth grade, it seemed that nightmare was coming true. In 2004, the Kurdish uprising in Qamishli happened. Following the requisite flag salute, the principal announced that our school trip was canceled because “there is trouble in the country.” Later, I overheard someone in the yard exclaim, “The Kurds are coming to kill us!” We were told that the Kurds were planning to target Alawite women. The teacher described an Alawite commander who the Kurds had tied to the back of a car and dragged through the streets of Qamishli until his flesh came off. [...]
Many observers and participants, myself included, argued behind closed doors and on social media platforms that the uprisings would have lost momentum had the president replaced the governor of Daraa and held the murdering police officers accountable. But Assad the Younger followed the dictum established by Assad the Older: just kill them all. This approach poured gasoline on the fire, the brutality of the police swelling the ever-larger and ever-angrier protests. Each day, there was a funeral for a protestor killed the day before. The funeral would turn into a protest, and the pallbearers would find themselves inside the casket the next day, surrounded by an even angrier crowd. People would attend funerals without knowing who had been killed—their main aim became the protest itself. [...]
You might be forgiven for thinking that, after all this horror, the entire country would be against the government and sympathetic to those calling for justice, reform, and dignity. But, in fact, the majority of the country did not join the uprising. This silent majority comprised three rough categories: the hardliners, the bourgeoisie, and the undecided. Hardliners knew exactly what was happening and supported it unequivocally. Without Assad, they believed, there was no country. The bourgeoisie, unlike the hardliners, cared only about the security of their own families and businesses. They refused to pick a side. People in this category were the first to flee the country. And the undecided, finally, could not figure out what was happening. However, many members of this group made up their minds rather quickly and joined the hardliners. Their conversion to opponents of the uprising was mainly achieved by the media narrative propagated on state television, as well as by the militarization of the conflict. [...]
This was just one take on who had killed the soldiers. Some suggested that the soldiers were killed by fellow soldiers who refused to watch innocent people massacred. It’s important to note here that weapons are abundant in cities on the border. Every house has a gun. Whatever the true story, this incident opened a new chapter in the uprising, with two important consequences. First, many Syrians saw the names of the dead soldiers as confirmation of the government narrative, which aligned undecided Syrians with the regime. Second, these events created a split within activist circles, as parts of the movement took positions for and against the use of arms.
