"No to violence, no to sectarianism, no to foreign intervention." This slogan from the early protests in Syria against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad rejected what Syria has become today. Four years later and it is painfully clear that each of these parameters have been broken sequentially since the beginning of the Syrian revolution on 15 March 2011. 2011: The year of violence The protests began in the southern city of Daraa, a city neglected by the Damascus-centred regime that since the year 2000 had begun to introduce neoliberal reforms that concentrated Syria's wealth into an ever-smaller group of individuals. Four years of drought had left Daraa's surrounding agrarian southern Hauran region in ruins. The UN reported that three million Syrians were living in "extreme poverty" and most had migrated from their provincial residences to the outskirts of the economic capitals of Damascus and Aleppo. Syria's dwindling natural resources had been challenged by the influx of one million Iraqi refugees since 2003, which had sent the price of food, water, and housing up to untenable heights. The neoliberal economic reforms of Assad meant that the general public could no longer rely on the Syrian state. It was these disenfranchised people who were the first to rise up in spring 2011 in Daraa, the suburbs of Damascus, and Homs. The Syrian state reacted with lethal violence through its secret police, military, and shabiha. The chaos of the initial blood-soaked protests created a new economy for petty thieves and arms dealers. The price of guns on the black market soared but new guns easily flooded the market from the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, always a smuggler's haven. The disaffected who took to the streets of Homs and Deraa, as well as the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Harasta had little to lose but their own lives. To gain was the "fall of the regime" a slogan that still felt sharp in the wake of the euphoria of the Arab revolutions of 2011. A new Syria was theirs to build. Indeed, the initial protests and resistance to Syrian state violence brought many in Syria from differing social classes and confessional backgrounds to express support for the revolution. Peaceful sit-ins happened in universities across the country; creative resistance temporarily bloomed in Damascus and elsewhere. The pinnacle would be the Homs New Clock Tower sit-in on 18 April 2011 that was put down by force by Syria's security apparatus. We know what happens next.
2012: Year of sectarianism Syria had not been immune to sectarian divisions. The Assad regime, which came to power in 1970, left indelible marks on Syria's sectarian balance. Hafez Al-Assad, an Alawite Muslim, put close allies in power, many of whom were Alawite and Christian but many not. It is a mistake to label Assad's regime as "Alawite", rather as with most kleptocracies, those who are left out of the system languish in poverty including many Alawites. Fast-forward to 2012 and Syria was fracturing along sectarian lines. Financing for rebel groups from the GCC countries and Turkey turned an armed uprising by ordinary Syrians fighting for their dignity into an Islamist uprising against a non-Sunni president. Turkey, allowing armed Islamic militias the use of its territory along its 820 km border with Syria, transformed the nature of the Syrian resistance. Now the black market for weaponry that had arose in the ashes of Daraa's calls for freedom had turned into an open-air weapons convention. The north of Syria, which had not experienced the same level of armed resistance in 2011, now erupted, particularly Aleppo and Raqqa. Meanwhile, Syria's border with Iraq, never known for its impermeability allowed for more men and weaponry to come in and out of the Iraqi Euphrates valley, fraught with battle-harden jihadist and seized American weaponry. A revolution that had once sought to unite all Syrians against a tyrannical dictator now found itself dominated by an influx of foreign cash, fighters, guns and, most pernicious of all, ideology.
2013/4: The call for intervention 2013 and 2014 were characterised by growing calls outside of Syria for foreign military intervention in Syria after the chemical weapons massacre in Damascus' Eastern Ghouta in August 2013. However, despite the push towards intervention, the US wavered as it recognised that it had been dealt a hand it could not win. Obama dragged his feet on the matter of the revolution turned war and its unprecedented humanitarian crisis. It was not until ISIS overran Mosul on 10 June 2014 and started beheading US citizens that US bombs started falling on Syria, not against Assad advanced military apparatus but on ISIS. Meanwhile, the Assad regime continues to bomb armed groups in civilian centres throughout the two thirds of the country his regime controls, while the US does the same in the one third of Syria ISIS controls. One would hope that this next year can bring about a cessation of the violence. It is apparent that Assad will not step down. However, he and his regime is no partner against Islamic extremism. Meanwhile, an unprecedented humanitarian crisis drudges on with the lion share of the displaced in unstable Lebanon or water-dry Jordan. While Syrian people do not need a military intervention (because it would not work), they do need foreign political stakeholders to cut off support both to the regime and its opponents. Turkey and the GCC have poured their fuel on this fire, however without their economic support, ISIS and other militias would lose their lifeline. Russia and Iran can put pressure on Assad to compromise on any arrangements for a new Syria, assuming he is given an incentive. It is impossible to imagine what this fifth year of the Syrian revolution holds in store for Syria and its diaspora. Major voices for non-sectarian revolution have been imprisoned either by the regime or ISIS. Tens of thousands of (un)named rot in Assad's prisons, while thousands remain kidnapped at the hands of takfiri extremists. Bombs fall over Syrians' heads no matter which superpower built them. Syria needs justice and that justice will not come by backing the Assad regime nor armed extremist groups. It will come via a third way of Syrian civil society both inside Syria and in its diaspora, if there will ever be a way out of this nightmare. Born in Chicago, Bradley Williams is a student at Columbia University in the City of New York, specializing in Comparative Literature and Arab Political History. He previously worked with the Iraqi Student Project in Damascus, Syria and is in the process of opening A Dream not Deferred, a scholarship fund for Syrian students in the diaspora unable to finish their university educations due to protracted conflict.
