Translation: Alexa Firat, edited by the UntoldStories team. The interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.
The massacres of civilians – women and men – on the Syrian coast, carried out by rogue actors belonging to the new administration, both during and after the military operations against loyalists of the Assad regime, has prompted a strong reaction by many Syrian intellectuals.
The responses of our guest, the writer and doctor Rateb Shabo (born in Lattakia), express both a lack of hope and a major rebuke toward many activists and elites for their positions on these massacres.
Shabo, who spent sixteen consecutive years (1983-1999) in Assad’s prisons, invites the formation of a governing council, and clarifies why every Syrian should be committed to stopping the violations and massacres on the coast. He also places a question mark around the ability of this new administration to restore the confidence of the people of the coast with them.
* Let’s begin our conversation with your impressions on the state of Syrian society in the past few weeks. Whoever reads or listens to you can perceive your sense of hopelessness for Syrian society, and “revolutionary society” specifically, because of the absence of their complete and unconditional condemnation of the massacres on the coast. In your opinion, which are the causes of this?
It descends from the sovereignty of an authoritarian trend following the fall of the regime, literally restoring the authoritarianism of the previous regime. I thought that the tragedy that had engulfed Syria over the past decade and a half would generate Syrians who would reject outright all the elements that connected the country to the catastrophes it had lived through at the hands of a regime. Just like how the first and second World Wars generated a European drive to not repeat the catastrophe. But I was surprised that the tasbihi [mafioso] drive of Syrian activists, despite all the bitter experiences, was stronger than the drive for justice and the necessity of building a new state.
I wasn’t expecting the conscience of the majority of activists to be so flaccid and compliant to the extent of accepting the massacres.
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This can be attributed – in my opinion – to the superficiality of activists in general. Superficiality in politics prevents people from understanding the reasons behind the suffering. This generates what we are seeing today, when the responsibility for the destruction of the country ends up being assigned to a specific group: the embodiment of evil in a group, the psychological readiness to commit crimes of extermination, and the acceptance of repeating the exact authoritarian relationship that led Syria to its catastrophe.
*In your public and journalistic work, you focus on the more educated sector of society: elites that volunteer themselves into the service of power. You are of the opinion that power in any country works for its own advantage, and civil society must try to keep it within its boundaries lest we head for a dictatorship. To what do you attribute this tendency of elites to identify with power?
The basic rule is that political authorities tend to be opposed to society and not at its service. They end with an excess of authority when they don’t find anyone confronting them. It doesn’t seem to me that “the elites” in Syria recognize this basic rule, or behave in a way to stop it. The intellectual is uncritical, merely there at the service of power, and the activists that we have are more and more from the intellectual class. In this way, these days we find a tendency to justify on the base of political necessities, not differently from what characterised the previous regime.
The tasbihi [mafioso] drive of Syrian activists was stronger than the drive for justice. I wasn’t expecting the conscience of the majority of activists to be so flaccid and compliant to the extent of accepting the massacres.
The ruling authority in our public culture has an above-the-normal position, and it assumes a lot of the concept of God. God is worshipped, not criticized. One can believe in him or blaspheme him. I think that this perception does its work on the public and the private levels alike.
When a person blasphemes God, then goes back to apologize and ask for forgiveness. In this way, the opposition is simply in denial of one god and aspires to another. This is the prevalent rule that denies political relativity in favor of absolute security. The general public thinks like that and surrenders their command to the authority/god. And “the elites” are not any better than the general public in this regard.
*We are talking about the elite. You are calling for the formation of a council of elders, outside the frameworks of political parties and other entities. To what extent does this seem possible in the shadow of the current polarization?
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I think that we have to produce this kind of “public opinion”: one that has accountability: to exist as an elite that adheres to public values as red lines that cannot be transgressed for any reason. There’s no need for this elite to be organized or to be coordinated. It’s enough to hold up public values above all else. This principle can bring together an elite that transcends political leanings, intellectual inclinations, collectives of people, sects, etc.
Its members can be from the left, the right or the middle. What remains is what brings the people together, i.e. conscience, a principle that cannot be abandoned under any pretext.
For example, a conscience cannot accept the killing of a family in their house. It’s possible for the person to deceive their conscience with sundry justifications, saying, for example, “I’m absolutely against killing civilians, but…”. This “but” opens the door to deceiving one’s conscience. I think it’s absolutely necessary for Syria to create a significant group that doesn’t deceive its conscience and stands for the public values that were violated in Syria every day. In my opinion this is truly possible. This need is even more pressing now, when polarization is so widespread.
*There was a cautiously welcome position held by Syrians on the coast towards Ahmad al Sharaa’s administration. But now it seems that the latest massacres have pushed many of them towards a complete rejection of the new administration. Do they have the luxury of this radical rejection?
The three months before the massacres were something like a preface or rough draft, like taking the pulse of the Sunni street first, and of the new ruling power. The massacres created an early fissure in the possibility of building a national state after the Assad regime.
If it was perhaps possible for a reasonable person to understand that there are uncontrolled criminal groups that exploited the collapse of the state and perpetrated the sectarian massacres, it’s however incomprehensible that the leaders of the new state did not pay attention to what happened, and did not try to counter it with a speech calling for national unity. The indifference of the self-proclaimed president of Syria and the absence of a genuine engagement with the plight of the people of the coast shows that he is more concerned with his partnership with those criminals than with representing all Syrians. The Alawites have the right to think that Al Sharaa bought the loyalty of these criminal factions with their blood.
My village in Latakia went without bread for six days. The bread commissioner was prevented from transporting it to the village. He was beaten and insulted with nasty sectarian language. On the sixth day, a new kind of bread with a terrible odor was distributed to the people. One of my female relatives told me that they preferred to give it first to a dog to be sure it was safe to eat. You see this level of trust? See what kind of relationship the ruling authority is building with the Alawites?]
Is it possible for the Alawites to restore their trust in those in power? I hope so, but I think that this will take tireless effort and straightforwardness from the side of the people in power. I don’t have a lot of confidence in that.
And here is where elites should take an active role, and especially Sunni-Arab elites, who should not repeat the same mistakes the Alawi elites committed in relation to the massacres of the previous regime.
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For now, I think that the Alawis are developing a radical rejection of al Sharaa’s authority, after they had welcomed him, albeit warily, in the beginning.
It became clear to them that there was justification for this trepidation. Notice that there are Alawites today who consider anyone among them accepting a ministerial position in the new government as a traitor.
According to the testimonies that you have received personally, is it true that the ruling power did not participate in the massacres? Or that it even tried to stop them? Do you expect any significant results from the committee al Sharaa formed?
One should not forget the roots, origin, and conceptual framework of those who occupy decision making positions in the new ruling authority. My opinion is that what happened wasn’t without a covert desire of the ruling power. Not because this ruling power wants that completely, but because it wanted to satisfy a vengeful desire among some groups, such as those who perpetrated the killings.
The security politics of the regime and its deep-seated sectarian structure seem impossible to dismantle. I think it is wrong to deal with the new powers as if they are revolutionary forces. Indeed, the forces that struck the fatal blow to the regime are no less bad. It’s to the duty of Syrian society to stand with clarity and definitively against its authoritarian aspirations.]
Al Sharaa’s ruling authority hasn’t condemned the massacres. It hasn’t even acknowledged them. It hasn’t directed even one word of reassurance to the Alawites who live to this day in fear and a complete lack of security. In the meantime, the massacre continues.
Equally important is the lack of discussion around the acute impoverishment that is taking place in parallel with the killing, torture, and humiliations, as a result of constant acts of arson, looting, layoffs from jobs, and cutting off salaries.
My village in Latakia went without bread for six days. The bread commissioner was prevented from transporting it to the village. He was beaten and insulted with nasty sectarian language. On the sixth day, a new kind of bread with a terrible smell was distributed to the people. One of my female relatives told me that they preferred to give it to a dog first, to be sure it was safe to eat. You see this level of trust? See what kind of relationship the ruling authority is building with the Alawites?
* The residents of the coast don’t feel the presence of a state that attends to their security. You say they consider any sound outside their house as a threat. I’m sure you have thought hard about what the ruling power should do to restore confidence in the people, in order to bring back that feeling. Is this even possible in the first place, or is there a structural problem that stands in the way of actualizing it?
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The ruling power can do a lot if it wants to start with a clean slate. No doubt the ruling power suffers from a structural problem. It’s a problem that also depends on the critical laxity of the Syrian elite. Although the greatest responsibility lies with the previous regime, whose policies were not only devoid of national interest, but also of any ethical value.
The security politics of the regime and its deep-seated sectarian structure seem impossible to dismantle. I think it is wrong to deal with the new powers as if they are revolutionary forces. Indeed, the forces that struck the fatal blow to the regime are no less bad. It’s to the duty of Syrian society to stand with clarity against its authoritarian aspirations.
*Have you come to understand the calls for foreign intervention coming out of the coast in the context of these conditions?
I understand the calls for foreign intervention from everyone who feels unprotected, especially under the performance of this exterminating violence that the Alawites are subjected to this day.
Previously the revolutionaries asked for foreign protection from the brutal violence of the Assad regime. For my part, I understood that at the time, knowing now and at that time that foreign intervention is not a solution, and that it will only put another burden on the ones we already have. We have put people in a situation of absolute insecurity and then we pretend to control them through patriotism. This is terrible behavior.
The disgrace is not in those who ask for foreign intervention, but rather in those who force people to ask for it. The disgrace is in those who reprove people for their demand of foreign intervention and are silent about the criminal act that is the cause behind it.
The disgrace is not in those who ask for foreign intervention, but rather in those who force people to ask for it. The disgrace is in those who reprove people for their demand of foreign intervention and are silent about the criminal act that is the cause behind it.
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*I’m talking with you from Germany, where a debate has prevailed for the past year around for who does “never again” apply, referring to the need not to repeat the massacres of the Holocaust in a post-Nazism world, and in relation to the massacres happening today, like in Gaza. There is a tendency now to sweep all that surrounds these massacres in the coast under the rug, as they say, to return to everyday life. To what extent do we need a similar slogan in Syria applying to all sects and ethnicities of the Syrian people, and is a new beginning possible in Syria without one?
The truth is that I thought that the years of hell that Syrians lived through would have generated in Syrian society a current that cautions against repeating. This could happen only through a real understanding of the true reasons behind what happened, so we could remove the causes and prevent its repetition.
Unfortunately, I was delusional.
During the previous regime, there were intellectuals who sang the praises of the Sukhoi Russian warplanes, and scoffed at the victims of massacres. It didn’t occur to me that this would be repeated after the departure of the Assad regime, and to find so many who dare to scoff in the face of all this death and these massacres.
The truth is that I thought that the years of hell that Syrians lived through would have generated in Syrian society a current that cautions against repeating. This could happen only through a real understanding of the true reasons behind what happened, so we could remove the causes and prevent its repetition. Unfortunately, I was delusional.
The blood that flowed in the coast is Syrian blood, not Alawi. And that means it is the blood of every Syrian.
The bullets that killed families who were safe and alone in their homes are bullets directed at the chest of every Syrian, even if they think they are far from those bullets, whether they are silent or not (about the massacres).
No doubt many of those people of the coast killed by bullets didn’t care about who was being killed by bullets in other places in Syria during those 14 years.
