The foreign support in Syria is very limited. The Syrians, they rely first on themselves and then on the Syrian diaspora. The Syrian diaspora was very supportive, and they are very flexible in sending the money, in sending the devices and all the equipment that people inside Syria they’re looking, because the outside, it has such rules, it have to have – apply for a grant and you have to get information and approval and all of that.
No, the diaspora, they have more flexibility, especially the diaspora in Europe, in United States and in the Gulf countries. Just they collect the money and they send it to Syria or they provide the devices, the satellite, the Inmarsat phone and all the equipment and just send it. Without the support and the help of the Syrian diaspora, I don’t think that the Syrian revolution was able to continue. According to the statistics, we have more than 5 million Syrians. And you have a very well educated and rich community in the United States and in the Gulf countries because the Syrians they are highly professional. And in the United States you have more than 7,000 physicians – doctors, the same in Europe.
In Gulf countries, you have very strong business community. And all of these communities, they help the Syrian people inside Syria in sending equipment to continue the revolution, and sending the money. And after that, because the growing of the humanitarian crisis in Syria, they played an important role. When the original Arabic broadcaster, Al-Jazeera, started in 1996, which opened a little bit the space for the criticism against the leaders, where this is something unacceptable or no tolerance in all the national medias to criticize your leaders or your president or the institutions of the security forces – Mukhabarat [Syrian intelligence agency], the army and all of that – it was a very interesting, let’s say, adventure when Al-Jazeera tried that.
Year by year, with a lot of events taking place in the Middle East, Al-Jazeera and other – Al Arabiya [a pan-Arab news network], the BBC [British Broadcasting Channel] later on, appeared that’s the only space for the people who can trust and believe, who can take news from them. When the Arab revolt started, Al-Jazeera was among the first who opened the space 24 hours for the people, for the revolutionaries to speak out, especially in Tunisia, where other Arabic broadcasts did not do that. Then the Tunisian people, they were watching Al-Jazeera 24 hours to know what’s going on in their home country. And that’s happened for others – in Egypt, later on in Libya, and in Syria.
The Arab broadcasting, the original Arab broadcasting, played an important role for the people to get the information and to get inspired about what’s happening in other countries, inspired to repeat again in their home countries. And it became also the main source of the information of all the Syrians or all the Arabs because they trust this broadcast. A lot of question and criticism, of course, for any media, for any outlet in the way of doing that, but still, it’s far away have credibility than the state media, where the state media is just propaganda, just repeating the lies day by day, and no one believing it. This is why Al-Jazeera became the main source of information.
Radwan Ziadeh is a Syrian dissident and democracy activist. He grew up in a middle class family in Damascus and became politically active after the death of President Hafez Assad in 2000. Remembering the struggles of his own family growing up, Ziadeh wanted to live in a free country and helped establish the Syrian Human Rights Association, a group dedicated to promoting human rights, in 2001.
Four years later, Ziadeh founded his own organization called the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies. Through his center, Ziadeh acted as an international lobbyist for the cause of Syrian freedom. Speaking at venues like the United Nations Human Rights Council, Ziadeh raised awareness about the human rights abuses being committed by the Assad regime in Damascus. As Ziadeh intensified the spotlight on Syria, the government retaliated by placing a travel ban on his family, effectively imprisoning them in Syria, or stranding those traveling abroad in third countries. In 2007, Ziadeh fled Syria for the United States as the Assad government issued a warrant for his arrest.
Beginning in March 2011, the Syrian people revolted against President Bashar Assad, who had succeeded his father, challenging the government’s control over the country and resulting in a tense standoff between the remnants of the regime and diverse opposition forces. In 2012, Ziadeh seized the opportunity afforded him by the revolution and visited his homeland for the first time in five years. He continues to reside in the United States where he works through organizations like the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies to rebuild Syria into a free and democratic society.
Twitter: @radwanziadeh
The Syrian Arab Republic originated as a secular, socialist state dominated by the Ba’ath party, an Arab nationalist movement. The state has since evolved into an autocracy headed by a single family and dominated by members of the minority Alawite sect, a branch of Shia Islam.
The Ba’ath Party took power in Syria in a series of coups d’état in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the leaders of those coups, Hafez al-Assad, became president in 1971 and led the country until his death in 2000. Under Assad, Alawites assumed control over the state security forces. In 1982, Assad’s forces stormed the city of Hama to brutally suppress a Sunni rebellion, killing thousands of civilians.
Following the death of Hafez al-Assad, his son, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president by a referendum in which he ran unopposed, officially garnering 97 percent of the vote. He was reelected in 2007, again with 97 percent of the vote.
The Syrian government is one of the world’s most brutal and restrictive. From 1963 to 2011, the government operated under an “Emergency Law,” which suspended many constitutional protections of civil liberties. The government continues to use arbitrary detention and torture against political opponents, and operates through an extensive internal security apparatus, including secret police. The government controls most of the country’s media outlets, and access to the Internet is permitted only through state-operated servers. The minority Kurdish population has been continually discriminated against and repressed.
Influenced by movements in Egypt and Tunisia, large opposition protests took place across Syria in 2011. The government responded with a harsh crackdown. Security forces fired on protestors, killing thousands. The crackdown led the Arab League to suspend Syria’s membership. The Assad regime attempted to appease dissenters through a series of low-level and largely inconsequential reforms in 2011 and 2012. However, the conflict has escalated into full-fledged civil war with both liberal and Islamic militias being formed to fight against the Assad regime. The Assad regime has continued to attempt to defeat the opposition using air strikes and heavy artillery to attack rebel-held neighborhoods. Freedoms of association, assembly, and the press were restricted even further as the government attempted to quell the uprising. Over a million people have been either internally displaced or fled the country as refugees.
In the summer of 2013, it was confirmed that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons to attack civilians. Over 600 people were killed in one such attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus using a nerve agent confirmed to be sarin. The Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons drew international attention and resulted in a renewed international focus on the nation and its civil conflict.
Freedom House rates Syria as “not free” noting that conditions even prior to the 2011 uprising and subsequent civil war were, at best, abysmal. It earned the worst possible ratings of seven in both the political rights and civil liberties categories. Conditions since the 2011 uprising have only deteriorated, and civil freedoms are restricted under the fear of violence. Freedom House has also expressed concern over rising sectarian tensions and massive displacement.