Assad and burning down the country

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Syrian regime is organising presidential elections despite the situation Syria is suffering under, and that the point of dispute is not that Bashar Al-Assad himself is running for a third seven-year term, but that he has kept his position for the past three years.

What happened and is happening today in Damascus reflects the same logic that led the country into the disastrous crisis it is suffering. This dictated that the Governor of Daraa arrest a few boys, pull out their fingernails and threaten their parents with erasing their children from existence, all because of some scribbling on a wall. This logic also drove the notable figures and leaders of the city to join the revolution after a degrading visit paid by the President of the Republic to a “monument” in which he acted like the head of a clan seeking to protect his own. It is also the same logic that has persuaded Assad, since the beginning of his rule, that it is possible to disregard the will of the entire country, forever, and to work from behind the state institutions and laws to neutralise the Syrian people and replace them with an imaginary nation of clones who chant his name. He must control the whole nation, from the prime minister to the ordinary citizens.

In Assad’s eyes, the community is not what each individual sees in real life and not what they experience of joy, hope, and sorrow. Community is the image painted by Assad, how he envisions it and wants it to remain. Reality is a delusion and the stage is the truth and life. Until matters stabilise and peace, security and stability are achieved, everyone should forget reality or ignore it and instead join the puppet theatre and treat it as reality. Everyone should play the role assigned to them and be convinced of their role. Anything to the contrary is a threat to the calm, stable and controlled structure; the safe and constant structure built by the leader. Going against this will only bring chaos, conflict, violence and destruction to society. Or so we are told.

The revolution destroyed the puppet theatre that the regime used to delude the society, imprison their minds and bodies, control their thoughts, and paralyse their effectiveness over the past 50 years. Assad’s purpose in running for presidency again is to take the first step towards rebuilding the structure once more; he does not know how to play any other role and cannot experience any sort of peace, safety or security outside the fantasy. He does not know how to live without it, just as a spider cannot live in its web after it has been destroyed, unless it rebuilds its web in the same way.

If Bashar Al-Assad had even the slightest sense of reality and knew how to deal with the facts and reality of what is happening around him, we would expect him to wonder what his candidacy for another term would mean. If he had any sense of reality, and I do not say any sense of responsibility towards his people and his country, nor do I say pity for the hundreds of thousands of people who have died, been disabled, injured or displaced, because I do not expect that; but if he had any sense of reality, he would have seen the elections as a suitable time to step down and withdraw from the bloody game with the fewest possible losses. He would have dared to put someone in his place who would guarantee his life and, at the same time, open the doors of hope to Syria and its people for a better future.

However, like a spider, he cannot live without rebuilding the imaginary world in which he lives. The first step in doing this is to re-establish the same legendary presidency. I say legendary because it will go down in history as the bloodiest rule known by a nation at the expense of the assassination of an entire people, the annihilation of an entire society, the destruction of an entire country, and the death of human civilisation.

Burhan Ghalioun, is a French Syrian professor of sociology at the Université de Paris III Sorbonne University in Paris, and the first chairman of the Syrian opposition Transitional National Council.

Translated from Al Araby Al Jadid 30 April, 2014

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.