Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

A Revolution without a Thinker or Leader | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar Assad speaks at the Opera House in central Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. (AP Photo/SANA)


In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar Assad speaks at the Opera House in central Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday outlined a new peace initiative that includes a national reconciliation conference and a new government and constitution but demanded regional and Western countries stop funding and arming rebels first. (AP Photo/SANA)

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar Assad speaks at the Opera House in central Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday outlined a new peace initiative that includes a national reconciliation conference and a new government and constitution but demanded regional and Western countries stop funding and arming rebels first. (AP Photo/SANA)

We do not know what Bashar al-Assad was thinking of when he asked who is the Syrian revolution’s “thinker” or “leader”. Was he thinking of the French or Russian revolutions, or was he perhaps considering the 8th March revolution in Syria? If he was thinking of the French example, this was not characterised by one thinker, but rather a number of ideologues from various backgrounds, from Rousseau to Montesquieu. If he was thinking of the Russian revolution, its founding fathers were Tolstoy and Gorky prior to Marx and Lenin. If he was thinking of the March 8th Revolution, its principal theorist Michel Aflaq was sentenced to death during Hafez al-Assad’s era and was denied entry to Syria for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Dr. Salah al-Bitar, the co-founder of the Syrian Baath party, was assassinated in Paris having been exiled there for decades.

The Italian writer Umberto Eco claims that literature inspires revolutions. It is those who express people’s emotions and feelings, and it is not necessary the role of the intellectual to guide ordinary people towards a revolution. The Baath party emerged amidst the ranks of intellectuals before it was then militarized and taken to the barracks. When the party first came to prominence, it was shouldering the sufferings of the people before it ended up fulfilling the objectives of the military. It was once the party of the nation before it transformed into the party of the region.

The aforementioned examples were all revolutions against ideologies that had besieged the people for half a century. President al-Assad felt that the Arab Spring was a bubble that would burst before it reached Syria, yet had he noticed the pattern he would have seen that the Tunisian revolution was sparked by a street vendor selling vegetables in a cart, without even a stall or a shop, and that those who ignited the Libyan revolution were not united by a single leader. He would also have noticed that those who filled Tahrir square were ordinary people like Wael Ghonim, not Lenin.

The age of revolutions that champion one man is over, just as the regimes that consecrate power in one set of hands have also come to an end. No one could highlight a single person who caused the collapse of the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the families of some Chinese leaders today have accumulated nearly US $ 200 billion through the market economy, rather than through a monopoly or despotism.

In Syria there is a broad category of writers and thinkers who we have never heard of before because they were not allowed to write, nor could we read their work. This group is now contributing to the flourishing Arab press. They appear in their true guise, not as agents, defectors or provocateurs. They are a group of intellectuals, rather than one thinker or one idea. Their only common denominator is that they spent many long years in prison for no crime, during which they cherished the notion of freedom.

Ever since President al-Assad rose to power, the bubble of the Arab Spring has been getting bigger and its signs have become clearer. Had Bashar noticed this from the start, Syria and its regime would not be as we see them today.