Reem Issa
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Which Type of Violence is the Most Dangerous in Syria Today?
Although ten years have passed, “violence” in its various forms is still the most prominent headline in describing what is happening against the Syrian people, though that violence has taken different forms during the past ten years, and it has been practiced by many sides. Violence has become one of the most important tools used and still being used by the various forces and sides to suppress the Syrian people and try to divide Syria geographically and humanly, and to reinforce and deepen that division with the aim of perpetuating and fixing it and thus deepening the crisis and striving to make it impossible to reach a comprehensive and implementable political solution.
As the forces, sides, and circumstances at all levels changed, the forms of violence also changed to ensure the ability of stakeholders to achieve their objectives and interests that contradict and go against the interests of the Syrian people.
Since the beginning of the current crisis in Syria, Kassioun has looked at the forms of violence and counter-violence to which Syria and the Syrian people are subjected. In its handling of the issue, Kassioun touched on the most prominent types of violence, including: economic, political, group-based, civil, and armed. The main objective of that review was to counter the attempts of some from this side and that to limit violence to one type, which is the usual and traditional one in this type of crisis in particular, in an attempt to cover up other types of violence, and even more importantly to use the discourse about violence as a justification and pretext for further counter violence.
A brief historical review… 2011
We will briefly and quickly address the aforementioned forms of violence as addressed by Kassioun in 2011 (you can read the complete original article entitled “Violence… and the Mission to Save Syria!” (in Arabic), published by Kassioun on April 29, 2011):
- Economic Violence: It is the root of all evil and all other forms of violence and causes the death of tens of millions around the world annually due to hunger and disease without shedding a single drop of blood. We pointed out that at that time that the officially declared poverty rates reached 30% and unemployment reached 11%, and the reality was certainly (and still is) much worse. This violence is practiced by those in power and the corrupt forces through brutal liberal policies on the greater part of the people within whom this type of violence accumulates and it remains latent and ready to explode in all directions, and a large part of the people fall victims along the way as a result of the increasing bad situation.
- Political Violence: This is represented by confiscating people’s opinions and closing the free outlets that allow them to express their opinions under politically violent legislations or by circumventing constitutional and legal legalities, restricting political parties and their ability to engage in political action, all of which result in the forces of corruption prevailing and continue existing.
- Group-Based Violence: This type of violence is represented by quotas, which in essence is a class quota in which representatives of capital and merchants take the largest share. This allows the great corrupt forces to reach pivotal positions in the state, while at the same time playing on the particularity of the Syrian fabric so that things appear to be in the interest of certain groups (sectarian, ethnic, tribal, or others) at the expense of other groups, to build mutual violence among groups, while in reality the adversely affected proportions within all groups are very close, and the violence resulting from these practices serves the interest of the leaders of all groups, who are the groups’ major capital possessors and plunderers.
- Civil Violence: This comes in the form of a direct threat to a human’s citizenship and personal dignity through all practices that violate people’s individual freedoms, whether in educational institutions and other state institutions that are dominated by favoritism, and the personal status law and its applications, in addition to other phenomena such as (state-sponsored) malign and violent bullying, which all serve the major corruption forces and infringe on the citizen’s citizenship and social efficacy.
- Armed Violence: It is the simplest and most obvious form of violence, and while it is usually the last means used by warring forces to show the extent of their strength, in the Syrian case it was used from the beginning and from all sides to break the compass and stop the real popular movement because the development and maturity of that movement within the national frameworks would have led to holding accountable the big corruption forces and preventing stakeholders from the other side from being able to achieve their goal of gaining power so they would become the plunderers or share the plundering without a real change in the distribution of wealth.
Violence over ten years; and where is it today?
The aforementioned types of violence have continued during the past ten years, and the means used by the successive de facto forces have developed according to the circumstances and the tools available in their areas of control. Although the fronts, discourses, and circumstances are different, but the negative repercussions on the vast majority of the Syrian people, that is, the plundered majority, have not changed but rather became worse.
In order for the different forces to be able to continue to use the different types of violence with the people, it was necessary for them, especially existentially, to introduce an additional type of violence, one objective of which was to be the primary tool in ensuring the continuation of the other forms of violence, increasing their intensity, and deepening and expanding their scope, making it more dangerous and comprehensive than the other types of violence.
We can call this type of violence: “time-wasting violence” and it is represented in practices aimed at undermining and destroying anything that could lead to a solution to the crisis. Among these practices are: political equivocations, false heroics, extremist rhetoric, and even arrogance in the name of the “revolution” at times and in the name of “the homeland” at other times. This type of violence uses all available political, media, and psychological means to try to play on regional and international balances to ensure and justify not making any concessions, something that is an essential part of negotiations and dialogue in order to reach a political solution.
This type of violence started appearing very clearly since the official beginning of the negotiations track in 2014, though its initial features could be recognized as early as 2012 and 2011.
This form of violence developed in parallel with the developments on the ground, and the most dangerous thing about it was (and still is) that it was a key factor in prolonging the crisis, which led increasing the effects of the other types of violence we mentioned above, which resulted in the deepening of the Syrian catastrophe, including an increase in poverty rates, unemployment, and hunger; deepening other humanitarian tragedies such as detainees, prisoners, and displaced persons (refugees and IDPs); as well as deepening various types of social, educational, and psychological problems; not to mention the catastrophic effects on Syria as a state in terms of destruction and deterioration of the infrastructure and the economy.
When will the “time-wasting violence” end?
If we want to present a symbolic picture of the “time-wasting violence”, then that image is of the war lords, the extremists, and the major corruption forces within the regime and the opposition, all of whom are choking suffocating the Syrian people and trying to finish them off once and for all to prevent their next resurgence, because they know that whenever the circumstance allows the people to rise again, the battle will be most definitely settled against them, even if it takes additional time.
The implementation of UNSC Resolution 2254 will not get rid of the extremists, the major corruption forces, and the war lords, but it will compel them to loosen their grip on the necks of Syrians, and the new blood and oxygen that will flow in people’s veins will lead to an upcoming revival, and a better and more mature preparation for the upcoming battles against the plunderers.
