The areas and sectors covered by popular protests taking place daily across the country have become so extensive that merely attempting to count and document them would require a huge team of observers on the ground, as well as in the various communication and social media outlets.
The famous English writer Samuel Johnson said in the 18th century: “Facts of life are stubborn things”. In the Syrian reality, the facts of life are stubborn and painful: the realities of rampant poverty, unemployment, IDP camps, a paralyzed economy, and deteriorating education and healthcare. These facts and realities cannot be ignored or bypassed — neither by diverting attention toward secondary sectarian, ethnic, or religious conflicts and contradictions, nor through attempts to numb social consciousness with hypothetical mega-projects that are largely touristic and showy in nature, resembling Beirut’s Solidere alongside an entire country suffering from poverty and slums.
Protests of a socioeconomic nature, centered around people’s demands have been growing in both depth and scope over recent months and weeks. Estimates range between 50 and more than 80 protests, demonstrations, and gatherings during the past three months, across various Syrian areas.
There are many indicators that there is a deliberate and organized escalation of sectarian, religious, and ethnic incitement and sedition rhetoric in Syria. Most of this is happening on Facebook pages, amplified by algorithms and by external and internal cyber armies. A much smaller portion is taking place on the ground, with the aim of turning these Facebook “Wars of Dahis and al-Ghabra” into a new Syrian bloodbath.
“People usually look at the ‘Greater Israel’ project from the perspective of geographic expansion—through building settlements on Palestinian land, and through Israel’s current efforts to expand its borders in Lebanon and Syria. But the core of the issue is about total control over the region—not only geographically, but also through expanding the dominance of its hard power. It seeks to create a situation in which it is surrounded by states that are either collapsed or in a state of chaos and heading toward division and fragmentation, such that they cannot pose any obstacle to Israel’s hard power. This is a geopolitical strategy for Israel. What Israel wants from dragging the US into war with Iran is not merely the dream of regime change in Iran; rather, it seeks the comprehensive collapse of the regime and the state. Someone might say that what Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are facing is an unfortunate and unintended byproduct of such a war. That is completely wrong—it is calculated in advance and intentional by Israel, because part of the objective is to weaken the Gulf states and to show America as incapable of defending them, thereby pushing them to align with Israel’s project, which seeks to become not only a dominant regional power but also a global one, as Netanyahu has explicitly stated”.
The protest, which all the forces of the old past and its ghosts—both abroad and at home—tried to exploit and divert from its demands on the one hand, or intimidate and frighten on the other, has succeeded in overcoming all these obstacles, marking a turning point in modern Syrian history.
Recent weeks have revealed a gradual rise in socioeconomic protest movements carried out by Syrians across various parts of the country and in many economic sectors: from teachers to taxi drivers and street vendors, as well as the struggles of residents of the Jobar and Qaboun neighborhoods to preserve their rights and property. These also include protests against increased taxation rates, rising service prices, and the lifting of subsidies—especially for electricity and telecommunications—along with threats of privatizing the healthcare sector, and the grievances of dismissed employees or those still working but facing wage deductions or repeated delays in receiving their salaries.
The dual American / “Israeli” aggression against Iran constitutes the most prominent event on the global stage this century. It may even surpass the Ukrainian event in terms of the significance of its final outcomes—especially considering that both events are two stages within a single, integrated process whose essence is the end of the old international balance, the decline of American hegemony, and the birth of a new world whose emerging features are rapidly taking shape before our eyes.
It is mistaken to think that the incident that took place in al-Suqaylabiyah in Hama last Friday evening is a local event isolated from the broader Syrian context, or from a wider regional context. It is even more mistaken to treat it as a passing or “individual” incident with nothing behind it and nothing to follow.
Today, Sunday, March 22, marks the 23rd day of the “Israeli”/American war against Iran, which began as a blitzkrieg aimed at destroying Iran and its regime, ultimately leading to the fragmentation of Iran as part of the “Greater Israel project”. It has since turned into a war of attrition, quicksand, and a dangerous quagmire in which the aggressor powers—and with them the entire global economy—are sinking.
