Syrian crackdown, conference canceled – Just World News with Helena Cobban

I got a sad email this morning, from a staff assistant at a reform-oriented organization in Damascus called the Tharwa Project. Just ten days ago, Dr. Samer al-Ladkany, the assistant director of Tharwa, had invited me to participate in a big conference Tharwa was organizing in Damascus under the title “”Recognizing the Multicultural Society for Successful Democratic Transitions.” Ladkany was inviting me to speak about some aspects of South Africa’s historic transition from minority-based rule to full democracy, and naturally I was pretty excited at the prospect of doing so. After all, in Syria power has for many decades now been quite disproportionately concentrated in the hands of the Alawite community that makes up roughly 11% of the national population– and it desperately needs to find a peaceful way to transition to a fully inclusive, accountable, and rights-respecting form of national rule…
In today’s email, the staff assistant wrote:

we have been closed down…permanently

have not been able to contact the director here in Damascus.

I guess that would be Ladkany. The “big boss” at Tharwa– the organization’s founder, Ammar Abdel-Hamid– left Syria for the US around a month ago, after being warned by the security services that he should do so.
I am still hoping that ways can be found to urge Bashar al-Asad’s regime to– as I put it in this JWN post a couple of weeks ago–

“do a Frederik De Klerk” — that is, to find ways to repair the broken fabric within his own country by opening up serious political negotiations with his political opponents from the country’s majority population.

Obviously, right now, the prospects for that happening look significantly bleaker.
The latest move against the Tharwa Project in Damascus was, sadly, fairly predictable. Last Thursday, Pres. Asad made a strongly nationalist speech in which he came out swinging against Washington, and against the Washington-pushed activities of UN investigator detlev Mehlis. Al-Hayat’s Ibrahim Hamidi interpreted what was happening as Asad “preparing Syria for the probable imposition of international sanctions.” (As reported here.)
Then on Saturday, the mukhabarat (security services) arrested Kamal Labwani, a Syrian democracy activist who had just returned to his country from the US. While in the US, Labwani met in the White House with with U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor J. D. Crouch. He also did an interview for the (US government-operated) al-Hurra TV and other media outlets.
So it definitely looks as if the regime is in a defiant, hunkering-down mode. I think that’s a great pity. The well-connected and Damascus-based Syria expert Josh Landis has written on his blog, “Syrians will put up with sanctions lite if the government moves ahead purposefully with internal reform designed to free the economy.” I largely agree with that assessment. I also think that– like the international isolation that South Africa’s apartheid regime faced in the late 1980s– Syria’s growing international isolation today might well act to help persuade people at the heart of the regime that wide-ranging internal political reform is not only a good tactic, but also, a necessary policy if the interests of their nation and their sub-national community are to be preserved.
Josh does add, it is true, “Of course, it is hard to do this when being isolated.” I would add to that, that it would be extremely hard for the Syrian regime to open up the political space that is needed for reform when it is not only the subject of very hostile intent from the USA, but also in an actual and unresolved state of war with Israel.
Well, I have a lot of other thoughts about this whole subject. I should also, probably, take the opportunity of either writing something here on JWN, or writing something new in al-Hayat, to set down some of the things I would have said at the conference in damascus, if it were held.
Yes, there is much that is parallel between the experiences of the voteless majority in South Africa under apartheid and the powerless majority in Syria under the Asads. But there are also several signal differences. One is the seeming absence of any inclusive and highly disciplined opposition party on the model of the ANC. Actually, I’m not sure if the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood might reach some of the necessary criteria (though a problem there regarding “inclusivity”.) As for the secular-liberalizing opposition networks, they all seem to me to be dominated by prima donnas and individualists. In the latter category, I’m afraid I would probably have to include the Syrian liberalizer who’s best known in Washington DC– Ammar Abdel-Hamid, the founder of the Tharwa Project…. In his blog, Abdel-Hamid has called for the opposition to build “networks, networks, networks”. (Calling for the creation of single, disciplined party or front organization would, I think, be more effective.) But even regarding “networks” he doesn’t actually seem to be very respectful of the other people who might be in such a network. In this recent post he summarily dismissed “the Syrian opposition” as being “weak and idiotic.”
Altogether, a story that is tragic at many, many levels.
Most important, now, though: What can we do to try to ensure the safety of Samer Ladkany?

Helena,
As a member of the ANC in South Africa, I’m a bit concerned about the way the interpretation of our history contained in this post might appear to people who don’t know a bit about it.
At the beginning our ANC constitution it says “End apartheid in all its forms and transform South Africa as rapidly as possible into a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic country…” Non-racial is what we are, not multi-cultural.
In our new best-in-the-world constitution of the South African republic, rights are individual. There are no group rights as F W de Klerk would have wished.
It would be quite outrageously untrue to say that the ANC is a tribal or sectional or racial organisation. Yet it is not hard for our enemies to build a case of that sort that is superficially convincing. They can start, for example, with the fact that the last three Presidents of the ANC, O. R. Thambo, Nelson Mandela, and Thabo Mbeki, have all been Xhosas.
In your article you state that “in Syria power has for many decades now been quite disproportionately concentrated in the hands of the Alawite community that makes up roughly 11% of the national population”. One has heard this much before, especially in recent weeks, but I have never heard it explained in greater depth. It seems to me no more substantial than the mutterings of “Xhosa Nostra” that are heard from time to time in South Africa, often from whites.
What one also knows is that the Ba’ath Party was founded in Syria by a Christian in a spirit not totally distinct from that of the ANC. If I were a Ba’ath Party member I would find it repugnant to be obliged to enter negotations on a sectarian basis. Just so do South Africans find it repugnant to be pressed towards dealing with Afrikaners or Zulus as a special case. It goes right against what we have fought for all along, which is one-person-on-vote-in-a-unitary-state.
If foreigners from America fly in to lecture about multi-culturalism or “diversity” they don’t get much of a hearing in South Africa. We are not under threat of bombing, invasion, and regime change by force as Syria is. If we were in that condition, I expect we would be tempted to be stricter and more vocal against such things.
As for Dr. Samer al-Ladkany, you ask how to ensure his safety. I’m sure the first thing to do is to get additional confirmation that he is in fact missing. Why not make a direct enquiry, as a journalist, to the Syrian Embassy in the USA? If he has in fact been arrested, then his whereabouts should be ascertained, and the legal process put in train to defend him. A solidarity campaign cannot be started without these preliminaries. If you expect due process then you must observe due process in the first instance.
I don’t think you have to assume that the man is as inaccessible as he would be at GITMO, for example.

2 thoughts on “Syrian crackdown, conference canceled”

Dominic says:

November 14, 2005 at 2:47 pm

Helena,
As a member of the ANC in South Africa, I’m a bit concerned about the way the interpretation of our history contained in this post might appear to people who don’t know a bit about it.
At the beginning our ANC constitution it says “End apartheid in all its forms and transform South Africa as rapidly as possible into a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic country…” Non-racial is what we are, not multi-cultural.
In our new best-in-the-world constitution of the South African republic, rights are individual. There are no group rights as F W de Klerk would have wished.
It would be quite outrageously untrue to say that the ANC is a tribal or sectional or racial organisation. Yet it is not hard for our enemies to build a case of that sort that is superficially convincing. They can start, for example, with the fact that the last three Presidents of the ANC, O. R. Thambo, Nelson Mandela, and Thabo Mbeki, have all been Xhosas.
In your article you state that “in Syria power has for many decades now been quite disproportionately concentrated in the hands of the Alawite community that makes up roughly 11% of the national population”. One has heard this much before, especially in recent weeks, but I have never heard it explained in greater depth. It seems to me no more substantial than the mutterings of “Xhosa Nostra” that are heard from time to time in South Africa, often from whites.
What one also knows is that the Ba’ath Party was founded in Syria by a Christian in a spirit not totally distinct from that of the ANC. If I were a Ba’ath Party member I would find it repugnant to be obliged to enter negotations on a sectarian basis. Just so do South Africans find it repugnant to be pressed towards dealing with Afrikaners or Zulus as a special case. It goes right against what we have fought for all along, which is one-person-on-vote-in-a-unitary-state.
If foreigners from America fly in to lecture about multi-culturalism or “diversity” they don’t get much of a hearing in South Africa. We are not under threat of bombing, invasion, and regime change by force as Syria is. If we were in that condition, I expect we would be tempted to be stricter and more vocal against such things.
As for Dr. Samer al-Ladkany, you ask how to ensure his safety. I’m sure the first thing to do is to get additional confirmation that he is in fact missing. Why not make a direct enquiry, as a journalist, to the Syrian Embassy in the USA? If he has in fact been arrested, then his whereabouts should be ascertained, and the legal process put in train to defend him. A solidarity campaign cannot be started without these preliminaries. If you expect due process then you must observe due process in the first instance.
I don’t think you have to assume that the man is as inaccessible as he would be at GITMO, for example.
salah says:

November 14, 2005 at 3:03 pm

Most important, now, though: What can we do to try to ensure the safety of Samer Ladkany?
Helena, although I share my sympathy with yours a bout Samer Ladkany, the realty this is the way the colonial “US” dealing with small courtiers which obviously there is no doubt is less democratic.
The point is using Samer Ladkany case to impose and to isolate the country also make trade or other types of sanctions all these sort of steps will start when you and other use this case to make a crises with the regime in Syria.
I am not justifying any acts by Syrian regime but in the end we will see the people in Syria the most suffers from your views and acts.
There are may examples we can list used same scenarios, like Iraq regime for 13 years Iraqis suffered, see what they got now!!!, Zimbabwe Mugabi’s regime and the people their how much suffer and so on.
I think this case can be solved by distancing from Politicized all the case upon all the country who did it, either by using independent non political bodys also some of the international unions and may be some low profile of UN agencies to solve this case in that country, do not take my view wrong I am not defending the regimes but when there is a case that regime need support then we all stand against him and punish him.
Salah

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