Syria’s Revolution Has Betrayed Its Promise
On December 8, Syria appeared to turn a page on dictatorship. After 14 years of brutality under former president Bashar al-Assad, the country ostensibly stood at the threshold of liberty. But liberty, as it turns out, is a fragile thing—its promise now eroded by bloodshed and betrayal. As the dust settles, Syria’s new chapter seems indistinguishable from its haunted past.
It’s difficult to write about Syria without despair, but that is the honest place from which I can write at this time. On March 7, my phone vibrated with a WhatsApp voice message. My friend’s voice on the other end was trembling and broken: “Please help us; they’re moving door to door, wiping out entire families.” She was speaking of the Alawites—my people—slaughtered along the Syrian coast as Islamist extremists, emboldened by the interim government’s failures, rampaged unopposed.
I sat there, stunned and helpless—a feeling every Syrian knows well, as if we are exiles in our own fate. Syria has a way of following you wherever you go, even beyond its borders. The pain does not dim with distance.Â
My friend and her family were able to escape and hide in the woods nearby until they were able to flee to Damascus. Hundreds of others were not as lucky.Â
After Assad’s fall, I dared to hope that justice, dignity, and a future worth building would follow. Yet here we are, with the new interim government presiding over massacres and disowning the consequences. Meanwhile, the bodies of the dead await burial and families mourn in silence while their neighbors dance in the streets, celebrating a stillborn agreement between the interim government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Not the Syria We Dreamed ofÂ
The constitutional declaration of the new Syria should have marked a departure from authoritarianism but instead entrenched it further. Sharia law has been elevated from “a” source of legislation to “the” source of legislation. The president—once again—holds unchecked power, shielded from accountability. The economic unraveling has compounded the misery: tens o
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