Apparently we know more about Syria than Syrians themselves

Why are most Western responses to the fall of the Assad regime so markedly different from the way Syrians view things

Have you noticed the extraordinary disjuncture between the almost undiminished joy in Syria over the abrupt downfall of the Assad dictatorship and dire warnings of what is to come from politicians and pundits in places like Britain and the United States?

Surely, at the very least, the Syrian people should be given credit for their optimism even though there are understandable grounds for caution in the wake of this vile dictatorship’s demise.

The response, largely in the West, reflects a certain kind of arrogance in assuming that the wise heads of distinguished people overseas should be given greater credence than the exuberance of ordinary Syrians.

There is also an element of, to put it bluntly, racism. The people who have taken over in Syria don’t look anything like ‘us’. They appear to be pretty wild, wearing aggressively bushy beards and have a penchant for waving around lethal weaponry. Most of all however, they are Muslims and therefore automatically classified as extremists.

It would be naïve to ignore the antecedents of Syria’s new rulers who are drawn from the well of Islamic fundamentalism and may well prove to be intolerant towards Syria’s many minority groups, not forgetting women.

But then again can it be said that Syrians are stupid for embracing the new order or that minorities, such as Christians, or even members of the Alawite sect, are blind in accepting the pledges of the new rulers who insist that everyone will be treated fairly?

Great revolutions create great uncertainty and so nothing can be taken for granted but might not the benefit of the doubt be given to Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which spearheaded the successful revolt?

They claim to have reformed themselves. Maybe they have, maybe therefore it is wrong to assume that they are irredeemable. People can change, even in the Middle East.

Meanwhile external powers, notably Israel and Turkey, have felt sufficiently comforted by international reservations about the new order to move aggressively to secure their own interests in Syria without fear of restraint.

The consequence of this could well create a self-fulfilling prophecy of belligerence once the new regime settles down.

Meanwhile I have watched well-meaning reporters pressing government spokesman for a firm date to begin elections and urging them to give various other guarantees of ‘good behaviour’ which, frankly are impossible to provide so quickly and in the immediate wake of a traumatic upheaval.

As for the sonorous demands for good behaviour coming from governments who are quite prepared to do business as usual with genocidal regimes elsewhere, their protestations need not necessarily to be taken at face value.

Missing from the questioning is any notion that a revival of Syrian civil society will provide the vital guarantees for better governance. Syria is a complex place filled with highly competent people, many of whom fled into exile and will hopefully feel sufficiently confident to return and contribute their skills to the mammoth task of rebuilding the nation. They are not hapless pawns, lacking the capacity to mold their own future.

Well intentioned people outside Syria should, if they feel they must get involved, be directing their efforts to providing the means for the revival of civil society, in other words letting the people get on with the job which they are more capable of doing. The lessons of Afghanistan and indeed Iraq where foreign powers assumed they should fill the vacuum left in the wake of collapsed dictatorships serve as a severe warning of the folly of this approach.

When I was a young and very wet behind the ears journalist attempting to cover the Israel-Palestine conflict I was fortunate to have had the friendship and advice of the late Syrian journalist Mustapha Karkouti, most famous in Britain for his role as a mediator during the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London. He had lived the turmoil of his native country, discovered new turmoil by moving to Lebanon but somehow retained an unshakable optimism. He refused to take the worst for granted and helped found the Lebanon based As-Safir newspaper which, against all the odds, became a beacon of light and open dialogue.

He is no longer with us but he was not alone among Syrians capable of building a better Syria.

Expecting the worst may well be a realistic default response in the Middle East where the worst has a bad habit of happening but it is not axiomatic that change necessarily results in regression.