Returning to Italy from Syria and running into the victims of a propaganda to which the country has lent itself for five years, gives a feeling of sadness.
"That Assad really doesn't want to leave ..."
"A bloody dictator ..."
"Will the regime collapse?"
We certainly do not want to sanctify Syria and identify it as an example of pluralism and the cradle of democracy of alternation. However, we want to clarify what that "regime" supports in a country where order and security went hand in hand with widespread social well-being and absolute respect between the various confessions.
For too long we have read (and we still read) about a war between "moderate rebels" and an Alawite clique that held power by force while resisting the claims of democracy and rights of the so-called "Arab Spring".
With our reportage we discovered that the "moderates" are actually genocides whose only interest is to exterminate anyone who is not a Sunni and among the Sunnis anyone who does not bow to their extremist view. A facade religious belief and essentially unknown to the killers themselves, used to finalize a contracted and wanted task from outside.
In the past, when the Syrian government put in place a program of national reconciliation, in fact an amnesty with the opponents, we believed it was only a skilful political move on the facade of ephemeral effects.
The truth that we have found talking (in private) with soldiers, volunteers, students, professionals, a well-representative and transversal sample of Syrian society, is that many people who until a few years ago were opposed to Assad, today support him. The president of Syria today is not the symbol of a caste or party in power, but the country itself.
Obviously the presence of bearded, bloodthirsty beasts has facilitated the change of face among the Syrians who had initially believed in the spontaneity of the revolt, but the data is still interesting.
After all, it's not so strange: when Bush son was re-elected in 2004, something similar happened. Despite steep polls, the war president was not stabbed but re-elected. This is a tradition rooted in countries where the identification between society and flag is strong, regardless of the model of community considered. Perhaps we Italians are the least suited to understand this. This is why we do not understand that today, in the midst of a war at home, it is unthinkable that a Syrian will send away the commander in chief of the forces that are defending their land. This is why we do not understand that Syrians have been challenging the AKs for years now as opponents of Assad who has become the flag of the country for all and not that of the Ba'th party.
Not even hiding behind the rhetoric of human rights can make sense. Talking about human rights in Syria today is like defending ecology in Nagasaki in '45. Faced with the lives of hundreds of thousands of human beings, does it make sense to speak of democracy and political rights? What are the priorities we should pay attention to?
Wandering around Syrian cities and provinces, you can see tens of thousands of photos hanging outside the houses or along the streets. They are the "martyrs", the fallen for the homeland: every family has lost at least one child, one husband, one father.
Do you want to drop Assad?
There is a high road: let him accept at a negotiating table one point less than the territorial reconstitution of the Syrian state. At that point a people who sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives to save themselves would really rise up against their leader.
In the opinion of a business student with whom we spoke a few weeks ago, there is another possibility: ending the war.
"Assad is a politician like there are thousands of them. Unlike the many, however, Bashar is also a man. And there are very few politicians who are also real men in the world.
I am sure that when the war ends the president will leave power, the cost in human lives too high and ultimately the responsibilities related to the role during his tenure.".
