As the Syria war enters its tenth year, it depicts a perfect example of a failed revolution that was attempted desperately in 2011.
When in 2011, a few “mischief mongers,” unwittingly sparked what later became the international war, it was an innocent wish for greater political freedom. The boy Moawiya who dared it, had written the fateful words “Your turn doctor.”
The ensuing years, with continuous skirmishes, full-scale offensives, destruction, bloodshed, and human displacement, one thing appeared clear: it was not the doctor’s turn. It was Syria that had to bear the brunt of a failed revolution.
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Amid this decade of chaos and failed revolution were born 4.8 million children, as the UN’s children body gave the recent figures.
About this decade, Henrietta Fore, who is UNICEF’s executive director, said, “The war in Syria marks yet another shameful milestone today.”
Before 2011
There was specious peace before the contagion of the Arab Spring from the neighboring countries engulfed Syria. In fact, the 2011 uprising had been brewing for decades against the rule of the Assad family.
It is not unusual for the majority to resist a minority rule. The Assad family from a minority Alawite group has been ruling over the Sunni majority of Syria.
Before Bashar al Assad, it was his father Hafez al-Assad whose rule in Syria is resented by the Sunni majority for his persecution and iron-handedness.
The year 2011 gave the Syrian resentment a voice following a seemingly insignificant incidence in a small town of Tunisia in December 2010.
The Prime Mover of Arab Spring
A vendor in Sidi Bouzid, like any other day, pushed his cart for livelihood through the streets in Tunisia. He had been perturbed by the police officers who had confiscated his cart several times. On that day, his pride was wounded by an officer who slapped him after a tirade that was aimed at confiscating his cart as he reportedly had nothing to bribe the police.
Mohamed Bouazizi, who might have been accumulating and sustaining for years the injuries against his pride, exploded that day against the autocratic system. But the best he could do was to burn himself as a protest against the state that was unable to give him justice.
That self-immolation served to be the initial spark that ignited the whole region and is known as the Arab Spring.
Arab Spring in Syria
Arab Spring had a larger impact than intended or even expected by the Tunisians who capitalized on the self-immolation of the vendor into a successful national revolution.
President Zine El Abidine of Tunisia was ousted, and soon to be followed by Egypt’s Hosni Mubarek and Libya’s Muhammad Gaddafi. Both rulers had been at the helm of affairs for decades.
In addition, the Arab Spring swept away from power the President of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh.
In Syria, too, a few schoolboys, influenced by their surroundings, felt overambitious when they wrote a graffiti on the school’s wall, “Your turn doctor.” They were alluding to the Syrian President Bashar al Assad, who is an eye specialist.
The legacy of a failed revolution
After a decade of war in Syria, all the stakeholders fighting the Syrian regime, including the US, left the war a long ago, realize the futility of war.
Assad braved all the opposition thanks to its vital ally Russia that refuted a general perception in international affairs that do not believe in fair-weather friendships.
