Sorry for posting this here, I don’t know a better place. I feel very sick watching the events in my country unveil. Sectarian tensions have been bad for a while, but in a matter of one week, so many of my people have decided that the druze minority is their enemy, and that “liberating” their towns (from their own people!) is their righteous conquest.
I am very saddened about where things have gone. Things just keep getting worse and I see no way out. A small protest in damascus against the violence was attacked by mobs, without any government protection or presence whatsoever (the protest was next to the “parliament” building!). We are living in fascism, where speaking out against sectarian violence is punishable my mob beatings.
I apologize for the rant. I understand probably none of you here is syrian or even middle eastern, so please feel free to ask questions and I will happily answer. At this point this is my only outlet.
The Ba’ath did not exactly fail the people, it just lost (similar to how soviet union just “lost”). We could argue that Bashar himself failed Syrians, especially in the 2019-2025 period. But by then, he was as far from Ba’ath as was Gorbachev from Communist party.
To add, in mid 20th century, communist parties in Syria and much of the Arab world were unconditional followers of USSR and influential foreign communist parties, even in matters that like the early support of Israel, or the French communist party supporting the french occupation of Syria. The Ba’ath party emerged instead as an Arab implementation of socialism, where Arab liberation was centered, and dependence or blind following of foreign bodies was rejected. It was only opposed to Communism in that sense. If you look at the Ba’ath congress of 1966, you’ll see it was even more revolutionary than the communists.