The stress on national unity is the only new element in Syria's official and popular discourse. Apart from this, talk of democracy and the national bond, conspiracies, treason and oppression, enmity towards Israel and imperialism… all are traditions of both the opposition and the regime. The emergence of such a discourse now does not mean that sectarianism was absent, but rather that covering it with nationalist slogans is no longer effective. And it would be best to approach this state of affairs by considering it to be part of the reforms which the people have demanded and which President Bashar Al-Assad has ratified, on the condition that it not be dealt with the way it has been in Lebanon or Iraq, making use of these two experiences to overcome division. The Lebanese deal with their sectarian situation by considering it to be their fate. They share power on this basis, gather “spiritual leaders” in a display that is little more than a folkloric fashion show, and issue statements that mean nothing but the assertion of division, despite their stress on national unity, which they use as a cover for their civil wars, repeated every few years. As for the new Iraqi regime, it has gone beyond Lebanon's situation of division and consecrated the federation of sects in the constitution. It was helped in this by the US occupation and by the direction taken by Iran and some of the Arabs. Before all this, the Iraqi Baath party failed throughout the years of its rule to spread secular thought and apply it politically at the levels of power, the street, cities and schools. In fact, Saddam Hussein (and before him Sadat) turned to the Islamists and to the clans. It is a conspiracy, said Assad, and the truth is that what foreign forces are plotting for Syria has been plainly exposed. It is enough for us to return to Colin Powell's famous conditions at the beginning of the war in Iraq to know the amount of pressure Damascus was subjected to when it had more than a hundred and fifty thousand American soldiers at its borders, when it withdrew its army from Lebanon, and when it stood alongside Hezbollah during the July War. It is enough for us also to return to Jacques Chirac's plans, in association with George Bush Jr., to topple the regime and support an Islamist power grab in Damascus, with Abdul Halim Khaddam not being far from such plans (according to the book “Dans le Secret des Présidents” by Vincent Nouzille). Chirac brought back the history of French colonialism. He wanted to drown Syria in blood and divide it into four countries on sectarian bases, and at the time Bush did not object. All of this is true and is documented. And Syria was able to overcome all of those pressures. But it was not the regime alone. It was the Syrian people, at the expense of their freedoms and their progress, who confronted and thwarted such plans. In his latest speech, Assad admitted the delay in starting reforms and promised to hasten the process in order to “ward off the conspiracy”. And in addition to promises of reforms and of forming committees to study and implement them, the decrepit leadership of the Baath party adopted a discourse on national unity closest to the folkloric discourse of Lebanese political parties. It is a discourse that reflects reality and drowns in it, using the expression “national unity” as a mere slogan devoid of any substance.
