Ridicule is predominant in the Syrian official tales regarding the reasons for the incidents and the people behind them, not only because a country submerged by “security” for over forty years seems infiltrated from all sides, but also because the airing in the evening of the confessions of infiltrators, agents and spies is a method which has been long outdated. What is increasing the weakness of the security ‘dramas' is the ‘oddity' of the enemies currently being accused. Indeed, if we were to eliminate the confessions of the American-Egyptian engineer who was released by the authorities after he bluntly recognized having visited Israel and sold pictures to foreign agents - owing to his American passport and the pressures of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry - there would be no one left on the list of conspirers against Syria except for the Lebanese Future Movement. Let us firstly say that the legacy of the Future Movement's security and military work cannot be capitalized on, considering that the Lebanese experienced its militia-like attempts between 2005 and 2008 and that all of them ended in a deplorable way. The use of the method conceived by the authorities in Damascus reveals the real goal behind the equivocal accusations. In one of his speeches, President Bashar al-Assad downplayed the importance of former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora, and claimed he was unable to make a decision by saying: “He is the slave of a slave.” We had no idea that the Syrian command recanted its assessment of the series of “slaves” in Lebanon and those standing behind them. In the meantime, it is not easy for Damascus to raise the discontent of influential Arab countries for the time being, especially since they announced their support of stability in Syria. Therefore, it was easier for the regime to fabricate an alliance of real and fictive enemies - including the Future Movement and the Muslim Brotherhood - in order to barricade itself behind it and cast accusations featuring sectarian and confessional allusions against the oppositionists of the rule. In reality however, the Syrian popular action has surpassed the opponents of the regime, while all the opposition powers produced by traditional organizational structures have become isolated from the pulse of the street and the decision which is as surprising to these oppositionists as it is to the regime. The latter – i.e. the traditional opposition and the regime – are unable to acknowledge they have lost touch with the street and the people or recognize their absence from the action of young people who – among other things - lay before the tanks of the regime near Baniyas to prevent them from invading a town. As for the introduction of accused individuals to deliver confessions about having received training, conducting instigation and participating in the demonstrations, it is a method that has been used by the Syrian authorities against their oppositionists since the eighties, inspired by the models of the Moscow trials in the thirties and the confessions of the enemies of the rule in Iran following the revolution. What was presented in details is unavoidable, as it constitutes a prelude for seeing the big picture. In this context, the Syrian incidents seem to be part of the major historical change witnessed in the Arab world. As for the security and military behavior upheld by the Syrian regime among other Arab regimes, it will not succeed in turning the clock backward or blocking the tide of change. While the rule showed severe shortcomings in meeting the demands for reform and tried to turn the protests into a depletion war against the citizens who are yearning for a decent living as much as they are yearning for freedom, it is obvious that the exit from the current state of political bankruptcy firstly requires the recognition of the limits and failure of the security solution.
