In his recent attack on the Syrian opposition and foreign “conspirators,” Syrian President Bashar Assad resorted to defending pan-Arabism, and accused those who he considers his rivals in the Arab world of being “so-called Arabs.” He said that attacking Syria, “the beating heart of Arabism,” renders the Arabism of such individuals suspect. Isn't Damascus the capital of Greater Syria and the capital of the Umayyad dynasty, as the Syrian president boasted? There is no debate over Syria's significant historical position in the heart of the Arab world, and there is no need to recall the words of Egypt's Gamal Abdel-Nasser about the country; Syria does not need such testimonies. However, reviving this position today by the Syrian president, at a time when Damascus is biased toward a particular camp in the region, a camp that harbors only hatred and condescension toward the Arabs, in terms of their civilization, culture and language, is puzzling. This falling back on Syria's status in the Arab world comes after Syria conducted a very strong alliance with the Iranian regime, which considers Arab nationalism and its slogans its greatest enemy, and refuses to call the Gulf “Arab,” insisting on the term “Persian” instead. Iranian leaders who know Arabic refuse to speak it, while this regime has sponsored sectarian policies of division in the region – these policies extend throughout Iran's areas of influence, from Baghdad to Beirut, as well as Gulf countries, and have now reached Syria itself. Under such conditions, how can the resort to Arabism work, while the Arabs view the Syrian-Iranian alliance with anxiety, believing its foundations to be purely sectarian and completely unrelated to an inclusive pan-Arabism? Moreover, the Arabism being cited today by the Syrian president has lost its luster and no longer inspires anyone, after the forced moves at unity by the “pan-Arabists,” led by the authors of the famous slogan “Who has protected Arabism other than the Socialist Baath Party?” It is enough to recall what the pro-Arabist Baathists in Syria and Iraq did in Kuwait and Lebanon, and before that Jordan and Palestine. Moreover, true feelings of Arabism are not in line with dealing in arrogant and racist fashion with Syrian citizens, even if they are opponents of the regime, or other Arabs, particularly from the Gulf. The Syrians who have demonstrated against the regime are described as peasants or villagers who only harbor feelings of hatred toward cities and urban areas; some of these people have recently been described as “devils.” In the eyes of the Syrian leadership, people of the Gulf are only people who have money but not “civilization.” The arrogance goes as far as insulting their clothing and lifestyle, which reminds us of the Nazis, whose slogans were based on racism and condescension, in dealing with other Europeans. The feelings of true Arabism are not in line with the Syrian regime's definition of itself as a protector of minorities, in order to exploit their fears and heighten this fear, as a means of retaining their support. Nationalism should be a means of embracing all people. The claim of protecting minorities only increases national fragmentation, which the regime has studiously boosted in the first place on sectarian foundations, putting the sect and religion before the nation. This is naturally the farthest thing from the type of thought that real nationalism should embrace. It is a tardy defense of and reliance on pan-Arabism, which the pan-Arabists themselves have worked to rob of its luster, while most Arabs have washed their hands of the ideology. Those who “sponsored” this Arabism over the last four decades were successful only in issuing slogans, whether about the domestic situation in their countries, or the outside world, in the confrontation they speak of with the “the Zionist enemy" – a confrontation whose results are known beforehand. The people demonstrating today in Syria are not demonstrating against Syria's Arab affiliation; they are demanding freedom and demanding that the regime listen to them. If pan-Arabism were reconciled with the values of freedom, democracy and justice, as it should be, many Arabs would not have cursed this ideology, as their uprisings have demonstrated, and the late defense by the Syrian president would not have come across like a voice shouting in the wilderness.
