Some believe that the impact the fall of the Assad regime will have on the Arab Levant and the region surrounding it, will be similar to the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Indeed, communist Moscow was the kingmaker in those countries, and through its socialist bloc, the Warsaw Pact and the communist elites, Moscow controlled those countries' resources and fates. Assad's Syria, meanwhile, and by replacing suppressed internal concerns with imperial-like external preoccupations, became also a kingmaker in Lebanon, and a major player in the affairs of the Palestinians, Iraqis and Jordanians, and even the Turks. Therefore, the collapse of this regime will end what is artificial, contrived and forced, in favor of a more “normal" situation – albeit this normality in our region is not without huge ambiguity. The analogy is not without its merit. In fact, it is its merit that explains many aspects of the current complexities seen in the Syrian situation, and is also one of the most important reasons why the Syrian revolution became a Syrian crisis, on which the whole world and its media are focusing their lights and elaborating every angle thereof. Yet, and for the sake of accuracy too, one mention some caveats: Most probably, the Syrian transformation will not impact neighboring countries, in the same way the Russian transformation affected Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary. Instead, the fallout will resemble more what happened in the former Yugoslavia. In other words, we are not likely to see the equivalent of German reunification following the fall of the Berlin Wall, as much as we are likely to witness the same fragmentation seen in Tito's empire. Similarly, we are not to expect the immediate creation of democratic configurations, similar to what happened in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, nor a peaceful breaking up of countries, like the exemplary model of the breakup of the Czech and Slovak nationalities. Instead, we may end up walking down the same complicated road, which will also possibly be paved with blood, as the one followed by Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia, the constituent parts of the former Yugoslavia. Of course, all this is neither a conspiracy, nor a new Sykes-Picot, as some smart-alecks like to say, and who in the end know nothing better than to lazily rehash outdated claims. No; instead, it is the big service that the Syrian Revolution has done for the obscured but inherent fact about the histories and compositions, and the extent of integration achieved among their various communities, or the lack thereof. The Post-Ottoman phase, which is common to both our countries and the former Yugoslavia, had imposed there, and imposed on us here, winding roads towards freedom and progress, compared to what other, and so to speak, more European, countries experienced – for example in Central Europe. Saying that the Syrian Revolution should not have happened so that we would not have to face these hard facts, would be like saying that the Eastern bloc should not have disintegrated so that the Yugoslav War would not take place: In both cases, there seems to be a strong yearning to live with lies, artificial realities and... tyranny. Now that the victory of the Syrian revolution is imminent, with the Syrian rebels fighting in the heart of Damascus, this requires us to prepare for the next phase, which may not be less onerous than the present one, if not more so. Here, we must sharpen the blade of our criticism, with respect to things like nation-building, inter-communal relations and the fight against radicalism, in tandem with expanding the sphere of our religious and ethnic tolerance. To be sure, while the revolution will solve a problem that had to be solved, it will also create problems that it will be impossible to avoid. Ultimately, the intertwined nature of progress in the post-Ottoman world, in both the former Yugoslavia and the Levant, requires an exceptional amount of thinking and critiquing, in order to offset the major and also exceptional shortcomings of our reality.
