Violence and Nonviolence

My comments on a debate started on Facebook concerning the violence of the Syrian regime and the responsibility towards removing the regime and its violence:

The revolution did not move from its peaceful civil protests to the armed phase out of choice, nor indeed did the demonstrations and civil activism stop.  The majority of the Syrian people are still peaceful and unarmed. The fact remains that the regime right from the start was not ready to condone any protest of any kind and was prepared throughout its years of domination to crush mercilessly any symptoms of dissent. The children of Daraa were tortured and the city and its villages were attacked and violated long before there was any call to carry arms. Are we naive to think that the regime was going to let the protest movement occupy the streets and the squares without crushing them to death?  Has it ever allowed the demonstrators to occupy the Omayyad Square like the Egyptians did in Tahreer Sqaure? We agonized endlessly over arming the Revolution and the presence of the FSA in the towns and villages which many believe invited the wrath of the regime and we certainly do not condone some of the abhorrent methods and practises of the outsider rebels, but if all that was wiped out of the history and memory of the revolution, would the regime have ever renounced violence and would it have stopped crushing the peaceful revolution or halted seeking to eradicate all the participants and all those who associated with them? If the regime stays by any show of compromise, we shall never get rid of it, but if the revolution wins, the Syrian people will kick out all the foreign offenders and the rogue elements. 26 November

 

What terrifies me, I say terrify, is the dallying with words some people seem to prefer. This is not an abstract argument about nonviolence and violence. This is about violence committed by of a government against its own people on an epic scale, the likes of which humanity has rarely encountered. It is futile now to decide whether the revolution should have remained peaceful because it has not, not because of a natural or inborn streak of violence characterizing it or the people, with no history of violence, but because these peaceful and decent people were driven to extremities and unnatural, not natural, behaviour by a terrible ruthlessness leached against them.  How can you prescribe nonviolence towards a regime which bombs schools, hospitals, ambulances, bakeries, shops, streets, infrastructure and homes, not to mention women and children? Today cluster bombs fell on a playground killing 10 children and injuring more.  I watched the parents lose their reason and all control. Violence dehumanizes and brutalizes; it does not nurture nonviolence but in fanciful novels. There shall be no health, no sanity and no shadow of normality in Syria as long as the prototype of violence (the regime) is not uprooted and dismantled.

Alisar Iram

©Alisar Iram