When I arrived to be part of the Freedom for Syria demonstration-parade at the human rights monument in Ottawa at 3pm Saturday 17 March (2012), I first felt a bit out of place. I – not Syrian; just another non-Syrian Canadian – put on the knitted revolutionary flag headband I’d gotten the previous night and stood there. My main objective to being there was to add one more body – one tiny percentage of support. One more eye to observe, notice things, and wonder what was going on and where to go from there.
These are my perceptions of that day.
Please treat my contribution as if I were writing it on a piece of paper and putting it into a silver bowl in the middle of a collective table. Imagine everyone writing their contribution and ideas down and also putting them into the bowl. You, the Syrians, can then take the notes in that bowl and use them as you wish.
I was surprised that there were so few people at the demonstration. The previous night at the charity dinner, there were about 600 people. At this demonstration, I was expecting a few thousand at least – much more than at the dinner. In a way, I suppose the result was logical: the dinner resulted in about $177,000 in donations; the demonstration in none – and money does more than emotion. I suppose, instinctively, that people realize this and balance their energy towards the more important.
I felt for the young men and women, who lead the chanting and gave their energy. I felt for the people who organized the demonstration. This was a lot of effort; I gave them their due. We have to do something.
But I could sense, even from some Syrians, that they felt a hopelessness. A feeling came from them that all the effort in the world was wasted energy unless it succeeds. And success – what is success? In the meantime, in spite of all the gatherings and demonstrations, 100s of people are still dying and lives are being torn apart continuously while we stand there and march.
Throughout the afternoon of Saturday, 17 March, I was wondering and searching for that heart of the issue – the answer to my question about how can this effort to “free Syria” succeed – succeed now?
In spite of all the guns and bullets, the terror, the displacement of people, hopes, dreams, lives, and all the things we are reacting to, this fight is not about them. They symbolize the fight, but if you focus on them, you’re not in the right battlefield.
This fight is about power: the power to determine one’s own destiny, to defend oneself, to pursue one’s goals, to formulate goals. The power to do all those things even as expressed in the Syrian constitutions of both 1973 and 2012 – as expressed in most constitutions around the world. This is a very bitter fight for that power waged by experts in gaining and manipulating power.
It’s taken me about 60 years to understand what power is. So bear with me, because I’m going to tell you.
My first bit of advice here is to take the best from any source and put it together into your own solution. Open your minds and allow what’s good in the world to help you; don’t let prejudice or even history prevent you from selecting successful things and blending them into your own thrust for success.
I’m going to quote the United States here. In spite of everything that has being going on throughout the past 10 years, you have to admit that the U.S. is probably the most expert nation in branding and packaging ideas. And 10 years ago, they branded the concept of power very well: power is in engaging the hearts and minds of people.
This is a fight for power, and to win, you need to reach out and grasp the hearts and minds of as many people as you can. You must be better at this than the enemy in order to win. And you must win, not just for Syria, but for all of us. We must all win this battle.
If you have a demonstration, yes you need the symbols and activities, but engaging the Syrian people is not enough. You must engage people like me and more than me, you must engage all the non-Syrians around you. All of us, or as many as possible, must become involved. For that to happen, they must know what the issues are. You need more people on your side than Assad and his regime has on theirs – to win. Your energy should be focussed on that effort – much more than it is right now.
Yes, today there were wise attempts to engage Canadians: praising the RCMP and Ottawa Police. Explaining things in English (and French). The contribution of the Libyan representative helped considerably. But their audience was small, although somewhat increased by some media representation.
Assad, and his people, are incredibly astute in the acquisition of power. You have a really dangerous enemy here.
By attacking and killing, terrorizing and destroying, he’s making even the Syrians, and certainly most of the rest of the world, think that this is a war of weapons and bombs. People, especially American people, pay attention to guns and things. Most of our media involves shooting and blowing things up. If we blow up our enemy, we win at the end of the day. By forcing people to focus on the action, he’s distracting them from the real purpose of the action – to get power. He, too, is fighting for the hearts and minds of people. And, in Syria (which wisely he has chosen as his limited goal) he seems to be winning. Syrians are getting tired to the point where many are giving up their revolutionary desire for self-empowerment.
Going from house to house, Internet video to Internet video, Assad is weeding out those who have any power and leaving those who are “easier to convince” to change their minds and even support his regime in exchange for “peace”.
If he succeeds in triaging the current layer of population in Syria – subduing them to the point where they individually change their minds, then he will work on controlling the education and information access to the younger generation. It will be another 50 years before you, Syrians, can try to attempt to fight again for that power for self-determination again. My heart bleeds with the thought that this could come to pass.
You need to realize that this is a fight for power, and approach the fight that way.
During the demonstration I saw only one attempt to engage a non-Syrian. A Syrian man was carefully and logically explaining the issues to a non-Syrian woman with a camera. He was doing a good job. He was the only one doing that job.
Mark my words, if you start approaching this fight from that angle, the Syrian regime sitting pretty at the corner of Somerset and Cartier will feel it. Do this all over the world, and you may start to win the war.
You need to convince people that you truly, truly want universal human rights. You need to convince yourselves. By this I mean the kind of conversation that the Imam had with us during the Freedom for Syria dinner. He paraphrased the Koran in that it states that all men are brothers and that if one person suffers, everyone suffers. Those are good things. Be prepared to encompass Jews, gays, and any other minorities into that home. If you talk about “zionists” and make people feel less secure, you will lose those people. Believe me, you need people; you need power; you don’t need to work against yourselves. Or you will lose this war.
So reach out to all the non-Syrians around you:
May God and Allah bless you all and help you succeed.