Why Syrian dictator’s downfall has made me realise my true ‘nationality’

Before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, some 90 per cent of Americans were opposed to US involvement in the Second World War. That same year, an organisation called Freedom House was founded with a mission to “rally policymakers and a broadly isolationist American public around the fight against Nazi Germany, and to raise awareness of the fascist threat to American security and values”.

Today, it is devoted to the “support and defence of democracy” worldwide and is probably best known for producing its global freedom index, ranking countries out of 100, and declaring them to be “free”, “not free” or “partly free”.

Under the recently ousted dictator Bashar Assad, Syria received a score of one. In comparison, Russia got 13, China nine and Iran 11 (all not free), while the UK got 91, the US 83, and Finland 100 (all free). Some may consider a single point to be one too many, given the violence of the Assad regime.

Will Abu Mohammed al-Golani, aka Ahmed Hussein al-Shar'a, the leader of rebel group HTS, now try to become a dictator like the ousted Bashar Assad or allow democracy in Syria? (Picture: Aref Tammawi) | AFP via Getty Images

Arbitrary killings, torture, sexual violence

According to a 2022 US State Department report, Assad’s forces and their Russian allies “repeatedly struck sites where civilians were present, including hospitals, markets, schools, settlements for internally displaced persons, and farms”. A United Nations commission found reasonable grounds to believe that such attacks were not accidental, but deliberate.

“Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; forced disappearance; torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the regime and other actors, including torture involving sexual violence, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, including denial of medical care...” wrote the State Department in a long list of the Assad regime’s crimes.

Following the fall of Damascus and Assad’s flight to Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “After 14 years of conflict, the Syrian people finally have reason for hope.” And that is clearly true, with Syrians at home and abroad celebrating the fall from power of a brutal, evil man who, when faced with pro-democracy protests in 2011, chose to respond with violence instead of negotiating a peaceful transition of power or simply leaving the country.

Rebel dictatorship?

However, it very much remains to be seen what Syria’s future will hold. The rebels that took Damascus virtually unopposed were led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group with past links to al-Qaida. Israel – fearing, rightly or wrongly, that it may now come under attack – has been launching air strikes on Syrian military bases to prevent chemical and other heavy weapons from falling into the group’s hands.

There are hopes HTS is not the extremist movement it once was, but it remains to be seen whether they will back democratic elections or seek to impose their own dictatorship. According to the UN, HTS has also been accused of torturing and ill-treating detainees, with “unprecedentedly large protests led by civilian activists and supported by military and religious figures” against these practices in areas it controls starting in February.

While HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, aka Ahmed Hussein al-Shar'a, admitted the use of “prohibited and severe means of pressure on the detainees” and promised to hold those responsible to account, “HTS later began using force, assaulting and arresting protesters”, the UN said. Syria may have lost one brutal warlord, but there still appear to be others.

“In Syria, it is kind of a monster-versus-monster conflict,” Aron Lund, a fellow with US-based think tank Century International told Foreign Policy magazine. “Ordinary Syrians don’t have any choice in regard to who rules them. Groups come to their area with guns, and people just have to get along. Depending on who you are and where you are, either Assad or HTS may have pockets of support, but neither side allows any real free expression or elections.”

Syrian asylum seekers should stay

All this means that Syrian refugees who fled Assad’s forces or the fighting in general and successfully claimed asylum in the UK have very good reasons not to rush back to their home country, however much they may wish to do so.

Indeed, I find myself hoping that they will stay, at least until the situation becomes clearer. Refugees like Tasnim Helmi – who, together with her father and husband, set up a successful bakery business in Rothesay, which has since expanded to Glasgow and Bearsden – have become valued members of their communities.

It would be appalling if they were to return only to be killed or, for some arbitrary reason, arrested and tortured. I feel a kinship towards them in a way that I did not initially quite understand.

Essentially, by peacefully going about their business, they are acting exactly as the citizens of a free democracy do, like I do. And, just like me, they have a right to do so.

‘Nation of nowhere’

The late writer and historian Jan Morris once wrote of a worldwide “nation of nowhere”, people of different backgrounds and religions who “share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding”.

It seems to me that there is also a global ‘democratic nation’ to which the people Morris described and also the Syrians who staged mass protests calling for democracy in 2011 would certainly belong.

This is the nation to which I hold the strongest allegiance. It is why I think we must help refugees who flee brutal dictatorships, why we must help Ukraine defend itself against Putin’s invasion, why Donald Trump is a traitor if he abandons Kyiv, and why there should be an international ‘Democratic League’ – essentially, a huge expansion of Nato with trading and other economic benefits – to defend freedom as tyrannies like Russia and China expand their influence.

And it is why Freedom House was quite right, despite overwhelming public opinion to the contrary, to argue that the US should join the fight against Hitler in 1941. We cannot sit on the sidelines and watch as democracy is destroyed.