Post-Assad, think small 

The West made many, many mistakes after the lightning-fast fall of Sadaam Hussein’s dictatorial regime in Iraq. The biggest one, I would argue, is that it imagined there is such a thing as Iraq. Meaning, Iraq as a territory delineated with a fat marker on an early 20th century map by the Englishman Sir Mark Sykes and the Frenchman François Georges-Picot. Iraq, an entity including Sunni and Shia Arabs, Kurds, Yazidis, Assyrians, Marsh Arabs, and others, without regards to their history or preference, all smashed together by imperial logic and beaten into submission by its iron fist.

Now, twenty years later, we have a chance to learn from our mistakes. Instead of thinking big and seeking to preserve Syria in the hope that it will evolve into a multiethnic democracy, we have the opportunity to think small: to support those peoples oppressed by colonial masters who seek self-determination in smaller states and enclaves defined by their community allegiances, reflecting their values, customs, and traditions.

Thinking small on Syria begins with recognizing the lie that is the Arab/Muslim Middle East. Sure, all nations and political communities are one way or another made up, or, in the words of Benedict Anderson, ‘imagined.’ The difference between what moral people should support and what they shouldn’t lies in the source of the imagination. When a community shares a self-image as a sovereign nation, moral people should support their self-determination. When a power seeks to imagine for others how they should live, such imposition should be rejected as either direct or indirect imperialism.

Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, to name a few colonially determined countries in our region, were all imagined by others and imposed on those living on the land. They remained together because minorities in power – such as Syria’s Allawites – imposed their will on diverse peoples who would have preferred not to be ruled by others. Distinct cultural groups who were put down brutally when they sought to express their collective desire for independence.

Attempts to maintain Syria, or Lebanon, or Iraq, should be understood as the blatant support for imperialist violence that they are. Attempts to keep down the Kurds living within borders imagined by Ankara or Damascus are genocidal, if we are to use the phrase as defined by Amnesty International and its vocal supporters across international institutions. Moral people should oppose such collective oppression at every turn.

Unlike Israel, born when the Jewish community living in the land of its ancestors fought off invading armies who sought to impose their vision of colonial boundaries upon them. Unlike Israel, where a distinct community seeks to maintain its independence within a political entity that reflects its history, its culture, its traditions. Unlike Israel, which has a lot to fix with its own minorities who deserve their own self-determination, and yet is the only expression in the region of an ancient people’s rebirth post-conquest.

Which is why, as the dust settles from the haboob sweeping the Levant, we have an opportunity to put an end to imperialism in the region, one independent people at a time. We have a chance to think small: small, independent political entities who work together in federation to protect their independence from Iranian and Turkish imperial ambitions. We have a chance to check our assumptions at the door opened by Assad’s departure and stop imagining that the land formerly known as Syria needs to exist as a single entity. Or Lebanon. Or Iraq.

Those of us far from the front lines and outside the circles of power have a job to do in these liminal days: to think and speak of the small, of the minority groups and their needs. By challenging the discourse to justify why it prioritizes a solution for ‘Syria’ or ‘Lebanon’ as opposed to the distinct peoples living within those colonial boundaries who have sought for so long to govern their own affairs. By recognizing that loyalty to past boundaries is a perpetuation of the oppression of those groups whose voices deserve to be heard. By answering the Kurdish call for help, for supporting the Assyrians and Yazidis in need. By taking their case to the nations.

By thinking and speaking small, we can open a window of opportunity for policymakers to make different choices than they did twenty years ago. We can support efforts to aid the Kurds to finally build their State, to aid the Maronites to determine their own destiny without asking the Sunni and Shia for permission. We can support the Assyrians and Yazidi as they seek to define their own destiny. We can urge the world to take advantage of Assad’s cowardly retreat into the Russian empire to finally end imperialism in the Middle East.