Some had suspected that Beirut was immune to the culture of repression that the regimes had endeavored to spread across the whole region. The regimes desired to sully every peaceful facet of the popular protests, especially those that erupted in early 2011, and the ramifications of which were felt across the Middle East region and the world. They foisted a new model of governance upon the political class and shaped military strategies at the global level.
Authoritarian regimes in the Arab world confronted the popular protests with all forms of violence, from official security repression to the use of «civil» actors such as the «baltagiyeh» of Egypt and the «shabiha» of Syria (both meaning «thugs» in English), to «bringing down the country on the heads of the citizens», specifically in Libya and Syria.
In Syria, pushing the revolution to its militarization, as its only option, was not enough for Assad; he also endeavored with great success to cultivate extremist groups that made a profession out of terrorism, forcing the peaceful rebellion to choose between two options: either submit to extremist terror and insecurity and stop the protests, or shed their blood under the banner of battling terrorism.
In the shadow of this bilateralness (terrorism and «Daesh» on one hand, and the dictatorial regime on the other), Beirut remained detached, despite the political and constitutional crises that wracked its government. The Lebanese continued to enjoy the right to demonstrate, with even the protection of the security forces – despite the powers-that-be in the government – whether to protest against internal matters, or to share in the protestations of the Syrians living in Lebanon against massacres that accompanied the Syrian revolution.
The Arab world and many of the Syrian people in particular, saw in the March 14 revolution the hope and possibility to bring change peacefully, something the Lebanese themselves did not fully appreciate at the time.
So in the aftermath of the March 2011 Syrian revolution, which encountered violent repression from the very beginning, it was natural that the massive Beirut demonstrations of August 22 and 29, 2015 would stir nostalgia within Syrians who passed through here, whether they remained in Lebanon or continued onwards.
They awakened to memories of peaceful demonstrations of the Syrian revolution, which had become a station in their exile. The youth had been woven into the fabric of their society and thrown into the cauldron of their politics, which oppressed their popular Intifada.
Beirut’s peaceful protests awakened memories of the peaceful demonstrations of the Syrian Revolution for Syrian youths living in Beirut or to whom Beirut has become a station in their exile; they have been woven into its social fabric and political cauldron, largely related to the oppression of their popular Intifada.
This was accompanied by surprise at the unprecedented way security forces dealt with popular protests in Beirut. Security forces repressed demonstrators’ rights and arrested participants, while, in parallel, the political class denounced Beirut protests as a «conspiracy». It reached the point that security agencies were producing official statements warning the Islamic State had infiltrated the protests and accusing the popular movement being part of a destructive conspiracy led by «a small Arab nation».
In this way, the peaceful movement in Beirut elicited two responses from the Syrians. The first was nostalgia and grief to the point they almost envied their Lebanese counterparts, at the margins of the wide-ranging freedoms to organize and execute demonstrations. Syrians had been horrified by the violence brought to bear against their peaceful demonstrations, which transformed parts of old-city Damascus and Ghouta and other cities into festivals of freedom, while the repression amounted to death in Daraa and Homs.
Beirut demonstrations had scratched an old wound, and not a few Syrians were perplexed that the Lebanese considered tear gas, batons, rubber bullets, and firing into the air to be «state violence». The Syrians desired for the opportunity to peacefully demonstrate, if even for just one hour. In this context, one activist said, «We would prepare for weeks to execute a peaceful demonstration that would last for less than a minute before the security forces arrived. But if this were the «repression» we encountered from the regime in Syria, we would have toppled it four times over».
The second response was to the reprehensible and frightening moment after the Lebanese movement was accused of being a «foreign conspiracy», financed by «a small Arab nation». The Syrians feared that not even in Beirut could civil society peacefully cry out for change, on its own terms, without facing the slur that it is a «conspiracy» that will lead to Islamic State rule.
In this critical and transformative time of their revolution, the Syrians needed a symbol to show the world that revolution is possible and that their demands for freedom are just and lead to democracy and not detention centers and graves. They desired that Beirut would be a bell to ring the conscience of their citizens in Syria and the Arab world, where the sitting regimes had managed to convince a large portion of their populations to forsake their demands for change, because they do not deserve freedom.
In the midst of these setbacks, at a time when «revolution» had become a synonym for destruction, the demonstrations in Beirut disproved the conspiracy theories that the Damascus regime and its regional and global allies hung on every peaceful corner. How could the Syrian opposition be expected to restrain its excitement? Or to keep itself from whispering advice to the Lebanese, eager to protect their revolution from what happened to the Syrian revolution?
Perhaps this passing phase for Beirut, with its rightful, popular movement, will remind us that in this miserable part of the world, our journey has many enemies. They are the conspiracy theorists who seize any signs of disgrace or inspiration, and the cynics who have allowed disappointments to defeat their faith in authentic moments that occur spontaneously, without conspiracy.
If our regimes had one victory that opened the path for all their other victories, it is this: to convince us, individually and as a society, that we are a people who does not deserve to desire.
