Silmya (Peaceful) until the end?

About two weeks ago, I published my first blog on how I envision what needs to be done to prepare for the moment after toppling the Assad regime (What’s Next / http://tinyurl.com/3hpcp4n). Since that time, a Transitional Authority was at least proposed and hopefully will be established soon. Also, Libyan revolutionists seem to be on the verge of taking total control of their beloved country. Images from Tripoli showed many men with machine guns roaming the streets and firing live rounds in the air. As exciting as the scene was, it had the sense of chaos painted all over it. People were asking, is that what we want in Syria? Is this how it will look when we topple the regime in Syria? The answer is of course not. The only way things will turn to outside military intervention is if violence escalates due to the lack of action by the silent majority inside Syria. The Assad regime, frustrated by its lack of control over the situation, will resort to more killing in hope of crushing the revolution.

When President Obama declared Bashar to be illegitimate and asked him to step down, he made it clear that it is up to the Syrian people to topple their own regime, signaling a lack of will by the west to interfere militarily in Syria. While this is good news for those who want to keep it peaceful, the question that sticks out is how do you topple such a brutal regime peacefully?

My answer might seem to be very simplistic, but I believe in going back to the basics. Often we get consumed in setting up grand schemes for tasks that can be accomplished with simple procedures. My plan calls for return to the basics of government building and collapsing. It involves those who are standing on the sidelines quietly though. My message to them is that if you do not participate in the peaceful plan, you will find yourself in the middle of the unpeaceful one.

So how do we topple the regime peacefully?

The two aspects of the plan are civil disobedience and the dismantling of the regime’s support pyramid. It involves breaking the wall of fear and taking a little risk. It is fear that the regime is utilizing to control the hearts and minds of the Syrians. When fear is shattered, the regime will lose its orientation and its grip and will be easier to topple.

1. Disobedience: The Syrian regime, based on the system that it has established in the past forty years, knows exactly how an average citizen will react to any situation because it conditioned them to react to fear. It knows that almost every eighteen years old will report to the mandatory army draft. The underprivileged will serve in the barracks and the wealthy will pay his way off to serve at home. It knows that anyone who needs to get paper work done in a government agency has to bribe his way through different agencies in order to get his work done without disruption. It knows that any citizen who confronts any member of the ruling family or their allies for any injustices done to them will be subjected to severe cases of harassment, torture, and/or imprisonment. Until the Syrian people change their response to such scenarios and shock the regime, they will continue to have the same treatment by the regime. If people start refusing to pay bribes and stand up for their rights, particularly during this time when the regime wants to be nice, they will weaken the regime and start gaining the upper hand. 
2. Dismantling the pyramid: Governments are structured like pyramids with the President being the highest point of that pyramid. Just like the highest point in a pyramid is one block standing on top of thousands of other blocks, the President of a country cannot remain on top of a government pyramid if all the blocks below him were not stable. You might ask how can I remove any of the people who are around Bashar? It is simple. First, we need to get rid of the mentality that anything we do must be grand to be effective. Insects that destroy huge trees do it by taking one minute bite in the core of the tree at a time. Those tiny bites become a big gaping whole inside the trunk of the tree that causes it to topple when small winds hit it. Everyone knows someone in the Syrian government. When you know someone on a personal level you can influence them better. If you speak to that government employee, who can be a block at the bottom, middle, or top of the government pyramid, and put some doubts in them about the legitimacy of the government or its action against its citizens, you are in fact starting to remove the blocks beneath the head of the pyramid. If you own a business and can take one of those blocks and put him in an honest job, you have deprived this brutal regime of a resource that it might have been using to suppress your countrymen.

Each person can help in their own way to destabilize this regime and cause it to collapse. The examples and metaphors that I gave here are meant to ignite your imagination and to get you thinking about how to help. They are in no way the only things to do to destabilize the regime and cause the grounds beneath it to tremble. If you are one of the silent ones, if you don’t know what you can do to help the revolution, or if you don’t want to see military intervention, you must come out of your silence and your comfort zone. You need to do your part to remove the support blocks from beneath the top of the pyramid. You need to do that before those who are protesting everyday say enough is enough of this killing and ask for foreign support. Break through the wall of fear. Break your chains and try to experience the freedom of living in dignity and with honor. Most importantly, do something now so we don’t see the situation in Libya repeat itself in Syria.