������

As a non-Syrian researcher who has worked extensively on the conflict in Syria and subsequent forced displacement since 2011, I found it regenerating and educative to witness the enormous wave of����that swept across Syria when the regime of����finally fell on Sunday 8 December.��

And while I do not tend to universalise my experience or "bring" the voice of those close to me onto the evolving Syrian present, I nonetheless am compelled to offer some thoughts on last week's commentaries and official media platforms.

Precisely and predictably, I observed the tendency of international commentators to belittle or neglect the "autochthonous" right to political imagination of Syrians. This, I argue, is a legacy of the����through which Western commentators think of the Middle Eastern region: a theatre of contrasting ideologies where people’s lives are innately embedded and should move accordingly.

In the immediate aftermath of the regime's fall, some international media outlets acknowledged the historical moment by discovering the����of Bashar al-Assad's prisons.

, however, prioritised a geopolitical reading of the toppling of the regime, focusing instead on the military opportunities offered by the crumbling state, such as those for the Israeli army in the south of Syria — especially in the occupied Golan Heights — and Turkey's chance to sway influence in the process of state-crafting and reshaping of Syrian institutions.��

Discussions almost always neglect Syrians themselves, whose lives have been characterised by loss or disappearance of family members, unlawful captivity, rapes, and crimes of all sorts, in addition to widespread looting and destruction of private goods and properties — all documented by��. Moreover, people's 'emotions' have been����of their rational and historical foundation.

This attitude of neglect towards people's views and attitudes during the Syrian revolution is��. As I've written in the past, this is, in fact, par for the course. The tendency of the international community to background people's voices — as though they were merely about Dionysian sentiments and irrational passions — reveals the ugly, orientalist reading of the region.

Notably, in contexts where Western colonialism plays a large historical role in causing continuous political instability, political commentators tend to adopt��only��the geopolitical lens, tacitly turning civilian life into pawns in the broader chess board of so-called regional stability, economic sustainability, or ideological priority.��

In this scenario, Syrians and those who celebrated the regime's departure have been����as politically blind and short-sighted. But weren't we, at the same time, mourning the victims of Israel's genocide in Gaza and Lebanon while celebrating al-Asad's departure? Yes we were. And yes, we do understand that Turkey would gain even greater leverage in Syria and did foresee that Israel would consolidate its colonial power and strengthen its settler fantasies.��

Dear international commentators, once again, the answer is yes, we did. What was missing from the international discussion, however, was the basic, sacrosanct right to political imagination — a right claimed by many Syrians and those who empathized with their struggle.

Let Syria celebrate

The fall of the Assad regime also represented a form of redemption for regional neighbours, such as the northern Lebanese, who endured decades of oppression under Syrian occupation from 1976 to 2005.

The celebrations that erupted in the northern Lebanese governorate of����reminded me of����about the destruction of Hafez al-Assad’s statue after Syrian forces withdrew from Lebanon in 2005, marking the end of the so-called Pax Syriana.

Those that promote a thunderous geopolitical interpretation of Middle Eastern politics are, therefore, not only unable to acknowledge any grassroots response to the moment in a transnational social terrain but also unable to reason across diverse, historical landscapes.��

A violent dictator is useful if it helps contain Israel's settler fantasies and Turkish ideological expansionism, regardless of people's lives, think those on the Left that support authoritarianism.��

But what they, too, fail to understand is that the Syrian people's celebrations were not all triggered by Ahmed Al-Sharaa's rising to power, or a sectarian belief in a Sunni-led Syria with renovated divide-and-rule strategies. Rather, more importantly, the act of celebrating comes from redeemed memory and the previously unlikely chance to process the violent past and move along the curves of history.��

Subscribe Now and Listen to our Podcasts On

The celebrations of Syrians inside and outside of Syria did not come from political short-sightedness or absence of future fears.

Instead, the desire to celebrate al-Asad's departure is triggered by the socio-moral possibility for Syrians to re-imagine their own political future: an imagination that had been swept away by the survival of the regime in power after decades of conflict and the chonicization of poverty, deprivation, and violence.

Some commentators have focused on the Syrian regime’s toppling as a way to����people’s attention from the genocide in Palestine, revealing how, for the umpteenth time, massive manifestations of political agency across Syria and Syrians abroad not only were deemed irrelevant, but even not a “historical fact”.��

Moreover, this plot-centred approach constantly sidelines the role of Syrians: mere pawns on a large chessboard that should prioritise the Palestinian resistance vis-à-vis their lived experience under the Assad regime — who, in this political view, was alleged to protect Palestinians.

Thereby, Syrians emerge as either paid mercenaries or political tokens, which was one of the leading arguments of the��” supporting the Syrian regime throughout the conflict.

There are several levels of conflict and reconciliation; and, historically, the reconciliation we should depart from is right the one with one’s own lived experience.��

International pundits also miss out on how justice is an intimate process, not only an institutional project. And, as such, its essence derives from historically informed feelings of redemption and political possibility, which differ from the 'emotions' arbitrarily delegitimated by some commentators on social media in recent days.

So, as a person who has been close to the cause and as an academic who largely focused on displacement from Syria, I believe my role today is learning from this — no matter how ephemeral — historically informed feeling of political redemption being revived across Syrians and beyond. Mere geopolitical interpretations will not educate us to people’s political imagination: but aren’t revolutions about the latter?

Estella Carpi is an Associate Professor in Humanitarian Studies at University College London and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Lebanese American University. Her work mostly revolves around humanitarianism, identity politics, and forced displacement. She is author of "The Politics of Crisis-Making. Forced Displacement and Cultures of Assistance in Lebanon" (Indiana University Press, 2023).

Follow her on X:��

Have questions or comments? Email us at:��editorial-english@newarab.com

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of ������, its editorial board or staff.