Hanin Ghaddar

It has been one year since the Syrian revolution started, and at least one thing is clear: The regime’s violent crackdown will not silence the opposition or force protesters off the streets. The street is for those who claimed it last March, and they will not leave it before President Assad and his regime are gone.

Of the thousands of videos that have been coming out of Syria over the past year, one in particular does not leave my mind. It is of a man named Mohammad Ahmad Abdul Wahhab speaking emotionally to the camera, saying the same thing over and over again: “They stepped on my neck. I am a human being. I am not an animal.” The video went viral because it truly summarizes the core of the revolution: Dignity.

One year ago, on March 15, 2011, the first and completely spontaneous demonstration took place in the Damascus neighborhood of Al-Hamedieh, where protesters shouted one slogan only: “Syria is free, and the Syrian people will not be humiliated.”

The first Friday protest of the uprising was called the “Friday of Dignity,” and in Daraa, ground zero of the revolution, people chanted, “The Syrian people are not hungry” in response to the regime’s pathetic attempt to stop the demonstration by mildly adjusting salaries.

During these first days of the uprising, it was clear that the Syrians decided to live with dignity or die. They wanted freedom and they valued self-respect. Since then, scores have been dying every day, but this did not stop them from going out, dancing with smiles on their faces because they finally felt the meaning of being human.

While they were reveling in this new feeling, the regime did not realize that they could be satisfied with real reforms. Instead, Assad chose humiliation and murder. He did not understand that once someone discovers their humanity, they will never go back.

They’d rather die. And while we wait for them to help us regain our humanity and dignity, we hide behind our fears of Islamists, our concerns for minorities and the prospect of a civil or regional war. And instead of us acting to make sure these fears do not come true, the Islamists are gaining more power over the Syrian issue. That is the eternal problem of the liberals. We think too much and act too little. We need to learn how to do both.

Then of course there are the Hezbollah supporters who feel that the concept of dignity, which their party always tailored for the Shia, is being hijacked by the Syrian opposition. Dignity, honor and defiance are now adjectives that characterize the Syrians after decades of being exclusively attached to Hezbollah and its community.

Resisting the tyranny and struggling against injustice are today concepts that attract more people in the region to the Syrians dying in the streets than Hezbollah fighters who do combat only for their leaders. 

Resistance is no longer exclusive to the Shia, and dignity has become a value claimed by those calling for their freedom, peacefully, in the streets of Syria and the whole region. While a considerable part of Hezbollah’s supporters hoped the Party of God would support the Syrians in their struggle against their dictator, party leaders decided to do the opposite, thereby shooting themselves in the foot. Hezbollah adopted the Syrian regime’s storyline and alienated many of its supporters who originally followed the party for its embrace of dignity and freedom.

One year passed, and we all, supporters and skeptics, still look with astonishment at the Syrians’ fearlessness and bravery. But instead of offering much-needed words of encouragement and support, we seem to be waiting around the corner for any blunder made by an activist or opposition figure.

The Syrian people realized that they are humans, but we still need to realize that humans make mistakes, especially when this humanity has been buried for 40 years in the regime’s dungeons. They, alone, made it a reality. They, alone, are coating it with their blood and tears. They, alone, are facing their worst nightmares every day and surviving them all.

Their dignity and freedom are theirs to make and protect, while the world watches. The Lebanese fumbled their chance a few years ago, and the Syrians are entitled to some slip-ups while they conduct their revolution. They are humans, and our duty is to keep believing in their humanity.

Hanin Ghaddar is the managing editor of NOW Lebanon