It is not only hope that is driving the Syrian people out onto the streets to demonstrate against the regime of Bashar al-Assad; it is determination. The Syrian protesters are willing to die to bring down the dictatorship that heads their country. This is their chance, and they cannot miss it. That is why no one should make the historical mistake of supporting a falling regime.

While the regime escalated its crackdown on protesters over the past two weeks in an attempt to scare the people back into their homes, the result was more demonstrators on the streets. When the torture it inflicted on dissenters grew more gruesome, including the mutilation of children and raping of women, it only led to more children and women taking to the streets. This is determination.

The Syrian people are determined to change their lives. They want freedom and dignity and to be treated as citizens, and they are ready to sacrifice everything to get there. They are ready to die trying because they want to live, because they want a better life. Death in this sense is the purest pursuit of life. This is not a political game; it is a genuine longing for life.

The dreadful torture and murder last week of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib is simple proof of the brutality of the regime. Hamza, who has come to symbolize the Syrian revolution, was, like other martyrs, not a Salafist or a terrorist, nor was he working for “outside parties” in a conspiracy against the government. Nobody believes these lies anymore. The truth is evident in the continuous flow of YouTube videos and reports from people on the streets despite the total media blackout in the country.

However, the Syrian regime seems incapable of responding other than with torture and murder. Assad is digging his own grave by carrying on with his brutal crackdown. The people will not turn back, and the longer the revolution lasts, the regime and its economy will become more and more exhausted.

In addition, the army might not continue to follow orders. The Syrian people are not their enemy, and Hama, Banias and Daraa are not the Golan Heights. It is not a matter of victory or defeat, and at one point, victory will feel like defeat. Killing their own people is becoming too much for many in the army to handle; we are already hearing stories of soldiers and officers defecting because of this kind of pressure to commit immoral acts.

Meanwhile, the international community is moving slowly but surely toward backing the protesters. The sanctions imposed on the regime’s key players are raising valid concerns among the merchant and bourgeois classes in Damascus and Aleppo, whether or not they will be affected by them. They are turning away from the regime’s usual formula of “freedom vs. security” and saying, “We won’t side with the loser, and security will come later.” 

The game is changing, and Assad is gradually losing all the cards he had to play on the regional and local levels. The first card was lost when Hamas agreed to a reconciliation with Fatah in Egypt, stripping the Syrian regime of its Palestinian chip. Then there is the threat to Israel’s security, which regime-backed businessman Rami Makhlouf stressed to the New York Times last month and which the regime highlighted when it sent Palestinians to march on the Israeli border on Nakba day. However, this did not work, as the Israeli violence against the protesters did not distract from the Syrian revolution, as the regime had hoped.

Iran and Hezbollah are still backing the regime, sacrificing Hezbollah’s credibility as a resistance movement, hoping that Assad, their only Arab ally, will survive. So do Russia and China. However, it is evident that this regime cannot survive its own crimes. The blood of those it killed will not disappear, and things will not go back to normal.
It is time to tell Assad to step down. The Syrian people are shouting it from the rooftops, and they are paying a very high price for freedom. There is no place for double standards in this situation. The West should not play Hezbollah’s hypocrisy game.

Western leaders told Mohammad Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Moammar Qaddafi and Abdullah Saleh to step down, knowing that they have a back-up plan once they leave. In Syria they’re worried they cannot translate words into action because they have no one to rely on when he goes. The main thing they’re missing here is that it doesn’t matter if they do not have leverage over the Syrian army, state institutions or the Syrian protesters. The Syrian people do not want or need them to take action.
They can do it themselves; all we have to do is trust them.

Hanin Ghaddar is managing editor of NOW Lebanon