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“Once you understand the causes of a conflict, you accept the situations that arise from it better”

Ali Wanli, a Syrian student on the master’s degree in International Studies on Media, Power and Difference, speaks to us about the conflict in Syria and how the country has come to where it is today

27.01.2020

Imatge inicial

Ali Wanli, a student on the master’s degree in International Studies on Media, Power and Difference, arrives at the meeting point, Gutenberg square on the Poblenou campus, coffee in hand and beaming from ear to ear. We introduce ourselves and begin a long, intense and passionate conversation about his life story, his studies, and especially Syria, his country of origin. We talk about the roots of the conflict that the region is suffering, its consequences, and geopolitics.

 

–Before coming to study in Barcelona, you lived in Saudi Arabia, although you are Syrian. What was your life like, in Syria?

I come from a middle-class family. My father is a doctor and my mother a teacher. In 2003 my family and I moved to Saudi Arabia. I went to school there and when I finished, I returned to Syria to study a university degree. I started Information Technology at Damascus University and studied it for a year; but I switched to the bachelor’s degree in Journalism, which I preferred. I had already been involved in a magazine at school and had always been interested in the world of communication. Meanwhile, the Syrian revolution began. I was obviously involved, being a young male student who was discovering new values and new ways of doing things.

 

–How did you experience the protests?

The protests were very dangerous. Dangerous because most of the population, me included, did not know how to protect ourselves against the State, which monopolized violence. Like lots of other people, I did not have well-formed political ideas and I felt constantly unprotected, as if I was about to fall off a cliff. Nobody expected such a violent response from the regime.

 

–Did you experience any situations of particular risk?

Yes, when the student union arrested me. In theory, a union is supposed to represent the students and seeks improvements for them; but in Syria the union was controlled by the university after the beginning of the demonstrations, which received lists from the country’s intelligence services. I was arrested and tortured for four or five hours at the University of Damascus Faculty of Medicine. They asked me questions for which I had no answers. Fortunately, on technical grounds, I was released. I had to leave Syria and I abandoned the bachelor’s degree in Journalism; I lost my job, my friends and my family.

 

–So then where did you go?

I went to Lebanon, where I spent only one day, and then I returned to Saudi Arabia to see my parents. There, I stayed a month and then I went to Egypt, to Cairo, to study communication again. I spent five years there and it was a wonderful period. There I worked for local organizations assisting Syrian refugees and I understood that countries’ economies weren’t decided by themselves and, therefore, I wanted to pursue an education to fulfil that. So, I looked for and found the master’s degree in International Studies on Media, Power and Difference, here, at Pompeu Fabra University.

 

–What were you expecting of the course?

I thought it would be interesting to study it because it included my two passions: communication and activism with a critical approach. I also hoped it would give me the tools to focus on sociology and Western political theories. I think, at least for now, that the master’s degree has more than fulfilled my expectations.

I’ve also been very lucky with the teaching staff. Núria Almiron, the master’s degree coordinator, has made learning really easy for those of us who are not Westerners. She knows that the master’s degree is geared towards the West; but she does everything she can [AW8] to provide it with a global perspective. In addition, I am pleased with the university community and life in Barcelona, I love it.

 

–Had you come across this combination of communication and politics in other programmes?

Not at all! Both in Damascus and in Egypt, the degrees were completely technical, focusing on how to do journalism and how to write a news article. I had never had the opportunity to explore and go further. Sometimes in our daily lives, it is difficult to have a clear point of view, because we are young and we are living in a world where there is a huge volume of information. Being in a conflict zone, moreover, it is also very difficult not to position yourself and think of one lot as the “goodies” and the other lot as the “baddies”.

 

–Has being in Barcelona and studying the master’s degree made you change your perspective of the conflict in Syria?

Absolutely. Being here and being in constant contact with international students has made me more open towards opposed political ideas. Anyway, I am still resentful because thanks to that I’ve lost my home. However, I’m starting to realize that there are different victims in a conflict. I am not saying that the Syrian regime isn’t criminal because it is, and I’m not disregarding all the people who have died as a consequence. Perhaps I think like that because once you understand the causes of a conflict, you accept the situations that arise from it better. Anyway, it is a difficult issue to deal with that has many nuances.

 

–You speak of resentment, and the conflict in Syria has historical, religious and social roots. How would you explain the conflict to a person who is has only the basic information supplied by the Western media?

I think that to understand the conflict we must go back to at least the Ottoman Empire. Syria was part of this empire, which was Sunni in nature. Some minorities such as the Alawites  were considered a threat to the regime, for regional political conflicts, especially in the beginnings of the 16th century when Alawites were exiled to live in the Syrian mountains. There was great class conflict, because the Sunnis were rich and lived in the cities and the Alawites were extremely poor and often servants to the Sunnis. So, we could say, then, that at that time there was institutional oppression and discrimination towards the Alawite minority.

With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, we became a French colony. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, orchestrated by the ministers of France and Britain, divided the remnants of the Empire and created what we now know as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, and other north African countries. In Syria in particular, they ensured that the minorities would be split between countries. They wanted to make sure that the countries of the Middle East didn’t have a nation state that could face the colonial authority.

 

–Why didn’t they want that?

It wasn’t in their interest at all. They wanted to have control of the territory and so they supported the Christians and Alawites in the area. In order to dominate it all, the French decided to support the minorities rather than the Sunnis, creating sectarianism and factions that are the seed of what we are experiencing today. The colonial era brought many social, political and religious conflicts.

The colonial era brought many social, political and religious conflicts.

 

–And then what happened?

Between the 1940s and the 1960s, we had a period we could called “democratic”. Classism was still present, because the Sunnis were still rich and still ruling. During these years, the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party was formed. It is a nationalist, racist party based on Arab groups. They wanted to re-unite all Arabs because they thought that by creating this sense of belonging they could face up to Western influence. 

During the sixties, and after several attempted coups d’état, Hafez al-Assad, of the Ba’ath Party, came to power while serving as defence minister. He was very smart and knew how to play his cards right, because while held this position he began to introduce Alawites into the army. When he perpetrated the coup, no one could fight against it, because he had control of the army.

From there, he began to create modern Syria, a country very similar in style to the Soviet Union. A highly state-oriented economy, many ministries and a strong army presence. I don’t want to lie by telling you that there was no development, because there was some development in some sectors. At that time, Syria was a country with zero debt. That was because everything we needed was produced nationally, barring a few concrete things for which we almost depended on the Soviet Union. As you know, it was always more reliable for the regime than negotiating with the West.

 

–If a part of the population considered the regime unfair, why didn’t it rise up against it?

There were attempts to do so. In 1982, a group of Sunnis in the town of Hama and Aleppo tried to revolt and the regime responded effectively. It bombed the Hama [AW21] for almost a whole month. There aren’t any exact figures, but there are believed to have been between 30 and 60 thousand deaths. That put paid to the Syrian people’s last glimmer of hope, because they realized that the State was not afraid of killing anybody in order to maintain the regime.

 

–Despite everything, a revolution began years later.

Yes. The background is that Hafez al-Assad died and appointed Bashar al-Assad, his son, as president of the country. The year 2000 was the beginning of his mandate and that was when he tried to transform the country’s economy. Bashar al-Assad was influenced by the West, he had studied medicine in London, he was well educated, he knew how to wear a tuxedo and he did it very well, you know, shaking hands with other politicians. In any case, the attempt to liberalize the economy did not lead to the riots.

The Syrian people needed hope. And Al Jazeera, the broadcaster, played an important role in this regard. It had always been thought that you had two political options: you were either with the dictators or with the West. The arrival of Al Jazeera made us see that we could build an alternative beyond that, and that not everything was black or white.

 The Syrian people needed hope. And Al Jazeera, the broadcaster, played an important role in this regard.

–This might seem a very naive question, but do you think there exists a solution to the conflict?

There are many factors at play in this conflict and it’s very complicated to analyse it accurately. That makes it very difficult to solve. How you fix all that? Local problems, classism, social problems, problems of sects and factions, international conflicts, the new world order and external influences in the country! In addition, the root problems are still there and today, the differences run deeper than ever. So, I think that given the current context, right now there is no solution to the conflict. At least in the short and medium term.

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