Nonviolent discipline is still vital

While I am afraid I’ve written this all before, it is important to reiterate now that sectarianism is rearing its ugly head in Syria:  maintaining nonviolent discipline is vital.  You can kill a few Alawites (the heterodox minority to which President Bashar al Assad belongs), but the regime can kill many more protesters.

There is nothing to be gained and everything to be lost from violence, especially if it is directed at the security forces.  You want them to come over to your side.  They won’t do that if they are being attacked. Instead, they’ll use the violence as justification for cracking down, and the uncommitted portion of the population will likely lean towards law and order.

What about the regime thugs?  Don’t demonstrators get to respond to them in kind?  Unfortunately for those of us who are not principled pacifists, the answer is no.  Violence is their favored terrain; you want to contest them on terrain that favors you, not them.  Best is in public, under the glare of TV cameras.

This is particularly difficult in Syria, which has managed to control the presence of international journalists and will presumably make life hard for those who report too enthusiastically about the demonstrations or too disapprovingly about the regime.  One of the few ways to get a regime to rein in its thugs is international reporting on their abuses.

The Syrian protesters have demonstrated a remarkable degree of unity and cleverness in confronting a regime that has numerous advantages:  it has no reason to fear military international intervention, it has Iranian backing, the Syrian middle class in Damascus and Aleppo has hesitated to go to the streets, the international community is reluctant to get involved, and the security forces appear to have backed the regime so far in all but a relatively few, isolated circumstances.

There is, nevertheless, a growing sense that Assad will not be able to restore the status quo ante.  He is in trouble even if he manages to weather the current wave of protests, which still seems to be growing and spreading. On the merits, his regime should collapse soon. But if it fails to cooperate, the only option is to keep up the protests, and keep them nonviolent.

A demonstration, allegedly in Damascus yesterday (no sign of the security forces that I see).  The Youtube caption reads: Chants of “Our Blood Won’t Be Sold” ring out through the Midan neighborhood of Damascus, Capitol of Syria as these youth march for the overthrow of the fascist Dictatorship of Bashar Al Assad on Saturday night, July 17, 2011: