Ideas - How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Bashar al-Assad's Syria

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

In 2000, Bashar al-Assad became president of Syria, also known as the authoritarian "Kingdom of Fear" that his father Hafez al-Assad had created three decades earlier. The younger Assad continued and intensified the use of imprisonment, torture and surveillance as tools of domination. His crackdown on a pro-democracy revolution turned into a 13-year civil war. Nahlah Ayed and panelists discuss what we can learn about the rise and collapse of authoritarianism from Assad’s rule and the 2024 collapse of his regime.  Listen to other episodes in our series, How to Defeat Authoritarianism:How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Benito Mussolini's ItalyHow to Defeat Authoritarianism | Idi Amin's UgandaHow to Defeat Authoritarianism | Augusto Pinochet's ChileGuests on this podcast:Basilios Zeno is assistant professor in the Department of Political Studies at Trent University in Canada. His work combines research, advocacy, and policy work on forced migration and asylum, legal violence, social movement, and interpretive decolonizing methodologies. Marie-Joelle Zahar is a professor of political science at the University de Montréal. She has served multiple terms as a mediation expert, in fact, still serving in that role, for the United Nations, including as senior expert in the office of the Special Envoy for Syria in 2017. Abdulrahman Matar is a Syrian-Canadian writer and journalist, a novelist, poet, and a painter. He is the founder and director of the Seagull Cultural Forum and executive director of the Syrian Writers Association. He was arrested five times and spent nearly 10 years in prison as a result of his writing and his positions on issues of freedom and human rights.Tareq Yousbasi is a journalist and a producer at the CBC of Syrian origin, who assisted with live translation.

One summer evening when she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna-Luc. I can't figure it out, but I do know that it was a violation. Then people started asking questions. What a creep. Who else knows about this? From CBC's personally, this is Agent Leila, the story of how a victim went undercover. So bring it on, let's go. Let's get a confession. Available now on CBC Listen, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast.

Thank you very much. Thank you all for being back here yet again today for another installment of Ideas at Stratford Week. It just warms my heart having you all here. Thank you for coming this morning. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. And welcome to a summer morning at the Stratford Festival in Ontario for the fourth in our series of conversations about the rise and fall of authoritarian regimes. In our last conversation, for those of you who weren't here, we use the example of Chile and Augusto Pinochet to think about how authoritarianes

reshape people's minds to entrench the rule and the complicity of the middle class, as well as the international community in enabling authorities to act with impunity. Today, we continue our exploration of authoritarianism by looking at something a bit more recent, the example of Syria and the rise, the rule, and the fall of Bashar al-Assad. With us here are four people, in fact, with deep knowledge of modern Syria and the Assad regime. I'm going to begin on my right. Abder Rahman Matar is a Syrian-Canadian writer and journalist, a novelist, poet, and a painter.

He has published six books, founder and director of the Seagull Cultural Forum and executive director of the Syrian Writers Association. he was arrested five times and spent nearly 10 years in prison as a result of his writing, just his writing, and his positions on issues of freedom and human rights. Thank you for being here. Basilio Zeno is assistant professor in the Department of Political Studies at Trent University in Canada. His work combines research, advocacy, and policy work on forced migration and asylum,

legal violence, social movement, and interpretive decolonizing methodologies. Basilios received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He also holds a BA and an MA in classical and Islamic archaeology from Damascus University. Welcome, Bacilius. Right next to me here is Marie Joel Zahar, professor of political science at the University of Moriol. She has served multiple terms as a mediation expert. in fact, still serving in that role for the United Nations, including as senior expert in the office of the Special Envoy for Syria in 2017.

Thank you for coming all this way. Last but definitely a lot least, Taduk Uzbek, who is a journalist and a producer at the CBC of Syrian origin as well, who will be assisting us with live translation. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you. To help us out. Thank you. I'd like to begin the same way we've been starting every one of these panels,

which is to ask each of you to paint a visual picture, an idea of when the idea of Bashar al-Assad's fall actually became possible to imagine. Marie-Juil, I'll begin with you. It wasn't. For social scientists, political scientists in particular, I think that what happened, what unfolded in December of that year, was absolutely unexpected in the same way

that we had been completely blindsided by the Arab Springs. We knew, for example, that, you know, the Syrian regime had lost some of its support from Russia, which was otherwise occupied at that point. But we had no sense that this was possible. After all, we were talking about a regime that had managed to sustain itself 15 years in power. we knew it was weakened, but it had managed to regain with the support of Iran and Russia, almost 75% to 80%, according to estimates, of the territory, wrestled away from the very many diverse and often infighting opposition forces that had failed to really come together as a united front.

So to say that we knew that we thought it was possible, I think would be rewriting history, I do think that it speaks to the need not to just look at events from afar because I suppose that colleagues who were closer to the ground who actually had connections and networks in Syria might have seen things very differently. Thank you for that. Abder Rahman. Thank you so much for invite me to this event.

I'm so happy for that. Thank you for you coming. It was not easy on the It was not We thought that the system The Assad's going to Because he was not He was not yet

It was a manned He was tomette by Russia and Iran It wasn't easy to imagine that the Assad regime is going to collapse because it had been supported by Russia and Iran

Rorming that Kettled the alaf in the prison and And he's taken the alas, and he'staker of the aracharate of the major. But the community has done any effect of the warf of the abyssah, actually. So the regime, like, killed thousands of Syrians, imprisoned hundreds of Syrians as well.

And many of them with unknown fate in detention. And that's because the international community just stayed watching it. And they didn't do anything about it. As Syrians, we'd have Lennieu's Sautin'n't even as a lot of the iman by the

decaturia we'd we're not a mouminine that he's going to any dictator will be As Syrians, we

deeply knew that it wasn't easy to overthrow the acid regime, but we always believe that it's going to happen at some time. Thank you.

I actually want to stay with you, Abdarhaman, briefly, to ask you, when you look back, the Assad family, beyond Bashar also, before that was Hafez al-Assad, ruled Syria for 53 years. What's the one thing that you think kept the system in place for so long? Five-and-a-half-half-haw-an-hung-haw-haw-er-haw-er-rob. and you can to come out of and that

do not to come high and to be alive. Fifty-five years of fear and intimidation, you can just like go out of your home and never get back again.

Any word, not to not give the system, will be the person and he'll

hisrottes and his and his his without any a reason just because it

could be a nother a nother a person in the

person in any single word has had a price so it could

get you and it could get your family arrested to make

an report and take an for a thing to

do act to take to any way to

to the other to have to that the mcaburates in every

mcalfi, even in the massaget. Yeah, so any piece, any published peace, any kind of

gathering, or any kind of cultural or political event, needed some kind of approval from

security forces, and there was like strict surveillance, even at mosques. So, Basilius,

I'm wondering if you can add to that picture of what it was like to live under the elder

Assad. Yeah, but I will unpack a little bit. So the fear always is necessary but insufficient condition. And also that doesn't explain there's no disagreement here, but it's adding more complication that Assad was also popular, especially in the first, like, otherwise you don't have civil war, right? You don't have people for 14 years fighting against each other. You don't have the same household collapsing.

Like, I had cousins and friends and uncles who didn't speak to me at all, like, because of political polarizing. Yeah, so it's not because I'm afraid they aren't afraid because they are other elements. And that brings us a little bit like to quick background. A Ba'ath Party in 1963 had a coup d'etat against the separat. Syria and Asia became one country from 1958 until 1961. It's called the United Arab Republic. It's interesting because the fleet. of Syria until it was changed recently. It was the United Arab Republic flag. The two stars that was in the official flag was one for Egypt, one for Syria. The Iraqi flag later that had

three stars under Saddam Hussein was the United Arab Republic plus Iraqi star, which failed in 1965 to join the Union. So in 1966, a radical leftist group had a good Dada, they were idealists, socialists in their life and every aspect, including a very strong man called Salah Jadid. So Hafez al-Assad in 1970, after the death of Gamal Abdu-Nasur, which was also considered as the death of pan-Arabism, Gamal Abdu-Nasad died like in September 1970. Havs al-Azad in November, 1970, had a coup d'etat. A military coup d'et. Yeah, coup d'et against his socialist group.

But that could be now we know it was with the approval of the Soviet at around that time and the American to approve their 242 security resolution, which is a peace talk with Israel, etc. So Haavsler said, ruled not just based on fear, but also by appealing to the merchant class in Damascus and Aleppo. That lasted until 1990s with the end of the Cold War. Syria actually joined the war against Iraq and the first Gulf War, which was unheard of. an Arab country joined, you know, NATO-led and American-led attack. And then in 1994,

the supposedly inheritance of the throne of Assad, Basel-Assad was killed in a car accident. So they had to call and summon his son, Bashar, who was in London, who was actually not fit for that position, but they had to prepare him radically into military school.

He was high and ranked. In 2000, Assad died. But with that, what died also, the a previous social welfare system, that actually gave some legitimacy to his regime. Under Bashal Assad, we had neoliberal autocracy, which is fundamentally different stage. It's a perfect place to bring in Mare Joel, actually. So it was a regime that ruled by fear, but it also ruled because there were strong supporters of his. So what changed in 2000 when his son takes over?

What does Syria look like then? A number of things changed, and some things stayed the same. And I think to the point that my colleagues made, authoritarian use different methods, and they adapt their methods to circumstance. One of the things that did not change is the cult of personality. There was a whole cult of personality that was built around how Faisalasad. You couldn't go anywhere without seeing huge pictures of him.

People basically needed to always pay their respects to him as the fighter, the father of the nation. there was actually in Dar'a, which is the center of the uprising, there was this huge statue of him. Of Bashar or Hafiz? Of Hafez, the father, where the base of the statue was a peasant worker and a woman. So basically, he was embodying the nation. That cult of the personality did not disappear. It changed.

It changed in interesting ways because you will all recognize. the celebrity status that comes with social media and which was very much used to sell Bashar al-Assad when he comes to power finally with his banker wife educated in London as a glamour couple open-minded who are going to actually lead Syria into this new phase. Damascus Spring is what we kept hearing. We called the Damascus Spring, but the opening was very symbolic. Another thing that did not change but was slightly transformed was the way in which the younger Assad, who didn't have the stature of his father, didn't have the networks of his father.

After all, before becoming the heir upon the death of his brother, he was an ophthalmologist destined for a medical career, had to build personal support because he knew he didn't have the same credentials. And that personal support that he built, he built it by removing people who he thought could be political opponents. So basically removing some of the stalwarts

of the Ba'ath party and the senior generals, mostly Sunnis of the armed forces and replacing them with a young, upcoming, mostly al-a-white cadre, who were all indebted to him. So the clan-like dimension of authoritarianism actually increased under him. And I would say that the third thing that changed

was what Basilius referred to as neoliberal autocracy, because the marketization, the opening of economic opportunities also created a whole host of support amongst basically the merchant classes, the urban classes, who benefited from that economic opening and who understood the condition for them to continue

to be rich and prosperous was the maintenance of the regime. As you say, some things didn't really change. Prison played a huge role in controlling the population, both in the elder Assad's world, but also continually under Bashar as well. And sadly, Abdu Rahman, you know that firsthand. I wonder if you could explain how you think the prison system played a role, not just in controlling people like you who are writing and being active, but the people you left behind your families.

How did it control society? There was like some kind of constant censorship and surveillance of every aspect of life. So you could see like informants everywhere, wherever you go, there is someone who could like go and tell the regime what you said or what you did. And that kind of surveillance was so strict. The regime didn't differentiate like between any political, cultural figures. Everyone should be a loyalist or they will pay a price.

So anyone from any part of society could end up in those prisons? You can find in the presence, like you can see Muslims, Christians, and even like Christians could go to jail as someone who has like close ties to Islamic groups. Mary Jo-Jual, I want to add something. Go ahead. On the point of, you know, everyone can go to prison.

What basically found the flames of the uprising was the imprisonment and news of torture of 15 children in that hour. We're talking about children, underage children, who basically wrote graffiti on a wall after the mothers of two of them were arrested for having a discussion about the Arab Spring and wondering whether or not that was going to come to Syria. So one point. The other point that I'd like to make quickly is about, you know, the impact of the prison system on isolation of individuals. because as Abder Rahman said, people did not trust each other, not even their family members. The prison system contributed to atomizing society.

I mean, there was a joke that ran around in Syrian Lebanon where a father goes to a grocery shop and there's a big picture of the leader and his kid says, isn't that the person you dislike? And the father screams. There's a kid whose parents are missing, his parents are missing. That does tell you the kind of mental space that is created where people cannot even acknowledge their own for fear of ending up in prison and under torture. Thank you for telling us. Go ahead.

Just a moment. A woman was arrested and she had a baby in prison and the baby didn't know. what a tree is or what... They grew up not knowing. Or what a bird is. They didn't have any single idea about what a tree could be or what a bird could be. I want to bring in Basilius, because we haven't touched on this with you,

but every authoritarian regime uses prisons as a threat. Syria was a whole other question. I mean, the number of prisons, the brutality in the prisons, the sheer number of people. I think it's be accurate to say that there wasn't a family that wasn't touched by imprisonment of some sort. Maybe just explain that a bit. Directly and indirectly. And also that depends on which stage was that.

However, there is one aspect of prison that is invisible, which is, to use the panopticon effect. But instead of being in a prison, you are the warden of your own self. Until today, like Assad regime has collapsed. Whenever I talk to my family or write an article, I have. a policeman inside me. You can't take that out. When you grow up like that for 40 years plus, that's part of your own subjectivity. It's not like an idea that you can dismiss. This is why surveys are not accurate for political scientists, because if you ask me, like in Syria to answer what I think, of course, I will lie 100%. 100%. Because you don't trust the...

Yeah, you can imagine, then you read this data. I said like 90% of people love this regime or that regime. That's not. You need to use more ethnographic... qualitative, more, like, immerse yourself into that context. Final point, like, this specter of disciplinary measures within you, they control all aspects of your life, but they give you resiliency at the same time. Nothing will hurt you more than actually being hurt all your life. Another dynamic which you raised actually in jocks, like black comedy and jocks, is so dark.

Like, similar, like, those who survive the Holocaust, they have very, dark sense of humor. If you are familiar with the post-1960s, like, you can't, like, even share these, this is how people actually coop with these kind of disciplinary measures for the rest of their life. I've never heard it put so starkly being a warden of your own self. That was a chilling. I'm still getting goosebumps thinking about how that works. Abder Rahman, back to you, if you could, we want to move on a bit to just this idea of resisting the regime. And you, having been someone who's written and who's written poetry and novels and nonfiction. What kind of influence did your writing and the writing of other journalists and novelists

have in actually weakening the regime? Under Bashar al-Assan, I wrote as everybody else did. My writings were no different. I wrote like a poem about autumn and how autumn changes. like it's water twice a year. And then the investigator just linked it as if I was talking about Ha'Faz al-Assad.

That there was a hidden meaning in this poem in some way. Yeah. Whatever you write is going to be interpreted differently and every writer is subject to be like a suspect in front of the regime.

Abdelahm, what was the effect of your writing on Syrians? Do you think that it gave them honey any hope, or did it feel like perhaps there was still a dream that was kept alive by your writing? So we wrote about, like, everything. It was not about money. It was about, like, creating or shaping, like, public opinion. against the regime and showing the people what the future should look like. Before the Arab Spring and before the Syrian, we didn't want the Assad regime to be tabled. We only wrote, because we only wrote because we wanted to defend public freedoms. We wanted to defend public freedoms. We wanted to defend public freedoms. We wanted to, we wanted to defend public freedoms. We wanted to, we wanted to.

to defend the freedom of expression, freedom of assembly. In Syria, freedom of tajibre, freedom and by freedom and instiglalia. In Syria, it might have been like easier to be a fighter to just hold

like a rifle and fight, but it was much harder to be a writer and to have an opinion. And that's what it was like in most of the Arab countries. a little bit of a little bit of a lot of a Sael, and to cut out of bindiya

and it's a danger to a lot of a time. I had the privilege of speaking to Syrian poet

Farage by Raktar who spent some of you know Syrian history, know that he spent years, years and years in prison. Specifically,

Sijan, Padmira prison, which is basically a dead zone. It's a dead zone. It's incredible he survived. He told me that when people have nothing to lose. They can break the fear barrier. Marizuel and then Basilius, what do you think

were the first steps to breaking that fear barrier leading up to 2011? I will say first and foremost, the excesses of the neoliberal autocratic order, because one of the things it did was strip common Syrians of dignity, the way in which it created a wedge between the rich, flaunting their newfound wealth and the poor who were basically made fun of, poked at as, you know, commoners who didn't understand anything, who were bothering people in the common spaces, which created, in part, that demand for dignity, which came from a lot of the rural areas once the uprising started. I would say that was one of the first thing. And I think that we cannot dismiss the impact of the regional configuration.

Because once other regimes started falling, like Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, that created conditions of possibility for those dreams that people like Abd al-Rahman kept alive in their writing. And I think the moment the regime went as far as imprisoning the children, it was clear that there was nothing left to lose. That's Marie-Juel Zahar, professor of political science at University de Morial. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayad. One summer evening when she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna-Luc.

I can't figure it out, but I do know that it was a violation. Then people started asking questions. What a creep. Who else knows about this? From CBC's personally, this is Agent Leila. The story of how a victim went undercover. So bring it on, let's go. Let's get a confession. Available now on CBC Listen, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In 2011, in the city of Darala, Syria, news spread about the arrest and imprisonment of some local teenagers and young men. They were accused of spray painting graffiti on a school wall. Your turn next, doctor, was the graffered message. Any Syrian could see that it was aimed at Bashar al-Assad, the country's dictator. Al-Assad had trained as an ophthalmologist. According to the families of the imprisoned youth, when they tried to visit their children, the authorities told them to forget they ever existed. Protests erupted in Darah.

The CBC's Tom Perry reported on what happened next. The sights and sounds are now familiar. Grainy images smuggled out of countries where dissent is not allowed, where protest is met with deadly force. This time it's Syria, where the ruling Ba'ath party has maintained a chokehold on power for more than 40 years. The government of President Bashar al-Assad is the latest to feel the repercussions of political unrest that began in Tunisia and Egypt and has now spread across the Arab world. Protests against the Syrian regime have sprung up in the southern town of Dara.

Demonstrators clashed with security forces this week. Reports say police yesterday opened fire on protesters at the town's mosque. The killing of protesters in Dara became the spark that started Syria's civil war. But the dictator didn't fall that year or the next. Bashar al-Assad and what opponents called, called his Kingdom of Fear, held on until 2024. On stage at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, our panelists discuss what finally brought down the Assad regime.

Basilius Zeno is now a political scientist at Trent University. In 2011, he was a student at the University of Damascus. When you have all these factors accumulating and insults people and kidnap their beloved ones, say, like, forget about them, and use that arrogance. I remember vividly, actually, and when the Arab Spring happened, I didn't expect it in Tunisia. Like, I was watching TV, finalizing my master's thesis before the defense. But when Egypt happened, due to the very close history with Egypt, then we all, our generation in college, posed, like, basically that was a direct hit.

Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, by the way, Saudi Arabia for two years, but it wasn't covered by the media. and then it reached the shore of Syria in Dar-a, which, the irony of history, Dar-a was the hub of support for the Ba'ath Party. So this is why no one expected in Dar-a in particular. I remember Bashar Assad gave his speech in the parliament. It was March 30, 2011. I was in old Damascus. At the restaurant, because we were convinced,

and I hear actually how I was naive as well, the narrative was around that time, which part of how ideology worked, that there was old God preventing Assad and the young generation from actually having meaningful political reforms. And for me and that generation, it was the momentum he will take that platform in the parliament and actually declare the old God as shooting at people and he will start meaningful.

He started cracking jokes. Yeah. He started cracking jokes in the middle for two hours of it. My face was melting. Like my whole word, and I sensed as a young person without any social science training at the time, that's the end. What an image. Yeah. Basilius, I do want to stay with you for one more minute.

And just because we can't finish this conversation without acknowledging that you were involved in 2011 with the revolution. Can you paint a picture of what was that, what that was like? And why you joined? I joined. I think the turning point for me was actually Bashal Asa's speech. That's literally a turning point for me Because otherwise, he could actually have gotten away with that

Like he could have actually purged some Including his cousin And then say, like, let's start a new air Let's sacrifice these bad apples on the good apple Actually, he would have gotten away until that point with that So I participated in there were two main protests called the protest of the intelligentsia Muzharat Nusaqafin

One in Medan and the second one was in Marie Ancient Damascus and I participated in both of them. And the second one, where a few people pretending to go to a birthday party. Actually, the video is still online, but we were filmed from the back

to protect our faces from the security forces. The moment for me, it's hard really to describe is when at the end, someone screamed, Shab Yurid Bsqad Nizam, that people want to tackle the regime, and we started to scream and cry

uncontrollably. It's like, Hannah-Ren described that as men-kwa-men. You exist in the, presence of others with the strangers. So I and four other, actually, poets and writers, we had to hide in one of the narrow alleys in Damascus, and one of my friends pretended to be the fiancé of someone else,

and we survived. Then I had to disappear for almost like three, four months. Security forces actually asked my uncle around that time, so I had to disappear in Germana. Every single week on Thursday there was a protest on Friday. we were meeting on Thursday with a group of beautiful Syrians, like from all background to organize and select Friday's names and to documents because we couldn't share any information

and everything was controlled by the state. So orally we will have a meeting, only people who trust each other and have notes. These notes actually became the call for my first academic paper around that time. Wow, and also determined the course of your career. Yeah, of course. Yeah, Syria. Thank you for sharing. that. Abder Rahman, in that period, can you describe what life was like for you as people started rising up in 2011?

Important. So when the demonstrations took place in Syria, I had just got out of prison in 2011. With the ma'at, the headid and theridion between the revolution two weeks. And because I only wrote a piece in Al Ha'ath newspaper, I was arrested a few days later. So I was in 2011, 2012, there was taken a muchabasharly in back a year. So I was in detention, and I remember a moment when they got me out of my cell, and I thought that they were going to execute me. And I'm thankful that I'm still

on the case of my life to rew my story and cases of other Syrians. And I'm thankful that I'm still alive to tell my story and the stories of other Syrians. In August 2012, when I began the mucabarats

more than other, you want to get me, I'm going to, I'm going to, Turkey. In 2012, when the regime forces persuaded me, I got out of Syria and went to Lebanon. To Turkey. To Turkey. And Abd al-rahman is written actually a very exquisite novel in Arabic, but it's being translated to English about his time in prison, which is shocking. Just very quickly, what role did you play outside of Syria? What could you participate from outside Syria as a writer. I wrote many pieces about what was happening in Syria.

I also did many interviews to shed light on what was happening on the ground. And my only concern was freedom and the freedom of the Syrian people. It was the right of the Syrian people. And the courtiet of the Syrians and the democracy. My cause of the Asasasia, and the ma'am of the stiddhar, and we'll be on that. My cause is freedom and to fight authoritarianism, and I'm going to live for that. Marie Joel, coming back to you, for a while, it appeared as though Assad had won, as you both have sort of referenced already. He had violently repressed opposition and was being normalized on the international stage with handshakes and photo ops.

Then, as we discussed in December 2024, it all fell apart. In retrospect, what do you think were the key weaknesses in the regime that made that defeat possible? I think my colleagues have both spoken about decay, and I think the word is appropriate. There was decay on a number of levels. First of all, I'll go back to what Basilius was saying about that famous speech in front of parliament. The moral decay of making fun publicly as a press, of the people who stood up against you and who your security forces shot. I mean, that, I think, speaks to total disregard for the people that you're supposed to be representing. I think there was another decay which is important, which is the decay of the state,

really problematic because Syria before did have state institutions that were more solid than most countries in the region. And these institutions are essential. Nahla, you know this better than anyone from your time in Iraq to be able to rebuild after a transition. Yet they decayed internally because the regime had to compromise so much to remain in power. And so whether it is in relation to the illicit economy, to giving various parts of the army permission to act in certain areas as if they control these areas separate from the state,

all of that created institutional decay. I will also say that I think there was a very important role that the international conjuncture played. And that is the fact that for a set of reasons having to do with both the war in Ukraine and Russia being occupied with that and also the changes in the international system, what we call, you know, the challenges to the liberal order, which completely paralyze the UN. Exactly. Right?

It was impossible for anyone else to resolve this. And so basically the situation was really decaying on all levels, which made it possible eventually. And eventually fall apart. Yeah. I wonder, Basilius, if that moment could actually teach us something about how strong or fragile authoritarian systems really are, despite what we see from the outside. All states have regimes, whether you have authoritarian regime or democratic regime. And like when we teach political science, we teach like six, seven forms.

Like it's not just two binaries, just good versus evil. Of course, you see yourself the good people and the other are the bad people. Look at the Trump, for instance. He is weaponizing democratic institutions and act as a basically fascist leader and transforming these tenets and eroding the foundation of constitutional power of the United States. gradually. There's no reverse from that. It basically outlast the personality of the person who is leading this, any given regime. Coming back to the Syrian regime, they are geopolitical factor, but I want to emphasize something that was crippling, shaped the life of millions of Syrians, and it should be labeled as a crime, which is economic sanctions.

Economic sanctions, you don't know how it, like for people, like, I just recently became a Canadian citizen, so I can, like, literally like. So it was last week, by the way. Yeah. But I want to, this is important for me as a researcher and sharing also my positionality here. You can't even open a bank account in the United States. Like I left the United States five years ago to come to United States.

I lived there for 10 years. My daughter was born there. Instead of remaining there, I anticipated Trump is going to be reelected. People laughed at our face years and I'm sorry to say, no, it's going to be even more. vicious than you are used to. That's what I said. Like when you grow up under authoritarianism, you sense it in your body and your, like, everything, you will be more on alert than ordinary seasons. It's very true. So don't take democracy as good thing by itself. It has a horrible

also background. It was also part of genocide. At the same time, it was democracies. And don't take authoritarianism as something that is bad or good. That's non-descriptive. That's just a judgment. You don't analyze when you say that. So why I'm saying that is the nuance, what it matters towards that understanding. So the Assad regime actually ducked its own grave by fatal mistake that they committed. They followed successful tactics,

but disastrous strategies. Approaching just the collapse of that regime, economic sanctions crippled all aspects of life. You couldn't get any, let's say, medical equipment. You could have, like, everything was decaying slowly. You can't travel. You can't transfer money to your family. Like in order to transfer like $100 to my family,

I had to send it to Germany. Someone will call his parents, like someone inside Damascus, hey, transfer the money that I transferred many months ago, and then that's how it goes. In case of emergency, it makes your life health. Economic sanctions, including the one that is actually killing Cuba right now, what it kills actually,

it doesn't achieve any political goal. What achieve is the complete destruction of society. The civil society, be replacing these regimes as democratic alternative, they will be fatigued, destroyed, dismantled, and that they have no power. The second factor and important economic sanctions is the what we call geopolitical conjuncture. Russia got busy with the in vote, the Guadmire of Ukraine, but the post-October 7. Let's not forget that Israel assassinated Hassan Nusra and then all Iranian revolutionary posts. Asa didn't do anything. And, and the war, and, you

And so the Kulas was imminent. When Turkey gave the green light to the Jolani, this is how he identified himself at the time, then they continue in 11 days of campaign and he succeeded. Thank you for that. Marie Joel, I want to ask you, as we kind of wrap up our conversation before the audience questions, just what happens after a system like this falls? Like what needs to happen to prevent the country from slipping back into another form of authoritarian rule? I will say bottom line citizen engagement.

And I think that is what keeps me prudently optimistic about Syria. The number of Syrians who obtained all kinds of Western citizenships and who the moment the regime fell packed everything, knowing they were going to make sacrifices, to go back and to be part of the rebuilding, is actually unprecedented in these kinds of situations. And I think that we need to actually acknowledge the courage and the sacrifices they're making. But to Basilius's earlier point, being a warden of your own self is not something that changes overnight.

And therefore, there continue to be, I think, important risks, particularly as people who have been brutalized by 15 years of war might. make a Faustian bargain to favor order and stability, even if that order and stability come with some sort of authoritarian revival. We don't yet know it's too early at this point to really pass judgment on the new regime in Syria, but it has some positive and some negative aspects to it. And therefore, in my opinion, it is really the engagement of Syrians that will make the difference because the one thing they've learned also is that the world is not coming to save them. Abdelahman, I know that, as Mary Joal just said, that you too would love to return to Syria,

but you have not made that decision yet. Are you able to explain why you haven't? Yeah. I don't really trust the new rule as many other Syrians do. It's been two years since the new rule came to power, and given their record while they governed parts of northern Syria, there are serious concerns about the president itself and the other groups around them. It's about the heartiness of everything.

Before the fall of the regime of the Syrian regime, the new rule didn't believe in revolution or either democracy. The new rule, like, killed a aded of the shahefeiene, and it gotled a few of them. The new rule, like, killed and arrested many journalists, and there are many signs that they couldn't be trusted. There are still fears about the lack of security and the continued presence of weapons outside state control,

so that might make journalists and writers a bit afraid about going back to the country. Just one more. So I'm a Sunni Muslim Muslim, and even though if I didn't support the current president, he will see me as an enemy. Even though you're the same religion. This week, this week, this week, this week, tomorrow, tomorrow, moroer santa,

on the majazzar that are puttukhiped in Mada, the dead the Madaniyene. Yes. This year is the first anniversary of the massacres that targeted the minority communities in Sweden. And I'm always, and I always affirm that I'm with the victims. Basilius, I know this is also in the back of your mind,

as you contemplate whether to return or not. Yeah, especially like I wanted to conclude, you talk my point. You can double down on the next point at the same point. Very appreciated. Humility point. No, very appreciated because I grew up in Swayda. So on March 2025, and also,

on July 2025, so basically a few months apart. Some forces affiliated with the current government, including individual private citizens, militias, committed mass atrocities and sectarian crimes against Allah, White, killing at least 1,400 documented cases. We saw some of the exact faces who filmed themselves committing these crimes again on Swayda. So you can't go to the crime scenes twice

and claim I had nothing to do with that. So I swear that they killed at least 1,700 civilians in five days. These are documented names. We still have a number of people who were kidnapped, disappeared. So basically, the situation is more fragile than even, because this kind of mass killing didn't happen even under the exception of the use of chemical weapons in Guata, which is a massive crime that committed against mostly children

killing over 1,000 civilians in August, 2013. for which actually international community said, it's okay, give us your chemical weapons and you are free to go, which was a turning point why we started to see more radical jihadist group actually saying that you can't trust. So some people join these fractions, not out of belief. This is why it's important to conduct thorough research, but out of frustration and actually disbelief in this international order

or system or accountability. So I will conclude with that just three points. Like any time an authoritarian regime collapse, it's not the end. You have authoritarian breakdown, then you have democratic transition, then you have democratic consolidation. So we are still in the first stage. It's not a new era. It's the end of the Assad regime.

We are yet to see a regime in making, but there is no, the sprouts of democratic performance and citizens are those basically the three million refugees and internal displaced people who came back home. These are the sprouts of the world. democratic movement. But people are extremely exhausted, sanctions, losing families, mourning, finding the grave of loved ones, the disappeared one. And the current government actually did horrible job in transitional justice to the extent that actually covering up evidence of four crimes

by spraying the graffities on the walls of prisons, transforming some of them into a new headquarters for the ruling, new ruling regime. So there are lots of question marks that's yet to be answer. How the regime would look like in India, I'm afraid like I share your concern that it seems the regional, international actors prefer stability over actually anything else, including the dignity of those who sacrificed their lives. I only have about four minutes left and I want to hear from each of you. Just what lessons do you think Syria holds for confronting authoritarianism elsewhere? Missilius, you can start? Short? Yeah, what lessons, one lesson, we failed.

That's my lesson. And if I don't acknowledge that we failed and that a counter-revolution succeeded, then there is no alternative future for the past. Then we accept any condition that wasn't worthy for the sacrifices of people. I don't want to see people actually getting shot and killed, like on the street or hunted for being whatever background you have to go to the market and find basically an explosion happen. or having children mocking each other piss on their background.

I don't want to see that. I want to fight against that. If I accept that, then there is no work to be done. For me, I felt then I have to continue this fight. Thank you. Marie Joelle. I'm reflecting on the recent visit of President Macron to Damascus, which was hailed as this great thing.

First time, a Western leader goes to Syria to meet with the president, and it was presented in a lot of our media as a sign of a turn. point to democratic transition. And I take two lessons from that. The first, ultimately, it's only the people who can defeat authoritarianism in their own country. And the second lesson is, unfortunately, and that's a lesson that all of us in the Middle East, more broadly, I'm of a Lebanese origin, have learned. For outsiders, it's about either stability or economic interests. It's never really about the dignity or the sacrifice of the people who have fought hard for values, freedoms, or any other deeply felt issues.

One lesson, Abdharahman. The ensan, first and before all the thing, fowka all of thing, and the freedom of d'aemon. Humans and our first and foremost, and freedom of expression is... Forever.

Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Humanity above all and freedom of expression forever. That's the message Abdur Rahman Matar draws from many years of war in Syria and the downfall of Bashar al-Assad. To conclude our conversation at the Stratford Festival, we turn to questions from the audience. We'll wrap this episode of ideas with the final audience question of the morning. This is lovely, well-written question. When the war, warden sleeps, if he or she ever does.

What is one thing that you wish for Syria in the future? When your own warden sleeps, when you're not thinking the way you learn to think under that regime, what is your one wish for Syria? I think the warden allegory like haunted everyone, sorry for that. It's such an apt one, though. I wish that people will have a normal death because of cancer, because of sick. because of car accident. Imagine you are wishing that. Not actually waking up

because someone was kidnapped, someone was assassinated, someone. A normal death is a wish. I wish people to have just normal life with normal expectation, with lots of creativity, existing as a human that transcend

beyond any obligations. Like just be as any Canadian here, care about work, future, human rights, being a good academic student, but not to worry if you can arrive to school or not. I wish for all Syrians, the new generation, actually, to have that. I would venture to say everybody wishes that for Syria and elsewhere too.

Very quick from you, Marijuel, and then Adder Rahman will end it. I'm not going to add anything because the thing that came to my mind was normalcy. Normalcy. It was normalcy, because everything was abnormal. And I so totally support what Basilius just said. Adderhaman, one final thought. One wish for Syria. To stop the Hirman.

Millions of Syrians are from their land of their family. I'd imagine to see my family that's half of it and I in the manfah. And I see my

my bn'tnety that I've seen I hope that all Syrians could get the opportunity to go back to Syria to see their families because I couldn't go back to Syria when like many of my relatives died and I couldn't see them and I don't want that to happen to my daughter. I am so grateful to all of you. Abder Rahman, Tarek, Basilius and Marie Joal, thank you very, very much for being here today. Thank you, never.

Thank you. That was the fourth in our five-part series, How to Defeet Authoritarianism, recorded at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. Make sure to check the Ideas podcast feed for the other episodes in this series. Thank you to the staff at the Stratford Festival. The series is produced by Pauline Holdsworth.

Ideas web producer is Lisa Ayuso, technical production, Harper-Charlton, Danielle Duvall. Our senior producer is Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.ca slash podcasts.