before two thousand and eleven there were and there were a series of i mean there were the events of the arab spring happening elsewhere people understood it to be spontaneous all over the place starting in tunisia but of course there were there were civil society groups and there were there were opposition politicians and activists and in each of the countries including syria that that eventually sort of had these and these movements against against external rule so in syria there were there was a whole number of activists many of whom were quite old and had been in opposition for decades to the assad government and to the bathurst government so these people around a lot of communists arab socialists oppositional arab nationalists and and people like that some islamists but they of course membership in the muslim brotherhood was a crime punishable by death after the insurgency in one thousand and two so those people were were not not as overt as the secular activists younger activists probably centered around the arts  music academic and but many of those people had by necessity left the country so some of these people who were outside the country i mean there were a lot of i spoke with a number of young people who were outside the country and they said well if something doesn't happen in syria you know shame on us because of the tunisians can do it and and the egyptians can do it and the libyans can do it and they yes many ways can do it haven't helped the syrians if they can't do something to to to to to change their own condition and and assert the rights of citizenship and so this is sort of the the mood in february and march of two thousand and two there were a series of protests that started and at the beginning the government was quite considered and and and clever actually in  in in clamping down on these protests and in some cases there were you know there were indications that the government was going to take people's grievances seriously and then there was just this this a bunch of daraa in the south in the jordanian border these kids painted on the on the walls their school the people demand the fall of the regime and and reportedly they also said your turn doctor meaning a shot of us and the government responded probably local officials in the first instance by arresting these these kids about fifteen kids and torturing them and and telling their parents when their parents went to go find out what was going on with them that they were you know get out of here we have them and we're going to keep them in and you're out of luck big protest took place in data of five first's that the the extended families of these of these boys who were from prominent not prosperous but prominent families locally and then the government responded to these with live fire and this was really the beginning and the government immediately began to brand the people who were protesting as islamised and criminals and foreign inspired terrorists and after a week or so they stormed a mosque in the center of data as they stormed it and killed a bunch of people in the mosque which is sort of served as a as a protest kind of a protest headquarters in a way they started and and claimed and filmed on state t v a bunch of weapons which were probably almost certainly planted and and put there to bolster to support the government's case that it was fighting an armed insurgents  the government had no rhetorical political weapons either to back out of the the the introduction of violence on the one hand because prosecuting its own officials would have sort of opened it up to all kinds of editor places that it wasn't prepared or capable of going in the first place and secondly that the government wasn't equipped didn't have the wasn't set up as a kind of a and i thort tarion state to respond to to citizen grievances and so the opposition had to be defined as illegitimate in order to to make the case that the state itself maintained its legitimacy but this didn't work and and by resorting to violence and and by branding all citizen criminals it made every death seem as if it was the state itself was committing crimes and thereby undermine legitimacy the state itself in the minds of first a few and then many more  citizens i think and this is really how things beg it's very hard to say when the opposition became militarized but it's it seems certain to me that the claims of the government that the opposition was militarized were fallacious for a period of broadly supportive of the government or at least worried about what would happen if the government really lost its legitimacy wholesale and these conversations always came along the lines of well there are going there's there's armed elements but no one could ever tell you who the armed elements were or how they got any weapons and it was the case that iraq was awash in weapons because the two thousand and three war and lebanon had been awash in weapons because of the the civil war seventeen years of civil war but in syria ordinary citizens didn't have weapons if they had weapons they were quite old and i had a conversation with a friend of mine who said well there's there's there's armed gangs all over the place and i asked him well are you meaning the government and he said armed gangs which was the precise formulation that the government was using on state t v and so on are they government gangs armed gangs are they align with the government armed gangs are you saying the protesters are armed armed gangs so who are today armed gangs this was it that this was the the  claim it was the case at this time that a kalashnikov in syria cost two thousand dollars with no bullets now two thousand dollars is about two years salary  for the average sort of ordinary job in syria so it's the equivalent of a of a weapon to challenge the state here say you know costing what almost as much as a house so a two thousand dollars kalashnikov was beyond the capabilities of practically anybody except for very wealthy people so it was also the case that that the government that people in the army were selling them stealing them and selling them probably and things like that that the notion that the opposition was armed from an early stage i think is is is actually it's it's it was state propaganda without any basis in reality and it also seemed to be the case that is these protests would take place elements would shoot but no one really knew who was shooting and it was the case that eventually armed elements emerged but it took months and months and in a way it was it was the the opposition that the that the government itself wished to conjure because this was an opposition which could be dealt with legitimately with mass violence unlike unlike unlike an armed citizens making making claims against a state syria has two principal foreign allies and these are allies of long's i mean we're talking about decades and decades here locally if you're on which was an ally  nonsense it is such arguments are are misunderstandings and they they they they underestimate the political interests of these of these countries these countries that the you know the clearly identified political interest from their perspective and then of course from the syrian the syrian at the syrian ally of longstanding russia and the soviet union before russia and this goes back to the hundred sixty s and and and even before and so this is also a long standing alliance of decades and decades based on on common interests and and  russia identify bashar assad as their client in the middle east and a person who is a kind of a representation of their own power and prestige and i her very complicated reasons saudi government is a major force and i think probably the principal destabilizing force i mean this is the principal  opposition force or opposition sponsor we can say in favor of violence in syria at the moment our course they don't have a the saudis don't have a land border with with syria and the notion that they are getting weapons to syria i think has always been a little it seemed i was a bit incredulous about this and i remain a bit incredulous of course the saudis have have boatloads of money and also a structure within lebanon of the the lebanese political establishment that is interested in and closely linked with with the saudi ruling establishment so probably what is happening is that the saudis are providing money and the lebanese are providing weapons over the border into syria to support various elements that they that they can identify who will take their money and weapons qatar of course is has been critical of the syrian government now it's interesting because both of these countries of course are marked monarch and in a way they have been sectarian in their in their opposition to the syrian government so they are seem to be i mean to the extent that there's an islamist opposition it's it's sponsored by these countries there's turkey jordan these are the the neighboring countries iraq and all of them are now host to ponder just thousands or tens of thousands of syrian refugees in any case and in some cases probably of the town of the pocket and so on which is also complicated in turkey because the the the out of we minority which is over represented in the syrian ruling structure and has become the syrian ruling structure has become more sectarian in its in its rhetorical structure in its rhetorical argument this minority is well represented in turkey particularly in that area so there's all kinds of tensions and the the turkish out of we in this area who are arabic speakers in many cases are are are  supporters of the syrian government so it's and the turkish government you see that it's become so frightfully complicated on many levels so i mean syrian citizens have plenty of reasons to oppose the government they don't need the help of foreigners to do it and they don't need for an inspiration to be opposed to the government either just of iraqis didn't need for inspiration guidance leadership or anything else to oppose the american occupation of their country  the syrian government is not in control of it of its repressive apparatus and the opposition especially the the original opposition the secular political opposition is not in control of its movement and that's not to say that anyone's americans the iranians the russians make the likelihood that any of those groups that those to the either the central state or the opposition will be able to assert some sort of unified position it makes it less likely now as far as united states is concerned the u s policy or u s if there's anything going on it's very low key and and and unusually secret because usually these things don't remain secret very long if they're successful you know these people start boasting about them and if they're unsuccessful their political domestic political rivals leak them right away so i mean secrecy in the united states in foreign affairs as far as i can tell particularly with regard to the to the middle east is basically seems mostly preoccupied with protecting one's one's professional reputation and covering you know what they say i want to use a colorful expression but but everyone knows what it is so we haven't heard much and i think that's probably because there's not much going on and to the extent there is anything going on it's going it's going through turkey probably u s operations and in syria providing some sort of supposedly communications materials to syrian factions oppositional factions there are what certainly weapons coming in the opposition is far better armed than they were originally but a lot of the stuff may be coming from the syrian army people are defecting with their weapons so i think the united states is not doing very much and i think that's as it should be i mean tense the beginning and have the uprising there have been the kinds of admissions on the part of the syrian government that that the syrian government is serving the interests of israel and there have been emissions on the part of the israeli ruling structure and military that the syrian government as presently configured is serving israeli interests both of these admissions are breathtaking  because the syrians the syrian government has based its legitimacy for forty years and longer in fact even before has less on its being part of the so called resistance front the states that it refused to accept the israeli writ in the region now we've seen that this is pure baloney the syrian government is sending at the earliest stage sending a letter a message to the to israel and to the united states that we provide a stable status quo and you have to support us and this resonates and the israelis have heard this and so it's quite surreal mubarak shortly before he fell but this is really quite a and so the idea that the israelis are anything but worried about the post post the syrians it's not at all based on on on worry opposition towards the syrian government insists that is presently considered as far as i'm concerned or as far as i know the only people in israel who have been supportive or sympathetic to whatever aspirations the syrian public expresses in its protest movement are people on and on the far on the far left because the idea of the syrian government changing here in government as has tried with great determination and dexterity to fragment the society and to take advantage of to to exploit sectarian differences and class differences as well but particularly sectarian differences within the society to prevent the emergence of a secular  non sectarian nationalist opposition nonviolent so it's also very threatening opposition to the to the status presently configure the kind of psychological  anxiety that this sort of the sort of development provoke in the ruling structures of these various countries i think this is very real and it leads to a sort of a you know whatever's necessary it's necessary and they will do it in order to maintain and of course the the the demonstration that the the syrians are in the position like iran  and putin for that matter of hanging on in the face of the waxing and waning of these of these of these movements and the the other states that have fallen i mean  was personally acquainted from his early childhood with with moammar gadhafi and his children and so the prospect of those people being being killed and paraded  thirty years being in prison and in jail you know this is really this is this is i think that this has really caused a determination for these people not to compromise on any level and so i think that this is this is part of the and they have hung on longer and it's also the case that the the the the strategy the tactic of  state survival of people like to show us that is based on the idea that you out last year rivals you if they're if they're weaker you crush them and if they're stronger you just you just play out the line till you've weathered the storm and that's that's that's the strategy everything else can be rebuilt later the structures of the state can be torn asunder and put back together but you have to survive and so the last involvement at the center of the syrian tool will have to figure out what the future of their country will look like and the better this is for them the one else now won't please those foreign powers but it's not their country it's  smart well intentioned people i think that the the the the syrian national congress and the various external opposition groups have been have had a lot of fact fighting and this is of course partly because they they don't really have a role and they're not there and consequently they're fighting over things that are probably not necessarily important it could be i mean i in the long run i i'm i'm i find these i mean i think that this is an exciting it's very painful and traumatic obviously but it's also an exciting and and it's a it's a time of of of new and still provisionally hopeful possibilities for a new kind of of arrangement for citizens to assert their rights as citizens in normal countries that they feel that they have a stake in that or their countries and i mean at the beginning not only in syria but everywhere in all of these places we heard people say over and over again for the first time in my life i feel like it's my country like i'm and you know bashar al assad has been telling everyone it's my country and you people all are here as  kind of a sleigh so that's that's