Syrian demography is not a marginal footnote in some report by an observatory that has professionalized falsehood, nor is it some ignorant collection of superstitions from books of illogic. Neither is this demography a map to be dissected with a scalpel according to the whims of weaponry and the moment. Rather, it is a dense history of intertwinement, interaction, and even at times forced coexistence—a mixing that was never an exception in our history but a fate.
Therefore, we must speak today, openly and without linguistic evasion or political niceties, because what is cooked in the shadows feeds more on delusion than on facts, and springs from water tainted with intellectual before national betrayal.
It is no secret that there exists an undeclared alliance of sorts among the proponents of canton and regional projects. They converge in their hostility toward the center, not in a vision for the state. They present secession in the guise of federalism and sell partition as prudent management of diversity. However, the matter is far more complex than some naive individuals imagine, those who think these entities are viable or represent a logical solution that satisfies the power fantasies and greed of some.
Apart from the ethical question regarding the legitimacy of federations built on sectarian or ethnic foundations, we find not even a logical or solid demographic ground upon which these entities could be established without turning into explicit precursors to a civil war, whose biggest losers would be the very advocates of that partition. History has shown this, and I do not think we are an exception to the history of peoples.
A temporary feeling of power, the dominance of weapons, or external protection has driven some to deny the simplest facts: the population ratios in Syrian provinces do not produce absolute majorities—neither ethnic nor religious—in the sense promoted by regional advocates. On the Syrian coast, for example, the dominance of the fleeing regime has created the illusion of a majority, not due to demographic reality, but through a network of privileges that made members of a specific sect predominant in hospitals, schools, directorates, security, and the army. Privilege has replaced census, and power has disavowed demography.
In eastern Syria, one needs little sense to realize the absurdity of talking about a "region" based on occupying entire provinces, when those imposing control do not constitute even one percent of the population of Raqqa or large parts of Deir ez-Zor, for instance. It is an equation of coercion, not partnership; the dominance of arms, not a social contract.
As for As-Suwayda, the question here is almost sarcastic: what federation could possibly be established in a mountainous, enclosed area, lacking state or economic foundations, unless it were a federation of apples and grapes? A fragile agricultural entity intended to perform a political function greater than its size? But the gravest danger lies not in the confined geography, but in the behavior of those leading the "regional" scene; they are not building a governance project, but small kingdoms of repression, whose features we see in their dealings with their own people before others: assassinations, liquidations, from "al-Matni" to others, and the complete displacement of the Bedouin in As-Suwayda en masse. Those not displaced fell victim to kidnapping or murder, as happened with "al-Taha" and his wife, "al-Hamoud," and others. This is not self-administration, but modern fiefdoms run by fear.
What is truly astonishing is that those running canton projects demand nothing but federalism and federalism alone, at a time when the winds seem favorable for any legitimate demands: cultural rights, religious rights, or specific constitutional amendments that could be discussed within the framework of a single state. This singular insistence on cantonization is not innocent; rather, it is evidence that the goal is to create strongholds for warlords, managed as private farms, not as communities of citizens.
Numbers do not lie or forge, and statistics are available for those who wish to see. The question intentionally ignored by regional advocates is: Will these cantons be good news for members of those ethnicities and sects residing in Damascus, for example, or in other cities? What about Jaramana, Sahnaya, Rukn al-Din, Ash al-Warwar, and dozens of others? Can these people sell their properties, uproot their lives, to live under sole rule in paper kingdoms that cannot even accommodate their own children? Or are these to be East and West Berlins and walls of isolation that the world forgot long ago, which some want to reproduce in a land already suffering immensely?
In the end, there will be no federalism nor independent cantons, only dreams and political recklessness. Their function is to improve the bargaining conditions of the Syrian state with its surroundings by weakening it to the utmost, then cursing it when it makes a concession. The irony is that these concessions, when they come, are only the direct fruit of their own misdeeds. This is how the game is played: fragmentation in the name of rights, blackmail in the name of victimhood, while the permanent loser is Syrian society in all its spectrums and even contradictions—a society that never needed new walls as much as it needs a single, just state.
Mohamed Abu Jawa
Zaman Al Wasl
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