With the tyrant Assad gone, it\u2019s important not to impose a negative script on what comes next. Syrians deserve support and hope<\/p>\n
Last week, time collapsed. Bashar al-Assad\u2019s fall<\/a> recalled scenes across the region from the start of the Arab spring <\/a>almost 14 years ago. Suddenly history felt vivid, its memories sharpened. In fact it no longer felt like history. Scenes that it seemed we would never see again \u2013 of crowds thronging the squares; the obscene riches of despots exposed, their fortresses stormed, their iconography desecrated \u2013 unlocked a familiar, almost sickening sense of possibility. Of giddiness, of horror at what fleeing dictators had left in their wake, and of hope. Syria\u2019s long revolution \u2013 the death, torture, imprisonment and exile that Assad\u2019s crushing of it unleashed \u2013 makes its successful end bittersweet. The price was so high, which makes its spoils even more dear.<\/p>\n The moment is also different in another way. In those 14 years, other revolutions across the region either unravelled or resulted in the retrenchment of dictatorial regimes under new management. And so that sense of untrammelled optimism that followed the fall of that first crop of dictators is tempered by some wariness of what comes next. But it can and should be a productive wariness rather than a reason for despair. Because what Syria benefits from now is an understanding of the fragility of this period. To those of us who experienced it before in other countries, it felt like a time when the momentum of revolution was unstoppable and cleansing. It had a kinetic energy that swept away the old systems to be replaced by new administrations, armed with good intentions and popular support, that would simply figure it out.<\/p>\n Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the tyrant Assad gone, it\u2019s important not to impose a negative script on what comes next. Syrians deserve support and hope Last week, time collapsed. Bashar al-Assad\u2019s fall recalled scenes across the region from the start of the Arab spring almost 14 years ago. Suddenly history felt vivid, its memories sharpened. In fact it … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}