Amid the ruins of war and destruction, Syrians now find themselves without any genuine political organisations capable of interpreting what has happened to their country, expressing their present demands, or shaping their future through structured political practice; what is commonly known as “political parties.”
Syria’s lack of real political parties is an old ailment. Since its founding, the country has been an example of internal political emptiness. Even at the height of its so-called democratic life, its parties were never truly “Syrian” in orientation. They were communist, pan-Arabist, Islamist, or Syrian nationalist. Even its liberal movements acted more as representatives of regional interests within Syria, such as the National Bloc and the People’s Party, than as national forces.
Throughout modern history, Syria has not witnessed a single political organisation with a purely national spirit, programme, and focus. On the contrary, such “national” leanings were often seen as a breach of supposed political honour.
The country’s complex formation and its historical ties with neighbouring regions – Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, the Sanjak of Alexandretta, and the Arab part of Iraq’s Mosul province – partly explain this. The enduring Israeli–Palestinian conflict, alongside internal sectarian, religious, and ethnic divisions, only deepened the problem.
Syrian elites tended to believe that national parties could not possibly accommodate these contradictions and wounds, and that overcoming them required supra-national ideologies and movements. These became the backbone of Syria’s populist parties.
What remains puzzling, however, is the persistence of this pattern, despite its devastating consequences. For over a century, and especially during the past fifteen years, Syrians have been the primary victims of these transnational populist parties.
Read also: The People’s Assembly in Syria: Between Representation and Functionality
Such parties isolated Syrians from modernity, education, and technology by fostering artificial conflict with the outside world, particularly the West, through a constant populist narrative. They were also the enduring moral sponsors of the country’s dictatorships, which committed horrific crimes against their own people. In the end, they left behind hundreds of thousands of victims, destroyed cities and economies, and even a damaged environment.
Yet, despite this national ruin, Syrians still do not see the urgency of finding an alternative.
A second striking sign lies in the political development of neighbouring states – territories Syrians often viewed as parts of their own historic geography. Those “lost lands” managed to build their own national political structures, while Syria, the supposed “motherland”, failed to do so.
In Iraq, for instance, although there were cross-border populist movements similar to Syria’s, several parties were fully national in nature. Early Iraqi organisations carried deeply patriotic names and missions, such as the Iraqi Independence Party (1924), the National Defence Society (1925), and the Iraqi National Party (1925), founded by Jaafar Abu al-Timman, the father of Iraqi nationalism. These parties fought for Iraq’s independence, defended the unity of the Iraqi nation, and sought progress without religious or ethnic discrimination. Later, others like the Iraqi Renaissance Society and the Iraqi Liberal Party continued that path.
The same is true for Lebanon: parties like the Kataeb Party, the Progressive Socialist Party, and Future Movement may have relied on sectarian or regional bases, yet they were entirely Lebanese; their vision and programmes remained within Lebanon’s borders.
It is no coincidence that Lebanon’s transnational parties, such as Hezbollah, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and the Lebanese Communist Party, were originally inspired by the Syrian political space.
Of course, there are many historical and social reasons behind all this. Still, Syria’s current reality is too dire to continue without change. The time has come to build genuinely Syrian political movements; ones centred on the country’s own issues, capable of lifting its people from despair.
If, as philosophy teaches, existence precedes nothingness and gives it meaning, then from the wreckage of Syria must rise national organisations born from within; dedicated, finally, to Syria itself.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of +963 association.
