Rania Habib can’t go home.

The assistant professor of linguistics and Arabic at Syracuse University grew up in Homs, Syria, and as a young woman, left her country to attend graduate school at the University of Florida. 

With a death toll of nearly 26,000 civilians and counting, Syria has proven to be the bloodiest battle in a string of revolutions and demonstrations known as the Arab Spring. With neighboring countries stepping in and an unclear plan for the future, Syrians like Habib are losing hope that the country will find peace again.

“It’s not possible to go back anytime soon,” she said. “I’m not sure what will happen to me if I go.”

Habib’s parents fled Homs — the city she grew up in — and are now living in the smaller village she was born in. Homs is where most of the action took place, and it wasn’t safe to live there anymore.

Although her parents are safe, Habib’s sister is not. The village where her sister lives has been under siege for about two and a half months, and there is no way to contact her. Habib knows most of the time she doesn’t have electricity and, for a while, she couldn’t even get food.

“Sometimes my sister goes on the roof of buildings to look for cellphone service just to call my parents and tell them she’s OK,” Habib said.

The story of the Syrian conflict starts not with the current president Bashar al-Assad, but with his father, Hafez al-Assad. The Assad Regime came into power in 1971, and Hafez al-Assad was president for 29 years until his death in 2000, said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at SU.

His tenure was marred with tension resulting from a minority sect ruling over a Sunni majority. The secular, militaristic government had no sympathy for other religious sects. In the early 1980s, Assad put down Islamic opposition, and around 10,000 to 20,000 people were reportedly killed, Boroujerdi said.

Habib was born in a small village in Syria and moved to Homs when she was 2 years old. Under Assad’s rule, her family did not have the freedom to speak out against the government.

Though Assad governed like a dictator, she said, he did advance Syria socially.

“I think the West has a really wrong idea about the Assad regime,” she said. “I think the Assad regime brought a lot of progress to Syria.”

In school, the government enforced the removal of hijabs — head coverings traditionally worn by Muslim women. Although Habib was raised by a Christian family and never wore a hijab, she remembers her schoolmates’ parents being upset, as they did not want male teachers to teach their daughters without their head coverings.

“As a child, and as a girl, society was more restricting than I would say the government was restrictive to me,” she said.

Hafez al-Assad was tougher than his son, Habib said, and when power was passed to Bashar al-Assad, a whole government was inherited, including many of its government officials.

“The current president was blamed for all that his father has done,” she said. “It’s not fair to him because he really did a lot of things for Syria after he came into power.”

Assad opened up Syria’s economy to the world, opened the private sector and spread technology. He opened factories and increased workers’ salaries by 300 percent, Habib said.

But the people still revolted. Assad’s rise to the presidency wasn’t exactly democratic, Boroujerdi said. Although there were elections, he ran two times unopposed. When his father died, the government changed the minimum age for president so he would qualify.

While the people wanted reform and change, Habib said, they initially didn’t ask for Assad’s resignation. But when the government opposition organized, and blood began to shed, that initial goal was lost.

The opposition formed the Free Syrian Army. Although its name implies freedom for Syrians, the issue has become more complicated.

The opposition is supported by countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and Habib worries they don’t have Syria’s best interests in mind.

For many of the stories of abuse and rape Habib has heard from family and friends, the government’s army is not to blame. It is the opposition.

Neighboring countries support the Free Syrian Army for a combination of religious, political and economic factors, she said. Many people fighting are from the Muslim Brotherhood, and Habib fears that when Assad falls, a fundamentalist government will take its place.

At the international level, China and Russia have blocked U.N. involvement. Russia has major ports in Syria, said Boroujerdi, and doesn’t want to jeopardize its success.

The United States is hoping the opposition will win, Boroujerdi said, but is reluctant to get involved. It’s an election year, and since there is not a clear leader in the fight, Washington, D.C., doesn’t want to get involved in another prolonged conflict.

“What happens then is that there is a lot of hand wrangling in D.C.,” Boroujerdi said. “They don’t really know what they want to do with a conflict like this. After Afghanistan and Iraq, in terms of the human material cost there, do we really want to get involved?”

In response to the violence, one SU law professor has started a nonprofit campaign called I Am Syria. David Crane, who is also an international war crimes prosecutor, started this organization to educate the world on the conflict, said Emilee Gaebler, a third-year graduate student in the College of Law who is involved in the campaign.

“It’s not a political movement,” she said. “It’s simply an organization that’s there to show support and show the people of Syria they aren’t alone.”

Students can like the group’s Facebook page and take a picture of themselves holding a sign that reads, “I Am Syria.” The phrase highlights the organization’s belief that what happens to one person in the world can be felt by everyone.

I Am Syria is selling shirts on its website and plans to donate the money to a shelter in Syria. Gaebler said the organization wants to cut out the middleman and make sure its profits are going directly to the people.

Although she does want Assad to step down, Habib said she is worried about what would happen if the Free Syrian Army comes into power. She said there is no way a government can be democratic when it is based on religion.

“It’s not a situation of democracy and freedom anymore; it’s a situation of more suppression and more separation,” she said.

Habib wants the fighting to stop. She wants a real opposition to come forth with a nominee and a plan, stating its goals, principles and what it wants to do for the Syrian people. But as far as she can see, any real steps toward peace are not on the horizon.

“As far as the situation goes right now, nobody has hope,” she said. “Nobody knows how it’s going to end. Nobody knows how long it’s going to last. And it’s horrible.”

Published on September 12, 2012 at 3:10 am

Contact Sarah: seschust@syr.edu