Crisis of Syrian parties: when realism becomes pretext for abandoning democracy – Jamal Darwish

Organized political work in Syria today is a complex and multifaceted issue for several reasons. The foremost is the structural failure of traditional and leftist parties that once dominated Syria and the region. This failure is tied to the nature of their formation, their inability to renew their intellectual and organizational tools, their distance from addressing the needs of society, and their connections to the authority, as was the case with the National Progressive Front parties in the past. Despite the fall of the regime, most of the parties that existed before it remain absent from political life.

This absence has its reasons. Many Syrians clearly refrain from joining any new political party, fearing a repetition of authoritarianism. A widespread belief prevails that these parties are merely the authority parties, and that any authority in Syria is shaped by external actors, rendering parties as facades that do not represent the will of the people.

If we revisit the formation of leftist parties after independence—as forces representing people's interests and linking independence to the redistribution of power—we see that this role quickly eroded with the rise of the totalitarian authoritarian state in the 1960s. Politics shifted from a field of social competition to one managed by security apparatuses.

With the collapse of the socialist bloc, Syrian leftist parties entered a dual intellectual crisis: they lost their theoretical references on one hand, and failed to produce alternative political and intellectual frameworks on the other. Instead of leading to deep critical reviews, most leftist parties continued reproducing ideological discourse disconnected from social and political transformations. While the global left undertook profound revisions addressing democracy and human rights, the Syrian left remained trapped in outdated ideology derived from the Soviet experience.

The 2011 protests exposed the depth of the crisis within leftist forces in Syria. Rather than redefining themselves as democratic forces linking freedom with social justice, they positioned themselves in a grey zone, adopting a discourse of fear for a state that had been usurped by authority. The popular movement was described as a civil war, social structures were blamed for violence, and the struggle for liberation shifted into a discourse of stability.

Following the fall of the Assad regime and the fragmentation of authority, this transformation did not produce a democratic repositioning among some leftist currents. Instead, it pushed them to seek alternative power structures by aligning with sectarian religious figures and pre-national tribal authorities, under the pretext of political realism or preserving civil peace. This revealed a deep flaw in understanding the state and citizenship, and a suspension of leftist values in the absence of a central authority that these parties had long relied upon.

Therefore, any prospect for forming a viable political framework depends on a transition from ideology as doctrine to politics as a historical practice, one based on institution-building, the protection of rights, and the rule of law. Without this shift, leftist forces will remain trapped in their historical crisis, unable to regain their place in society, and outside the political moment in which they are expected to act, not merely witness its failure.

Jamal Darwish is a Syrian writer, researcher, and political analyst from Sweida. He provides analyses of developments in the Syrian scene and the trajectories of political solutions, with a focus on democracy, governance, decentralization, and pathways to building a state grounded in rights and the rule of law. 

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ANHA