Listen to Ibn Khaldun; do not dismiss them as Bedouin tribes

The separatist Druze of Suwayda, who moved against the Syrian regime relying on the humanity-hating Zionist Israel, lost the bulgur at home while chasing the rice. Within a short time they understood how far the Zionist deceivers, who had stirred up in them the desire to commit genocide against their neighbors, the Bedouin tribes, could protect and shelter them within Syrian sociology. They probably thought that, with a corridor toward northeastern Syria, they could establish, with their tiny population, a new Baath regime under Israeli protection. After all, Assad's Baath regime too had managed to rule the entire Syrian people for 60 years, intimidating them, with a small minority.

Israel made the same calculation through the Druze it had lured off the path. Using as a ready-made apparatus the pretext of protecting the Druze, it too thought it could bring to life the fable of the David Corridor, inherent in its notorious perverse theological understanding. It too, for now, found itself facing the situation of losing even the corridors (dehliz) in the lands it has occupied. They relied on the advantage of Israel's air power to gain superiority against the state's legitimate armed forces. Israel bombed the heart of Damascus and forced the government forces to withdraw from Suwayda. But a force they had not been able to calculate at all stepped in: the tribes, who occupy a very important place in Syria's demographic structure.

With their own hands they awakened and set against themselves the Bedouin spirit in these tribes, that spirit of asabiyya, that thing called Arab honor and zeal, which had been seen sleeping for years in the face of Israel. The march on Suwayda of the tribes that had been set in motion was probably a surprise for everyone who has been watching Syria for a century.

Under the Assad regime, although these structures expressed their discomfort for a long time, they did not show themselves with this effect. Today, when we examine the reasons a little, we need to remember that in fact it was again the honor sensitivities of the Arab tribes that lit the fuse of the revolution 14 years ago. The tribes, who could not bear the torture inflicted on their children and the insults to their honor in Daraa, soon engaged in mass protest actions and then revolts against the Assad regime. An important part of the revolutionaries who later joined these protests was in fact also motivated by these tribal bonds. However, ISIS and the other dirty actors who were put forward from the early years of the revolution, Iran, Hezbollah, and the incapacity displayed by the other Islamic groups against them in demonstrating their own rightfulness left a serious margin of caution between them and these tribes. For that reason, because the zeal we see among the tribes today could not be realized at that time with the same effectiveness and organization, the revolution against Assad could not take place earlier.

Yet it is now seen that these tribes can organize much more easily in claiming a revolution that has been accomplished.

The statements of the commander of the tribes who marched on Suwayda against the Zionist-backed Druze reflect the situation very well: "Now we have a state. At Ahmed al-Sharaa's signal we advance to the place he points to. Syria belongs to everyone. Christian, Druze, everyone. But not to the collaborators."

These words convey a very powerful message about what motivation the tribes are now acting with. Frankly, as we said before, this powerful presence of the Arab tribes, which seems a surprise to some, shows the dimensions of the strong sociological, demographic and political support on which today's al-Sharaa government rests. The al-Sharaa government is no longer a structure consisting merely of HTS; today it is a government that has embraced all of Syria and been embraced by all the Syrian people. From the moment this government has found its own state, it will no longer be as unsupported, rootless and powerless as the Assad regime. Moreover, the strong asabiyya that the tribal structures possess seems to have the energy, the intention and the determination to build precisely the very strong state that Ibn Khaldun emphasized.

In fact, in my last visit to Syria at the end of April, I mentioned in this column a meeting we held with tribal members. The organization of these tribes is largely a structure produced by the Ottoman state and social order. The tribal members we met said that they were seeking to integrate more strongly into the still fresh revolution process. They explained that they should not be condemned for having lived their lives under the oppression of that tyrannical regime in the time of Assad, that even then they had never accepted the regime, and that, because they had found exactly the regime they were seeking, the regime had in fact come about so quickly partly thanks to their own welcoming and joining it.

At the meeting, where there were representatives from the Deir ez-Zor, Hama and Homs tribes of Uqaydat, Shammar, Nu'aym, Adwan and Ubaid, the tribal members were eager to show that they had embraced the new regime very strongly. Let us point to one more dimension concerning these tribes, so that we can think a little more about what kind of interaction the Middle Eastern geography will have from now on through the change in Syria. None of these tribes is only in Syria. Each has extensions inside Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Therefore, from now on, wherever the pulse beats in this sociological structure, there will also be a possibility of its affecting the other sides. Perhaps this is a situation that will require everyone to change their calculations from now on.

For now this shows how the al-Sharaa administration in Syria has found a strong sociological and demographic base within a short time. It is at the same time a structure that will require the PYD in northeastern Syria also to review its calculations. If the SDF does not come, in a short time, to the standard of one homeland, one government and one army for Syria, it must know that this force, which until now has not stood against them, has now set in motion and will make the world narrow for them.