The farce of tyranny

NEW DELHI: To liberal progressives, who have been in a swoon since the recent victory of Donald Trump in the US and the advances of the fascist right worldwide, the supposedly unexpected fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria will evoke both curiosity and cautious optimism. The world is not irretrievably lost to despots and their billionaire friends. Tyrants do fall, in a heap like Bashar, or can be stopped in their tracks by popular resistance, like Yoon Sook Yeol of South Korea was last week by ordinary citizens—including an old woman who tried to snatch a gun from a soldier and scolded him for being “an embarrassment”.

While pundits have characterised the current time as the age of democratic backsliding, we do have recent cases of the people rising to erase a sin they have committed upon themselves. In Algeria in 2019, longstanding president Abdelaziz Bouteflika was stopped from seeking re-election a fifth time. In Sudan, also in 2019, the 30-year rule of Omar al-Bashir was ended by protests triggered by civil society disquiet over consumer prices.

Closer home, we have the example of Sheikh Hasina, who was given half an hour to pack her bags and hop on a helicopter to Agartala across the border. She escaped in the nick of time, save for the indignity of witnessing her possessions being ransacked by protesters. Two years ago, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, vanquisher of the LTTE, cowered from a rioting mob inside the Colombo airport before being hustled to safety by sea.

After all the terrible majesty of their rule by terror, the fall of tyrants is always ridiculous. In downfall, people do to them what they fantasise about in pomp. Some like Muammar Gaddafi are brutalised; some are executed and made an example of, like Afghanistan’s Mohammad Najibullah, and some hung upside down, like Benito Mussolini. The most celebrated case, of course, was that of Saddam Hussein who, when discovered hiding in a hole in the ground in rural Iraq, identified himself as "Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq" and offered to negotiate.

We do not yet know whether Bashar al-Assad went with his head high. We do know that in the last week of his reign of infamy, he was deserted by friends. His guards seem to have fled after the rebels took three important cities on the road to Damascus without any resistance. His long-time sponsors, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah abandoned him because they had their own battles to fight. Damascus fell without a fight and bullets that did not have to be fired in anger were sprayed in happiness. Syrian regulars discarded their uniforms and conscripts presented their arms to the border guards of Lebanon. No one wants the robes of a fallen regime.

Revolutions are strange phenomena. No one knows what to do next, but one is happy. One can’t be certain that the successor who comes along is going to be better. Revolutions come with no guarantees—of anything—elections, democracy, low prices, peace. Frequently, more violence follows, or even a reign of terror. So, what are people happy about the day after a revolution? Is it just that fleeting sense of freedom, something to be briefly giddy about? Something we always give away — to the next in line holding a gun, or a book of words?