The strange logic behind Syria's culture of conspiracy

Compared to Col Muammar Qaddafi's rants and raves, the Syrian president Bashar al Assad's recent speeches have seemed rather tame. Mr al Assad made no declarations about "fighting from house to house" or "alleyway to alleyway". He also didn't blame the problems in Syria on young people taking hallucinogenic drugs under the guidance of an al Qa'eda or American plot (take your pick) as Col Qaddafi has.

For its part, Syria's alleged array of enemies lacks an imagination - Mr al Assad has mentioned only Israel as a threat by name, placing the rest of the blame on unspecified "satellite channels" and "foreign conspiracies". Still Mr al Assad declared that Syria faces "a great conspiracy, the webs of which spread from close and far away nations, and some of whose strings reach inside the country".

He conceded that these enemies were "smart" in choosing techniques like satellite TV and SMS to infiltrate Syria but that Syrians should "note their stupidity in that they chose the wrong country and people, as this kind of conspiracy does not work here".

The commentary in the global media following Mr al Assad's speech characterised his own statements as a conspiracy theory. Of course in Syria, that's subjective; one person's conspiracy theory is another person's truth.

What Mr al Assad was explaining to a Syrian audience - and a global one at that - was Syria's Baathist interpretative framework, which it has always used to understand the world around them.

As long as Mr al Assad's clan and their attendant Baathists believe that what he says is the truth - well, then it is the "truth". And has any state presented him with any evidence to counter his argument?

Of course, I'm not arguing that Mr al Assad's speeches should be taken at face value. Rather, his speeches should be analysed for what they do and don't say. He has declared that the protests were part of a plot "to weaken Syria, for Syria to crumble, and for the final obstacle in the face of the Israeli plan to fall and be removed". In doing so, he followed a familiar path trodden throughout this season of revolts, of placing blame on foreign powers seeking to undermine incumbent regimes. Nearly all of the leaders threatened by domestic uprisings play upon a psychosis of victimhood.

Such themes were also highlighted during a recent speech by Butheina Shaaban, the de facto spokeswoman of the Syrian state, to a Ba'ath party conference, who said: "The second thing that is being targeted in Syria is the beautiful coexistence in this country. As you have seen, this region is targeted to make it a sectarian, parochial, and ethnic-based region." Ms Shaaban's fears express a sentiment that probably he

arkens back to the French colonial era, when the Syrian mandate was carved up into mini-statelets for the Druze and Alawite communities.

This use of the past was also evident in Mr al Assad's speech to the People's Assembly, replete as it was with notions of nostalgia for the Syria of the Pan-Arabist 1960s. He reiterated Syria's support for "pan-Arab rights and independence, and supporting Arab resistance movements when there is occupation". But that rhetorical tactic echoed deposed president Hosni Mubarak's attempts to remind Egyptians of the glories of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war - and his role in that conflict.

Foreign plots. Antagonism towards Israel. Syria as the vanguard of Arabism. Those are the Syrian state's "truths". Yet what about the truths that he failed to acknowledge? Until his announcement on Tuesday that the emergency law would be lifted and the state security court abolished, Mr al Assad has deflected the issue of reform, arguing that reforms were sought back in 2005, but were stymied due to "negligence, tardiness, procrastination, and other factors that we as fellow countrymen know". He said "There are no obstacles [to reform], there is only procrastination, and there are no opponents ... as you know, this was a small group of people who are no longer around."

For the regime's dissidents, however, this "small group" of people is still very much around. While the uprisings in the region were a product of restive youth, a need for greater freedoms and a revolt against heavy-handed tactics by the security forces, they were also uprisings against the systems of patronage that have become one of the crucial pillars for the survival of many regimes in the region. Indeed, this has been a season of revolutions against patronage.

Villains during these revolts have ranged from the kleptocratic Trabelsi clan in Tunisia or Col Qaddafi's sons and their extravagant lifestyles, to the fortunes amassed by the business cronies surrounding the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

One of the targets that demonstrators attacked in Deraa, the southern Syrian town, was the monopoly on businesses operated by Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Bashar al Assad. Upon the deaths of protesters there the Syrian president said: "The blood that was shed was Syrian blood. The victims are our brothers and their families are our families." He promptly went on to promise an investigation into their deaths.

What he still fails to acknowledge is that Syria is a hyper-security state. Those behind the demonstrators' deaths were probably members of the dizzying array of security apparatuses that maintain his own state.

Corruption and a culture of patronage that rewards those close to the regime: these are the truths for too many of the Syrian people. Addressing those truths would have strengthened Mr al Assad's authority in Syria far more effectively than the jaded strategy of deflecting local problems onto foreign enemies.

Ibrahim al Marashi is assistant professor of contemporary history at IE University in Spain