(AINA) -- 'Syria is free'; thus screamed the Syrians as they celebrated the tumbling down of the criminal regime during a whole week. Thousands, even millions, of Syrians strolled the streets of the entire major cities of Syria. They were from all societal segments, strata, trends, genders, religious beliefs and non-religious ones, convictions, sects, confessions, parties, and orientations. Syria lived an unforgettable week of victorious elation, euphoria, and historical liberation; a week that will never be erased from the history of this extremely old and historical land.

Today, in the post-victory day, the question concerning the forthcoming is what curves inside the Syrians' conflicted feelings, swinging from extreme optimism down to dire pessimism. What the Syrians need to perceive, nevertheless, is that politics, states-forming, and re-netting the societal textile of a torn-apart nation are not achieved by means of emotions and sentiments, nor are they determined by means of either optimism or pessimism. In the following, I shall display three a priori factors, which the Syrian public must pay piercing attention to in their journey towards reconstructing their country. They are three descriptive and analytical points that endeavors to deconstruct the scene and anatomize it by means of an intellectually objective, critical, and awareness-raising precision.

Civil Politics

First, one must never undermine the fact that, throughout the past five decades, Syria was a politics-free zone, where the country did not have any form of political civil activeness. Syria al-Asad, the father and the son alike, worked systematically and categorically towards eliminating all sorts of diversified political plurality and trends of reasoning. Al-Asads Baath regimes either squashed other political parties or they domesticated and subdued them. They also fulfilled this elimination of politics vis-à-vis exerting barbaric violence from the police and security forces over all forms of civil and political trends and movements that used to exist historically in the country, and they used to represent different and diverse views and discourses.

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The Syrian public square was suppressed and then sanitized from every civil movement and political activity; the strategy that prevented five generations of Syrians from creating any political thought, or from enjoying any ability to practice natural political rationalization or assessment. The idea of 'politics' in the Syria mind was narrowed down to the concepts of 'power' and 'power game' alone. This is why, the forthcoming Syria urgently needs the creation of a political sphere wherein the Syrians would be freely able to develop their own political minds. Otherwise, the Syrians would succumb passively to the domination of the solo power-controlling voice that exists alone in the public square at the moment, namely the voice of 'Jabhat al-Nusra' and its leader 'Abu Muhammad al-Joulani'. And, the Syrians would instinctively deem the power-control and its games are the exclusive natural manifestations of politics and political activism. This would, eventually, surrender the public square to the monastic Islamist voice, which now seizes power and authority, to brain-wash the minds and to impose its exclusive and singular control and dictatorship over the civil thought and practices alike.

Liberation Versus Freedom

Second, when the Syrian people rebelled against the regime, 'freedom' was one of the foundational principals the revolution's public called and struggled for and paid for its sake highest prices of oppression, elimination, detention and uprooting during the past years. What the Syrians achieved today is actually 'liberation', and they did not yet achieve 'freedom'. There is an essential political, civil, societal, and state-based difference between liberation, on one side, and freedom, on another. Syria is liberated today from the regime of criminality, oppression, tyranny, and corruption. Yet, the road of freedom, its understanding, practice, and transformation into a criterion for the process of state's building and administration, is still long, full of obstacles, and its end is unknown, and we do not yet know whether the Syrians would be able to tread onto it and reach its final destination or not in tomorrow's Syria.

One of the constitutive features of freedom's application in states and societies manifests in the factors of plurality and diversity. The forthcoming Syrian society and state needs to be pluralist and diversified par excellence. For, Syria is by default a sophisticated, interpenetrated, and very wealthy mosaic of communities, cultures, religions, sects and confessions, intellectual trends, and political views. No alternative ruling entity is entitled to hijack the country and deprives it of such diversity or marginalizes other voices and views, no matter how powerful it was, and no matter which international and regional force stands behind it, and no matter what is the agenda and ideology it endeavors to impose on the Syrian context.

In order to live in freedom, the Syrian peoples need to be exposed to diverse voices, discourses and stances that echo its own substantial plurality, diversity and colorful sociological textile. We must not allow one, single, monastically hegemonic voice, whatever it was, to dominate over the scene or to brain-wash the public square upon the claim that it is the voice of religious, numerical, sectarian, cultural, linguistic, or ideological majority. Freedom is the pillar of democracy, and the essence of democracy is harmony in the heart of diversity and difference. Without this, the Syrians endures no chance to perceive, live, and practice in a 'free' Syria, and not just a 'liberated' Syria.

Revolution in Peril

Third, finally, in the light of the two above mentioned factors, we are obliged to say that the Syrian revolution, which was generated by the hands of the free, civil, harmless, and innocent Syrians, has not achieve victory yet, and I fear that it might witness defeat in the near future. The Syrians know that 'Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham' (The Board of al-Sham's Liberation) was not historically representative of the Syrian revolution. During the past years, this entity used to exert systematic intimidation, detention, and even persecution against the civil Syria rebels, and it withstood their calls for freedom, democracy, civil society, seculariism, justice, rule of law and constitution and human rights. Al-Joulani's Board of al-Sham's Liberation not only withstood the civil rebels, but also had field-combats against the 'Free Syrian Army' phalanges. And, when it ended up securing American-European support and back-up to establish sort-or a semi-state-like entity in the vicinity of Edlib, it practiced in that incubated Islamist-state miniature policies and strategies that are totally opposite to what the civil Syrian revolution vouched and espoused for.

Today, by means of an international and regional decision-making reinforcement, 'The Board of al-Sham's Liberation' and its leader, became the only absolute despotic player on the Syrian arena. It was made the hero that tumbled the regime down, and it is now ruling as an alternative ruling power in the name of no other than the Syrian revolution which it withstood in the previous years. The Syrian revolution have not yet achieved its goals or fulfilled its principals. Therefore, one cannot truly say at the moment that the true civil Syrian revolution is victorious. What counts as crucial in the ensuing period, however, is not to witness the defeat and failure of this revolution. For, though it has not achieved a victory yet, it has not experienced still a defeat and brokenness. The Syria civil, democratic, free, and secular rebels are still striving and persevering, and they try to raise their voices as loud as possible in the public square, upon the hope that one day the revolution will triumph.

The road still truly lies ahead in its complication, hardship, challenges, and surprises. The Syrians' journey towards achieving their dream of state and society is still waiting ahead. The crucial thing now is that the Syrians are liberated from a Nazi-like regime and they throw the black past in the garbage of history.

This is an English translation the author composed and published in Arabic language in Nida' al-Watan Lebanese Newspaper.