Omar Aziz told his friends: ‘If the revolution fails, my life and that of my entire generation would be meaningless… Everything we dreamed and believed in would have been an illusion.’ He died before seeing the triumph of the revolution and reaping the fruits of his work. The Syrians who are still alive owe a huge debt to Omar Aziz and the tens of thousands of Syrian martyrs. It is a debt that cannot be repaid with tears and moving tributes. Nothing else would suffice but to fight for a free Syria.
On the occasion of the 12th anniversary of the death of Omar Aziz on February 16th, Syrian libertarians and internationalists are calling for lessons to be learned from this revolutionary figure for the continuation of the Syrian revolution, and for the rediscovery of the writings of Syrian revolutionaries in a freely accessible work. [ 1 ]
” A new beginning also needs a new road map, a new direction to continue moving forward. We want to move forward together. To do this, we must first find each other, recognise each other, and orient ourselves in these new coordinates. ”
Omar Aziz, a Syrian anarchist born in 1949 and died in 2013, had in fact returned to his native Syria during the 2011 uprising and had invested in the creation of local councils – in the suburbs of Damascus – supposed to become the embryo of the new popular power against the state of Bashar Al Assad. These popular committees of the early days of the revolution, which had been the site of a direct democracy, even if limited, were in the years that followed crushed by state repression but also swallowed up by Islamist opposition. In 2011, Omar Aziz published the book Les Comités locales de coordination en Syrie to theorise the first moments of this experience.
Omar Aziz was arrested in his home in Mezzeh in November 2012 and died the following year at the age of 63.
(1) https://rememberomaraziz.net/