Omar al-Hasan, Baladi News
Syrian regime and its supporters have been seeking since the beginning of the popular revolution in Syria to create an image for the regime through a wide network of mass media and pages of social networking sites which will move it from the category of the killer, authoritarian and dictatorship regimes into a regime that expresses freedom, liberty and secularism along with caring for the minorities in every sense of the openness to the western values through which the regime wants to say that his enemies are against these values and want to take the country 1450 years back in history.
The regime's supporters use a number of direct and indirect ways to promote it in this image as they own and run a big group of media, accounts, and pages on the social networking sites which are being run according to a policy that aims at delivering a specific image about the life in the regime-held areas as it's a "secular" and open regime and different from the "reactionary" regimes in the region, which imposes many constraints on their citizens, especially the Gulf regimes and Turkey which the west is dealing with as being Islamic-oriented "reactionary" regimes.
These means depend on relatively keeping away from politics and avoiding the direct presentation of the regime's secularism by showing positive sides of the daily life of the extremely loyal Alawite and Shiite regions where no forms of demonstrations or military actions were reported against the regime and therefore didn't witness any bombardment or any features of war. Moreover, those areas are considered the basic human sources for its troops and are also the primary downstream for all the looted money from the rest of the Syrian cities, and it can be said that these regions are growing and witnessing an urban movement and becoming richer at the expense of the rest of Syrian regions which are being subjected to systematic destruction.
These scenes and photos which are being published from the regime-held areas, specifically from the Syrian coast, show a very normal life away from the atmospheres of war and rather exceeds what's happening in Syria from killing and destruction as if they are taken from another county despite the facts that the battels or the besieged areas are 1 or 2 kilometers away. There are no military uniforms, weapons or tanks, but young men having fun and playing as if they are living in the paradise under the rule of a secular regime which doesn’t prevent them from enjoying their lives according to the western style; the same style that was described by the regime itself as reactionary before the war.
These scenes are associated with scenes from the life in the regime-held areas in the capital Damascus and Homs, where bars and casinos appear full of people along with concerts and the opening of fancy department stores, which the western resident doesn't know that most of the civilians in the regime-held areas can't afford shopping at them, but their customers are only the city's nouveau riche who have collected their fortune during the war.
While these media hide the scenes of misery and suffering that have become the distinctive feature of the regime-held areas which are witnessing unprecedented numbers of homeless, disabled and destitute.
Most of those who appear in these scenes are from the thugs and their relatives, regime members, security branches, national defense, along with the regime's loyalists whose lives have become much better after being supported by the regime during the war.
The western spectator who receives such scenes and images will believe that this regime is actually fighting against the extremists because what he is seeing are scenes of the everyday life of civilians just like him, which according to the regime's propaganda is a "wrong" lifestyle which the extremists are trying to replace with their mid-ages mentality.
In addition to publishing footages that show Russians as being "partners of the civilized world". For example, a video that went viral on the social media showing a helicopter (Kamov Ka-52) flying over a crowd of people on the coast of Latakia. It shows a mixture of the Russian military power and the "friendly" relationship between the Russian pilot with the Syrian civilians who are trying to enjoy their times on the beach, in a scene meant to cover hundreds of people who have been killed by this pilot and annihilating hundreds of the cities that are burning alongside Syria.
Furthermore, dozens of concerts' scenes in the regime-held areas within the city of Aleppo that are trying to say that the city is divided into two sections, one controlled by the regime's opposition members, who are mainly consisted of "terrorist organizations" that want to destroy the life of civilians, and another under the regime's control who lives a "normal" life.
Also, sending "Hafez al-Assad" to one of the scientific contests in Hong Kong which represents a proof on the regime's attempt to invest in all the areas that present it as a regime reconciled with the west.
Moreover, the regime has sought to use his undergraduates in this campaign to whom it organized several exhibitions and scientific competitions, which it used to say that it supports science and technological development, while all the people who were studying in technical fields and in particular the areas of electrical engineering know that you need a security approval for the implementation of any project and scientific experiment which the regime has always banned and held those who work on it accountable.
Have the Regime Succeeded in Promoting for this Image?
It can be said that the regime has so far succeeded in that, as it's unlike the opposition in its all forms, investing many resources in building its "civilized" image and publishing it in many languages, whether English, French, Russian or others. It seeks in all ways to penetrate the western media institutions and strengthen its relation with them along with the various international institutions in order to turn them into a reliable platform trusted more than the regime's figures and able to deliver the "good" image of it to the west and present it as the secular regime who is defending civilization against monsters coming from the dark pages of history.