Syria’s Young Pioneers

“Some scouting leaders call scouting a chronic disease once it enters the body, it can never exit,” only half-jokes Mogera Atassi, leader of the Damascus-based Troop 35 of the Scouts of Syria. Having been involved in the movement since 1981, it is a journey that makes itself known in his instinctive retelling of scouting’s history, or perhaps, his impressive archive of scouting proverbs, recited without hesitation. Quoting the scouting movement’s founder, Lord Baden-Powell, on the fly, “Scouting begins as a game and ends with a good citizen.”

Introduced in 1912, scouting’s arrival in Ottoman Syria and Lebanon make them the first Arab countries to see the formation of a scouting movement–only four years after scouting was originally founded in Great Britain, Atassi proudly relays. He delivers the fact as context, but it implies an accomplishment, a proof of authenticity bearing witness to the fact that scouting is innate to Syria. An institution embedded in a national DNA. As a matter of another fact, scouting in Syria predates a Syrian state, with Syria having only gained independence from the Ottomans in 1918 and the French in 1946. In this sense, the Scouts of Syria predate and outlast all.

Throughout the history of the movement, there have been attempts on its existence–ranging from exploitation to restriction to outright bans. Nonetheless, the Scouts of Syria have endured, surviving every effort to suppress them, outliving every regime that sought to impose its will on them. The Ba’ath Party was only the latest, and undoubtedly, most barbaric martinet. After 61 years with its boot upon Syria’s neck, the party came to vanish with the demise of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on December 8, 2024. Scenes from Syria captured the elation, for there is much to rejoice, and yet there is also an overwhelming sense of disbelief…54 years of Assad rule, 14 years of war, all coming to an end in 11 days.

Suddenly, Syria’s entire matrix is being reconfigured as we understand what Syria looks like outside of the Assad regime. To understand what a shared Syrian identity looks like outside of terror, the ubiquitous visual landscape of Assad portraits and a daily pledge of allegiance to the Ba’ath Party. Syria became a state created in the image of the regime, fancying itself a deity; the mere existence of a civil society was deemed a provocation. The war only exacerbated that gap between Syria as state and Syria as nation, fracturing Syrians along ethnic and sectarian lines.

Only months removed from Assad’s fall, nation-building is the subject of nearly all Syria-related discourse. Much is to be started from scratch and so, in times like these, Syrians may look to those rare institutions that have withstood all. Scouting is one such constant–an alternative civil model to the regime’s good citizen, defined by silence and distrust: a black hole in the place of a national identity. The Scouts of Syria ingrains instead a loyalty to the nation, a duty to its people, rather than an obedience to the state; on this, Atassi is full of conviction, “When you build a good citizen, you are building a cohesive society founded on principles and morals. Therefore, if you want to build a country, you must build the person first.” 

There is something deeply intuitive about the model of Syrian citizenship that scouting instils. It is a citizenship rooted in the Scouts’ belonging to Syria, and yet, it is universal. After all, the global scouting movement’s listed values–integrity, respect, care, belief, and cooperation–speak to a perennial human truth of how we hope to treat others and be treated in return. The practice of this truth forms the movement’s praxis: teaching youth how to embody this code of conduct. “Scouting is a pedagogical movement, it aims to build the characters of young boys and girls–to build properly,” Atassi says, paraphrasing scouting’s doctrine.

From one to many, scouting’s philosophy scales the Golden Rule to create a society of individuals who are collectively-minded, bound by the idea that servitude serves us. It is a grand mission but so obvious when Atassi explains it, “[Scouting] teaches discipline and morals through law and covenant, other differences are irrelevant, ideological or religious.” This open-mindedness is not an attempt at political correctness but rather a sincere description of how the movement has always seen itself in Syria: a national pastime for all Syrian youth, no matter who they are. Atassi continues, “Every scout is a brother to every scout and a friend to all people, as stated in the law: one people, one nation.” 

Indeed, one single scouting troop may consist of all of Syria’s identities, weaving together religion, class, and gender–Atassi frequently describes this multiplicity as a fuseifusah, or mosaic, integrating all. However, if scouting reflects the country, it would be a clustered composite, as troops are only found in Syria’s bigger cities. “Scouting in rural areas did not have the same opportunity due to a lack of financial support and the regime’s unwillingness to allow the movement to spread,” Atassi laments. It is a fact that is hardly surprising: throughout Syria’s modern history, punctuated by coups and rebellions, the scouts have been both embraced and constrained by whatever power is laying claim to Syria that day.

The origins of this contradictory relationship between the authorities and the Syrian Scouts can be traced back to the French Mandate, to which the Syrian and Lebanese scouts’ nationalism was growing in response. In one Beirut-based journal, Al-Kashaf (The Scout), a scout manifesto published in 1927 titled “Al-kashfiyya khidma wataniyya” (Scouting is a National Service) outlined scouting principles such as being in nature, good deeds, and personal development. Yet these individual needs were ultimately meant to serve the nation as a whole, through the idea that scouting “wants to turn them into great men who will take their nation by the hand and guide it to life.”

Under the Mandate, the Scouts were disbanded more than once for their alignment with anticolonial nationalism, which sought to end French control. Such limitations on the scouting movement, followed by their recovery remain a recurring theme in Syria, whether under external or internal occupiers; it is a history that echoes the perils and promises of organised youth movements across every geography and era. Thus, as scouting briefly flourished following Syria’s independence from France–with the first-ever mass gathering of Arab scouts, called the “Jamboree” taking place in Syria in 1954–the Ba’ath Party’s ascent to power led to an official ban beginning in 1986.

With that, the Scouts of Syria’s properties were seized and given to the Revolutionary Youth Union, the Ba’ath Party’s own youth organisation. “And this was not the first time, the land at Zabadani, where the first Jamboree took place, was also confiscated,” Atassi regretfully recalls. Despite the regime’s remaining hostility towards the Scouts, Hafez al-Assad briefly allowed the organisation to resume in the 1990s due to pressure from abroad. In 2006, however, the Scouts of Syria were revived during Bashar al-Assad’s reign, under the full control of the Revolutionary Youth Union.

Until and throughout Syria’s civil war, the Scouts of Syria remained limited but exploited nonetheless, having all overseas funds sent by global scouting organisations siphoned by regime associates. The disintegration of Syria’s economy during the war only aggravated the Scouts’ financial circumstances; even today, many in Troop 35 struggle to afford uniforms or the meagre membership fees. Yet, it is those dedicated individuals, like Atassi–who implemented a system for passing down uniforms from older scouts to younger ones–that have kept the movement alive. He does not doubt the movement’s future in Syria, declaring confidently that “It will return stronger because the rope of scouting ties us together.”

How the Scouts of Syria have come to persevere speaks to scouting’s force acting in tandem with its nationalism, leveraged by all persuasions, from fascists to communists, from colonial powers to anticolonial governments. It is youth. Children especially are seen as “embodiments of a basic human goodness (and symbols of world harmony); as sufferers; as seers of truth; as ambassadors of peace; and as embodiments of the future” according to cultural anthropologist Liisa Malkki. There are few things as universally moving as young people, and few things onto which we project our aspirations and agendas so viciously.

Scouting, in particular, speaks to this desire to lay claim to the children of the nation, with its romantic imagery of organised youth in uniform, engaging in outdoor activity, abiding earnestly by Scout Law. The air they evoke, that of simultaneous naivete, patriotism, nostalgia, and militarism, is highly captivating, and in being so, at once both threatening and heartening. And we are captivated yet again by the scouts as they replace the two-star flag patch they have worn for decades with a brand new three-star one. They show us that we can unlearn fear, that it is possible to trust each other again. 

No matter what the crisis de jour is in Syria’s modern history, the scouting movement remains a constant. Wearing their uniform uniforms, marching in marching bands, the scouts stay young as we age, as colonisers come and go, revolutions agitate and lull, and dictators rise and fall. The scouts are there, the living embodiment of the constitution of our shared imagination. The ideogram of the Syrian national identity, these youth carry us forward to the promise of a kinder future, remaining devoted as they always have, guiding the nation in the transformation from subject to citizen.