Rabat – Actually, not only is Syria under occupation but the whole region is being systematically destroyed, its infrastructures wiped out, emptied of its population chased and forced into other countries but it has practically no recourse. Not only is the destiny of Syria decided without the Syrians but it is decided for non Syrians just as that of Iraq had been without The Iraqi. With the ISIS, USA, NATO, Russia, Iran and the Gulf Emirates led coalition peace, it seems, cannot be imagined unless Syria and Iraq cease to be as single unified entities. The condition for the war to stop is the total annihilation of the cradle of Mesopotamian civilization. Other neighboring countries will not have to wait long for their turn. The whole region is being redesigned and its map redrafted, again.
A recent political joke proposes a democratic consultation of Syrians including those in territories under the rule of ISIS, those in territories under the rule of Kurds and the refugees scattered throughout the world as a result of the war waged on them by all and each of these States. It is sarcastic to propose that only the Syrians can decide who is to rule them while Syria is under the maintained fire of those making the proposition.
The Syrian crisis will be studied in history books as the unique case in which strategy has brought enemies to be at war in some fronts and allied in others at the same time. It will be taught that while two countries were downing each other’s fighter planes and feeding weapons to each other’s enemies, they were discussing how to ensure political transition in a third country. The case will be presented as a rare illustration of how conflicting interests and contrary schemes are prioritized to transcend immediate constraining conditions in preparation of a final clash. The case will also be studied as an exercise of how warring intestinal foes not only let down respective allies after they have fulfilled their role but crack down on them when it is time to crystallize their central conflicts.
Bachar Al Assad will go, the Kurds will compromise with superpowers, Turkey will recover her role as a broker of a lasting solution with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates will be reduced to their true scope, ISIS will be disbanded and an international court will be set up to try those of its leaders we will be told had not committed suicide, others will be helped to flee and disappear in Africa or South America, some will be rehabilitated into figures acceptable to rule over some province in the region, Europe will listen to the USA and Russia and comply with their final decisions. A plan to reconstruct the region will be launched that will provide opportunities to multinational companies that are actually everything but multinational. Nations will have all been dismantled…
Meanwhile, peaceful Muslims are arrested in Democratic countries for performing religious rituals and for reading official documents they have download legally from official government sites. Meanwhile, U.S. and European leading political leaders are calling for banning Muslims from their countries and for killing the families of terrorists. The whole situation has resuscitated anachronistic attitudes and ways of thinking. Extreme racism, bigotry and intolerance are conjured and brainwashing mechanisms that shied to work in the open mark a strong come back and operate with pride.
The desolation, the violence, the chaos, the destruction, and the pain resulting from war can neither be understood and coped with nor used to or met with reason while still at work. They have to be stopped and removed, that is the only solution to them.
While like all those who have been looking for political change and the departure of the tyrants that ruled in the Middle East and North Africa I took the winds that had raised in the region for the breeze I was hoping for for so long, I have been disappointed as it turned out the breeze was actually a storm that had been building up and that I had not anticipated all its devastating effects. In fact, while there has never been the tiniest place in my heart for the rulers of Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia and Yemen, now that they are all gone, I am left perplexed, not knowing exactly what to think, let alone what to feel. The region has not improved. It is all prey to civil wars as if their departure had released internal feelings of hatred I had no idea about. In any case, it has revealed conflicts among various groups and categories of the population of those countries I, like many, did not suspect they were dormant, checked by the former rulers and waiting for their departure to surface and explode in the everyone’s face.
I hear, but find it difficult to understand, that all this is happening because those former rulers had destroyed the internal and endogenous cultural, social, economic structures that could have ensured political coherence after their departure. Some even have suggested they did that on purpose. I have also heard arguments to the effect that the aftereffects of the departure of those dictators had been engineered by foreign powers whose interests would be at stake without them or jeopardized by a true democratic system.
I also heard that the sudden removal of the long suppression of freedom of speech and of political oppression had unleashed deadly ideological conflicts that centuries had failed to reconcile and that could now clash. Whatever the value of these different arguments, they have in common that they assume that both individuals and elites in the region are not mature politically, easily manipulated ideologically, deviant culturally, unable economically, driven by feelings of hate and aggressive passions and in some cases sold out to foreign interests. I have even heard that what is happening in the region is Devine judgement like the one that had struck Sodom and Gomorrah. I have difficulties accepting this. There must be some other reason everyone fails to see!
I am disappointed. I was dreaming of a peaceful transition to democratic régimes respectful of human rights and that protected individual as well as collective freedoms. Régimes led by individual and parties elected democratically and who enjoy the love and respect of their countrymen and countrywomen. Régimes under which everyone would be able to pursue happiness and in which subjects would become citizens. I guess, I just need to be more patient.
Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah
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