by Eze Eluchie,
Any
objective observer of Arab and Middle Eastern affairs will affirm that foreign
induced change of rulers in the region has always been a recipe for prolonged
and violent pogroms. The very recent examples of the overthrow and murder of
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Qhadaffi and the continuing mayhem
and destruction foisted on not only that region but with the blood spilling
globally, should have ordinarily served as trite warning to outsiders who meddle
in what they least know about - to desist therefrom.
From its
very inception in the wake of the Arab Spring series of revolutions which
engulfed Arabia and the Middle East some 5 years ago, sectarian and ethnically influenced
efforts to oust the Al-Assad regime in Syria (which served, alongside the very
shaky government in Lebanon, as liberal regimes in the Middle East where
Muslims, Christians and persons of divers ethnic origins had access to high
political offices with women accorded tangible freedoms and equal rights) elicited
much greater interest from across the world than earlier episodes of the Arab Spring
which in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya, which had largely been considered
as internal affairs of those countries. With benefit of hindsight of the
outcomes of what had been erroneously considered populist mass-led revolutions
in other parts of the Middle East, particularly the revolutions in Iraq and
Libya which had replaced stable, though authoritarian leaders, with mob-rule
and territories largely ungovernable which now serve as breeding grounds for
international terror syndicates, there was a felt need by some in the
international community, particularly UN Security council veto-vote wielding countries
Russia and China, to prevent a repeat of the ugly situations now existing
across much of Arabia.
Fears that
an ouster of the Al-Assad regime would have led to sectarian exterminations against
Christians and other religious minorities, ethnic genocide against Alawite
tribes and the enthronement of extremist Islamists in Syria, a whittling away
of the erstwhile liberal society that had existed in Syria and retrogression of
gender and people’s rights has been further brought to the fore by the reality
that the so-called rebel forces striving to oust Al-Assad, inclusive of the
Free Syrian Army, derives much of their fighting stamina from either the
Al-Nusra Front and other Al Qeida linked terrorists organizations. The war in
Syria long ceased to be a civil war as much of the so-called rebel fighting
force is populated by foreign fighters from as far flung territories as
Tunisia, the Russian caucuses and other areas where jihadist elements were
imported to fight an extremist Islamist cause. In the event that the Al-Assad
regime had been overthrown, Syria would certainly have gone the way of Libya,
Iraq and Egypt (under the Brotherhood) – back into damnation and a period where
women in accord with extremist Islamic philosophies, disappear from public view
and become mere chattels of their menfolk.
It was, is
and continues to be right and appropriate in the interest of the peoples of
Syria and their neighbours and the international community in general, that for
now and the foreseeable future to heal the wounds of the debilitating battles,
the Al-Assad regime and its structures continue to superintend over Syria. The
United States and its allies can for now forget their untenable insistence on
ousting the current Syrian regime – previous regime change has left the Middle
Eastern countries where such has occurred, and the Middle East region
generally, far worse off.
Should the
assertion in the foregoing paragraph be mistaken as an approval of all tactics
used in prosecuting the war against the ‘rebels’, ‘moderate extremist Islamists’
and terrorists? Certainly not! Wars by
themselves are necessarily bloody, moreso when the war is being prosecuted
against terror elements who adopt such unconventional tactics as suicide
bombings, chemical weapon attacks, use civilians and civilian-structures as hostages
and other quite lethal and effective means to gain whatever advantages they
need to, without the slightest of reservations.
As the
Syrian war crosses the 5 year mark with daily reports of heart rendering
fatalities and battles and wastages to which entire communities and several
millions have been subjected to, it has become pertinent in the interest of
Syrians and overall humanity that an immediate or expedited end be put to the
wars in Syria. The following steps are recommended:
1. A
ceasefire to allow for safe and free passage of civilians from the war zones,
particularly Aleppo and its adjacent territories into areas where they can be
adequately protected and given much needed humanitarian assistance.
2. Armed combatants
in Aleppo and other rebel held territories should be encouraged to lay down
their weapons, surrender. The instrumentality of the United Nations can then be
adopted to superintend over reconciliation and rebuilding efforts and other
transitional arrangements.
3. Efforts
will thereafter be focused to extinguish Islamist terrorists, ISIS and Al Qeida
and their affiliates.
At an
appropriate time, issues of who committed which war crime or crime against
humanity against whom in the course of the ‘Arab Spring’ across Arabia and the
Middle East, inclusive of crimes against the peoples of Libya, Iraq, Bahrain
and Syria will then be objectively addressed – raising such issues now appears
to be deliberate ploy to continue the sufferings of the peoples of Syria in
particular and the Middle East whilst allowing extremist Islamist terror
elements a crack through which to flourish and establish their horrendous strangle
hold over that region.
Picture: Pictorial comparison of
parts of Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, before and during the war.
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