Since last one week most of us have had our social media timelines filled with news report after news report, heart-breaking photos and videos coming from the Ghouta region of Syria where airstrikes killed nearly 628 civilians of which a large number were children.
What is the reason for the ongoing conflict in Syria and is there any solution in sight?
How and why did it all begin?
The start of the Syrian conflict, or ‘civil war’ as it is termed in the press, can be traced back to the pro-democracy protests that rocked Syria in 2011 during the height of the Arab Spring and the subsequent brutal crackdown on them by the Assad regime. However, there are several factors which contributed to the atmosphere of the uprising. In 1982, Hafez Al-Assad, then President of Syria (father of current President Bashar Al Assad), ordered a military crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama, killing tens of thousands of people and flattening much of the city. Severe drought plagued Syria from 2007-10, causing as many as 1.5 million people to migrate from the countryside into cities, exacerbating poverty and social unrest.
Bashar Al Assad came to power in 2000 and in the years that followed various cultural and political forums of discussion began to shut down due to government pressure. In March 2011, peaceful protests erupted in Syria, after 15 boys were detained and tortured for writing graffiti in support of the Arab Spring. One of the boys, a 13-year-old, was killed after having been brutally tortured. The Syrian government, led by Assad, responded to the protests by killing hundreds of demonstrators and imprisoning many more. Although the 2011 protests were non-sectarian, the armed conflict exposed deep sectarian divisions. In his public statements, Assad sought to portray the opposition as Sunni Islamic extremists in the mould of al-Qaeda and as participants in foreign conspiracies against Syria.
The regime also produced propaganda stoking minorities’ fears that the predominately Sunni opposition would carry out violent reprisals against non-Sunni communities. Therefore it was a combination of these events, a history of lack of political freedoms, unwarranted suppression of ordinary citizens, stoking of sectarian fears, economic woes and the straw that broke the camel’s back – the brutal crackdown on the protestors and inhumane treatment of those detained, that ignited public anger. In July 2011, defectors from the military announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group aiming to overthrow the government, and Syria began to slide into civil war.
ROLE OF FOREIGN INTERVENTION
Foreign backing and open intervention have played a large role in Syria’s civil war. Russia entered the conflict in 2015 and has been the Assad government’s main ally ever since. The governments of majority-Shia Iran and Iraq, and Lebanon-based Hezbollah, have supported al-Assad, while Sunni-majority countries, including Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia supported anti-Assad rebels. Since 2016, Turkish troops have launched several operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) near its borders, as well as against Kurdish groups armed by the United States. The US has armed anti-Assad rebel groups and led an international coalition bombing ISIL targets since 2014. The US has repeatedly stated its opposition to the Assad government backed by Russia but has not involved itself as deeply. At the UN Security Council, Russia and China have repeatedly vetoed Western-backed resolutions on Syria.
Peace negotiations have been ongoing between the Syrian government and the opposition in order to achieve a military ceasefire and political transition in Syria, but the main sticking point has been the fate of al-Assad, but they have consistently been ineffective. In the latest round of talks at the UNSC last week, a 30-day ceasefire has been agreed upon unanimously after several delays. Fighting in Syria continues on two main fronts, Eastern Ghouta, where recently, Syrian government forces backed by Russian warplanes escalated bombing resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths, and Afrin, where Turkey and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) began in January 2018 a military operation against the YPG in north-western Syria. The fight has been joined by pro-government forces.
HUMANITARIAN COST OF SYRIA’S CIVIL WAR
Since the beginning of the conflict, more than 465,000 Syrians have been killed in the fighting and over a million injured. Now having gone on longer than World War II, the war in Syria is causing profound effects beyond the country’s borders, with many Syrians having left their homes to seek safety elsewhere in Syria or beyond. Over 12 million – half the country’s pre-war population – have been displaced from their homes, which is, in other words, the Syrian refugee crisis.
Targeting civilians, indiscriminate attacks, use of incendiary weapons, cluster munitions, and chemical weapons, unlawful restrictions on humanitarian assistance, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, and deaths in custody are some of the human rights violations that have taken place in Syria.
COULD ALL OF THIS HAVE BEEN AVOIDED?
If the Assad-led government, (which claimed to be “very closely linked to the beliefs of the people,” (Assad in an interview), was truly interested in the welfare and betterment of their people, they should have solved the political and economic problems which were brought up by the people in 2011. Rather than holding any kind of negotiations or talks with the people, the Syrian government responded to their citizens’ plight with unjustified violence and suppression. The various terrorist groups, including Daesh, found a golden opportunity for fulfilling their interests and taking advantage of the public resentment, joined the conflict, essentially escalating the vicious cycle of violence.
As Guardian columnist Natalie Nougayrede pointed out, the story of Syria is a “moral defeat for Europeans”. She writes, “Historians may one day tell us to what degree the west wasted a chance to force Bashar al-Assad to the negotiating table, had sufficient and timely pressure been brought to bear on his forces, in particular through targeted strikes. That’s how Slobodan Milošević was forced to sign the 1995 Dayton agreement, which put an end to mass atrocities in Bosnia. In the summer of 2013, a window of opportunity was arguably lost as a result of American hesitation. If archives are ever opened up, we may learn that it was the US failure to uphold red lines over chemical weapons use in Syria that emboldened Russia’s Vladimir Putin to launch his military intervention in support of a dictator whose army had been massacring civilians since 2011.”
USA’s hypocrisy also stands exposed. USA felt no qualms at all in carrying out a military invasion of Iraq in 2003 supposedly to “reinstate democracy for the Iranian people”. One wonders, what was stopping them from offering to be a negotiator during the start of the conflict? Perhaps Syria would not be suffering the way it is, if only, all the negotiations and talks had happened then, rather than later when terrorist organisations joined the game for their own interests and the scale of violence became too large to tackle.
Currently, on the international stage, there are mainly two proposed solutions for the Syrian conflict, namely the American one and the Russian one. Unfortunately, both these visions do not recognise the ground realities of Syria. What is needed for moving forward are measures – not grand plans – that seek strategic, targeted relief for civilian populations, while reducing armed hostilities and violence in the country. (Samer Abboud)
LESSONS FROM SYRIA
First, the notion that we are completely helpless is not true. In a democratic society, the government is formed by us, the common people, and therefore our foreign policies indirectly shaped by us. If we unite in large numbers and thus make a strong case for helping the cause of Syrian people, definitely we would, at least to some extent, effect tangible changes. And if this phenomenon was observed by every country, in Europe, in the USA and especially the GCC countries who, rather than fulfilling the role of “Ummat-e Wast”, have become puppets of USA and Israel, then we would surely observe the start of change.
Every single person, not just an Indian, who is pained by the humanitarian disaster in Syria, must ask themselves… “Am I really so helpless? Are we as a democratic nation, really so weak? From now, the people to whom we give our valuable votes, the people who wish to hold the reins of power, now we will demand that they take a serious stance on issues such as Syria, that they refuse to be mute spectators to this carnage. And we will hold them accountable.”
An-Nu’man ibn Basheer reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be to him, said, “The parable of the believers in their affection, mercy, and compassion for each other is that of a body. When any limb aches, the whole body reacts with sleeplessness and fever.” (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim)
Let us not give the excuse that, unfortunately our government is not exactly at the forefront of protecting human rights especially those of minorities. This is the ugly reality, yes, but for how much longer?
Just as we unite for Syria, Palestine, Muslim Personal Law, let us also unite for addressing both our internal problems as a community as well as strive to be a role model, helping hand and guide for others. In sha Allah, the least that will happen is that we will prevent another Syria.