Like a neglected cancer that could have been cured had it been caught in its early stages, Syria has been abandoned to destruction; an entire traumatized generation is bereft of mothers, fathers, siblings and proper education.
Almost half the population forced to leave their homes and possessions. This is the worst human catastrophe since the evils of World War II, yet apart from dropping bombs, the world has done little to quell this madness.
Mistake after mistake on the part of the international community, combined with a lack of will to rescue the Syrian people from regime barrel bombs, the bestiality of terrorism and starvation, is responsible for the impasse existing now.
The so-called superpower hesitated for too long and, although it was well known that air strikes alone can’t cut it, the use of ground forces was off the table and remains so. The United Nations could only drag the unwilling to useless conferences
without result.
Europe only woke up to the tragedy when hundreds of thousands desperate Syrians inconveniently fled to its shores and only now it’s prepared to fork out billions of Euros to countries hosting refugees on condition they stem the flow while threatening to close its borders to Greece, which cannot hope to cope with the needs of asylum seekers given its own economic woes and austerity cuts that have triggered social unrest.
And those poor Syrians who’ve braved every obstacle in the hope of finding a life worth living are being treated as unwelcome pariahs under suspicion of being terrorists or rapists in countries where the far right are gaining traction.
What remains of their homeland is a country torn and bleeding; its cities besieged, entire areas turned into rubble. Historic sites that have stood for thousands of years, no longer exist. Thousands of Syrian toddlers lost to the Mediterranean; millions under canvas in neighboring countries doing their best to scratch a living and keep themselves warm during a cruel winter, while hungry families send their children to beg in the cities of Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon where they are sometimes targeted by predators while their fathers and brothers are sporadically hired as cheap labor.
Let’s not kid ourselves that there are any actors wearing halos. The regime has one goal, which is to remain intact and in charge at all costs. The Takfiri militants, including Daesh, are out to create a caliphate where minorities will face oppression. Both sides have committed atrocities; both have the blood of innocents on their hands.
And now, what began five years ago as a budding “Arab Spring” revolution, which over time morphed into a civil war, has transformed into a proxy battleground for the Russian and American camps. Topping this hierarchy are geopolitical interests.
Neither side is willing to work together for the sake of the Syrian people. Instead, they flex their muscles and issue threats as the Doomsday clock ticks closer to midnight. Forget useless attempts to forge an understanding between elements of the regime and the political opposition. The keys to ending this mess rest with Moscow and Washington because as long as they pull apart in opposing directions and provide weapons to their proxies on the ground nothing will be gained.
They are the most military powerful players and the ones with the most influence.
If they can’t or won’t settle their differences and reach an accommodation how do they expect the parties directly involved in the conflict to come together? This terrible state of affairs has gone beyond winners and losers.
There are no winners. Just ask the parents of those drowned babies washed up on a Turkish beach or those who’ve watched helplessly as their once smiling kids waste away to bones before their eyes. Ask the wives whose husbands were burned alive or forced by Daesh to sit on bombs before they were detonated or the young women whose honor was brutally robbed by monsters hiding their crimes against humanity behind their own warped version of religion.
There are no perfect outcomes either. The day when the bombs stop falling and the weapons are put down will be just the first rung on the ladder toward healing minds and rebuilding this stricken land, a process that will take many decades.
It’s a day that can’t come soon enough but as long those countries who truly can make a difference continue to bicker, it will remain a distant vision.
