June1, 2012
By Saeed Qureshi
Insensitive
and unmindful like a psychopath of the ongoing unflagging uprising and
citizens’ beastly massacres, the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad exudes in
public appearances a broad smile and a cheerful countenance that reflect as if all
was fine in Syria.
The incumbent Syrian
president is the son of that heartless predator who preyed upon his own dissident
citizens and killed them without batting eyes. Mostly they were from Sunnis groups
including the Muslim brotherhood. Perfectly fitting into the proverb “like
father like son”, the incumbent Syrian tyrant is brazenly treading on the
footprints of his fiendish father Hafiz Al Assad who was rightly nicknamed as
the Butcher of Damascus.
During his barbaric rule of 30 years, Hafiz
al Assad ordered at least six brutal massacres in which several thousand Syrians
were killed. In some of these massacres, the people were not only shot point blank
but were buried under the debris when they were still alive. One of such gruesome
massacres was carried out in Hama village where the entire population was
massacred, their houses bulldozed and the ground leveled with dead or alive bodies
underneath.
The Hama massacre occurred in
February 1982, when the Syrian army, undertook a
scorched- earth operation against the town of Hama in order to
quell revolt by the Sunni Muslim
community against the regime of al-Assad. Reportedly 10 thousand to 40 thousand
citizens perished. In the 13 October 1990
massacre executed during the
closing times of the Lebanese
Civil War, hundreds of
Lebanese soldiers were executed after they surrendered to the Syrian forces
The Syrian fierce uprising against the
incumbent regime that began in January 2011 is fast turning into a civil war. According
to a rough reckoning, thus far it has swallowed over 12000 human lives while around
35000 are reported to be injured or maimed. All the initiatives, efforts and
appeals to the Syrian government to stop the use of unhindered violent means
and heavy artillery and weaponry, has fallen on deaf ears.
A United Nations Security Council’s resolution to end the violence in Syria was torpedoed
by a double veto of Russia and China on February 4,
hours after the Syrian military launched a deadliest attack on the city of Homs.
The Arab
League suspended Syria's membership over the government's response to the crisis,
and sent an observer
mission in December
2011 without any tangible progress. It failed to persuade the Syrian authorities
for ending the escalating violence and appalling brutalities being
indiscriminately inflicted on the demonstrators. Kofi Annan,
the special envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League, was in Damascus
trying to keep alive a peace plan under which Mr. Assad promised six weeks ago
to end the violence. He as usual defied that pledge
The strong
condemnation by United States, the European Union states and
Gulf Cooperation Council states (GCC), had remained
futile in impelling Bashar to desist from the bloodletting of Syrian people who
want to change the dictatorial regime run by a minority religious section and
bring a populist democratic government.
Besides imposing
a surfeit of sanctions lately, the United States, Britain, France and at least
five other major nations expelled senior Syrian diplomats that could
lead to a similar action by other states that realize it was time to force the
oppressive and betraying Alawite regime to initiate talks with the opposition
groups for restoring peace and transfer of power.
But this time
the situation presents drastically different scenario. The revolution is to say
is part of the sweeping Arab spring that would not dissipate or relapse notwithstanding
the temporary setbacks till the repressive tyrants merciless despots, and
bloodsucking dynastic sovereigns are obliterated.
The regime in Syria is engaged in an insane, callous
and frenzied witch-hunt of the agitators by attacking and besieging the cities wherever
the anti-regime demonstrations take place. Yusef Khalil in his masterpiece article, “A
Turning Point in Syria” published by socialist worker.org. tells us that “The
Syrian military has used heavy weapons, tanks, bombs and artillery to destroy
entire civilian neighborhoods…….. Tens of thousands have been detained or
disappeared, and hundreds of thousands displaced”.
According to Yusef Khalil, “what began as mostly unarmed demonstrations
has, in response to the intense government repression, turned to arms to defend
the protests from the military and the regime's thugs. with large demonstrations in every part of the country,
and entire cities falling out of the regime's control, only to be attacked and
taken back by the armed forces with reckless slaughtering of those who come n
their way.”
If the Syrian dynastic regime is under the
illusion that finally it would be able to overpower the unrelenting countrywide
upsurge then it should be taken for granted that that day would never dawn in
beleaguered Syria. The overriding reason
for such forecast is that the disaffected and brutally suppressed people of
Syria never imagined that they could rebel against a callous tyrant in such a
defiant manner. They would not lose this historic chance by backtracking from a
revolutionary struggle.
The Alawite regime has been keeping itself in
the power saddle by dint of terrorizing her own citizens for almost 42 years.
The insurgency or liberation movement is like water which one finds way flows
out. The distressed and oppressed Syrian people being killed and brutalized
incessantly by regime would not sit back after huge sacrifices ranging from countless
deaths to destruction of their houses and displacement from their own land.
There are two potent groups braced against
the Syrian regime. One is the Free Syrian Army (FSA) backed by Turkey that is
battling in the streets and markets of Syrian towns and cities against the
Syrian regular army. It consists of independent
groups and individual brigades that believe in the armed struggle as was done
by the Libyan armed groups.
The
second is the pro west Syrian National Council (SNC) set up by the Syrian
exiles that supports the foreign intervention even armed as was done by the
NATO in Libya to protect the Syrian people from the pogroms and mass killings by
the Syrian army. This entity wants harsh sanctions againt the Bashar regime and
its functionaries besides creation of no fly zones.
The Syrian revolution pits two regional
powers against each other for achieving their coveted goals of leadership.
Saudi Arabia and its protégé Qatar would want the Shia minority regime of Alawite
to be dismantled and defeated via the Syrian armed groups and by the foreign interventions
powers.
On the contrary Iran would not like its
partner in faith and a close ally and neighbor to be destabilized and overthrown.
If Alawite regime is removed like that of Libya then Iran’s influence in Arab
world would considerably whittle down. The Lebanese based Hezbollah also harbors
and supports the incumbent Syrian regime because of common faith and for showing
their solidarity with a patronising regime.
Although foreign support is indispensible in
this historic movement, yet essentially it is neither the colliding powers
trying to fish in the troubled Syrian waters nor the external invention that
could bring the regime’s downfall. It would be the people themselves most
notably the working classes, the suffering downtrodden, the suppressed
religious and ethnic groups, the farmers, the intellectuals and all those
sections of society who would herald this colossal change. It is only the Syrian masses who would replace
a dictatorial dynastic regime with a system of government where the power
belongs to the people and not to a coterie of blood sucking, rapacious and
diabolic usurpers.
Why don’t the isolated tyrants realize that
they can no more hold on to their tyrannical regimes any longer in the present
liberating times? The supreme sacrifices of the Syrian people for ending the reign
of incessant terror let loose on them for decades would not go in vain.
If a gubernatorial change can come in Egypt
with deliverance from a rogue, pharaoh like tyrant, it can as well be brought
about in Syria no matter what the sacrifices of the people or the stakes of the
foreign stake holders are. The Arab spring would eventually also make its enchanting
advent in Syria with all its fragrance, charm, glory and magnificence and as a harbinger
of the national liberation and the establishment of a popular government. That
blessed day is not far off.
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