What Of Today’s Syria?

In the last week, I’ve been watching Western TV news networks hype the speed with which The “Syrian opposition” or “rebels” have moved south from city to city, eventually pushing out the President, ending around 50 years of family dynasty rule, and eventually taking the capital city of Damascus.

Like every civil war, war, conflict, or whatever it’s called at the time, there are always layers of proxies, as I’ve mentioned in my past posts. Syria is most certainly no different.

A modern times’ country carved from the sands of a larger area of the Middle East way back from the Sykes-Picot (not so secret) agreement during the First World War. Britain and France with the agreement of Russia would draw their lines in the sand, sadly without really understanding the tribes, and just who they would like to govern them, and exactly where.

From that point, Syria would go through massacres of the population, depending on tribes, locations, and religions. If they weren’t fighting one another for their own reasons, they would be doing it for their proxies. Britain, France, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and more recently the USA to name many.

If you want a history lesson on the region just watch the film “Lawrence of Arabia.” It may well have been taken from Lawrence’s own writings “Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” a view through his own perspective, but it gives you a great idea of the British incompetence in the region.

Syria has turned a complete 360 degrees since then.

Arab tribes fighting for power and greed to Arab tribes fighting for power and greed…and like the Sykes-Picot agreement all those years ago, there will be countries from the aforementioned looking for a place at the table to do just the same once again.

The Christians have taken a beating over the years while caught inside the borders of the “new Syria.” I know, my wife’s father’s family originates from Northern Syria near today’s Lebanese border. Most left to live in the West decades ago now. The Kurds find themselves caught inside the borders of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. They are neither Arab nor Persian nor Turk…and all along the chance for their own country could well have been drawn up by the colonial rulers during the First World War. But they’d have to have had an understanding and a thought for the tribes on the ground to do that.

When you look at the countries of the region that the USA and their allies have got involved in over the last 100 plus years, and in particular the last 25 years…Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria…foreign policy and military policy have not gone well.

All of these countries, it could be argued, should be more than one country, or the borders drawn in order to suit the tribes. But sadly when there’s outside influence, it’s never about the tribes, as we all know.

So, to have some form of peace, the “rulers” have to rule with an iron fist to keep the lid on their country from blowing off. Again, outside influence plays its part.

If the West had backed Assad when the opposition (terrorists they would have been called in any other country) began to rebel…then perhaps the lid would have remained on, and only a couple of hundred or even less would have been killed, and no one displaced.

But that would never happen, as Assad the sitting president was playing with Russia and not the USA.

Just like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the lid blows off, the proxies play against one another…and hey presto…Damascus is full of terrorists…Islamic terrorists.

Despite the “new kids on the block” rhetoric to the free world, time will most certainly tell just where the country goes.

It reminds me of the early days of the fall of Basra to the British, as I was on the ground with the media at that time. The calm before the storm. Hope for those living there. Yet hatred of one another not really coming out overtly on the streets. Western journalists not describing exactly who they are interviewing, grabbing soundbites of hope with a little bit of trepidation for the future.

Then bang! It all kicks off.

Having been on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, and seeing the horrors after the hope…it’s gut-wrenching.

Today I’m 70, retired and living in the USA, so how do I feel today, thousands of miles from Syria? Gutwrenching.

There are countries in the Greater Middle East that are ruled by individuals just as bad, if not worse than Assad, but they are backed by the West. And the name of rebels or opposition as opposed to what they really are, terrorists…when facing a ruler not in line with the West…it has to stop!

Assad was bad, really bad…but I sense that the new administration under the thumb of Islamist terrorists will become a whole lot worse.