The Syrian National Coalition, an umbrella group of opposition political forces, has just turned down invitations to visit Washington and Moscow and suspended its participation in the Rome conference for the « Friends of Syria », in protest at the absence of a reaction from these « friends » over the destructions, by missile strikes from Assad’s armies, of the old city of Aleppo, a crossroads of cultures since four thousand years, where the Hittites, Assyrians, Akkadians, Greeks, Romans, Umayyads, Ayyubids, Mamluks and Ottomans have left their fingerprints with palaces, citadels, mosques, madrasas, khans, bathhouses, in a fascinating network of streets.
Now begins the third year of the revolt against a dictator, dictator’s son, of a brave people who, contrary to what happened in China after the June 1989 crackdown and after that of 2009 in Iran, did not give up facing the first slaughter.
The entire world sits on its hands while witnessing the assassination of the Syrian people by its own military: 70,000 deaths; 4 million homeless, being abandoned without food or medical care in Syria; and more than 700,000 refugees in neighbouring countries. For a population three times lower than that of France.
All sorts of justifications have been offered to oppose the possibility of intervening. They are all questionable: Syria had a real army, and no one could hope to overcome it: in other words, nations get help only when it is easy to win militarily. Syria was too remote: yet it is closer in distance to Europe than Iraq and Afghanistan are, and about the same distance from the USA as Libya or as Mali’s distance from France. Western countries were ruined, and could no longer fund such expeditions: this does not prevent them from wasting huge fortunes in many other foolish things. There were no general agreement in the United Nations to do so: this did not prevent the attack of Tripoli, that Russia did not authorize. We would not want, as in Libya, to give weapons to the Islamists, who would form the greater part of the rebels, nor harm the Christians who remain under the protection of Assad: it is precisely by not helping Syrian democrats that the fundamentalists’ victory is accelerated.
Even financial support is very low: even though Qatar just offered 75 million EUR, and donor countries promised one billion euros in aid, but this aid has been slow in coming and two-thirds are for refugee-accepting countries.
By acting this way, the West has everything to lose: if Assad remains in power, which is unlikely to be true, the West will carry on its conscience another martyred people, and in Islamic lands they will continue to associate secularism, the West and massacre. If Assad is chucked out, which is most likely, a new Islamist state will be present on all or part of today’s Syria, the coastal region remaining in the hands of the Alawites.
What can be done?
At least provide massive aid, rapid, and very visible to refugees in the camps, and especially to the secular government that will now try to move into the liberated areas of Syria to organize its reconstruction, proper functioning, and defense.
Also, deploy an interposition force among the belligerents, as suggested by Qatar. At Most, the use of drones to guide the rebels’ weapons and even ground Assad’s air force.
All this is still possible.