Navigating Syria

I unfriended another Facebook friend this week. It may seem a trivial matter, but for me, it is not.

The reason for my action was Syria. As in Egypt, Syria has instigated many social media breakups with people who, until then, were regarded with a degree of respect and admiration.

But this is not a social media affair. The problems lie at the core of the Syrian conflict, with all of its manifestations, be they political, sectarian, ideological, cultural or intellectual. While Palestine has brought many likeminded people together, Egypt has fragmented that unity and Syria has crushed and pulverised it to bits.

Those who cried over the victims of Israeli wars on Gaza did not seem very concerned about Palestinians starving to death in the Yarmouk refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus.

Some squarely blamed the Syrian government for the siege that killed hundreds, while others blamed the rebels.

Some went further, blaming the residents of the camp. Somehow, the refugees were responsible for their own misery and needed to be collectively punished for showing sympathy to the Syrian opposition.

The only line of logic that exists in the Yarmouk narrative, as in the Syrian story as a whole, is that there is no logic.

It turned out that solidarity with Palestinians has limits. If forces loyal to President Bashar Assad do the shooting — and the shelling and the starving — the plight of the refugees is open for discussion.

It also turned out that some of those, who pose as human rights activists, are rarely compelled by ethical priorities, but rather by dogmatic ideology that is so rigid it has no space for a sensible argument based on a serious investigation of facts.

Some self-proclaimed progressives have decided to make Assad the last line of defence against American imperialism. They did so with Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi as well.

Their line of reasoning does not stem from a serious understanding of the legacies of the two men, but from an entirely different set of representations, as in the West’s attitude towards Libya and Syria.

Syria supported Hizbollah and Hamas in their resistance to Israel. True.

Leading US neoconservatives have plotted for years to “roll back” Damascus, and to subdue any resistance to Israeli hegemony. Also true.

But delineating these truths and others, in all that the Syrian government has done — the horrendous war crimes, the perpetual sieges, the unhindered violations of human rights — everything is somehow forgiven. These are not to be discussed, or even acknowledged. In fact, for some, they never happened.

The other side is just as culpable.

Crimes committed by opposition forces and Al Qaeda-affiliated groups are heinous and barbaric. A simple news search produces volumes of crimes, massacres of entire villages and of whole families or individuals who belonged to the wrong sect or religion.

The intellectual crowd that opposes Assad is also unmoved by all of this. It often pins the blame on Assad or the thugs (shabiha) for any reported crime anywhere in Syria. 

And when news emerges that the victims were loyalists to Assad, some find ways to twist the story in order to place the blame on Assad forces anyway. But when more is revealed to prove the responsibility of an opposition-affiliated militia, or a gang, they simply shift gears to a massacre elsewhere, which is real or fabricated.

How is one to navigate a Syria where there are no “good guys”, where a return to the status quo of an inherently corrupt, oppressive and undemocratic, clan-based government is unthinkable?

And where neither Al Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant nor any other warning faction offers an antidote to Syria’s many ills, but, worse, offers an archaic and essentially violent interpretation of Islam?

How is one to navigate the Syrian intellectual realm when both narratives are riddled with half-truths or outright lies, where each discourse is predicated on the complete dismissal of the other?

How is one to navigate this territory when many intellectuals who also masquerade as human rights activists turn out to be narrow-minded ideologues devoid of any humanism?

Assad is not a deity. He is no Che Guevara either.

The crimes his forces committed would be enough to send thousands of his backers to perpetual imprisonment.

His opponents are no liberators. Few amongst them have any potential of instating democracy or justice. Their crime record is vile and frightening.

The Syrian narrative is very complex because a just solution is not a matter of clever articulation of words.

Aside from the Syrian camps, parties involved include Western powers, Arab governments, Israel, Russia, Iran and a cluster of intelligence agencies and legions of foreigners, on all sides.

The agendas are mostly sinister. The media campaigns are driven by lies. The story of the Ghouta chemical attack of last year is particularly poignant. A war was about to break out, led by the US and cheered on by Arabs.

A recent investigation by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh suggests that the whole thing might have been a plot, involving Turkey, to indict the regime. He argues that the Americans knew it, yet were still ready to go to war.

If the Nusra group was indeed behind the Ghouta killings of hundreds of innocent Syrians, it does not make the Syrian army innocent. Far from it, as it killed thousands. 

The barrel bombs continue to level entire neighbourhoods. Those who survived the chemical attacks, died in numerous other ways.

With 150,000 Syrians, including 10,000 children dead, 6.5 million are internally displaced and 2.5 million have fled beyond the country’s borders, no one is innocent.

As for the pseudo-intellectuals who are keeping track of one body count and ignoring the other, they must wake up to the fact that there is only one pool of victims: the Syrian people.

But how do you navigate an impossible story?

You side with the victim, no matter the colour, sect or creed. You remain committed to the truth, no matter how elusive. You drop every presupposition, abandon ideology, permanently discard dogma, and approach Syria with humanity and humility.

We need to understand the roots of this heinous war, but we also need it to end for the good of the Syrian people.

The Syrian conflict should not be a stage of bloody political intrigues for the West and Russia, Israel, Iran and the Arabs. Syria is not a God-given inheritance of the Assad-clan and its friends, a space for another extremist experiment, as were Afghanistan and Somalia, or another imaginary battlefield for social media leftists whose claim to socialism is an occasional Facebook profile photo of a clasped fist or an earth-shattering quote about defeating capitalism.

Syria belongs to its people. You either stand on their side, or on the side of the oppressor. 

The writer, the managing editor of Middle East Eye, is an internationally syndicated columnist, a media consultant, author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London). He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.