When
will you get the message? Comply, as Jordan, Egypt and others did and
we’ll protect your leaders, ensure favorable press, shore up your
economy, secure energy needs, and engage your businessmen. In short:
abide by our imperial diktat.
by
Barbara Nimri Aziz
Alternative
advice to a marginal (but an ambitious) nation determined to follow
an independent course might be: build a solid self-sufficient
economy; lure home your best expatriate talent in IT, engineering,
medical research and media. Having done this, you may survive if: if
you keep your head down, if you don’t ally yourself with another
strong power, if you abandon all regional ambitions, and if your
people don’t try to excel? Above all, never do anything nasty “to
your own people” allowing human rights specialists to declare at
the appropriate moment, your “threat to humankind”.
Whichever
is the best strategy for survival, neither Syria nor Iraq found a way
to avoid the wrath of the American-Israeli-British bloc.
We could
make lists of ‘did’ and ‘didn’t do’, one for Syria and one
for Iraq, to compare their compliance. In any event, they’ll both
earn “F”. So they have to be starved, humiliated, desiccated and
demonized. Then, when this doesn’t produce a sufficiently
convincing “F-minus”, they’re bombed, and bombed again.
It’s
Syria’s turn. The only reason I can imagine how Syrians feel
today—those citizens who are somehow managing to survive within its
borders– is because I was in Iraq in February 2003, in the days
preceding the US invasion there. Women and men and children and
soldiers and medics and teachers and diplomats and
journalists—everyone–mutely awaited the blows. Finding themselves
at that threshold stunned the whole population. Why? Why: because
Iraq had begun to get back on its feet after a decade of brutal
embargo and exclusion. The cost to the nation had been huge. But (by
2000) Iraq managed to lessen its diplomatic isolation; it even
expected the United Nations might lift the US-imposed sanctions.
Citizens commenced determinedly to rebuild. They could glimpse the
end of the tunnel.
We know
what happened next. And we know how that invasion was fabricated on
phony evidence to “finish the job” (an idiom common to cowboys
and gangsters).
Now to
Syria fourteen years on. As recently as December 2017, ISIS was in
retreat and citizens began to return to areas liberated by an
exhausted but still viable Syrian army. Territories occupied by ISIS
and other rebels were retaken by Syrian troops. Some inter-city roads
reopened, heating oil was available, food prices seemed lower, and a
few foreign groups dared to visit the capital. Gasps of hope
emanating from the besieged people were palpable.
In the
case of Iraq, by 2002, it started to rebound after a decade of
decline due to the embargo. The entire nation had been fractured and
impoverished; bodies and nerves were battered by pollution, disease
and scarcity of medicines–all precipitated by the blockade. Iraq
lost millions of its young; its wheat fields had been destroyed,
first untreated by pesticides, then firebombed by foreign aircraft;
its diplomatic energy was exhausted, and its Kurds had secured a
protected territory which forecast the nation’s possible breakup.
Iraq had an army but no air force, its planes in disrepair, its
pilots gone. The nation’s oil revenues, controlled from outside,
were of little use in addressing its massive civilian needs.
Starting
in 1998, with astonishing fortitude, Iraq had begun to erode the
blockade, extracting itself from that deadly vortex. Baghdad hosted
an international trade fair. Building cranes reappeared on the city’s
skyline; regional airlines began regular flights into Baghdad
airport.
Just
when Iraqis felt they might actually beat back the embargo, they were
confronted by another war—a blanket military assault. And no one
doubted how defenseless Iraq was.
Worldwide,
acknowledging the inevitability of an invasion on Iraq, a few million
people roused themselves in protest. That day, February 15, 2003, I
was in Mosul in north Iraq and I witnessed firsthand the public’s
bleak mood. Those far off demonstrations, instead of offering hope,
only confirmed to Iraqis the veracity of the military plan against
them. (Who cares what those panicky demonstrators shout; they are 13
years’ late.) That dissent, they muttered, was disingenuous, driven
only by Americans’ fears for their own fighters.
Now,
Syria. In 2010, more restrictions were added to earlier sanctions
that had already marginalized Syria globally and impeded its economic
development. Wikileak’s published diplomatic documents, reveal that
by 2006, Washington had a stated objective to overthrow the Syrian
government. The uprisings in North Africa (the so-called Arab Spring)
may have provided an impetus for the burst of public dissent in
Syria. Aftera merciless crackdown by security forces, civil unrest
spread until the country devolved into a sectarian war that spread
more quickly than was experienced by Iraq. Syria’s once robust and
proudly self-sufficient economy began to collapse; youths and
professionals left, emptying its universities and hospitals of staff
and students.
Foreign
observers surmised Syria would fall within six months, that Al-Assad
could not withstand the forces mobilized against his government. They
didn’t know Syria.
With
Russian support, but drawing on its willfulness and military power,
Syria surprised everyone. Although the toll on its troops has been
high, Syrian forces recaptured land lost to its foes. It kept major
roads open, and secured unfailing support from Russia, Iran and
Lebanon.
Losses
to the nation are immense, the staggering civilian toll graphically
recorded day after day. Although terribly crippled, the country
managed to regain territory and defeat ISIS on several
fronts—successes lamented by the western press. Syria’s defeat of
ISIS notwithstanding, American generals declare that they will remain
in Syria “until ISIS is defeated”, then announce that additional
fighters will be sent to the country.
After
the US president muttered something about disengaging from Syria, the
press challenged him to demonstrate resolve, to show real leadership,
how the job was left unfinished. Saturday, the bombing began,
silently applauded by Israel, and bolstered by the UK and France.
Source:
Comments
Post a Comment