Cui bono?

It didn’t take long for headlines out of Syria to turn, did it? Locals that set fire to Hafez al Assad’s grave and celebrated the “dawn of freedom” could ignore the sudden food and fuel shortages for only so long, after all.

Besides, they’re realising just why and how the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) suddenly wiped out Syria’s entire military arsenal – missiles, ammunition, aircraft, ships, you name it – overran the previously Syrian-controlled buffer zone in the Golan Heights and positioned its tanks just 12 miles (20kms) from Damascus.

And it did all this in a matter of hours, while most people in the capital were still pinching themselves in disbelief, as if it knew just what was happening, how fast it was happening, and was simply counting the minutes to the regime’s collapse. Also – this is important – surely some of them would be wondering why Golani said he wasn’t interested in “another fight right now” even as Israel left his newly liberated country without a functioning military/air force/navy?

They’re also waking up to the reality that ISIS started sharpening its knife the minute Bashar al Assad fled. Granted, most Syrians hated the minority Alawite rule of the Baath Party.

But they also understood the hypocrisy of western media that celebrated Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) as heroes of the revolution while in reality it was an offshoot of ISIS that hijacked the legitimate 2011 uprising that stemmed from the wider Arab Spring. Soon its head-chopping, liver-eating crusade, so heavily subsidised by American and Gulf intelligence, was centred not as much around the ruling party as any grain of sectarian/religious thinking that did not agree one hundred percent with its own al Qaeda-esque fanaticism.

So – you won’t find this in the foreign corporate press – the hated yet secular Assad and his allies became the last line of defence keeping Syria from turning into another Afghanistan.

And the fact that the government of Israel and ISIS’s hordes inside Syria were salivating at the prospect of his fall is a testament to the ancient Roman concept of cui bono – who benefits? The phrase is attributed to one Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla, a Roman consul and judge known for his rigorous pursuit of justice and assumes that identifying the party who benefits from an act (especially a crime) may point toward the perpetrator or underlying motivation.

No doubt the Assad regime had few admirers in the country, and it will take a while for the victims of his family’s half-century of oppression to make peace with their scars. But a people’s revolution must, by definition, come from the people, not brainwashed fanatics – Tariq Ali’s “slaves of empire” – trained by the most rich and powerful, not to mention duplicitous, intelligence services in the world.

Remember Saddam and Gaddafi? They, too, were epitomes of the iron-fisted strongman that would stretch you on the rack in a second for threatening their rule. But, in 20-20 hindsight, no Iraqi or Libyan prefers the al Qaeda/ISIS nightmare that came after them, nor do many Arabs not dependent on CNN or Reuters for their newsfeed take these mercenaries as their liberators. That’s not to defend the strongmen, just not to defend what replaced them.

So, while the list of those who benefit from Assad’s fall includes both Israel and outfits like ISIS that now control Syria, and of course the seat of empire that directs arms and money to both, it does not feature the people of that country. That’s why analysts that know the place and its problems were so quick to call this change a “downgrade”.

Just like Afghans, poor Syrians, so used to the liberalism of the regime they loved to hate, must now live with the new rulers’ radicalism and call it freedom; only theirs is paid for by Uncle Sam, relished by Israel, and delivered to them by the latest regional reincarnation of al Qaeda/ISIS.

Postscript: Interestingly, Dawn’s recent editorial about Syria ended with the words “…if Syria becomes a hotbed for a resurgent IS or even more bloodthirsty groups, the western bloc will be held largely responsible for destroying another Muslim state, and enabling a new set of extremist monsters”.

That’s rich, isn’t it, because the “western bloc” is already more than “largely” responsible for the effective destruction of a number of Muslim states, and indeed enabling different sets of “extremist monsters”.

Yet now it’s evolved from fighting those monsters in some countries to paying them to fight for it in other countries – the Obama White House’s “leading from behind” novelty that this column never tires of mentioning. And it doesn’t really give a toss about anybody, or even the whole world, holding it as much responsible for this or any other thing as they want.

Also, far away from Syria, another country – Pakistan – is also making noise about the state facing insurgent pressure from a radical outfit, TTP (Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan), that has found welcome refuge across the border in Afghanistan. Go over the headlines of the last week or so and you’ll find the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban prominent among militant groups that congratulated HTR (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) for toppling the “godless” Assad regime – victory for Islam, glory of jihad, and all that. There’s no mention of a reply yet though.

In a way it was here, in the time of the so-called Afghan jihad, that the soldier-cleric phenomenon – of which Golani’s radicals are only the latest extension – was first created. But that’s a story for another time.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024