I last visited Syria in 1997. Had paid the visit as a mark of reverence and gratitude towards Syeda Zainab (RA). What a beautiful city, country it was then. How cheerful were its inhabitants. But what has global politics alongside deformed brains of the local leadership made it look today? A tale of human misery.
The UN is dead. So is the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). So is the entire Muslim Ummah. So is the world and most regrettably, I suspect, the human race is dead, at least up to the degree of being totally numb towards human suffering.
The traumatic conflict in Syria has claimed more than 500,000 lives. All possible crimes against humanity have been liberally imposed by all, towards all. Rape, loot, plunder and destruction has been taken to new heights of zenith. The UN recently issued a 29-page report on war crimes unleashed in Syria - that's all the UN can do; issue a report. They can't prevent war or its related crimes. Since the UN can't help stop the crimes, they cannot finish it and with total lack of international accountability against genocide, the UN actually indirectly strengthened the perpetrators. War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity; it destroys states, it destroys religion, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it. (Martin Luther).
The world has silently witnessed the madness in Syria for the last seven years. The war has now entered into its eighth year. Seven years of mayhem bombarded upon unarmed, innocent population. Seven long years of silence or turning a deaf ear by the global leadership, be it political, social or religious. And to an equal degree of amazement seven long years of sullen silence of the Muslim Ummah. Do these actors on the world stage not know that war is a disease not an adventure.
A few months ago, along with Russian support, the Syrian regime has pounded Ghouta with an onslaught of aerial and artillery strikes, killing over a thousand people. For some dirty politicians of the world, it is not merely cruelty that drives them to war, it is excitement, too. War is a misery.
The Syrian observatory for Human Rights based out of the UK has an even compelling story to tell, it records that between 2011 to till date, over 13,800 children have been killed. Wives raped and killed in the presence of helpless husbands, who later suffer the same fate. Children exposed to killing of parents and vice-versa. It obviously impregnates their young minds and the trauma that will remain with them for their whole life. They kill by bombing, who do they bomb to death - children in schools, patients, old, infirm, and weak at the hospitals and those in medical camps.
Almost 8.6 million people of the 10 million population of Syria today are in dire need of support - bombed and shelterless, they are a continuous stigma on the once prominent trait of nobility of the human race. There are now millions of children in Syria who haven't seen or attended, school of any sorts, in the last seven years. In the neighbourhood, Turkey, an Islamic country has been firing more fiercely on Syria's Turkish border's Kurdish enclave of Afrin. The city of Afrin lies in the north of Syria, close to Turkey. And it fires upon Afrin because they see it as a city offering threat and hence in their estimation deserve to be heavily and indiscriminately bombed.
Although J. F. Kennedy told the UN General Assembly in 1961, "mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind". Yet the current and the recent past administrations of the US pay only lip service - to no war and make peace concept. They only issue hollow threats they would act if the war doesn't stop - a seven-year of amazing patience. When will the US Act? And when? And, why not now? Nay, they would not. The sights of innocents with bloodied faces and fright writ large upon their faces, brightens, pleases and emboldens, Trump, an avowed enemy to anybody who, he does not consider to be an American.
Between 2014-2017, the UN admits that 2500 children have been killed - in any other part of the world, if such crimes were to surface - whole world would rise in protest. But since it is downtrodden Syria and equally having reputation of being the underdogs of the Middle East, it should make matters easier for the war-mongers to make and consider the butchering of human future, as a justified act. Russia sees Syria as its last foothold in the Middle East. The fascination of the Arab leadership and rulers with Russia is a fading phenomenon or almost dead. The Arab Spring had frightened most of these illegal governments. Iran for its own political, economic interest, considers it best to help arming Bashar al-Assad, the man who wears the crown dripping today with the blood of 13,300 children and infants. If Assad catches even a two-minute sleep; any night, then I am in such deep anguish about his lack of apathy - when gods wish to punish, they turn man to madness, so said Shakespeare.
With over half a million laid to death since 2011, the spending in achieving this uncouth behaviour and objective, is a staggering amount of USD 226 billion. It does not require mathematics of any genius to do basic GDP growth rate Syria would require in the following decades to earn back money sunk in the war. The vultures of business are only lying in wait for the war to stop and then to get most lavish and ridiculously priced contracts of reconstruction. First, they sell arms to indulge into mass-scale destruction; then they send their businesses to provide men, machinery and materials for undertaking the reconstruction work. War, not peace, keep churning the wheels of international economics moving - sad, but true. Although, it is a fact that in war, all are losers and there are no winners.
Some limited Syrian victory, which is revolting and nauseating seems to be on the cards - they have carved eastern Ghouta into three zones - but victory is always short lived and for a short span. A political solution is the only answer. But will Syria and its partners - Russia and Iran - agree to? A difficult question! The answer though can also be simple. No. Why? Because national economic interests rank higher than the noble objectives of keeping men, women and children safe in their homes.
In pursuit of war, Russia and Syria and Iran portray themselves as giants but when it comes to make peace, they act like pygmies. As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular (Oscar Wilde). Only if world leadership would recognize that the most disadvantageous peace is better than war.
Let peace win. Let war lose.
(The writer is a freelance contributor and a columnist)