dianadarke

Arming Syria’s opposition forces – to do or not to do

English: Cult of personality in Syria, Square in Aleppo displaying former president Hafez al-Assad (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After more than two years of sitting on the fence, the West is being forced to decide. The trouble is the West is split, with some elements jumping off the fence on one side, and others jumping off on the other – and some are still clinging to the fence desperately trying to avoid having to make a decision at all. Countries are split, political parties are split, even families are split. There is no clear or easy option.

Islam’s greatest thinker, the medieval theologian Al-Ghazali, told the story of The  Donkey Between Two Carrots. The donkey agonised over which carrot might be juicier or bigger for so long that it ended up dying of starvation in the middle. And the moral of the tale? Indecision is a form of decision and its consequences can be fatal.

But the Syrian tragedy is being prolonged not just by one but by two metaphorical donkeys. It is not just our indecision in the West. The indecision of Syria’s own population is also a big factor. The ‘greys’, ‘the silent majority,’  after living for so many decades under repressive Ba’athist rule, have been silenced by fear, fear of reprisals, arbitrary arrest, imprisonment or worse.

In terms of numbers ‘the silent majority’ makes up at least 70% of Syria’s 22 million population – in other words over 15 million people. How do I work that out? Because the people actively involved in the fighting are an absolute maximum of one million on either side, those employed by the regime in government, military or intelligence positions are a further 2 million maximum, so the remainder, leaving 2-3 million aside who are now refugees in neighbouring countries, are ‘undecided’.

It is easy for us in the West to blame this ‘silent majority’ for their apparent quiescence in the current situation. But we have not lived through what they have lived through, not come anywhere near experiencing the pervading culture of fear they have endured since the 1970s when the Ba’athists and Hafez Al-Assad came to power. We have not had family members abducted and threatened, or worse.

They need our help. They need our courage to liberate them. They cannot liberate themselves. The overwhelming majority of them are moderate Sunni Muslims with decent human values and principles who want nothing more than to earn their living and look after their family. Yet the media has got hold of the kind of sensationalist scare stories it so loves, so that we now imagine them to be ‘cannibals’ to use Putin’s words, or fanatical Al-Qa’ida types intent on terrorizing the West. How can we be so misled by the media?

Of the 100,000 or so fighters opposing the Assad regime, a maximum of 5,000 could perhaps be labelled ‘extremist’. Most are in the Aleppo and Idlib area, where there are certainly some extreme groups who have been able to thrive thanks to the power vacuum we have left through our inaction. In Homs there are less than 50 such fighters, and in Qusair there were none at all.

Instead of obsessing about this 5% of extremists, who are too small in numbers to have any real say in a post-Assad era, we should be focusing instead on the 95% who desperately need better arms to a

Map of Syria with Idlib highlighted (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

void being slaughtered by regime forces. If we do not, they, like Al-Ghazali’s donkey, will die a long slow death while we, like Al-Ghazali’s donkey, do nothing but agonise in the middle.