Today, Syria’s allies look back on the ten years since the start of the broad, massive civil movement that transformed into a fully-fledged revolution against the tyranny of Assad’s regime. Ten years is the price of international complicity and its support for the tyrannical Assad regime, in one way or the other. The results are death, injuries, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. What began as a peaceful struggle that won the world’s sympathy turned into the greatest human tragedy of the modern era.
This revolution exploited the various forces in the region to consecrate its presence and goals. Terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, Hezbollah, ISIS, Fatemiyoun, and Zainabiyoun, reached their goals in the battles on Syrian soil and turned the revolution into purely fundamentalist wars, far from its origins of righteous demands called for by the Syrian people.
The United States took a sharp verbal stance by placing a “red line” in front of Bashar al-Assad’s regime if it were to use chemical weapons against its people (which did happen). This was only a small chapter in the most important policy President Barack Obama’s administration was seeking at the time, reaching a nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime, Bashar al-Assad’s most vital ally. It immediately welcomed the Russian offer to supervise the neutralization of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons arsenal. Perhaps the most telling and significant issue that the Syrian revolution exposed is the reality of the positions that had been covered with enthusiastic political statements, adjusted according to the type of audience. The mask fell from the true ugly face of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which decided to declare its ugly sectarianism in defense of a tyrant and criminal regime.
It is not surprising that since its involvement in the bloody war against the Syrian people, it has not posed any real threat to Israel. Rather, Israel itself declared, through the words of its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and one of the most prominent leaders of Mossad, that the Assad regime’s survival is a guarantee to Israel’s security. This was confirmed by the Syrian President’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, who had been the economy minister of the Syrian regime at the time, when he said: “The security of Syria is the security of Israel,” in an interview with an American newspaper at the height of the Syrian revolution.
But the story that began as exemplary and gained the world’s support became one where the dear and proud Syrian people paid the price alone, with interests prevailing over their rights. Israel warned Obama and his administration about its fear for its security in the event of changing the Assad regime, which had kept the occupied Golan Heights quieter than Hawaii’s tourist resorts throughout the year for four decades. Then, there are also the Russians, who decided to enter with all their resources to save the regime in exchange for a lifetime deal that gave them a military base, gas exploration rights in the Mediterranean, major arms deals, and a gradually expanding sphere of influence. But the human cost was terrifying and dreadful, a sin committed by everyone who had abandoned the Syrians and decided, in various ways, to keep the criminal.
Ten years of broken dreams amid which lives were lost, blood got spilled, people got lost, and families were displaced. These are the tragic outcomes of the immoral political decisions supporting the Assad regime, which has caused killing and destruction from the first moments of the revolution’s outbreak. This should clarify and prove to the world that the clear choice is either he stays in power or blood is spilled.
Syria’s economic situation today is catastrophic; it is facing hunger in a very real sense after losing its ability to provide its basic needs, and its national currency lost more than 85 percent of its value, thus leaving it unable to compensate for its shortages through imports from abroad. We have also been hearing, over the past few days, that a political agenda is being cooked for the post-Assad period, primarily under Russian auspices, as it has come to hold the mantle. However, the contours of the next phase remain obscure, though the Assad regime, its cohorts and its mercenaries will certainly take great care to increase the cost of change that is to be paid in blood, which has always been paid by the great Syrian people. Ten years “to be remembered and not to be repeated.”
