An interview with a Syrian Christian: “I don’t prefer USA’s freedom to Syria’s”

In the age of new media, it has become increasingly easy to have conversations with people you know nothing about, who believe in values completely removed from your own and have opinions on contentious subjects that you can barely believe possible. I had one such conversation with @HumanishTweeter when he responded to something I said about Syria on Twitter.

For a bit of context of the current situation, a New York Times article discusses how squeezing the economy (in the form of sanctions) will eventually put the pressure on the merchant elite to rebel against Assad:

““We’re all waiting for the thing that will crack them,” an Obama administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “And it will be the economy that will wake everybody up, both those who support him, and Assad and his circle.”

“…But uncertainties persist over the international strategy to put pressure on the Syrian economy. American and European officials have debated whether the sanctions will end up hurting average Syrians more than the leadership. Some analysts have contended that the government may try to paint itself as a victim and court support by casting the sanctions as a contest of “us against them.””

These economic concerns are oddly foregrounded by my conversation with a Christian Syrian tweeter whose comments (although vitriolic and angry) echo this unease over economic loss and its effect on the average citizen.

He said: “Millions of them [the people of Syria] despise the uprising as fake, and a mere grab for power.Syriawas extremely at peace in itself for many years now, and there was no reason to do this at all. Ask yourself why Syria is the target of world scorn… but the Saudi King is 100 times worse and people like Obama kiss his ass.”

“It’s all a joke. Israel wants Assad gone because of Hezbollah…Israelis the most powerful lobbyer of American politics, so, we support their bidding.Syriawould be fine, if not for little power hungry killers, aka, “peaceful protesters” [who are] shooting at police etc. Not all of them are violent, I know, but it [Syria] wasn’t some hell hole. The sanctions were the worst thing about Syria, and the very people that set the sanctions up (to get people to topple Assad) are the same people the rebels sided with.”

I commented that there were obviously people not at peace with the regime, who chose to rebel.

He replied: “I believe their motivations are revenge for what happened under his dad, the 20 thousand Hama deaths. It’s the past. Well, see if “families” were tortured for vengeance, of course that’s wrong. But I don’t believe all these stories, either… but if some occur, I can’t believe Assad etc signed off on it. It’s like in theIraqwar, someUSApeople did brutal, sadistic things to prisoners etc, but it’s not like generals wanted it happening…just random crimes.

I pointed to stats, to Amnesty, to the facts that say that these kinds of crimes aren’t random, but a way of inciting terror and keeping the oppressed downtrodden. The recent expose of the use of torture to keep family members in foreign countries from protesting was alarming, not because it’s surprising, but because it points to worse human rights abuses happening in Syria that we don’t know about. I asked if he believed he was truly free under the Assad regime?

“Free. I am Christian. Jesus when he was here never preached overthrow of the Romans. Ever. Why? Because unlike what Jews thought, Jesus knew true freedom is within, spiritual…USApreaches freedom, “land of the free”… know what they did recently? Forced fag marriage on the state of NY, against what violators of NY already said NO to on a ballot. They did the same nationally forcing abortion on our people. Free you ask. To do what? Live? Have families? Be happy? Yes…. to be a fag and get married and kill your baby? No.”

And most importantly, a statement that echoes the youth from all over the Arab Spring countries: “I don’t preferUSA’s freedom toSyria’s. This is my point,Syriain that regard was free. What nation doesn’t have rules people hate? They were as free as anywhere except to make mass money, because of sanctions. Makes many people think “if only Assad were gone we could make more cash.”” Surprisingly, many of his concerns echo orthodox Christians all over the world (the loss of the nuclear family values) and are concerned less with the war, but what the regime change will do to his lifestyle and values (however misguided they may otherwise be considered.)

As part of the Christian minority, perhaps “@humanishtweeter’s” worries are founded in becoming part of a sizable minority in what would otherwise be a Sunni Muslim majority. Media reports suggest that Syrian Christians worry that the unrest could turn into civil war, dividing another country by religion where the divide, previously existent, was not yet so fractured.

The statements portrayed here are xenophobic, racist and bigoted, and yet I see an echo in his worry about Western involvement, in how it will change his country and the way that economic sanctions are, not just potentially, damaging the average citizen. I support the movement in Syria completely, but I cannot help thinking it’s worth listening to the other side, only in the hope of coming to some kind of middle ground, remembering the minority groups which also make up the country, and maybe changing these extreme opinions into something more inclusive.

Failing to realise the promise of 9/11

Robert Grenier wrote an insightful piece on the US’s initial reaction to 9/11 on Al-Jazeera English. He says:

“What the president failed to take into account was that with al-Qaeda, the struggle would never be just about terrorists or the willingness of states to confront them. Terrorists cannot long survive in societies which fundamentally reject them. If the US were actually to lead a global movement against terrorism, it would have to find a way to appeal to the many Muslims, including majorities in many countries, who then sympathised with al-Qaeda’s struggle, even as they rejected al-Qaeda’s tactics. It would have to find a way to respond to the young Pakistani Muslims in my own son’s grade school class, many of them from the most privileged families, whose reaction to 9/11 was to say “Now you know how it feels”.

…

“Those were the things I wished to say in that imaginary message to the White House. But prescribing policy is forbidden to intelligence officers, whose role is to inform policy, or to carry it out. And while those rules may have been bent beyond recognition in the case of Afghanistan, where a hitherto obscure field operative was actually asked to recommend policy to the White House, it was hardly an open invitation. As I knew in my heart at the time, the “other half” of the War on Terror was simply not to be.

For the US to assume genuine moral leadership of a War on Terror, it would have had to confront the conundrum at the heart of its policy, to try to reconcile the fact that some of its most prominent “allies” in the struggle against terror were themselves at base the prime instigators of global terrorism. For all that the Bush Administration would speak in later years of a “War of Ideas”, it brought nothing to the fight, other than the self-deluding notion that antipathy towards the US in the Muslim world was based on some colossal misunderstanding.”

For a retired CIA veteran to come to the heart of what has happened in the “war on terror” movement is astounding. The Bush administration, it seems, sentences a people to never-ending racism, hatred and indeed, terror in a different kind of way. The assumptions that people now make when they see a “bearded, brown person” are to do with the media-fed ideas on terror, which imagine that every Muslim is a fundamentalist, every Muslim woman is oppressed and every Muslim man a terrorist.

To reiterate something rarely said in the media, this is not true.

Islam has degrees of faith, much like any other religion. People follow them as much as they choose to. As we’ve seen with the Arab Spring, it was the US that often financed and facilitated dictators in the Middle East, because of their interests being close to their own. They choose to allow atrocities to happen, all for access to Middle Eastern oil.

Today’s media is focused on what is happening in Libya. “It is a revolution,” they say, “and we are helping them.” The British and the Americans are deeply vested in the shifting movement. Gaddafi is to face trial in Libya, and these countries get to say they helped unseat a dictator. Again. Whether Libya will go the same way as Egypt, when the general outcry was that “this wasn’t the revolution they wanted” but instead a Western-imposed democracy, remains to be seen. However, we have to hope that Orhan Pamuk’s brilliant quote, “Can the West endure any democracy achieved by enemies who in no way resemble them?” does not resound truthfully in our ears again.

The fighting today over Gadaffi’s last remaining stronghold continues, as does the scandal which links British and Libyan secret services, under his rule. It is a well known fact that torture is used in secret prisons around the world. The fact that Western powers condone it is not unsurprising, either. The fact that documents that prove the truth of this have been revealed, is surprising. Yet, it will not impact what is overtaking Libya today. The background behind this “war” is what matters; the US is intervening to unseat a dictator who they initially put in place, all in favour of getting to Libya’s well-stocked oil reserves.

The media focus matches this continual hypocrisy. Why are the atrocities that are being conducted in Syria as this is being written not brought to the frontline? The humanist approach that provides reasoning for the many wars going on around the world apparently does not apply to a country where people are being killed daily. Arab leaders are attempting to stop the bloodshed, yet the only action offered by Western powers is as it is currently being termed, “a war of words.”

I appreciate that Western powers cannot engage in every war, help (if that’s what you can call it) every human rights atrocity that takes place around the world, yet the nature of how they pick and choose who to help is clearly all to do with aid politics. Nothing is done for free, of course, and yet the decision to allow a country’s population to languish under bullets and torture seems far more cold-blooded than one would expect. Although sanctions are being put in place, will they really make enough of an impact on Syria’s economy to stop the bloodshed? The Syrian people seem unwilling to have Western intervention change the course of their revolution as it did in Egypt and Libya. The fact that violence spiked during the Red Cross visit seems representative of this. Although Cameron claims that the situation in Syria is different, the “moral imperative” approach still applies. The lack of intervention has only increased the crackdown in Syria. The solution it seems is for foreign help which does not include the West, something which seems alien to most interventionist wars, yet in this case seems to provide a solution to help the peoples of Syria, without losing the integrity of their revolution.

The rhetoric surrounding the “war on terror” continues, and yet, the terrors perpetrated by the apparent victims of this war are far more note-worthy. Coming up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11 would perhaps give the United States a moment to reflect, think back on the last ten years, and perhaps figure out what is slowly leading their country into economic decline and international disrepute.