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SYRIAN REBEL TAKEOVER - Much has been said about tyrants by Shakespeare, who described them well. The ancient Greeks said even more. And look at what they do to stay in power, or what various ambitious half-mad individuals do to rise to power.
In Syria, great power has passed from father to son, with all that it entails. And certainly, not to the son who was destined to inherit absolute power (the kind of absolute power that corrupts absolutely), but to another son. No subtle patricide occurred… How could it?
A family that ruled the country for half a century, only to hand it over in ruins. A regime that has been accused of even using chemical weapons against its own people—chemicals that took their breath away, turning air into a torturous struggle for survival, meaning death…
Turkey has won with the gangrene of its foreign policy—the reconstitution of the Ottoman Empire being its Plan B. Perhaps Israel has also won (another rival, "shrunk"). The Islamists, former ISIS terrorists who have changed their ideology / brains (how is that possible?), have won too. Is the "Syrian National Army" a more suspicious evolution of paramilitaries funded by Turkey, anything but positive? For Turkey and Israel, those who arrived in Damascus are Sunni rebels, but for the "holy powers"—the USA and the EU—they are Islamic terrorists, with some (see Britain) preparing to grant them "amnesty" (HTS) and cease labeling them as evil terrorists.
The losers are Russia, Iran, and even China (perhaps their military industrial complex gain something). For Russia, "after the mistake of Ukraine," its second mistake was fighting against the Kurds on the Syrian front, on the side of Bashar al-Assad. Iran sees the Shia Hezbollah movement as no longer worth the support it has been receiving for years; if it were valuable, it would have helped maintain the status quo in Damascus. The Palestinians are also on the losing side. Also on the losing side are the Orthodox Christian minority of Syria and other religious groups, all of whom are targets for everyone.
Greece is the biggest loser of all, in need of a double aspirin, because yet another counterweight against Turkish imperialism has been lost. It's as if this counterweight is being emptied of sand. The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed Assad's fall. A great loss for the former colonial matrix / power, France, which, the day before Assad's fall, celebrated the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris—Macron took the opportunity to embrace Trump two or three times, for obvious reasons. America has long lost its prestige, especially after the failed "democracy exports" that began under the Clinton administration and continued with Obama in the long-suffering region. Trump said, "Syria is none of our business..." Of course, America still has 900 soldiers there...
The Russians took in the "incoherent" Assad, so now he will have to endure the Russian winters, while thousands are freed from his notorious prisons. Maybe the Syrian people will emerge victorious, but after years of oppression, "they’ve lost the eggs and the baskets" (as the Greek saying goes). And now they are running around with plates, cutlery, and Louis Vuitton bags in their hands! Political thinking is not in their blood—not in the Arabs' strengths—religion plays a dominant role, as well as local traditions, which include a strong dose of exaggeration, cunning, and suspicion. A religion that takes one step forward and five steps back! The new rebel leader spoke at a mosque in Damascus... Where else would he speak?
Syria has been in an endless tragedy for decades. It’s a pity. Perhaps there is hope for the Kurds—I would call them Sunni Muslims with their minds and hearts in the right place, which is rare—who deserve something better in the wider region. They don’t only want autonomy; they seek their own independent state. This would be in the interest of Greece, Israel, and also America. It would also be a way to correct a historical injustice. One country has the economic and military power to redraw the borders in the region if it wants to, and that country is America.
(Dimitris Eleas is a political scientist, writer and researcher living in New York. His e-mail is: [email protected].)
