Farewell to Syria: How the West courts the Islamists | EUROtoday

The Assad regime fell a yr in the past. Islamist items marched from Idlib through Aleppo in the direction of Damascus. Druze items have made their approach from Suwayda to the capital. Meanwhile, Assad went to the Hmeimim air base, boarded his non-public aircraft and flew to Russia by non-public aircraft. And so 60 years of Baathist dictatorship and 54 years of Assad have come to an finish. Although there will be no discuss of the top.

The nation is in ruins. The homes can maybe be rebuilt. But what about all of the broken lives this regime has left behind? Who gives you again your murdered buddy, your stolen years in exile, in worry, in jail?

A yr in the past I traveled to Syria with my father. It was potential once more after the regime fell. The new rulers, Islamists, have been already there, however their energy had not but been consolidated in the course of the transition part. I wrote about it and spoke of a “return”. Now I feel perhaps it was extra of a farewell. There have been two main massacres of minorities since then: in March towards the Alawites on the coast, in July towards the Druze in Suwayda and plenty of “smaller” incidents.

The self-proclaimed interim president Muhammad al-Golani gave his victory speech, as he did a yr in the past, not in a public sq., however within the Umayyad mosque. There have been navy parades in numerous cities, which additionally included internationally sanctioned battle criminals like Abu Amsha. To rejoice the day, an enormous banner was hoisted in Tartus with the portraits of al-Golani, the Emir of Qatar, the Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman, Erdogan and Saddam Hussein. So much might be stated about every of the boys on this illustrious group. Just this a lot: What form of sign ought to it ship to the Kurds, who’re consistently being instructed that they need to combine into the brand new Syria, in case you dangle up the image of a dictator who’s answerable for the deaths of over 150,000 Kurds?

And this banner in Tartus is not any exception. I noticed numerous footage of Saddam Hussein on my journey a yr in the past, in Damascus, Hama, Homs, and most of all in Idlib, the Islamist capital. The fall of the Assad regime – and the victory of the Islamists – was additionally celebrated in Berlin. Around 2,000 individuals marched from Alexanderplatz to Pariser Platz. They chanted “Allahu Akbar”. A flag with the portrait of Saddam Hussein may be seen right here. Young individuals posed close by with their proper index finger raised, a gesture of the Islamists.

When I noticed the photographs from Syria and Berlin, I felt an amazing sense of loneliness. The German Embassy in Syria posted a grotesque reel on Instagram filled with images by which the brand new rulers – answerable for the deaths of Druze, Yazidis, Alawites and Christians – are shaking fingers. We misplaced, I assumed. We are all Syrians or non-Syrians who had hoped for freedom, democracy and the rule of legislation. A couple of days in the past, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights counted 11,439 individuals killed in Syria because the fall of the Assad regime, together with 8,835 civilians.

We reside in an age of impunity. The butcher Assad has acquired political asylum in Moscow from the butcher Putin, the place he supposedly spends his days enjoying pc video games. The butcher Golani has moved into the vacated dictator’s palace. But there’s a distinction: the worldwide justice system has no extra entry to Assad than it does to Putin. They are additionally rightly remoted and sanctioned politically by the West.

Al-Golani and his males, however, are courted. People wish to deport, are most likely additionally hoping to profit economically, or just do not feel like coping with Syria any additional. This even supposing the HTS, whose chief was al-Golani and which is now an everyday a part of the Syrian military, was listed as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council. Numerous HTS supporters have been convicted by German courts in recent times. Even after coming to energy, there was no signal of a departure from Islamist ideology or apply.

People are keen to be dazzled by the truth that al-Golani has shortened his beard, given up his nom de guerre and seems in public along with his spouse Latifa al-Droubi, who wears a scarf however not a niqab – simply as individuals have been dazzled up to now by the pleasant face of Asma al Assad, the “Desert Rose” (“Vogue”). The protests towards Assad in 2011 started with requires freedom, dignity, democracy and human rights. These are universalistic values. In the civil battle, Islamists fought not solely Assad, but in addition everybody who represented these values. Today, 14 years later, the West is betraying these values ​​by courting the Islamists.