ONE THING you can be sure of is that when Westerners interfere in the Middle East they make matters worse. We saw this with the Cameron/Sarkozy adventure in Libya where, contrary to their hubristic ‘Arab Spring’ hopes, their meddling precipitated the overthrow of Gaddafi and let loose a flood of Muslim immigrants into Europe. We are seeing similar unintended but inevitable consequences today of their cheering on of Bashar al-Assad’s downfall in Syria.
When the dictator was overthrown in December Western political leaders rejoiced; Keir Starmer immediately welcomed the president’s fall, voicing all the usual platitudes about the restoration of peace and stability. Never mind how that was to be assured; in naive Western eyes the Syrian people would be free at last to reconstruct their country following 54 years under the brutal father and son Assad dynasty.
Now, just three months later the internet is awash with horrifying photographs and videos of massacred Alawites, the ‘tribe’ or clan that the Assads belonged to. At least 745 civilians belonging to this minority have been killed execution-style by the country’s security forces and their allies in the past two days, a war monitor said on Saturday. Other online sources suggest many more.
Witnesses recount horrifying scenes, bodies strewn on the streets, the parading and killing of naked young women, perpetrators laughing and boasting about their brutality. Children once playing in the streets, women and men defending their families have become victims of unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the Islamic terrorists that have become Syria’s so-called security forces. This video contains distressing scenes so it is behind this link.
The Syrian Observatory on Human Rights (SOHR) reports the Syrian defence forces launched an attack on the Syrian coastline and Latakia in the mountains following an attack by Alawite supporters of the former regime. Al Jazeera reports it as Government forces battling Assad supporters. However SOHR has documented the death of 973 civilians in 39 massacres and other individual executions committed by military and security forces. There are liable to be many more. In addition SOHR says 231 members of security services and the Ministry of Defence and 250 Alawites ‘affiliated with the former regime’ were killed.
Western outrage is muted though what we are witnessing is a new crackdown on Assad’s remaining ‘supporters’ with al-Qaeda influenced security forces grabbing the opportunity to massacre Alawites, Christians and Druze. What is clear is that the violence did not stop with the overthrow of Assad.
How long can the West ignore that the inevitable has happened, that this is more than a struggle for power, but an Islamic-perpetrated sectarian genocide?
Alawites make up 10 per cent of the Syrian population. Under the Assads, they were afforded protection. Christians, who constitute another 10 per cent and Druze, 3 per cent, were also protected minorities. As such they tended to support the Assad regime during the civil war, not necessarily out of affection for the Assads necessarily but out of self-preservation.
However the Sunni Muslims who make up three-quarters of the Syrian population consider Alawites to be the wrong kind of Muslim, and despise them. Christians and Druze are also considered lesser beings beyond the pale. Without the protection of the Assad regime these religious minorities are wide open to the brutal mixture of revenge and sectarian murder spree which we are witnessing today.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, the interim president of Syria, is best known as the founder of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria, and more recently as the leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group that rebranded itself in a bid to distance itself from al-Qaeda but which remains rooted in extremist Muslim ideology.
Under al-Sharaa’s leadership, areas controlled by HTS prior to the fall of Damascus were subjected to harsh interpretations of Sharia law. These resulted in public executions, disappearances and widespread oppression. Religious minorities, including Christians and Alawites, were particularly targeted and faced persecution and displacement under his rule. In addition to its violent sectarian tactics, HTS under al-Sharaa systematically suppressed dissent. Activists and journalists who dared to criticise the group’s governance have been imprisoned, tortured or assassinated.
In a breathtaking inversion of reality during an interview with the Economist, the interim president claimed that ‘The [former] regime depended on a certain group of the people against the other groups, which posed the threat of having a full-scale civil war in Syria.’ It was the old regime’s support for the minorities which prevented the outbreak of the sectarian genocide we are witnessing today.
Discussing the problems Syria faces as they attempt to rebuild the country he said, ‘The most important of these steps is to have the Syrian people inside the country united. This is the most important capital that we have, and, thank God, this has been achieved today.’ That ‘capital’ is being squandered in Latakia and the coastal region as women are raped, civilians murdered and homes, villages and towns destroyed in a pogrom led by state troops and their Chechen allies.
Despite al-Sharaa’s attempts to portray himself and HTS as a moderate force now that they have gained power in Syria, his record betrays a strong allegiance to the principles of radical Islamist militancy. He has made statements denouncing the violence against the Alawites, Christians and Druze and has vowed to hunt down the perpetrators of the violent clashes but even if we take them at face value we are forced to question how much heed his radical Muslim followers are likely to pay.
The West’s useful idiots are finding their blithe statements of a new dawn for Syria are coming back to haunt them. The Biden regime backed the new Syrian government led by the ex-terrorist president. Biden assured the American people that the new government was going to serve all Syrians.
On their podcast The Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell conducted a ‘fascinating’ interview with ‘fighter turned President Ahmed al-Sharaa’. In a discussion marked by their theological illiteracy, Stewart and Campbell allowed the former al-Qaeda terrorist to dodge the issue of his adherence to radical Islamic teaching. There are some questions which are too uncomfortable to be asked.
The question we must ask is where is the outrage from the West? Have our political leaders stood up in parliament and denounced what is happening? Have the BBC expressed horror at the massacres? The Sunday programme on Radio 4 did report the attacks on the Alawites, but neglected to mention the slaughter of Christians and Druze. Perhaps they thought it controversial and liable to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment.
The West tries to ignore reality. Meanwhile Alawites, Christians and Druze in Syria live in dread, fearful of what might happen to them.
