By Walid al-Bunni
Four monsters are testing the will of the Syrian people: The Alexa storm, the crimes of Bashar Assad, the failure of the international community, and the inefficiency and subordination of the opposition.
The Syrian people are as determined as ever to finish what they started 33 months ago. There is no return to a regime of corruption and slavery.
Is the tragedy and the hardship of the Syrian people testing their will, or motivating them to pursue their determination for freedom and human dignity?
Until now, all what was missing was the storm Alexa that came to complete the quartet of death and destruction.
The storm exposed the harsh reality for the Syrian people. Their plight began with a tyrannical and ruthless regime, with its determination to remain in power and dictate the future of the oldest civilizations in the region. They have been exposed to its support by the Lebanese and Iraqi sectarian militias, who believe in the killing of women and children is pleasing to their god.
This is a regime without conscience, without any humanity or shame. The brutality and the military might of this regime has displaced millions inside and outside the country. Seeking refuge in the surrounding countries, those millions of Syrians are now dying from cold and hunger while the regime is boasting of its victories, the destruction of its cities and the displacement of the inhabitants.
Alexa uncovered the adulterated declarations of those who call themselves the “Friends of Syria”. Their statements began with “Assad’s days are numbered” and declarations of unlimited support to the opposition, and a red line that Assad has crossed more than five times. These phony declarations reached the peak with a decision to destroy Assad’s chemical arsenal, giving him carte blanche to continue the killing of Syrians and destroy cities and villages using all kinds of weapons of mass destruction.
Meanwhile, Syrians are left to die from hunger and cold without any serious effort to provide basic assistance.
Our “friends and brothers” have failed to force the tyrant to comply with the peaceful Syrian revolt. They have made many international declarations demanding he cease killing protesters, yet could not make him stop even if they wanted to. They allowed him to pillage and kill indiscriminately, and invite all the extremists of the world to Syria.
The tyrant summoned the sectarian militias of Hezbollah, along with Iraqi and Iranian militias, after his own army was killed or joined the ranks of the revolution, leaving the door open for Al-Qaeda and its extremist ideas to infiltrate Syrian society which for centuries had been an example of tolerance and religious moderation.
Then Alexa came and stripped the fig leaf off the various institutions and formations of the opposition. Alexa has exposed the systematic corruption among the ranks of the opposition by regional and international states in efforts to dominate the agenda in Syria. The opposition has failed to gain the support of the Syrian youth in their aspirations for freedom and dignity. It failed to address the hopes of the Syrian people to rid themselves of the regime that has systematically exploited, tortured, raped and killed them for decades. The actions of Assad’s security forces has made the Syrian youth easy prey for extremists, only heightened by the corruption and opulence of the opposition.
The storm revealed the frailty of the Free Syrian Army. It demonstrated the fragmentation of the opposition and their fraudulent competition for position and benefits. It showed the disintegration of links between the Syrian people and the so called democratic opposition and all its civil and military institutions.
It exposed the sectarian polarization process of the Iraqi, Iranian and Lebanese militias that support the Syrian regime. Although filled with hatred towards one another, these militias worked together to reach high levels of popularity among the Syrians by adopting an extremist religious discourse.
We need to address this reality seriously and urgently.
We need to stay loyal to the dream of the youth that started the revolution for freedom and dignity, for all those martyrs and all those who still are in Assad’s catacombs of torture, frustrated and lost in despair and extremism.
To do so, we need to start by curing the ills of the democratic national opposition and install the principle of freedom to all Syrians.
There is still a chance for those Syrians faithful to the revolution to launch the Syrian national project again. We need to identifying the priorities; the first being to abolish the tyrant regime, and second, to maintain a unified Syria, land and people, free of all extremism.
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