SYRIA: AND WE THOUGHT IT WAS AL-ASSAD

It’s been 73 weeks now since Bashar al-Assad’s Syria has consistently been making the headlines on our screens and on prints for obvious reasons; since Thursday 15th march 2011, this erstwhile Arab league member country has been embroiled in a chain circle of political conflict, public demonstrations and a full-blown civil war that the United Nations new Special envoy to Syria, Brahimi, recently described as ‘’staggering’’ and ‘’catastrophic’’. And that’s not an exaggeration; In August alone 5,440 casualties were recorded. The fighting has displaced more than 1.5 million people inside Syria and sent tens of thousands more fleeing across its borders. In Turkey, which hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees, the number is ‘’70,000 and climbing fast; about half of the refugees are children many of whom are likely to have deep psychological scars’’, notes Carol Batchelor, head of the Turkish office for the UN refugee agency.

But this is not the attention this writer intends to draw.

I need you to follow me, please.

What, or is it who, has brought al-Assad to this point? Why is this change not following an order as we know it with tyrants like Idi Amin Dada or Muammar Gaddafi? Why is this not playing out like it did with Saddam Hussein and like it did with Hosni Mubarak? Is this 47 year old Bashar really a tyrant?
These questions have kept this writer awake for some days now and I would like to share with you my findings. Let’s begin, shall we...

*’’Idi Amin Dada, born in 1925 or 1928( now that’s the beginning of his weirdness!), was a military dictator and president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British Colonial regiment, and later the King’s African Rifles......eventually Amin held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Army and became its commander before seizing power in the Military coup of January 1971, deposing Milton Obote............his rule was characterised by gross human rights abuse, political repression, ethnic persecution, extra-judicial killings, nepotism, corruption and gross economic mismanagement.......Amin was largely backed by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, the Soviet Union and Germany’’(Hitler’s very country!).

*’’Mummar Gaddafi, born 7th June 1942, was the official leader of the Libyan Arab republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the ‘Brother Leader’ of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. Gaddafi entered the Royal Libyan Military Academy in 1961 and graduated in 1966........he steadily rose through the ranks of the military and joined a group in hopes of deposing King Idris. He did seized power from King Idris in1969 and remained as Libyan Leader until 2011. In the 70’s Gaddafi often personally presided over the executions of members of any form of opposition or those with ties with the Jewish state.......he vocally opposed Zionism and expelled totally the Jewish community from Libya. He was noted to have said that recognition of Israel was ‘an act of treason’. In 1980 Gaddafi acquired chemical weapons and only renounced Tripoli’s weapons of mass destruction six days after the capture of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003 by the United states’’.

*’’Saddam Hussein, born April 28 1937, was president of Iraq from July 1979 to April 2003.......he played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought his party-------Ba’ath Party to long-term power in Iraq. Saddam joined the Iraqi armed forces as a young man and in 1976 rose to the position of General and rapidly became the strongman of the government......as Vice president under the ailing General Ahmed al-Bakr(whom he forced to resign in July 1979), Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces.......he suppressed several movements and ordered the invasion and looting of Kuwait in 1990. He had aggressive stance against Israel, including firing missiles at Israeli targets. Saddam’s dictatorial regime was largely notorious for bringing untold brutality on anyone or any group he sensed as an opposition. Saddam initiated Iraq’s nuclear enrichment project in the 1980s with the purpose to use as a weapon of assault . Some reports cite Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army as being responsible for some 200,000 civilian deaths’’.

*’’Hosni Mubarak, born 4th May 1928, was former Egyptian Military commander who served as the country’s president from 1981 to 2011. Mubarak assumed the presidency in October 1981 following the assassination of President Anwar El Sadat and he became the longest serving Egyptian president. Before he ventured into politics, Mubarak was an air chief Marshal of the Egyptian Air Force......... he secured his position as president by having himself nominated by parliament, then confirmed without opposition in a referendum. While in office, Political corruption rose dramatically.....political figures and young activists were imprisoned without trials, illegal undocumented hidden detention facilities were established,.......Universities and Newspaper staff were rejected based on political inclination.......street demonstrations and ‘non-approved’ political organisations were banned, and estimates of political prisoners ran as high as 30,000. Mubarak is ranked 20th on Parade Magazine’s 2009 world’s worst dictators list’’.

Now here comes Bashar al-Assad biography........

*’’Bashar al-Assad was born on 11th September 1965(oh! happy birth month, by the way, al-Assad). He graduated from the Medical School of the University of Damascus in 1988, and started to work as a doctor. Four years later, he attended post-graduate studies at the Western Eye Hospital in London, specializing in Ophthalmology. Bashar only returned to Syria in 1994 when he was hastily recalled to abandon his Medical career following the death of his elder brother, Bassel, the heir apparent to their father(who was Syria’s president at the time). ‘The Hope’, as al-Assad was largely called, actually came up from a poor background...........unlike his brothers Bassel and Maher, Bashar was quiet and reserved and was disinterested in politics or the military. While his father was in power, Bashar was reported to have entered his father’s office only once and ‘he never spoke about politics with him’.
........over a period of six years and a half until his death in 2000, Hafez al-Assad(Bashar’s father) went about systematically preparing Bashar for taking over power, amidst grudging followership from the young Medical doctor, who never liked the way of politics. He had to be enlisted in the military in 1994 to establish his credentials and 5 years later he was propelled through the ranks to become a colonel...........parallel to his Military career, Bashar was engaged in public affairs....and led a campaign against corruption; this did put Bashar in the hearts of the Syrian people and put off potential rivals for president.
In 2000, at 34, Bashar al-Assad was elected president with 97.2% of the total votes cast and in May 2007, he was approved as president for another seven-year term, with the official result of 97.6% of the votes’’.

.......And that was how the story went, until we got here!

Please allow me to take your mind back a bit. Did you notice any difference or differences in the biography of Bashar al-Assad and those of the previous four men? Did you see the similarities in the biographies of Idi Amin, Gaddafi, Saddam and Mubarak?
 Ah! That’s the point!

Again I would like to ask: What, or is it Who, has brought al-Assad to this point? Why is this change not following an order as we know it with tyrants like Idi Amin Dada, or Muammar Gaddafi? Why is this not playing out like it did with Saddam Hussein and like it did with Hosni Mubarak? Is this 47 year old Bashar really a tyrant?

Stay with me.

The Islamic Republic of Syria hasn’t always been an Islamic republic; as a matter of fact Syria was originally a state under the control of the Roman Empire. ‘’During the second millennium BC, Syria was occupied successively by Canaanites with an estimated population of 500,000 at its peak, Syria’s large and prosperous population made it one of the [most] important provinces of the Roman Provinces’’.  Syria is significant in the history of Christianity and the Christian church particularly at Antioch. With structures like the Church of Saint Simeon Stylites in Aleppo, which is considered to be ‘’one of the oldest surviving Churches in the world’’, Christianity was dominant.
But by AD 640, Syria was conquered by the Rashidun army led by Khalid Ibn al-Walid, ‘’resulting in the area [Syria] becoming part of the Islamic Empire ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Although there were great toleration of Christians in this era and several even held governmental posts, key governmental decisions were exclusively those of the Umayyad dynasty’’. But the country’s power ‘’dramatically declined during the later Umayyad rule; mainly due to the totalitarianism and corruption spread among the Empire’s leadership, conflict between its general staff.......and oppression of the original inhabitants’’. As one Umayyad chieftain did put it, when asked about the decline of the Empire. His words:

‘’rather [than] visiting what needed to be visited, we were more interested in the pleasure and enjoyment of life; we oppressed our people until they gave up and sought relief from us’’.

The Umayyad dynasty was overthrown by the Abbasid dynasty in AD 750. Arabic was then made the official, dominant language replacing Greek and Aramaic.
Five successive take-over battles will then follow for the control of Syria; from invasion by the Shi’a extremists to one led by Timur Lenk, this country was finally wrestled away from the hands of the original inhabitants------Christians. And as rightly pointed out by one commentator:

‘’it was during the conquests of Timur that the indigenous Christian population of Syria began to suffer under greater persecutions....and so it followed also when the Shi’a had their stint in government’’.

What is playing out today in Syria is a continuation of that persecution engulfed in a rather disguised, intricate manner.

Let’s begin the unfolding.

As I write, there exists some religious Shi’a who still see Syria as an ‘impure’ Islamic state because of its Zionism history. Prominent among this group is Ahmadinejad(now I didn’t just mentioned this name for lack of a longer word!). I will tell you. Only on Wednesday 5th September 2012, the New York Times reports that Iran is supplying weapons to Syrian Military via Iraqi airspace. ‘’Iran has resumed shipping military equipment to Syria over Iraqi airspace in a new effort to bolster the embattled government of President Bashar al-Assad’’. The report, which quoted a senior American official on condition of anonymity continues, ‘’ the flight started up again in July [after initial suspension by pressure from US] and had continued ever since’’.  In a new twist, as to what would be classified as a high profile secret leak, the New York Times further revealed that ‘’there have been reliable reports that Iraqi Shiite Militia fighters, long backed by Iran during its efforts to shape events inside Iraq, are now in Syria [in a cheap disguise that they are there] to help the Assad government’’.

But this militia know exactly who they fighting for-------the Rebels, of course! Militias are not trained to fight for governments; Militias are trained to fight governments.
Now are you confused? Don’t be. Ahmadinejad is fuelling both sides of the war.  Why would he do this? Simple; this man is on a mission----he is intricately making good of his Qud’s Day Promise!

In April 2008 when President al-Assad told a Qatari newspaper that Syria and Israel had been discussing a peace treaty over dispute of the status of the Golan Heights, with Turkey as a mediator, Ahmadinejad’s Iran strongly opposed the treaty. Assad continued anyway but not ‘’without the price of severing the ties between both countries’’, reports the Qatari Newspaper.

Ahmadinajad hasn’t forgotten.

Still demanding for more motives? Listen to Ahmadinejad:

‘’.....a new Middle East will definitely be formed......in the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Zionists’’.

The English word ‘definitely’ connotes ‘’certainty, assurance, or strong affirmation’’ based on what has been set in motion.----------and what better way to set an annihilation process in motion other than putting in place an enriched Uranium nuclear programme and creating catastrophic turmoil within a country! At least while Israel is on the waiting list, Syria can well be taken care of first (Turkey is on Ahmadinejad’s list too! I will write on this when it’s time). Ahmadinejad’s new middle east is suppose to be without any trace of the Zionists.

Now does this exonerates Bashar al-Assad from crime against humanity? No! Is he quilty? Only because he is an accomplice; a pliable one at that. Quiet an irony for an Ophthalmologist------he is supposed to see from a far! But al-Assad didn’t see this coming. He still perceives the Iranian President as a friend. On the other hand, Ahmadinejad wouldn’t think the same of him-----in al-Assad the Iranian President has seen a loyal tool to fulfil purpose.

If you are reading this and you still see the upheavals happening in Syria as an extension of the Arab spring that would yield an outcome as it was with Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, please look again! You may well be needing an Ophthalmologist! (don’t worry, I wouldn’t contact al-Assad).
The closet comparism would be the 1970s Lebanon’s generational civil war that lasted 15 years, resulting in over 150,000 deaths.

‘’The opposition remains deeply divided and lacks a clear strategy’’ reports the TIME Magazine. And when France’s President Francois Hollande urged the Syrian ‘opposition’, only a week ago, to form a transitional government in exile that the West could recognise, he seemed to have forgotten one of the golden rules of French cuisine: You can’t reheat a soufflé!
There is no opposition; this one was planted with a mandate not to succeed. Substantial reports have it that the Syrian National Council leader, Abdelbaset Sieda has ‘’significant ties with Iran’’. So also is the Council’s long time spokeswoman Bassma Kodmani(who by the way has resigned!).
TIME Magazine’s Tony Karon sums up this succinctly: ‘’it is increasing evident that it [Syria] has eluded the full gamut of the outcomes that ended the Arab rebellions of the past two years’’.

Ahmadinejad has hurriedly (he has only till August 2013 to continue as president) set the train on track and he is watching and waiting. But watching and waiting is exactly what the world can’t afford to do now. And I fear it might just be too late before the world realises what has been set in motion, just like it was with Rwanda in 1994.
But heaven knows I have done my part. Will you do yours? Will you?


----------Ogedegbe,G.A.

             Additional words:
Michael Gordon, Tony Karon, Wikipedia