An international crime in Ghouta implemented by Russia, Iran
علي الأمين/سوريا وإيران يرتكبان جريمة دولية في الغوطة
Ali Al-Amin/Al Arabiya/February 28/18
United Nations Resolution 2401, which calls for an immediate ceasefire in Eastern Ghouta and which does not apply to terrorists as it gives permission to shoot, besiege and starve them, is nothing but a mere deceptive decision.
In fact, it does not include any details regarding the cessation of military operations or, to be more accurate, about the annihilation of half-a-million Syrian citizen residing in this eastern suburb of Damascus.
The resolution calls for an ambiguous 30-day ceasefire. However, the Syrian regime’s military forces and its allies saw no harm in targeting civilians by using chlorine gas the very next day the UN resolution was supposedly adopted (24 February 2018).
This reflects the extent to which the regime and its allies, Iran and Russia, are willing to go in order to commit genocide while being aware that killing Syrian civilians will not cause a stir in Arab or Western governments.
Over the past seven years, hundreds of thousands have fallen victim to this alliance. Ever since the regime used chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta in 2013 and was not subjected to any international sanctions, it – along with its allies – realized that there are no international ‘red lines’ they cannot breach to carry out massacres and displace populations.
The annihilation and displacement of populations is the task which the sectarian regime in Syria wants to accomplish. The secularism claimed by the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party is merely a facade used for the Alawite minority rule and to commit these grave massacre Arabs have ever witnessed against their own people.
Today, Syria might be paying the price for some countries’ stubbornness to get the Syrian tragedy which the Palestinians suffered from due to occupation, displacement and the revocation of identity.
Indeed, the international silence over the on-going Syrian bloodshed, which started seven years ago, reflects a policy that unleashes the regime’s monstrosity in order to carry out a maximum number of organized crimes. This stripped the Syrian people, who seek a reasonable amount of freedom and a right to participate in determining the state policies, of international protection.
It has even pushed them to give up their human identity, either by succumbing to the regime’s barbarity or being dragged into the madness which the regime uses to conceal – even if partially – some of its past and present crimes against its own people. Given this vicious equation, the regional and international vanguard has become a tool for the partition of influence at the expense of Syrian blood.
Axis of the Resistance has simply opened the way for Israel toward Syria which was once called the beating heart of Arabism
Conspiracy of the Axis of Resistance
The savagery of the regime, to purge Syria of its people either via murder or displacement, is the reason behind its survival and the source of its regional and international protection. For seven years now, the regime did not feel this brutal task against its own people threatens its existence.
This task is rather the very basis for its existence and continuity. What Syria has witnessed over the last few years is a regional and international operation to destroy the Syrian society. This task has been carried out by the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ which has resorted to all its sectarian ideologies to engage in this mission.
One can further note Iranian and even Russian influence in Syria – via establishing military bases and dominance over large Syrian areas – was conditional upon displacing inhabitants by making living conditions insufferable due to the killings and massacres.
In fact, regions under Iranian influence in Syria are the ones whose occupants were subjected to killing and displacement particularly in the areas extending over Damascus and its suburbs, Homs and its countryside and areas between Damascus and the eastern and northern Lebanese borders, as well as the Syrian south and Dera’a.
Ghouta is the last stronghold of the region that has escaped the influence of Iran, Russia and the regime in Damascus and its adjoining areas. Thus, the decision to target Ghouta by Iranian militias and regime forces aided by Russian air cover is irreversible.
The destructive tendency adopted by the regime and its allies aims to destroy living conditions in these areas and displace the maximum number of inhabitants who embraced the revolution against the regime like the case was in Darayya and Yarmouk.
The policy of displacement and demographic change is still ongoing and it has met no form of international objection. This shows that the machine of murder and sectarian cleansing is somehow not objected to or there is rather silence over a crime Assad, Iran and Russia volunteered to commit considering it’s a filthy task which influential countries are not willing to directly stain their hands with.
Furthermore, the depravity of the Axis of the Resistance has extended to the attempt of covering crimes perpetrated in Ghouta under anti-Israeli slogans. As if Israel will be harmed if the Syrian people are displaced and murdered! The Syrian people are thus well-aware that the Axis of the Resistance’s increased murderous and destructive acts in Syria serve a strategic task to turn the page of hostility towards Israel.
Unspeakable tragedy
The Syrian population, who has suffered an unspeakable tragedy under the banner of a so-called American and Israeli resentment and whom Russian planes shell its children and Iranians shell its cities in the name of liberating Jerusalem, is a witness to how the Assad ravaged the country under the false pretense of hostility against Israel.
All this will certainly have strategic results on the future of enmity towards Israel. The Axis of the Resistance has simply opened the way for Israel toward Syria which was once called the beating heart of Arabism. Ghouta is just a detail. The recent international resolution shows that the policy of killing, destruction and displacement will continue in favor of the regime of tyranny and resistance.
The decision to destroy al-Ghouta will not stop, as long as the political and strategic results are in Iran’s favor and within Russia’s control and as long as they guarantee Israel’s stability on the long run and as long as Washington is reassured that all these parties, including Turkey, will not guarantee their shares without American legitimacy.
The only real victim, which is paradoxically absent from this melee is the Syrian people. They are absent from all the policies that shape Syria’s future but is present front and center as the victim that daily suffers the slaughter of Syria and its future.
