Some thoughts on Syria …

Leila Al Shami

"There was nothing inevitable about what happened in Syria. The regime’s supporters from the beginning made clear their intentions, they scrawled them on walls across Syria: “Al-Assad or we burn the country”. As Russia and Iran gave unlimited economic and military support to the regime to crush the opposition, the democratic Free Syrian Army received little in the way of weapons or support. Islamists were released by Assad from prison in 2011 (they went on to head the main Islamist brigades) and were given support (financial and military), mainly by Gulf States. They came to dominate the military struggle. Sectarianism was carefully nurtured by the regime’s policies and political calculations- such as by sending Alawi death squads into Sunni civilian neighbourhoods. Syria’s political opposition elites in exile were hijacked by Gulf or Western influence, and anyway never had any real relevance on the ground. Worst of all, Syria’s civil revolutionaries were abandoned, including by much of the international left which slandered them as fools, barbarian jihadists or agents of the West."