The Syrian conflict is experiencing a breaking point after President Bashar Assad's regime violently responded to mass civilian demonstrations with chemical and biological weapons, genocidal massacres and mass rapes, then turned into a civil war. The UN, claiming that they are responsible for ensuring international peace and security, acted as if they attempted to end the tragedy in the country, but their attempts were inconclusive, as they did not believe they could accomplish this.
The Western countries' unstable policies on the Syrian crisis first caused a fault line in the region, and then globally. The Arab Revolutions becoming counterrevolutions and pathological structures like Daesh emerging should be seen as a result of the Western countries' inconsistent discourse. The West's failure to develop moral and principled attitudes against the coup that ousted Mohammed Morsi, the first democratically-elected president in Egypt's history, has prepared the ground for pathological structures like Daesh to emerge in the transitional period of the Muslim world.
Russia directly occupying Syria is an outcome of the West's silence in the face of Russia's fait accompli in Georgia, Chechnya and Ukraine. The West standing idle against Russian jets killing Syrian civilians, disheartens us that they will make an effort to restore peace, human rights, rule of law and democratic values.
The context of the UN's draft cease-fire, planned to come into effect as of the new year, strengthens this belief. The draft cease-fire, served by a news agency, contains three cease-fire proposals (if true). The first is to continue the fight against terrorist groups, after these groups are identified, and then it is suggested to comply with the cease-fire. The second proposal is a cease-fire for all groups that accept the fundamental principles. The third proposal is to prohibit the use of certain weapons and to foresee a partial cease-fire.
It seems that none of the proposals will cure the problems. Ideas about which proposal is the weirdest will differ, but everyone will agree that none will ensure peace and stability in Syria.
As we have expressed many times before, the West's fundamental mistake is that they tend to deal with the flies in the swamp, rather than dealing with the swamp itself. To top it off, they are discriminating between male and female flies, as in the late Kemal Sunal's “Korkusuz Korkak" (Fearless Coward) film. While waging war on Daesh, the West believes that it can solve problems by supporting groups like the PKK's Syrian off-shoot, the Democratic Union Party's (PYD) armed wing, People's Protection Units (YPG), which is a group that is implicitly aligned with Assad, who has committed atrocious massacres, who has forced his people to become displaced to change the demographic structure of the region and committed mass rapes in certain regions.
When all these developments are brought together, the picture roughly looks like this: The West says that Assad should go (although not forcefully); yet they continue to do everything to enable him not to go. They are saying Assad needs to go, as they know they will be stuck in a difficult situation if their own societies see that they openly support a villain. Yet, they are endeavoring to keep him in place, as the division of Syria seems to be in a deadlock, especially after Russia's intervention.
Or another scenario: As the West is agreeing to offer Syria to Russia, everything that has happened is a sham. They say “Assad should go," as they will not be able to explain the “Communist threat" that they have mobilized the public against, including themselves. Meanwhile, they do not want to swallow their own words. They are doing everything possible for Assad to stay, because Russia wants him to stay.
The draft plan, alleged to be offered by the UN, might be a product of the second alternative, meaning they are giving Russia their share. Yet, they are falling under the illusion that the Muslim world is passive, as it was in the World War I era. I am afraid that the UN will fall into – and be remembered with – the same cynical situation the League of Nations fell into when Italy invaded Ethiopia.
