Why Syria?

There are a lot of countries in the world that are fucked up, but of the lengthy list of nations with legal systems morally bankrupt that even the orcs from lord of the rings would consider enacting trade embargoes against them, we hear almost exclusively about a select few sovereign states that at this point probably have more in common with the hunger games arenas than any other country.

When I say the middle east I could be referring to states such as Turkmenistan, the woefully unappreciated second North Korea in which the president and his family hold absolute power over every facet of life and the media freedoms are so slim you still think I’m talking about Turkey.

Far more impressive, though, is Qatar — which holds the world’s 3rd largest natural gas & oil reserves, and acts as another kind of wonderland like Turkmenistan, letting tourists experience through rose tinted $500 rayban sunglasses what it was like back in the golden days when the west too had a SLAVE SOCIETY.

This Sharia-law run society — in which homosexuality is most certainly a crime and different sources put the weight of punishment for it between a few years in prison and the death penalty — had a population of just over 2.2 million in 2014 with only 278,000 of those being actual citizens. That makes a grand total of 12% citizens in a country that will not allow migrant workers to change jobs or leave the country without the permission of their employer. These thoroughly oppressed migrant workers make up 99% of the private sector workforce in a country whose citizens have the highest per capita income of any country on the planet.

“Qatar: the morality of the dark ages with all the amenities of modern life”

- their tourism department, presumably

But interestingly we hear very little from these countries. Perhaps this is because pursuing a career in domestic journalism in either country proof of attempt to perform this task would land you a healthy stint in a prison that one can only assume would be like a gulag with extra culture shock. Or perhaps part of the reason is that these countries are relatively wealthy and provide little in the way of political and geographical influence for any invading force. Surely there must be some explanation as to why they have been left to there own devices with such morally degenerate and repressive practices while countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lybia, and even Cuba are not allowed the same sovereign independence.

People will often make the claim that the west is only interfering in this or that country for their own gain but this can sound a lot like a baseless conspiracy theory when you don’t stress the fact that there are a lot of countries with terrible human rights abuses on either economic side of the ones we meddle with. The countries highest on the list of fragile states are all African nations that fall incredibly low on the development index. Is the excuse that it’s easier to help countries that are more developed, with better infrastructure to maintain improvements made once we leave the region? Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Turkmenistan are all rich to varying degrees and the gulf nations especially are some of the wealthiest nations in the world and are incredibly well developed, making their human rights abuses all the more reprehensible.

I’m not encouraging an invasion of any country, but the idea that Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan were the worst countries that desperately needed western intervention is duplicitous and misleading in the extreme.

The truth is that international intervention only occurs when there is something to be gained by the meddling factions

Syria has been going through a civil war since 2011 and its measured freedoms have degraded as you might expect, but Saudi Arabia’s freedom index was exactly the same as Syria’s in both 2011 and 2015. Which means that one of the strongest US allies in the world had the same freedoms as a country on the brink of an uprising a few years ago and now has the same freedoms as a country in the process of a multi-sided proxy war that ISIS is heavily involved in.

The difference now is that the Assad regime is committing acts of deplorable violence against civilians to remain in power and repress the populist uprising. I’m not going to attempt to defend this administration, but I think it’s worth mentioning the fact that this kind of situation is eerily familiar.

In Iraq just as in Syria there was a religious minority Baathist party dictator with a history of human rights violations. At this point it’s agreed upon by even the American Republicans that the Iraq war was a fucking disaster, with only Jeb Bush reluctant to make the call, presumably because his brother is standing in the wings giving him puppy dog eyes every time a reporter asks Jeb about his brother’s time in office.

So why Syria?

It’s not really a long story. The interests of every group involved are fairly easy to see simply from their diplomatic relations.

As a country allied to Iran, Russia, and China, Syria presents a de facto opposition force to the US and EU. If Assad were to fall, all of its allies would lose influence in the region and the West would stand to make significant gains through the empowerment of their ally Saudi Arabia and increased security for Israel.

More importantly, though, is what Russia, Iran, and to a lesser degree China, would lose with the fall of Assad.

If Assad falls at this point, with all the Western intervention in the conflict, the US and the EU will have a large degree of power in deciding on the party that fills his place. This would allow them to ensure that the ties with Iran and Russia are broken, and a victory is had for the glorious West.

What’s somewhat more interesting are the coincidences between the Syrian situation and previous failed attempts at the same thing in Iraq.

“Baathism is an Arab Nationalist ideology that promotes the development and creation of a unified Arab state… It supports the creation of single-party states, and rejects political pluralism”

There have been only two Baathist states in the world; Iraq and Syria. The philosophy and ideology is similar in many ways to the ISIS expansionism that the West is so afraid of. Obviously this is just one of the many ways of looking at a complicated issue but is it really so surprising that ISIS would be founded and have the most ease recruiting members in two states that have a history of this kind of political rhetoric? Are we surprised that the US has an large number of anti-government right-wing extremists when the country’s political dialogue is consistently centred around their ultimate fear that the Government is going to take away their fundamental rights and freedoms? When ISIS appears to actually be working towards the goal that these politicians draw the line at espousing, how unrealistic is it that a fair slice of the population, disillusioned by decades of political instability and inequity, might see them as many Americans see Donald Trump — as the people that will, all else aside, actually walk the walk instead of sitting on the sidelines and playing political games until their term is up and they can retire somewhere nice, leaving the country no better off than it was when they first conned the population into letting them run the place.