Syria, between ashes and roses
When I think of Syria, I often remember Adonis’ poetry. I imagine him in a state of total bliss, reciting the poems of transformations, of the journeys between the provinces of day and night, of preaching the great disruption and anticipating the new beginnings, poems that ruptured the stagnant language and with it the stagnant world of the Arabs, and made him the greatest Arab poet and visionary of modern times.
Adonis was born in Syria, but his productive decades were spent in Beirut as a poet, essayist, historian of culture and editor of Mawaqif, the journal that expressed the tremendous intellectual and artistic ferment that followed the Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel. Adonis was obsessed with renewals after deconstructing stale orthodoxies. He exploded Arab poetics, and wrote pioneering criticism of classic and modern Arab culture.
He used language as if it was never used, abused or debased by millions of his ancestors; in his hands it became malleable, he gave it shape and form, the way a sculptor would chisel beauty out of a shapeless stone. He thought that Arab intellectuals and artists should do the same to their polities and societies.
Thinking of Syria on the fifth anniversary of the beginning of its descent to the great disruption, I thought of Adonis’ poem A Time Between Ashes and Roses, which he wrote decades before the rupture. Adonis was not sympathetic with the Syrian uprising, particularly its Islamist overtones. While I shared his jaundiced view of the Islamists, I was disappointed that he did not lend his voice to the secular opposition to the tyrannical regime in Damascus.
The Adonis I invoke here, is the visionary poet and the critic of his culture, the prescient historian who believes that Syria is now going through that long time of migration from the ashes of desolation to the season of renewal, the flowering of roses. Looking back at the last five years, one could only conclude that the season of migration will be treacherously long.
No Russian goodbye
During the week we looked back, trying once again to understand what went horribly wrong, asking the same questions and getting the same unsatisfactorily answers, Russia announced that it will scale down its brutal Arial war against Syrian civilians living in the areas controlled by the anti-regime opposition groups, which find themselves at times fighting both the regime forces and the Jihadists of Jabhat al-Nusra or the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), at the same time. Already, Amnesty International has accused Russia of committing war crimes in Syria. What is clear from the Russian position is that the withdrawal is partial, and a residual force, including offensive air capabilities will remain in Syria.
But regardless of the real motivations behind the surprising Russian move, the air assaults in coordination with ground attacks conducted by a combination of Iranian led Hezbollah and other Shiite fighters from Iraq and regime forces succeeded in stabilizing the Assad regime, and enlarged the area under its control in the environs of Aleppo and other areas. And while some analysts are linking the partial withdrawal to the political talks in Geneva, there is no reason to believe that Russia will “deliver” Assad and/or put pressure on him to accept a transitional period that will lead eventually to his political demise.
Genocide and justice
After the US House of representatives voted 383-0 in favor of classifying the atrocities committed by ISIS against the Yazidis and Christians as an act of Genocide, the Secretary of State John Kerry read a statement in which he asserted that ISIS, or “Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians and Shiite Muslims”. Kerry added “Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions –in what it says, what it believes, and what it does”.
And yet for all of the ritualistic and brutal killings of fellow Syrians and Iraqis at the hands of ISIS, the Syrian regime remains the single most efficient perpetrators of mass killings in the country. Syrian and International human rights groups have documented the numerous crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Syrian regime including the use of nerve gas and chlorine, mass execution, indiscriminate shelling, barrel bombing, torture, siege, starvation and sexual violence.
Obama’s next ten months would look to many people in the Middle East like a long suffocating eternity. Obama’s long goodbye is upon us
Hisham Melhem
The al-Nusra Front and other extremist groups engage in killing civilians, they control their own prisons, where torture is widespread. We may never know the exact number of those who were killed in the last five years, but estimates range between 250,000 to more than 400,000. There are now five million Syrian refugees in neighboring countries and in Europe. A weak and small country like Lebanon suffering from a variety of political and economic ailments where more than a million Syrian refugees have settled in the last few years could implode anytime. The number of displaced Syrians is around 7 million. This situation cries out for justice and accountability.
Syria is not a signatory to the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, so the ICC has no jurisdiction over the country, but there are precedents for using a mixture of local and international justice mechanisms, such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone which indicted and convicted former dictator Charles Taylor.
The quest to achieve justice to the victims and their families in Syria should not wait until the war is over. Preparations for a Syrian version of “Truth and Reconciliation” committee should be underway by Syrians and their friends. The worse thing Syrians could do is to fall into the collective trap of denial. They should avoid Lebanon’s tragic failure to exorcise the demons of its own civil war.
Obama’s long goodbye
On the fifth anniversary of the war, President Obama reminded the Syrians once again that his doctrine of non-intervention even in a colossal human tragedy like theirs’s, was a wise choice. The president of the United States is proud that he did not deliver on his own threats and promises. One of the many subtexts in Obama’s Doctrine in the Atlantic Magazine is that he is done with the Middle East.
The president got his nuclear deal with Iran, and he will spend the remaining months of his tenure keeping ISIS at bay and trying to prevent a terror attack against the homeland, to degrade ISIS and hopefully decapitate its leadership. But he no longer talks about destroying the Caliphate monstrosity in Syria and Iraq. Of course occasionally, drones and maybe Special Forces could be used in Libya, Yemen and Somalia, but these are tactical and safe moves designed to keep ISIS and al Qaeda off balance. The mission of destroying ISIS Obama will bequeath to his successor.
The other urgent issues and crises of the region; the ongoing unraveling of Iraq and Libya, where Obama’s actions and inactions are still reverberating, and Iran’s destabilizing role in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, would have to wait for the new president. Obama’s next ten months would look to many people in the Middle East like a long suffocating eternity. Obama’s long goodbye is upon us.
Watching Syria after five years of agony, I was moved by that incredible spirit and boundless hope and courage that animated the first optimistic peaceful demonstrations in Damascus, Deraa, Homs and other Syrian cities and towns. The Syrians are at it again I wondered. They are back in the streets shouting for the fall of the tyrant and calling for democracy and human rights the very subversive demands that terrifies the Assad regime and the Jihadists.
Recently, I came across WH Auden’s poem It’s No Use Raising A Shout in which he writes:
“I’ve come a very long way to prove
No land, no water, and no love.”
Looking at the people of Syria, I would like to say (and hope) that they have come a very long way to prove that after the ashes of desolation there is land, water, love and yes Adonis, roses too.
Hisham Milhim
Al-Arabiya