Ayoon wa Azan (There are 2 losers in Syria)

Toppling Saddam Hussein or a thousand dictators like him was not worth the blood of a million Iraqis. And the toppling of the Syrian regime or the opposition or both is not worth the demolition of Aleppo then Damascus, since the two cities represent the heart of the world’s civilization. Today I read that the regime is bombarding Homs: what is left from Homs to bombard? The regime is responsible for this. There is no argument there and I am convinced that it could have avoided all the horrific killings. The opposition started off as a national, peaceful movement. Then foreign terrorists joined in and proudly started taping their crimes and distributing them. (I never said, as one reader claimed, that the Free Army committed massacres. I rather clearly spoke about foreign terrorists). Today, Syria’s social fabric has already, or is almost about to tear down. The state’s infrastructure has been destroyed along with 2,600 schools, mosques, churches, and hospitals. The strategic weapons that were supposed to be used against Israel were actually used against the citizens and Syria lost its regional role. The UNICEF is now alluding to a complete lost generation of Syrian children. Some Syrian experts are now writing reports about the civil war losses and the future of Syria. This group of experts is headed by Brother Abdullah al-Dardari, a prominent economist at the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). I personally believe that the ongoing war will result in two losers. Whether the regime remains or whether it is replaced by the opposition, the “winner” will be faced with a complete demolition that will require decades to fix in order for Syria to gain back its 2010 status – one which was not actually a great one. The Greek King Pyrus once said, “Another victory like this one will bring our demise”. The victory that he had achieved was extremely costly for his forces, and this made him cautious about another potentially costly victory. In Syria, both parties are losing and no one is thinking about the following day. I have contact with some trustworthy Syrian sources, some of which are active within the opposition and some others are independent. All are saying that the wise minds must think about the country’s benefit before their own personal interests, or else the destruction and the killings will proliferate. The opposition is obtaining weapons from the Gulf States. Europe is not offering anything, even though French President Francois Hollande and British Foreign Minister William Haig wanted to lift the European weapons’ ban, since the opposition needs quality weapons to confront the arsenal of the regime and its allies in order for it to win. My opposition sources tell me that there are thousands of armed Iranian fighters and trainers in Syria. A trustworthy source said that he heard from opposition leaders that the Lebanese army withdrew from the areas bordering Syria, and that Hezbollah fighters are now deployed along the borders. I asked him about the authenticity of this information and he asserted to me that he heard this news but has no proof to its veracity. The same source told me that he has been hearing pieces of news from the opposition that are hard to verify and that developments would later on show that the news was either a lie or an exaggeration. One undisputed matter is that Syria is being destroyed and its people are being slaughtered with no quick solution on the horizon. Brother Abdullah al-Dardari and his team of experts believe that the reconstruction of Syria will require 80 billion dollars. I believe that this amount of money is unavailable in Damascus. Two days ago, Al-Hayat carried a detailed and colored map on its first page highlighting the areas that are still under the control of the regime, the areas controlled by the armed opposition, and the disputed areas. The map clearly showed that the opposition is controlling the northern part of the country while the regime is in control of most of the south. I had alluded to this matter through a column that I wrote on the sixth of this month and quoted opposition sources as saying: Are we in the presence of a new Sudan? Every fiber of my being says no. However, I am afraid that this is just wishful thinking. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.