January 21st , 2014
Syria Talks
Tommorow it seems like the some of the parties involved in the Syrian war are going to atttend peace talks in Geneva. On the surface it is a very good thing , after all almost 3 years of nearly unabated violence has taken it's toll on the people of Syria. Nearly 150,000 dead, more like 130,000 according to the Syrian Human Rights watch , but with the way violence is going on in Syria it won't be surprising that we hit that number soon , that is a tradegy :(
However it would be very wrong to put faith in these peace talks , because many factions of Al-Qaeda will not attend the talks and in reality they are the ones who are doing most of the fighting and from the opposiotion side commiting the most carnage. In fact nearly a week of infighting between the FSA and the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ) left over 700 people dead. The level of horror in this conflict is unbelievable , I who has observed many wars over the past years has never seen carnage at this level. Syria however brings about a lot of similarities with previous conflicts for example many factions of the FSA , have made millions of dollars smuggling fuel, guns and all sorts of products into Syria , but above all some factions of the FSA have made millions smuggling foriegn fighters into Syria. For confirmation check out the article " How the FSA became a Largely Criminal Entreprise". This phenomena is not unique to Syria however in fact many militias in Africa want wars to go on so that these rogue militias can make millions smuggling "blood diamonds". Above all these fighters are not so concerned with a solution to the conflict , they just want the war to go on. Let's face it the Syrian government and the Assad dynasty are not the nicest rulers in the world and the Syrian people have legitamate greivances against their rule, for example the poverty and the corruption in the Syrian government. However the opposition isn't really that much better , in fact it can be worst in many cases. The crimes of the forces opposing Assad are horrific , like chemical attacks , beheadings, massacres ( Hatla , June 11,2013) , use of child soldiers , torture , looting , the list goes on and on. Putting the opposition to power in Syria is clearly not the answer. In fact by judging on what has happened overall in these 2.5 years or so in Syria , it could be fair to say that the media outlets in foreign countries like the BBC , Al-Jazeera, CNN and other Western and Arab news sources have done thier fair share in escalting the conflict in Syria. This is due to the fact that the Syrian media has not over the years built credibiliy and this is the ultimate weakness of the Syrian government and as a result these news outlets have caused many Syrians to lose faith in thier government, and to make the Syrians believe in more violence and to lure thousands of foreign jihadists into Syria , and thus alas we see a sharp increase in the levels of violence. If it wasn't for the media the war in Syria would have been solved a long time ago . There is simply no trust between the combatant parties and it is very hard to have lasting peace without any underlying trust , and statistically peace deals ending civil wars tend to break down within 5 years , in fact it is true in 40% of the cases as highlighted in the book "From Poverty to Power". One very important factor why it would be hard to reach a peace in Syria is because the UN withdrew thier invitation for Iran to join the peace talks. Iran in general is the key to the Middle East and every conflict in the Middle East has either Saudi Arabia on one side and Iran on the other. Also Iran has many interests in Syria so do the countries who support the opposition so is it fair to exclude Iran ? There is always hope personally I wish peace to the Syrian people , ending this suffering , ending the misery because at the end of the day we are all humans and everyone deserves to be treated humanly and the children of Syria just like anywhere else in the world deserve to live in a world without fear!
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