As a Syrian freedom fighter, I keep asking myself this question. Our revolution started in Syria on March the 15th, the Syrian regime has been killing the protestors and attacking peaceful demos ever since. The Russian leaders are on the Syrian regime’s side 100%, and are supporting it politically and militarily.
Now why do the Russians help such murderers? Why don’t they care about us, the Syrian people? Why do they want me dead?
There are no answers for these questions. It is simply because I’m asking the wrong questions.
After some serious thinking, I came to a conclusion.
The Russians don’t really care about keeping Assad or removing him. They don’t care about the Syrian regime more than they cared about the Libyan regime. And above all, they don’t care about me dead or alive, my freedom, or my rights.
The only thing that matters to the Russians is their power.
Russia is standing on the opposite side of where the United States and Europe are standing. And ever since the cold war ended, the Russians worked and still are working to create some kind of balance of powers, they want to take the place that the United States is in right now. They want to be the major power on Earth. That is what it’s all about. We’re just lost in the game.
The Syrian regime took the Russian side a long time ago, after Israel occupied Palestine and other lands, and the Russians started supporting everyone who is against Israel since Israel is a dear friend of the United States in the area. Most Arabs started looking at Russia as a good ally and at the US as the devil because of this.
Russia doesn’t really care about the Syrian regime. They don’t care about Palestine, or Iran. They only help those simply because the United States of America and Europe are supporting the other side.
If Bashar Assad became an ally of America, Russia will be the first one to support us, the people, and demand him to step down.
The Arab Spring is being supported by the west, and that’s something Russia didn’t want to see. They’re losing allies quickly, and they’ll do whatever they can to put an end to it.
The same analysis goes for the Iranian nuclear weapons, the existence of the state of Palestine, and North Korea. (I did not forget sneaky Chinese of course)
It’s not about oil, it’s not about right or wrong. It’s all about power.
We are nothing to Russia but a lousy pawn in their chess game.
Part 1: When the Bosnia war was at its worst I was around 17. I remember very well how I wrote a reader’s letter to our local German newspaper, claiming the point that the whole Yugoslavia crisis was not about Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia or (at this point completely unknown) Kosovo but about Montenegro as the only Russian access to the Mediterranean…in Europe - I didn’t know about their base in Syria this time and however it’s very different because this base is only “leased” while in the Balkans Russia is a cultural factor. I guess I was right because the Independence of Montenegro was indeed very late, much after all wars had finished.
ReplyDeleteThat same year I went for 2 weeks to a school exchange to Russia. I liked the culture and still do. Today I know that this is so because it reminds me in a very deep sense of my own country. It has the same geography in a bigger league, central, very central and that’s a burden not a bless. I’m absolutely convinced that it’s in last instance geography who forms history. For example come all religions either from deserts or from mountains, that’s where one asks religious questions, not in the peach garden. You write that for Russia and USA Syria is just a pawn in a chess game. Both countries just care for influence. That’s all right but nevertheless the goals are very different.
Imperialism must be the second oldest business in history, coming directly after that other business what you described in the other chapter what Assad’s lovers are doing hopefully safely protected. Imperialism means that a bigger group of monkeys sees on the edge of their territory a smaller group of monkeys which they can kill and appropriate their territory and females. In ourselves culture monkeys it’s also very common to make the other monkeys in the new territory speak the same language and follow the same traditions, wear the same clothes etc. That would have gone on that way until the monkeys from the biggest mountain, probably the Russian ones, would have dominated all the other smaller little rocks. Then in the end there would have been peace, a peace where everyone has the same history and speaks the same language.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteBut one day some clever baboon made up a calculation that you get far more influence for your money if you just fuck up the others with trade contracts. You have to invent this idea if you are on a major island close to a continent and you know you will never conquer them and they will never conquer you. USA copied Britain and today 90% of the world knows that it’s the more successful way. It’s the same morally indifferent as classical imperialism but luckily less bloody and preserves the cultural plurality while encouraging mixing up through migration at the same time. How good that I can smile at girls who have another color than me without being lanced an axe at me.
Of course the monkeys on the big rocks in the middle of the landscape with so many neat looking small rocks around them don’t want to accept that the big rock is no more worth like in the old times. Surely Putin would like them to make business in all the world and invent computer chips and make it a tourist country but instead they want to build more tanks, build a smaller Soviet Union, burn black people and vote 30% Zhirinovsky. If Putin would not fraud the elections, the people would elect democratically…no, not the democrats, that’s the witches they want to burn…they would elect Zhirinovsky, Germans did it too when they saw their rock vanishing.
So Russia has to change, the fast as possible, it gets more and more retarded in all sense in all the world! So what does the big gorilla in this situation? He looks for another gorilla uglier than him, so he can hide for a while saving coconuts to pay for his beauty therapy. Of course he will do all what it takes to slow down the ugliest one’s therapy as much as possible. Maybe if for some decades there will still be at least some regimes so bloody as Brother/Dear/Saferlover Leader then the pressure to change will come to Russia when the people already stopped drinking or voting for Zhirinovsky (what’s basically the same thing). Contracts, influence, even bases all this they can have without an anchor dictator, just look at Russian investment in German Energy Company or Chinese investment in all the world. They like Assad because he attracts attention for being uglier than them.
The nice point is now that you Arabs forced them to accelerate their own development, it’s really ironic. All what is happening now in Russia, most important freedom of demonstration, I did not expect to happen before 2020. I know it’s all flawed, the famous new opposition man is from the center of power, that’s a plan they made up…but they wouldn’t have put it into reality if they mustn’t. Anyway it’s the beginning of multipartidism in Russia - hey that’s a big step for Russia! As big as that now black people can walk in the streets of Germany and I keep the faith that one day they will be able to do this in Russian streets as well. It’s a big embarrassment for Russia to politically leap behind India and Latin America, but behind the Middle East where dictators always lasted longest? No, in a world where Libya overtakes Russia the pressure becomes too big - they do a small revolution from above of fear from a real revolution before it even has started.
ReplyDeleteI hope intensely that Russia understands as soon as possible that they can’t anymore defend their interest in the Arab World in Syria, in the contrary, they only make enemies by helping a regime completely isolated from the other Arabs. I guess they are already up to something else: Keeping Iran interested, illusioned and occupied in its West, deflecting it from its East, from Russian dominated Central Asia. But as we see now in Kazakhstan even this means them shooting in their own knee. So please wake up Russia and turn your big red rock into a museum.
Your friend - @toxochlorians
Thank you for these posts my friend. This was a good read.
ReplyDelete