Oct 18 2012

‘Daydreaming’ about peace in Syria

By Fatih Abdulsalam

Azzaman, October 18, 2012

Everybody yearns for peace in Syria. But peace cannot be achieve through prayers by the Pope, the pleading of an Imam or the wishes of a politician.

A ruinous war is going and it seems it is difficult to imagine peace without score-settling.

The destruction and casualties are massive and any peaceful settlement that is to follow this bloody war will be shaky. One can wonder what a few-day truce is going to achieve.

The war has been going on longer than expected. It has entered every home, every shop, every school and every factory in Syria.

The war has its proxies, minds and pockets. It has opponents and proponents with roots going down deep into the ground. It has its own brigades, militias, armies and agents.

Peace is the main victim of the war in Syria. It has been there all the time, but no one seems to be seriously interested in it.

And now the  U.N. envoy Akdhar Ibrahimi  is striving to bring peace to the battlefield – a truce of a few days – to defeat a gigantic war. Is not he chasing a mirage?

Ibrahimi flew the world advancing a ceasefire only for the four-day Muslim feast of Adha.

As if this is all what the hapless Syrian people need. The ambition of the whole world has been condensed to merely a truce of a few hours and days.

How will a truce of this type take place in the absence of international observers? There are no peace troops in Syria to guarantee that the sides will cease fire.

If Ibrahimi does not have a green light that the truce will go beyond the four-day feast, then he will be only daydreaming.

Syria has turned into a land no longer owned by its own people. Syria is in the hands of foreign powers who spread their carpets on its soil and are comfortably playing their cards as rivers of innocent blood flow almost everywhere around them.

The request for a ceasefire is a recognition that what is happening in Syria is a war and not peaceful demonstrations for democracy and freedom.

The world has begun to recognize that there are two warring parties in Syria. Both parties will use  the truce to their benefit since the world has agreed to see them on equal footing. It is no longer a regime fighting terrorist gangs or a government suppressing peaceful demonstrations.

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