For the last several weeks, Syria has been a rare and unlikely bright spot in a grim world. If you tuned in the day before Thanksgiving, this is what you have been able to see:
The armies of a tyrant defeated.
The graven images of a cult of personality demolished.
Foreign invaders departing.
Drug factories shut down.
Prison doors thrown open.
People long thought dead found alive.
Refugees returning to their homes.
Families reunited.
Reconciliation instead of vengeance.
Mass celebration of freedoms restored.
You can fairly call this list an oversimplification, because the complexities of Syria can be overwhelming, but it is by no means an exaggeration. Where there were once torture gulags to rival those of Nazi Germany, now there is a chance for a seemingly impossible restart after half a century of dictatorship.
Now the news is more somber as the hard work begins of putting a country back together in one of the geopolitically most treacherous neighborhoods on Earth, and the painful task commences of exhuming bodies from mass graves to offer whatever comfort is to be found for the families of the missing.
Syrians’ jubilation endures, but there is also bitterness, because the horrors of the last decade could have been avoided if the world had not preferred the illusory stability offered by a dictator, even though the scale of his crimes was already known; just a month ago, Arab states were working to normalize relations with the now deposed regime, European countries were moving to restore diplomatic ties, and the United States was trying to strike a deal. And there are flashes of anger that people who blithely ignored the shelling of schools and refugee camps for years are now concerned for the safety of bars in Damascus and Christmas trees in Suqaylabiyah.
What does this mean for us on the other side of the world?
It’s Christmas, so you can rejoice that the guns have at last fallen silent and peace has come to one corner of the world where prospects for peace had seemed hopeless.
It’s Christmas, so you can set aside the cynicism that says all sides are equally bad and all progress comes at an equal and opposite cost.
It’s Christmas, so you can set aside your detachment and allow yourself to feel some of Syrians’ joy, sorrow, and hope.
It’s Christmas, so go ahead: Look up the Christmas celebrations of Syria’s Christian communities. You can even admire the Christmas trees.
Comments
6 responses to “It’s not about the Christmas trees”
I’m not sure I follow this logic. Lots of information suggests difficult times ahead for Syria and it’s people. I’m not sure I’d call such an evaluation “cynicism.”
There will undoubtedly be difficulties. The uninformed cynical take is that things may be different, but they’ll be just as bad as before – even when what came before included a factory of death designed by a literal Nazi, into which whole families could disappear without a trace and from which survivors emerge so broken in body and mind that they can’t remember their own names. I think that even with the difficulties ahead, whatever they are, things will be much better than that.
I do hope we don’t end up with sectarian strife in a failed state. That’s pretty bad too.
On the net I’m optimistic, but I second Stephen F’s cautiousness. Some of the victors are not nice people either, and could possibly be torturing and disappearing people just as much if they had the power. Hopefully some kind of stable balance of power arises, but I’m not holding my breath given the complexity of the various geopolitical interests involved.
Sectarian strife in a failed state is what we had before. And certainly there’s the potential to end up like that again, but there doesn’t seem to be much interest in it for the moment. As for the victors, we at least can look at how they ran things for the last 5+ years in Idlib. And it wasn’t a perfect democracy by Western standards, but it looks pretty good compared to the alternatives.
I’m optimistic things will be better in Syria, if only because the bar is so awfully low. We’ve learned by sad experience that the qualities that make for a successful revolutionary rarely make for a successful leader of a democratic government, but the new leadership in Syria is saying all the right things and deserves a chance.