Over eleven months, ten people have been killed in Syria every day, and sometimes twenty, fifty or more; and tomorrow and after tomorrow, just as many people shall be killed, and also in a week and a month. We saw many unidentified victims, with their bodies torn or mutilated. Their names were unknown, except in the heart of a bereaved mother, sister or wife. Then, a foreign journalist or photographer is killed, the whole world is saddened and rushes to express anger at the killers, with calls for them to be punished. Our blood is cheap. For this reason, when 13 Syrian activists are killed trying to smuggle out a photojournalist working for the Sunday Times who has been wounded in the leg in Baba Amr, we hear every possible detail about the photographer Paul Conroy and three other wounded journalists. But the Syrian victims remain just a number, 13, no more and nothing less. Since last Wednesday, February 22nd, news in the Western media has focused on Marie Colvin, the U.S.-born Sunday Times reporter, who died during the bombardment of Homs. She was a great war correspondent, who had an outstanding and deserved professional reputation, and she risked her life in many conflicts but finally lost the bet in Baba Amr. Yet when dozens of Syrians, mostly civilians, die on the day Marie Colvin was killed, and when as many Syrians die on the next day and before that and today, they remain just numbers against one Western victim, be he or she a journalist or a photographer. The death of a foreigner then unleashes waves of calls for arming the Syrian rebels, and foreign military intervention. I thus read that Syria in 2012 is like Bosnia in 1992. And amid all this, there has been insistence on the need to punish the killers. If the regime in Syria is going to be held accountable then this must be on the basis of the thousands of Syrian victims, not one ‘gentleman' from the press of ‘I Was There' who describes the death, destruction and bereavement to justify foreign intervention that leads to more destruction, death and bereavement. I oppose arming the opposition because its men have no training and because they are lightly armed, making them easy prey to a regular army with heavy weaponry. I also oppose any foreign military intervention and condemn everyone calling for it, even if they were those Syrian citizens that carried a banner that said, “Yes to NATO planes, yes to foreign intervention” - signed Occupied Kfar Nebel, Baba Amr… I do not accuse those poor souls of more than naiveté and ignorance of the outside world. However, their excuse does not apply to members of the Syrian National Council and other opposition groups that call for foreign intervention, i.e. for killing more Syrians. If there should be any intervention to stop the daily killing in Syria, it should be an Arab military intervention, with the help of Turkey not NATO, and definitely with the United States outside the picture so that the tragedy of Iraq and the million victims there is not repeated. To date, the Arab countries have done nothing for the Syrians except to condemn the regime. But if this were enough then Israel would have been defeated decades ago. What we need therefore is deeds and not words. But the Arabs of this era are good only at talking. They have left the people of Syria, the beating heart of Arabism, to be killed day after day, without realizing that if this heart stops beating then we will all die, or live a life that is even worse than death. I am flogging a dead horse, and having all senses does not mean having a conscience, as we have settled for the mere sense of vision rather than wisdom and perception. Yet I refuse to be in the herd; I say that Arab military intervention must follow a clear plan for the regime to step down, at a time when the National Council had rejected, from the outset, any dialogue with the regime and blocked the paths for a solution for the crisis. But that is not to say that the regime would have taken any of these paths anyway. A way out means cutting short days and days of killing, because it gives the regime a life preserver that it can use if it so wishes. In the meantime, thousands of Syrians are being killed, but all we hear are the names of foreign reporters who did not need to be in Syria. [email protected]
