Kassioun Editorial 1099: What Do Syrians Want?

Syrians want an immediate and urgent solution, and the solution should start promptly, because every additional delay in starting it means increasing and reinforcing the possibilities of existential danger to all of Syria, land and people.

Whenever it appears that Syria’s and the Syrians’ situation has reached rock bottom in its collapse, realities show that the abyss into which the country is descending has no bottom, and its darkness could acceleratingly increase day after day.

Security and military tensions are reemerging in many points on the Syrian map, including the new tensions in Suwayda governorate and the possibility of a new Turkish aggression, which threatens to break the ceasefire that has lasted for nearly three years now.

Likewise, the factors for paralysis and collapse, which have been around for years, have intensified in recent weeks all at once, and in a comprehensive manner. The exchange rate continues to tumble, darkness from lack of electricity hovers in Syrians’ homes and hearts, and the daily oppression has multiplied in pursuing transportation that is nearly completely stopped.

Even state institutions “temporarily” stopped working under the pressure of the ongoing and deepening fuel crisis. Food prices, which were already soaring, continue to soar, and hunger is devouring people’s flesh, while the cold, in the absence of any heating means, is gnawing at their bones. Schools are likely to stop working – partially or completely; health facilities are in a dilapidated state and are likely to decline further, whether in terms of the availability of qualified staff or in terms of the availability of the necessary materials for treatment, including medicines, or in terms of the availability of the electricity needed to operate them.

The “higher people” of influential and corrupt people, extremists, and warlords, and with them the media promoting their discourse and their interests, all of those are in their high ivory towers, where the people’s whimpers do not reach them; and if they reach them, they exploit them in the most humiliating ways for the people and their dignity. They prove on a daily basis that they are not only incapable of providing any solutions, but they do not see that they are concerned with that to begin with.

The only way out of the existing situation is not linked to the arrival of a ship carrying petroleum or a new batch of aid from this or that country; saying things like that is a miserable attempt to evade responsibility. Everyone knows that the black hole of plundering and corruption in Syria can swallow billions of dollars without choking on them, and without any of it reaching Syrians who really need it.

The only way out to achieve salvation is a radical and comprehensive change in the socioeconomic structure that itself was the cause of the crisis, and today it is the cause of its aggravation and deepening. It is the same structure that wheeled in the Western liberal Trojan horse into the country, and it is the one that has amassed the fuel of oppression over the decades, so that a match from abroad is enough to ignite the country and its people. This structure is the same one that is benefiting today from Western sanctions and blockade, while those sanctions are killing ordinary Syrians.

The only way out is a radical change of this socioeconomic structure that is biased in favor of the profiteers and against the overwhelming majority of Syrians. The entry to this change lies in the political solution according to UNSC Resolution 2254, to which there is no alternative:

To secure the patriotic political will needed to completely break with all the policies that are biased against all Syrians and in the interest of the plundering few, and implicitly to break with the state of economic dependence on the West and particularly the dollar.

To secure the patriotic political will needed to reach understandings with Turkey with the help of both Russia and Iran, not only to end the Turkish occupation of Syrian territory, but also to turn the Syrian-Turkish borders into an outlet to break Western sanctions and blockade, open the doors for Syria towards the emerging economies of Russia, China, and India, and consequently provide real solutions to the fuel, electricity, and other crises.

To secure the patriotic political will needed to make mutual concessions among the Syrian political forces and in the interest of the Syrian people, by acknowledging the inability of any side alone to end the catastrophe, and immediately start direct negotiations between two qualified delegations, to reach an understanding on the mechanism of implementing UNSC Resolution 2254, starting with the formation of the transitional governing body, then the constitution, and then elections.

(النسخة العربية)