Daily Times

The recent protest attacks on the American and French embassies in Damascus must be viewed in the context of the long-standing hostility between Syria and the western world, specially the US. However the US and French officials may describe the attacks and attempt to pin responsibility on the Syrian government, the fact remains that the ambassadors of these two countries invited wrath upon themselves by visiting Hama, the flashpoint of protests against the Ba’thist regime in Syria. This was considered highly inappropriate by the Foreign Office of Syria, which saw these visits as interference in its internal affairs. Hama city in the past has been the centre of resistance against the Ba’thist rule, put down ruthlessly by Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad. In the current unrest in Syria, it has again become one of the main centres.

The seeming western interest and concern for the human and political rights of protestors is not accidental. Syria has long been a thorn in the side of the US and Israel for offering resistance to the American plan to subjugate the Palestinian and Arab people in the name of a sham peace process. The received wisdom in the Middle East used to be that the Arabs could not make war against Israel without Egypt (possessing the largest and strongest Arab army) and could not make peace without Syria (holding out for a just solution).

The ‘Arab Spring’, which broke out from Tunisia and Egypt, has taken on other dimensions in other Arab countries. The way NATO made a ‘humanitarian’ intervention in Libya, with the US ‘leading from behind’ to avoid the fallout of intervening in yet another Muslim country, while completely ignoring other countries with similar protests like Bahrain or Yemen, strengthened the suspicions that the US is targeting regimes it does not like. In Syria’s case in particular, there are accusations that the US is instigating and funding the protests. Looked at from a broader perspective, the ‘thorns’ are being removed from the US’s side one by one, although the campaign in Libya has turned sour and Moammar Gaddafi has turned out to be a hard nut to crack. There may be a genuine element in the Syrian protests, but the US is certainly trying to take advantage of the volatile internal situation of the country. A long-serving regime in a one party state in today’s world lays itself open to the risks of subversion through mass protests. There are reports that the US experts have been training Arab youth on how to organise mass protests through social networking websites. Therefore, the vulnerability of such a regime is a given. The protests may be spontaneous and genuine, but can be taken advantage of by an interested party in order to remove the government. In this context, the American and French diplomats’ show of support and solidarity for the protesting public in Hama was perceived as highly inappropriate.

By conducting such unsolicited and inappropriate interventions the west is playing with fire. Every such intervention, whether military or non-military, is going to arouse more anger against the US and the west and, arguably, hurt their interests. The Syrians, Libyans, and the people of other Arab nations should be left to decide their own destiny. The principle of sovereignty and independence must be upheld, because the Trojan Horse that the west is using in the name of humanitarian intervention to batter down the gates of the regimes it does not like stands exposed.*