A role assigned to the western press in recent years has been one that establishes a boundary between authorised and proscribed thought; and ultimately achieves the ‘manufacture of consent’. The media has been busy transforming perceptions into facts. One should oppose it. Syria is an illustration of that dramatic situation.
Russian bombings of Aleppo are ‘murderous’, while the international coalition only makes ‘surgical strikes’. Aleppo is besieged (by its own army!), while Mosul is going to be ‘liberated’. A humanitarian convoy is bombed — a ‘terrorist attack’, the US claims, until acknowledging their ‘mistake’ once evidenced; ‘monsters’ on one side, ‘freedom fighters’ on the other one.
However, when Russian President Vladimir Putin states that East Aleppo’s population, which has been taken hostage, is being used as human shields, he is censored in the French press.
To those who want to be factual about Aleppo, let’s be factual about Syria. The population there was doing much better in 2010 than it is today — living in peace, enjoying food and housing, their children going to school and with minorities free to follow and practise their religions. Yes, the regime was a dictatorship — a system in which one cannot express himself or herself freely, a system in which one can be jailed (and tortured) for his or her beliefs and a system that was corrupt.
Then, a revolt ignited in early 2011 and this was put down with the kind of ferocity such regimes only know. Then Kalashnikovs started to ‘grow’ overnight in the fields along the Jordan border and fighters from all over the world poured into Syria through Turkey — with arms and money provided by their respective sponsors.
Let’s also be factual about war: It kills people — as it does in Afghanistan at wedding parties and hospitals. Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) fighters are doing probably worse. Just think of their methods of holding a population hostage, as they did last week when they prevented civilians from leaving eastern Aleppo through humanitarian corridors opened up by the Russians.
Aleppo is not a city besieged by hostile foreign troops, but a city occupied by gangs of extremists — the very same people who had planted bombs in Paris It is why one can only hope for Daesh to be defeated swiftly. A total liberation of Aleppo would be a first step towards the freeing of Raqqa, Idlib and ultimately the whole country.
Pushing ‘federalism’
A series of conclusions can be drawn from what appears to be failed western diplomacy in Syria. First, it confirms that the US, passively followed by Europe, acted as if it wanted the Syrian state to disappear — all the while it softly pushed the concept of ‘federalism’.
The destruction of Arab states has been a constant objective of Israel, and a recent Wikileaks document revealed that the then US Secretary of State and now Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton supported a war in Syria in order to overthrow the government and oust Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, claiming it was the “best way to help Israel”.
Second, from a Nato perspective, other results achieved in the region are just terrible. Iran has returned as a major actor and Turkey has joined forces with Russia. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will never accept an independent Kurdish state.
As for France in particular, the results of an emotional diplomacy based upon feelings and non-realities are somewhat pathetic. To make Al Assad’s departure a preliminary condition is absurd when the only army in the field is the Syrian National one.
Actually, one simple question should have been asked: Who is France’s worst enemy, Al Assad or Daesh? Did Al Assad put bombs in Paris? Did he kill French soldiers fighting terrorism? No, but Daesh did. That should have been enough.
Sticking to a grotesque diplomatic approach of “No Al Assad, No Daesh!”, with no other serious third option can only end with France being a spectator to a settlement arranged by the US and Russia. France should have smarter things to do.
— Luc Debieuvre is a French essayist and a lecturer at IRIS (Institut de Relations Internationales et Strategiques) and the Faco Law University of Paris
