This is a silly blog. I rant, and sometimes I try to say something deep, but all in all I try to be witty and smart. We all do that on the internet, it is our window, and a good deal of us (I suppose "us bloggers") are too narcissistic to take a step back and try not to sound so damn smart every time we post.
This is, mostly, why I have been so silent on this blog. It is a fun thing to do, its purpose to let the words amuse (me, you, whoever) or just come out and relax me in the process. I cannot find the energy to do that right now, not with what I read in the news.
I have always felt a connection to what happens in Palestine, for example. The Gaza siege put a dampener in my enthusiasm and my will to blog, but did not kill it entirely. I was going to post something, at some point, what with all the travelling I have done, but lack of time and other priorities prevented me form doing it.
Now there is a deeper reason. Much deeper. It is Syria. It is a hot hot hot debate, but to me the core of the matter is as simple as its outer layers are complex. Those are meat and mead of analysts, fuel for (interesting) geopolitical debates. They have a merit, I suppose, as they illustrate the conflict to us, crassly clueless European, framing in context what happens just next door.
What matters to me is that for the last 2 years people have been suffering, fearing and dying over there. Normal people, ordinary people. People I could relate to. The death of an illiterate shepherd on the Tora Bora hills is not less dramatic, his life just as valuable, but I have to acknowledge to myself that there are other levels to relate to people, beyond that of just "being a human like me". I go through the gory, unsettling, disgusting images that the internet is flooded with. Before-and-after pictures of places that used to be beautiful, peaceful, or just "normal". Places where people of all ages had their trade, their everyday dramas, their jobs, their exams, their hopeless crushes on that girl/guy. When destruction hits people I can relate to, with similar dreams and aspirations, it all gets a lot scarier. To know that those people are no more, wiped away but the tug of war between their government and a bunch of thugs, to know that their existence has been shredded to pieces by the war-game of far way nations, is simply too disgusting to ignore.
But I can go deeper than that. I will. Syria, in a way, is family to me. It makes bleed the hearts of the people I love most, the ones who mean the most to me. I am not Buddha, I am not an enlightened soul. Certain wars will mean more to me than others. Certain events will tip the scale in favor of at least trying to say something, to articulate a thought.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/01/2013115135151522535.html
This is just the last in a long line of brutalities. This one robbed us of 87 (as of now) people and shattered the lives of those who knew them. It hit them where it hurts, where they thought it could not, would not happen. Because the parties are their own government, or a militia that allegedly, supposedly, theoretically took arms to overturn a corrupt police-state.
All I can do now is pose myself, and those around me, a simple question. Is it worth it? No. It is not. It cannot be. Do not come to me ever saying that this is a "necessary price", that "transitions are always bloody", that there are "lesser" or "necessary evils". There are not. We screwed up, big time, all of us. The dictator refuses to budge, refuses to bend, refuses to reform, cracks down on his own people, and what do we do? Do we help the citizens find a voice? Do we pressure said government to pull its head out of its ass? No, we do not. We flood the country with weapons, we arm militia groups. Ignorant, bloodthirsty thugs who love their sects more than they love their country. People who are prepared to die, yes, but also people who will do so no matter how many more they drag down with them. We bless these groups, and even anoint them with legitimacy, while what happens (legally speaking), is a Head of State who is refusing to go simply because "well...because Ben Ali and Ali Abdallah Saleh did". Is the government power hungry? Sure. Is it corrupt? I don't think anyone can object to that. Were there no alternatives to all of this? Of course there were.
But pitting Shi'ites against Sunni, crippling an enemy for good, forcing new markets to (eventually) open up to western goods, pulling all sorts of strings and stacking up all sorts of credit (to be exacted, no doubt, at usury rates) seemed and seems more important than asking Syrians if they did not prefer to go through a political battle, rather than being engulfed in a full-on war, fought by a bunch of barbarians, in their streets and in their houses, with a dreadfully cold winter upon them, with no international help, and very little recognition, no information, surrounded by states that are at best paying lip-service to their plight, when they are not downright hostile to them or trying to exploit them as a negotiation tool (see the case of refugees).
But most importantly, and I don't give a flying shit if it sounds egoistic, it robs my loved ones of sleep, it makes them dread the future, it makes them worry sick, and I cannot just look the other way and keep to myself. If it is only to say that I am infuriated and disgusted, I will use this web space to do so.
