At the onset of the bloody incidents in Syria, I made a bet with two colleagues who are among the pillars of Al-Hayat in London. One said that the regime would fall in the early summer, and the other said at the end of the summer. We wrote the details of our wager on a small yellow paper that I still keep. I told them that they were both wrong, and then I won the bet. Today, I don't bet that the regime will survive, but I fear that the crisis may last for some time, and that it shan't be settled before many more victims have perished. I was in Beirut a few days ago, so I had the chance to sit with colleague Nada Itani, head of the Information Center in Dar Al-Hayat. She gathered for me everything I had written on Syria and the ongoing crisis there since 1/4/2011, when I related to the readers “Manaf's account” of the incidents in Daraa. Manaf hails from that border town, and I had met with him in Kuwait, where he told me in detail about the protest by young students who chanted “down with the regime”. The students were arrested along with their teachers and parents, and the town's people demonstrated on the following day calling for the release of the detainees. However, the security services opened fire on the protesters, killing many people. On 27/4/2011, I went back to the situation in Syria, after Likudnik Americans called for intervention, and ended my article by saying that the situation in Syria is very dangerous. Many were killed in the protests, and I read the figure 200 and also 300, and said about these figures, “Even if those killed were three or four, it is still a humanitarian disaster, and the solution can start by stopping the killing and starting a sincere dialogue”. I went back to the situation on 27/5/2011, and asked whether the relationship between the regime and the people had reached the point of no return. I proposed a ‘grace period' of six months during which the government would announcs and implement a program for reform. I then reiterated this proposal on 3/8/2011, as a way out of the ongoing bloody confrontation. Between this and that, I repeatedly called for an end to the killing of the demonstrators. On 4/6/2011, I spoke of a news story in the New York Times which mentioned casualties, injured, and incidents of torture, as well as the figure of one thousand deaths since the start of the unrest. I said: “If the story on Syria is true, then the regime is responsible, and if it is untrue, then the regime too is responsible, as it bans foreign journalists from entering the country. As a result, the only source of information available for these journalists is the opposition and the human rights groups, which are all opposed to the regime.” I then addressed President Bashar al-Assad in this column on 21/6/2011, and held him fully responsible for the incidents and said, “…You are the president. You are the one responsible. You are responsible if protests demanding reform and change erupted. You are the one responsible if you did not anticipate them, and responsible if you did not deal with them well. You are also the one responsible if there are saboteurs. Why did the security services not anticipate their subversion?” I also wrote again about Syria on the 26th of the same month, and spoke about the killing of the two children Hamza al-Khatib and Thamer al-Shar'I, and the traces of terrible torture found on their bodies and said, “I write down the names of the martyrs because they are symbols, and the whole nation is martyred…” On the sixth of August, I went to Jeddah to attend a meeting of the Arab Thought Foundation's Board of Trustees, chaired by Prince Khalid Al Faisal. I left with Al-Hayat's editors two articles for use in following two days so that I could have time to focus on the Jeddah event, and I found that my article published on 8/8/2011 included the same words mentioned in the statement of the GCC, in which it expressed deep concern for the bloodshed in Syria, and another statement at nearly the same time by King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, in which he said that killing innocent people cannot be justified in any way, and called for a halt to the killing machine and bloodshed. On the same day, I said that the Syrian regime used violence as the only means in dealing with the protests, although this has not solved anything. I described the regime's policy as being “a suicidal policy the worst aspect of which is the fact that it was not the only policy available at the beginning”. I then concluded my column by saying that things would get worse if the government did not change its violent ways in dealing with the opposition. After that, I wrote about the issue in subsequent articles, some focusing on Syria alone, and others addressing similar Arab developments together, including three articles this month alone. All these pieces contained condemnation of the Syrian government and calls for an end to the killing, and all of the material is available upon request. Why am I writing this today? Because I am fed up with obnoxious Syrian dissidents, who send me letters that say things like: Why do you not write about Syria? I wrote about Syria more than I wrote about any other Arab country. Other letters even said: You are equating between the victim and the executioner. But this is a lie because I have opposed the killing before any official Arab statement did. As a last example, the reader Ghassan Abdul Qader, in a letter published by Al-Hayat Reader's Mail, began by saying: There are rivers of blood flowing in Syria, and yet we hear no comment from you…I say that rivers of blood is a distasteful exaggeration because blood gushes and does not flow in rivers, and secondly, I wrote a few dozen articles on Syria since 1/4/2011 which is why I wrote this article. The reader Ghassan has at least used his real name. But there are “the brave ones” who show off their courage behind fake names, such as Syrian, Youssef, Syrian Faten, Faten of History and Ammar 12. I just want to say: Shame on you. In the end, I conclude with something that I said in a previous article: May God help the Syrian people. [email protected]
