Reports | 25 05 2020
Even after five years, violence still controls everything, and bullets fly as wisdom fades away. Man lets his madness and hunger for revenge take control, and then lead him to the doors of death.
Once again in the realm of unthinkable, we see before us what we could not let go of in the past.
Corpses in the “Quds” hospital in Aleppo are still under the rubble. Children, women and elderly people are all dead because of a savage Syrian pilot who could bomb the hospital and kill so many, and then return home on time for lunch with his children, just as he had promised.
Over the course of one day, Aleppo sees six different kinds of hell. The government attacks with their airplanes, the Russians are launching rockets, the Kurdish people seek revenge for their Sheikh Maqsoud. Isis seeks revenge for the town of Mari’a, and the refugees are seeking revenge for the al-Kilaaseh neighborhood, and the armed sectarian groups seek revenge for Zainab and al-Husein. All the rockets, however, just land on the innocent people of Aleppo, who risk death by staying in their country.
It is surreal, especially in war-torn cities, from Dar’a to Ein Diwar, the fighters, guns and trenches change, but innocent Syrian people are always the victims, everywhere.
On top of a tank carrier lie 47 dead bodies, whose identities aren't much different than those of their killers. They grew up in neighboring villages, they belong to interconnected tribes, they pray behind the same sheikhs, they sing the same songs, and they all fight against injustice and for their freedom. And yet somehow they find themselves in opposite trenches, enacting one of the most horrible scenes imaginable, wherein the killer does not know why he is killing and the dead do not know why they have been killed.
Even ladies, with their hair tied up and wearing perfume, in order to spread the word on media, go near the scene of death to take selfies and laugh like the devil. This happens in front of yet another pile of corpses of Syrian revolutionaries who were fighting for the sake of their children.
On the other side, the scene is that of an airplane landing everyday in the military airport of Hamimim. Around it are the hearses, distributing corpses to their villages so that they can be prayed for. Those who lead the prayer in these villages have just returned from leading the same prayers for the corpses of their enemies: Count not those who were slain in God's way as dead, but rather living with their Lord, sustained by Him [Qur’an].
Other contours of the war in Syria have different shapes, far away from the government and the revolution. Far away from Isis and its international enemies, and all the Syrians that they have killed. It is now the worthless things that Syrian never noticed before, never cared to buy, that are now driving Syrians to fight, to be destroyed, and in some cases, to commit suicide.
Where is the human being in this big pile of mess?
It is going to be a horrible tragedy when our future generations of children read about these events.
There is no honor in arms, no glory in a bullet, and no religion for a killer.
Banning bullets…. That is what al-Tib al-Taizini proposed in his Damascus speech, which led many Syrian critics and people to begin arguing about the difference between bullets manufactured in Syria, and imported bullets. It also led to arguments about the bullets of the opposition and those of the government, as well as a debate about whether al-Taizani is entitled to his opinion or whether he is just a traitor.
“I was one of those who didn’t want the revolution to become armed. We yelled till we ran out of breath for people not to enter the playing fields of a tyrant. A tyrant brings bullets to the playing fields. Tyrants and and executioners are capable of savagery, but knights are not.”
No one knocked at the doors of a revolution and forbade the revolutionaries from militarizing. Those who are angry, blame al-Taizani of always having all those romantic ideas for the country but never doing anything, then they blame him for being a coward and a traitor. Then when by the time we’re done with militarized revolution, we realize that we have been playing around with, and dancing around in our own sadness. We have ventured too deep into the valley of death.
No Honor in Arms is a slogan that gets retold again every day. In the last 5 years, guns have gone from shoulder to shoulder, and have pointed in all 6 directions. Many Syrians find themselves fighting for the trenches that they used to be fighting against, and the ring of death started revolves around the regime’s military, the Free Syrian Army, the army of Muslims, the “Rahman” army, in addition to the army of the devil, and many others that are not mentioned here.
The final portrait of death in Syria is not only a picture of the Regime and the revolution, it now consists of many horrible pairs whose purposes are not understood: Aleppo and its suburbs, Duma and Masraba, al-Ma’ra and Idlib, pairs being adjacent neighborhoods, each with its own army with its own fighters and its own symbol. Those armies have already sent hundreds of Syrians to their doom for no reason.
Until when will this crazy, bloody story keep disorienting us?