Thread by @EHSANI221

How #Syria ‘s was could have turned out differently

It was June 6, 2011 when 120 army & security personnel were killed at Jisr al-Shoughour

Had Washington & Arab capitals dealt with this incident differently, countless lives would have been saved & so much misery avoided ==>

This is how @nytimes reported on the incident

Right off, the article mocked Govt ‘s characterization of those who killed the soldiers as armed thugs & it went on to highlight how locals disputed the Govt ‘s story

Most media outlets did the same
nytimes.com/2011/06/07/wor…

Back in Washington, surveillance of Opp. communication devices made it clear it was indeed hit on Army & security personnel

It was here that Arab & Western capitals could / should have taken a stand that taking up arms against a sitting Govt (yes, a HATED one) was unacceptable

Instead of calling for civil disobedience rather than taking up arms, not a single capital questioned the media ‘s narrative that relied on so-called “local residents” to refute the Govt ‘s account & instead claim superiors shot their own soldiers. Few questioned this story much

Not only Arab capitals did not question the account of “local residents” or pleaded with them and others not to take up arms civilians against the state they may hate, they actually kicked #Syria out of the Arab league few months later

Yes, all this was happening in 2011 still

Sadly, it was hating-the-regime that blinded all & led to policies of escalation from all sides

This is not about giving the regime a pass

Of course #Syria was never beacon of democracy. This was always a brute system paranoid about security & was never going to let go easily

Instead, throughout the early days of the war, all you heard from the opposition $
& from western experts that the regime will fall in 6 months max

They all repeated the above as fact and this only contributed to repeated policy errors that simply added more fuel to the fire

Even now and 12 yrs later, many of the so-called experts are still at it repeating the same lines in different form

Arab capitals seems to have moved on

Western capitals invested so much in sanctions & democracy busting charges that makes it hard politically to make U turn

You can hate a sitting Government all you want & you can 100 great reasons for doing that

But this doesn’t mean that arming civilians against this Govt makes it kosher so long as that system is not to your taste

Alas,

Syrians paid the price, and how