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My heart aches for Myanmar and Kashmir; for Idlib and Aden – part 3

September 2, 2019 at 1:32 pm

A dead body of a boy is being carried away by white helmet members a after Assad Regime’s warplanes carried out airstrike over Kansafra town of Idlib de-escalation zone in Syria on 4 July 2019. [Syrian Civil Defense/ White Helmets / Handout – Anadolu Agency]

Read part 1 and part 2

Honestly, why should we blame the West, which claims to defend human rights, for their crimes against Muslims when the blame and all of the criminality rests with the Muslim leaders who incite Westerners against us? They encourage them with the brutal crimes that they have committed against their own people.

The massacres committed by the killer Bashar Al-Assad, for example, which began with the revolution of the Syrian people against his tyrannical regime in 2011, and which are ongoing. Assad’s helicopters are still dropping barrel bombs on innocent civilians in Idlib. Meanwhile, his Russian ally is still using aircraft and missiles with internationally banned phosphorus warheads against Idlib, the Aleppo suburbs and some parts of Latakia. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, under the leadership of Qasem Soleimani, as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah militias, which Assad resorted to in his battle against his people, are wreaking havoc on the land.

They are all destroying beloved Syria. According to UN reports, this bombing has resulted in the death of thousands of helpless Syrian civilians, including hundreds of children, in the past three months alone. It has also forced over 400,000 Syrians to flee to the border in the north-west of the country, where they have no other shelter but olive trees.

Injured air attack victims are being evacuated following air attacks of Bashar al-Assad regime and its supporters on Idlib de-escalation zone's Maar Shurin district, Syria on 10 June 2019. [İzeddin İdlilbi - Anadolu Agency]

Injured air attack victims are being evacuated following air attacks of Bashar al-Assad regime and its supporters on Idlib de-escalation zone’s Maar Shurin district, Syria on 10 June 2019. [İzeddin İdlilbi – Anadolu Agency]

These are only the most recent crimes in Idlib among the many others committed by Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies since 2011. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, almost one million people have been martyred in that period. It estimates the number of civilian deaths since the beginning of the revolution at 511,000 as of March last year, including 19,811 children, 12,513 women and over 60,000 political prisoners as a result of torture. Amnesty International estimates that nearly 13,000 were executed in mass hangings, in addition to 17,700 others killed in the regime’s prisons. The genocide policy of the regime has been condemned, it says, with 3 million Syrians injured, including 1.5 million living with permanent disabilities, of whom 86,000 are amputees. Moreover, half a million people have been detained in the regime’s prisons since the beginning of the revolution, and over 6 million people have been forced to flee the country. Another 6 million are internally displaced persons, according to the UNHCR.

READ: A new black mark in the history of the UAE and Bahrain 

These statistics are chilling. The crimes committed by Arab leaders against their own people are far worse than those committed against Muslims by governments in, for example, Israel, India, China and Burma.

No other revolution in history has made as many sacrifices as Syria’s. The people have sacrificed everything for freedom and dignity while the entire world was against them. Their worst wounds came at the hands of those closest to them, their supposed brothers in religion and Arabism who conspired against them instead of offering help and support. Why should the world help them when their own flesh and blood abandoned them? Why would they help them when their own government describes the rebels as “terrorists” and claims to be fighting a “war on terror”?

Assad’s regime is fighting this war on the world’s behalf; it has been keen since the beginning to keep the murderer from being overthrown, although in the beginning the international community claimed that he needed to be removed from power, using the US and other Western leaders as the mouthpiece. This was exposed as false, and their deceit became clear. They were very keen to keep Assad in place in order to protect Israel, and have recognised the Israeli annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. I am convinced that Russia’s involvement in Syria to rescue the killer President when he was about to be toppled would not have happened without the green light from the US, the approval of the West and Israel, and the blessing of the Arab regimes that manage the counter-revolutions from their Zionist base in the UAE.

I warned earlier against the ceasefire and truce declared by the murderous regime in Damascus and its Russian allies, after they had failed to enter Idlib, which remains the stronghold of the valiant Syrian revolution. I said that this truce is nothing but a trick, as were others in the past, being used to buy time for the regime’s forces to regroup in order to continue fighting and shedding more Syrian blood. This happened immediately after the Astana 13 conference, as clashes resumed in Idlib, and despite the rebels’ courage in defence of their land. Russia adopted a scorched earth policy, as it did in Chechnya. Russian troops managed to enter Khan Shaykhun, treading over Syrian corpses, and made their way to Maarat Al-Numan, committing a series of massacres along the way.

The humanitarian catastrophe in Idlib is beyond description. Three million Syrians are trapped by intense and continuous bombing by Russian aircraft. Meanwhile, the world stands idly by and watches. The international conscience died after being bought in the petrodollar market.

All of this has happened with the collusion of the treacherous Arab Zionist regimes. We can’t blame the West when Bin Salman and Bin Zayed in Saudi Arabia and the UAE respectively have been committing heinous massacres in Yemen for five years, amounting to war crimes. They did so under the misleading pretext of what the Saudi Crown Prince called Operation Decisive Storm to restore legitimacy in Yemen under a false cover known as the Arab Coalition, under Riyadh’s leadership.

Yemeni children affected by the Saudi-coalition war - Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Yemeni children affected by the Saudi-coalition war – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

This coalition invaded Yemen, burned the land and the people, and destroyed the entire country. Whole cities, towns and villages have been erased from existence. Coalition missiles have hit homes, markets, hospitals, schools, mosques and even school buses. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded, while tens of thousands have suffered in epidemics, most notably of cholera. Starvation is prevalent as a result of the arrogant, reckless actions of Bin Salman, whose friend and ally in the coalition, the even more reckless Bin Zayed, betrayed him and took over Aden. The UAE Crown Prince separated the southern part of Yemen from the north by means of the Southern Transitional Council, associated with the Emirates. His announcement that the UAE was withdrawing from the alliance was followed by Emirati warplanes bombing the Yemeni army in Aden and Abyan, which is under the command of the coalition, led by Bin Salman. This led to the death and injury of 300 people. In its official statement, the UAE justified its bombing of the Yemeni army by claiming that it was part of the “war on terror”. Yesterday’s ally is today’s terrorist.

“Terrorism” is the excuse that they came up with to justify their own incitement and ignite wars in the region. There is no doubt that the counter-revolutionary and pro-coup forces created this excuse and benefit from it. These Arab Zionist leaders are dividing the Muslim Ummah and causing sedition and wars in order to serve the enemy; that’s who they aim to please when they compete with each other.

READ: Saudi-backed Yemen government calls for legal action against the UAE 

All the indicators suggest that the bonds of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the UAE are linked to the international arena, as both seek to be the main power in the Middle East and close to the decision-makers in the White House. They want to control the region to serve their own interests, using financial muscle and military force to re-draw the political map for their own benefit.

We are facing today a plan to split Yemen by distributing the roles between the coalition, the Houthis and the Southern Transitional Council, under the auspices of the United States. The plan to divide the region is underway and the map is being redrawn with the blood of its people on an ethnic, doctrinal and sectarian basis, not only in Yemen, but also in the other Arab countries. The aim is to make Israel the strongest state in the Middle East with the other countries in its orbit, seeking to please it by warring with their neighbours. The Ummah has returned to internecine wars thanks to the betrayal and collusion of the Arab Zionists.

Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for them, Israel would not have violated all of the Arab lands undeterred. They are in harmony with the Zionist regime in the heart of our nation and agree to bomb other Arabs and label them as terrorists; the reality is that such leaders are the real terrorists. Do not blame the West, as its politicians are simply following the lead of the Arab leaders, who have humiliated themselves and allowed their enemies to humiliate the Ummah.

“And whomsoever Allah disgraces, none can honour him,” says the Almighty in the Qur’an. Do these Arab leaders not understand that?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.