January 2014
The flight attendant on my flight from Qatar to America sounded like any other Westerner in his 20s, from pop culture, to family, to hobbies. But when he said he was Syrian, my curiosity woke up.
The flight attendant on my flight from Qatar to America sounded like any other Westerner in his 20s, from pop culture, to family, to hobbies. But when he said he was Syrian, my curiosity woke up.
His immediate family had left Syria years before, but like
many Middle Eastern immigrants, lots of his relatives stayed behind. At the
time of my flight in late 2012, his family was still alive, but he worried for
them.
The young man called himself a Christian. His sympathies lay
with Syria’s President Bashar al-Asad—as do many Christian Syrians, who are a minority along with Al-Asad’s Alawite Muslim sect. But his real passion showed in his condemnation of Qatar’s
media, which he believes stirs hatred among his people and gives only one side
of the story. I heard this theme often during my four years in the Gulf
emirate.
Al-Asad’s brutality over the past three years deserves no
praise. Yet his rivals have reached their own crisis. The first two years of
the civil war saw a highly fragmented coalition try to battle the government.
Their disunity made foreign governments wary of supporting them. But as Western
nations began to change their tone, growing news of radical Islamists among the
rebel armies has deepened and further complicated the calamity.
Ironically, while the first series of peace talks
in Geneva, Switzerland, is under way, headlines on the conflict are saying
little about Al-Asad and much about the “1,400 dead” in January from the
“rebel-jihadist clashes.” A three-way civil war is in full swing.
Lebanon’s top English newspaper cited the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying
190 civilians have died. This includes 21 whom the Islamic State of Iraq and
Greater Syria executed at a pediatric hospital in Aleppo.
Back in Qatar, a Syrian man sat with his elderly father in a
clinic waiting area a few months ago. Both smiled as they watched my young son
playing on the seat next to them. He found a video of “Barney” on his smart
phone and showed it to my son.
The man worked on a Qatari government farm. He had just
brought his father from Syria. He had to evade gunfights in order to rescue his
father. Now his father will live with him for the duration of the fighting.
He affectionately translated parts of our conversation to
his father. The man’s voice was dry. His eyes were hopeless. He seemed too
tired to try blaming anyone.
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(Originally published by Yahoo! Voices.)
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