Having already banned women from making sounds or from speaking to each other, the Taliban have now banned them from being visible at windows. If a kitchen has a window, then a woman may not cook near it. What a roaring success that 20-year war was.
The trick is being repeated in Syria. There is a Muslim minority that also identifies as Aramean, but Maaloula is one of the oldest Christian towns in the world and one of only three, all in southwestern Syria, where Western Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken. It is now besieged by Ahmed al-Sharaa for the second time. As Emir of the al-Nusra Front, he tried to destroy it in 2013. As Emir of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, he is on the brink of succeeding.
In regretting the overthrow of Assad’s regime, and the 20-year effort to depose the Taliban, you seem to be adopting the rightwing realist position-usually scorned by leftwing pro-democracy utopians-that certain peoples such as Arabs are just unsuited to democracy and stable dictatorship-even with the worlds worst dungeons such as Assad’s Saydnaya prison-is the best they can expect.
ReplyDeleteAs a right winger, I partly agree but preferring Arab dictatorships such as Assad’s to whatever emerges from the liberation of their people is an exceedingly odd position for someone on the Left which is supposed to believe in universal human rights and democracy.
There is no liberation to any of this. Barely a Syrian is involved at all.
DeleteOf course there’s a liberation-a long running hereditary dictatorship has finally come to an and people of all communities are cheering on the streets to celebrate and thronging political prisons to be reunited with their loved ones. What happens next will be up to Syria, in the upcoming elections. But to regret the fall of a dictatorship is, as I say, an odd position for someone who thinks they’re on the Left.
ReplyDeleteYou must have been very young, or not yet born, in 2003.
DeleteThere’s no comparison with 2003-there was no invasion of Syria but the entirely unopposed fall of a dictatorship with absolutely no resistance even from its own armed forces and alleged supporters, none of whom could bring themselves to defend it any longer.
ReplyDeleteAs I say, no one knows what is coming next and it will largely be up to the Syrian people who may well choose an Islamist regime. There are those of us (on the Right) who reject notions that ”democracy” or liberty are “universal” and believe such things can only really exist in the West or the Anglosphere, where the right cultural conditions for them and thus that perhaps stable dictatorship is the best the Arab world can hope for. But it’s an odd position for someone on the Left to take!
"There was no invasion of Syria"? I can't even be bothered.
DeleteNo election in Syria for four years.
ReplyDeleteAnd Saudi Arabia thanked explicitly today by al-Sharaa.
DeleteIf you think there was an invasion of Syria then it’s the first completely unopposed “invasion” in history. Even Assad’s armed forces and supporters could no longer bring themselves to fire so much as a shot in his defence. He left his country without even saying anything.
ReplyDeleteAnd that just reads like a spoof. AI without the I.
Delete“No election in Syria for four years.“
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to no elections ever under Assad.
HTS like their leader are almost all Syrians and the “invasion” of Syria, the first entirely unopposed invasion in history-even the dictatorships army couldn’t any longer bring itself to defend the Dear Leader-while he just left for a palatial residence in Russia without a word even for his supporters.
What an odd thing for someone on the Left to defend.
There it is again, "the first entirely unopposed invasion in history." Where to begin? And there is scarcely a Syrian or an Arab in HTS.
Delete