I can’t possibly have been alone, in the wake of the First Arab Spring and the Syrian uprising in 2011, in wondering if the UK was backing the wrong side. Long an ally of the UK, with Tony Blair cementing good relations in 2001, President Assad making an official visit to the UK in 2002 and the British Syrian Society being formed (by Presidents Assad’s father-in-law in 2003), Syria became an enemy almost overnight. Yet, we continued supplying them with weapons until 2022.
Assad became the bête noire of the Middle East on the basis that he ran an oppressive police state and, as the Syrian rebellion spread, was accused of killing hundreds of thousands of his own citizens by bombing cities that had become rebel strongholds. He has also been accused of using chemical weapons on rebel fighters.
For a country that we were close to politically, it can hardly have come as a surprise that the Assad regime was oppressive; we were supplying him with the wherewithal to be oppressive. But, given what is likely to replace him, they may have had good reason for that oppression.
Chemical weapons are, of course, banned under the Geneva Conventions and hold a particular place of horror in the imagination. Likewise, killing swathes of your own population seems to instil more loathing of a leader than lobbing bombs over a border, even when thousands of innocent people are subsequently killed. Thus, the deaths of non-combatants in Gaza are considered a necessity in crushing Hamas, viewed as a militant Islamist organisation. But defending your own country from, essentially, the same people within your own borders is condemned.
As for the use of chemical weapons, the evidence is strong that they have been used (if we trust the relevant findings of international and independent organisations) and Syria does not appear to deny it. But death in war is death in war whether by bullet, bomb, fire or nerve agent. As for horrific and life changing injuries, witness children with widespread burns in Gaza. It is unnecessary to support either side in either conflict not to be horrified by the injuries to anyone, especially in civil wars. But some seem to be remarkably unmoved by carnage in Gaza.
As evidenced by the events in Syria this week, the overthrown of the Assad regime and his seeking asylum in Russia, we can see that the stakes for them were always high. Syria is now in the hands of a group of radical Islamic extremists about whom some aspects of both the mainstream and less mainstream media cannot deny the potential for disaster.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is an organisation that was directly linked to al-Qaeda but which seems to have wooed our present government with its current message “of inclusiveness and a rejection of violence or revenge.” Keir Starmer and his attack dog Angela Rayner have welcomed the downfall of Assad, conveniently ignoring the fact that HTS is a recognised terrorist organisation by the UN. But the UK is, conveniently, considering removing HTS from its own list of terrorist organisations.
As reported in UnHerd: “Let’s not forget that not so long ago HTS were selling foreigners to Islamic State to behead on YouTube.” The Daily Telegraph was moved to state that: “Jihadi terrorists now run Syria.” And there seem to be fears already for the Kurdish population, oppressed wherever they are located, as they are beginning to be targeted by HTS. If HTS is removed from proscribed terrorist lists, how much evidence will be needed to put it back on?
Israel appears to be welcoming the downfall of Assad while, at the same time, striking deep inside the country to destroy chemical weapons supplies. They clearly understand the danger in a group like HTS having the capacity to turn these weapons on them. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims credit for helping to overthrow Assad as this severs a link with their arch enemies Hezbollah and weakens its ability to strike them on behalf of Iran. It appears that the Israelis are not beyond using one group of extreme Islamists to help defeat their own group of Islamic extremists in Gaza.
How much of the fawning relief of our political leaders that Assad has been overthrown is the triumph of hope over experience? Or has the speed at which this overthrow took place put the wind up them, leading them to wonder about our own security from groups like HTS? After all, we have long been importing vast numbers of young Muslim men of military age both legally and illegally into the UK and across Europe. The evidence that they do not respect our laws and culture is copious.
Thousands of Syrians are preparing to return from Turkey into Syria, and UK Syrian refugees say that they will also return. Let’s hope they mean it. We have 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK and these are the very people who, for the time being, are celebrating the victory of HTS in Syria. How long before they turn their attention to us?
Roger Watson is a retired academic nurse who lives in the UK.
He is currently engaged in a range of professional consultancies in the UK, Europe and China. He writes regularly for several outlets including The Daily Sceptic, The European Conservative, Country Squire Magazine and The New Conservative.
