The Passion of the Interventionists

The 22-member Arab League and Turkey are right royally upset over the civil war situation in Syria. They profess to be dreadfully concerned over the viciously violent response of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to the Sunni-led opposition to his Baathist Alawite regime.  The deaths of well over 70,000 Syrians, the displacement of a million others, the violent attacks by artillery, helicopter gunships and regime-supporting militias causing atrocities among the majority Sunni population represents an intolerable affront to the notion of Muslim tolerance.

They have pleaded and they have warned the Syrian regime that their behaviour will not be tolerated. They have encouraged and they have armed and supported the opposition, engaging President al-Assad's righteous wrath, accusing them of supporting terrorists, themselves encouraged by the West in a plot to dislodge him from power. The Sunni-majority Arab League and Turkey deplore the atrocities committed by Syrian regime forces.  The Arab League is concerned over Iran's support for the regime, along with its proxy militia, Hezbollah fighting alongside the Iranian Republican Guard.

And then there is Russia, supporting the Syrian regime with new weapons, rendering military advice, and valuing its client for its reliable purchase of Russia's advanced weapons sysems, and valuing also the availability at the Syrian port of Tartus for its Black Sea Fleet. China and Russia have made common cause in support of the Syrian regime in the Security Council, holding back on sanctions and neither wishes to see UN or NATO interventions.

Recent history has much to tell the world about Western interventions in Arab/Muslim affairs. The initial, historical interventions with colonialist zeal created the artificial nation-boundaries intersecting tribal affiliations and clans and religious sects which only tyrannical strongmen, royalty, theocracies, oil sheikhs could counter through repression and violent oppression.

American-led intervention in Iraq led to vicious sectarian bloodshed when Sunni dominated Shia through Saddam Hussein's Baathist party permitted no rebellions, and all restraints were released with his defeat. Now America's most hostile antagonist, Iran, has a neighbourly partner in Shi'ite ascendancy. There was intervention in Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt where dominant tyrants were unseated and Islamist dictators took their place.

So, for those who despair at the tragedy of Arab slaughtering Arab, of torture and atrocities and mass slaughter, enforced migration, the spectre of starvation and disease, a reminder of Arab-nations responsibility to involve themselves in humanitarian intervention is not displaced.  The West cannot and will not solve these problems that are regional, historically endemic, and pathological in nature.

To those who prefer to believe that only the intervention of the West will 'save' besieged Muslims from their own murderous regimes, a deep breath is recommended, and a cooling-down period. For Western intervention never fails to breed deeply-held resentments and a collective pledge of jihad against the interfering West, determined to degrade Islam and oppress Muslims in their zeal to be of assistance.

Turkey, a member of NATO, assumed to be a political-social bridge between the Muslim world of the Middle East and Europe and Western democratic ideals, has made it clear enough that its sensitivities lie with the jihadists whom the West term terrorists and whom Turkey views as proud defenders of Muslim values. Its warm relations with Iran, and its rejection of a Judaic presence in the territory as the country returned to its Islamist roots speaks volumes about Western values infiltrating Muslim societies.

The problems of tribalism, clan honour, religious disagreements, female subjugation and offences continually taken against the presumed machinations and inclinations of Western interests infringing on those of Islam, cannot be solved by the West. Islam must heal itself. Western reaction is best led at home, in countering the malign influence of jihadist Islam that has migrated abroad.