The Universality of Morality

"The international community must use every tool at our disposal to draw the world's attention to these offences. They are not just offences against conscience. They are also offences against the laws of war."
"We are under no illusion that our job, or any of our jobs here, are to just write a cheque."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry

"The fighting has set Syria back by years, even decades. [Humanitarian and development agencies] face unprecedented demands [resulting from the crisis, it] is vital ... the burden be shared."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Free Syria Media Hub @Free_Media_Hub

There are two dimensions being spoken of here in the midst of a revolutionary conflict complicated by a jihadist incursion taking place in Syria and which has, over the period of three years, taken an estimated 130,000 lives and made suffering refugees of millions of Syrian Sunnis. Syrian Sunnis have suffered doubly, they have been an oppressed majority in the country under the al-Assad regime father and son, and they now suffer atrocities of government attacks.

Humanitarian groups anxious to deliver life-saving food, water and medication to Syrians whom their government has blockaded in the country's largest urban areas, including satellites of the capital Damascus have been blocked in their attempts to deliver aid to the desperate and the starving. Blocked not so much by the rebel insurgents, but by the government of the people for some of the people.

Kuwait, hosting a conference to attempt to persuade charitable donations to ameliorate and alleviate the desperate plight of the Syrian refugees both within the country and those huddling in crowded refugee camps in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, has led off the pledges with $500-million of its own treasury. Bearing in mind the oil riches of these countries, this represents close to a pittance. Saudi Arabia coughed up $60-million additional to its previous pledge bringing its total to $250-million; mind-boggling in its miserliness.

طارق @tns119

 

Qatar was good for another $60-million and the United States pledged another $380-million. This funding may help in the short run to make life a trifle more sustainable for the millions of Syrian displaced by a government unwilling to give a majority of its population equal status with the governing minority Shia Syrians. This was an implacable decision taken when the first Sunni protests surfaced years ago, and a vengeful President Bashar al-Assad chose to escalate a peaceful protest to a military conflict.

The Iranian and the Syrian foreign ministers flew off to Moscow to deliberate with Russian President Vladimir Putin over a possible strategy that might be recommended for the upcoming Geneva session to try to find a solution to an intransigent president who prefers to bomb his people rather than surrender his position, and a Sunni collective that refuses to negotiate anything but the removal of the tyrannical president and a resulting shared administration.

The United States is indeed under an illusion, or perhaps more adequately stated, delusional in its decision under this administration that Iran must have a place at the conference to hammer out a new position that might conceivably stop the Syrian regime from its sectarian war strategy; why not invite Hezbollah to deliver its opinion as well, and crown Bashar al-Assad in the process?

If there is a moral duty it is for Assad to move aside and allow his ruined country to find peace, but the hatred that have been unleashed will be difficult to impossible to halt at this juncture. Revenge will become a motivating factor in the return of the Sunni immigrants as their Syrian Free Rebel militias will seek to even the score, even while they attempt desperately to foil the intentions and the atrocities-in-the-waiting of the al-Qaeda linked infiltrators.

This is a deadly problem of rabid hatred leading to no-holds-barred brutality, a double-headed killing machine. It is wholly incumbent upon the leaders of the Middle East themselves, the Arab countries witnessing the complete dissolution of civility into mindless slaughter in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq to themselves seek a solution. And to invite those Syrian refugees to resettle in their countries as fledgling future citizens, should they so desire, depleting the squalid refugee camps.

It has to be asked: why is it the moral duty of Western countries to come forward and pledge treasury and invite Syrian refugees to migrate to Europe and North America to find haven there, far from the country of their birth when their neighbours who share ethnicity, religion, culture and heritage have no use or respect for their own moral obligations?

Solidarity in Islam.