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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Opinion -> 
The groan of Aleppo
    2016-12-26  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    THE Syrian Government announced on Dec. 13 that it has recaptured Aleppo after four and a half years of bloody war with the rebels and extremist terrorists.

    Before Syria’s civil war tore up Aleppo, the country’s largest city, with 2 million people before the war, was a busy commercial powerhouse, and a proud historic center.

    But the war that erupted across Syria in 2011 exploded into Aleppo in the summer of 2012, when rebel fighters took over the eastern part of the city.

    Aleppo, as well as Syria itself, the one-time pretty and wealthy Middle Eastern nation, has been largely reduced to rubble.

    Indeed, by any standard, the war in Syria is a humanitarian calamity. An estimated 300,000 people have been killed and more were wounded during the still going-on civil war. Millions of refugees have fled their shattered homes for safety.

    Over the cause of the Syrian civil war, the dominant U.S. and Western media have blamed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for his suppression of his own people. They kept calling Assad a “dictator” and demanded he step down. They did the same with former leaders of Iraq and Libya: Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi.

    Well, by the Western standard, these “strongmen” were far from nice or approachable. But a close look into the U.S. and its Western followers’ double-standard practice in the Middle East and their hit-and-run style of intervention in the region will reveal their hypocrisy and peremptoriness.

    If Uncle Sam really abhorred dictatorship, he should have equally found fault with other Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, which are ruled by strongmen in a similar way as Syria and Libya.

    But Washington always has a distinct principle: implementing rewards or penalties not based on true or false, but on whether or not the subject is an ally of the U.S.

    As known to all, both Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi were killed because of their intensive anti-American stances. Washington can terminate any individual leader of other small nations if they are thought to be “disobedient.”

    A little knowledge of Syrian modern history will help understand why Bashar al-Assad was targeted by the U.S.

    After becoming President of Syria in 2000, Bashar al-Assad did have trouble tackling internal affairs involving opposing forces. But that would have not led to a war without external interference.

    He made a fatal “mistake” when he opposed the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Bush administration then began to destabilize the regime by increasing sectarian tensions, showcasing and publicizing Syrian “repression” of Kurdish and Sunni groups, and financing political dissidents. It has proved to be America’s tried and true way of overthrowing a legitimate government.

    Assad also made other enemies when he opposed the Qatar-Turkey pipeline in 2009. The Assad-led Syria has been in the volley of bullets shot by numerous enemies and U.S. and European leaders have repeatedly announced that Assad’s days “are numbered.”

    But miraculously, he has survived and Syria has seen the light at the end of the tunnel. Why?

    Because the U.S. and European powers have created too many messes and left the trouble unsolved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. They are swallowing the bitter pill of their own making. Refugees from Syria and other turbulence-ridden nations are torturing European countries. The ferocious terror group IS could not have grown so fast without American efforts to disturb the power balance in the region.

    Fearing to bring more trouble to itself, the Obama Administration did not move further to topple the Syrian Government. With Russia and Iran’s help, Syria made it through.

    But the tribulations for Syrian people are far from over. Nor is the end of the spillover effect from opening Pandora’s Box. On Dec. 19, Russia’s Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Kariov was assassinated at an art exhibition in Ankara and a truck barreled into a Christmas market in Berlin killing 12 people and injuring at least 50, an apparent act of terrorism.

    Nobody knows if the world will become even messier.

    (The author is an English tutor and a freelance writer.)

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