Halep: Total Destruction

WRITTEN BY: ACADEMIC ESAD DURAKOVIĆ

Aleppo is an absolute tragedy. It is apocalyptic. And Aleppo was, in the history of Arab-Islamic culture, one of the greatest cultural and scientific centers of that entire impressive universe. From the time I visited it, I remember it as a city that was truly worthy of Scheherazade's literary universe in terms of its urbanism and cultural universalism. I felt it personally: when you find yourself in Damascus, in Aleppo, on the soil of pre-war Syria, you simply become aware that civilization originates from that very land.

All the more monstrous is this total destruction that the "modern" world, in a kind of paganism, is inflicting on this homeland of its own civilization and culture. Everything is being destroyed there today. Only horror remains, also "worthy" of Scheherazade's world, but this time in a negative sense.

Aleppo has been sacrificed, it has been destroyed urbanistically, culturally, it has been destroyed in the humanitarian domain. This is a total destruction, and I want to point out one particular aspect of it, in addition to those that are so obvious.

Civilians have been massively sacrificed in Aleppo, and this is the greatest tragedy, since every life is a miracle of God, in the literal sense, and every human being is a universe worthy of the highest respect. However, political hypocrisy of the World is triumphing there today, along with all other forms of destruction; the example of Aleppo, or rather our attitude towards its suffering, shows how much the media can falsify the truth and thereby enable future destructions.

Namely, these days the world has risen up because of the destruction of Aleppo and the suffering of its civilians. With enormous justification! But the point is that "Assad's forces" are condemned as supposedly genocidal, even as occupying forces, forces that are to blame for everything that is happening there... This way, that "satanic force" called ISIL, al-Qaeda, etc., the very force that is persecuted and demonized on its other battlefields, is amnestied.

Here, in Aleppo, it is now presented as a victim. What hypocrisy! When rebels of all kinds, and in any case of the "ISIL type," were conquering Aleppo, also destroying and slaughtering, there was no such outcry in the world because they were on a mission to overthrow the al-Assad regime, which was the target of Western forces, who, in fact, constructed the monstrous ISIL and other destructive forces in Syria. Now, when that force, which had the task of destroying the legitimate system in Syria, is suffering defeat, the world pities it, but in a perfidious way: with a supposed concern for civilians, about whom they did not care when they were being slaughtered by brutal rebels armed to the teeth from abroad.

This is the ultimate hypocrisy of Western countries' policies. And it is precisely through news agencies from those countries that information from Syria reaches us and influences the formation of our opinion, stance, emotions...

ISIL (and its allied rebel formations) is a military, ethical, religious, and ideological monster. The West's attitude towards it is best seen right now as the brutal rebels withdraw from Aleppo.

Civilians are victims in any case. They should be mourned, helped, but - always and not only when they are victims of al-Assad's attacks. The West - it must never be forgotten - brought all this about in Syria. I know that country. It used to be beautiful, tolerant, PEACEFUL, the people in it were cultivated, educated, even noble, truly, and now all that has been destroyed - to ashes.

The rebellion in Syria, its horrific war, was imported; it is the result of external influences exclusively. I do not justify any crime, no one's, especially not against civilians, about which I have already spoken at the beginning of this text, but the question arises: what kind of logic and what ethics is it to impose the opinion/stance that al-Assad is occupying Aleppo?! He is the legitimate president of Syria who is liberating that famous city in his own country, which has been occupied by international forces known as "rebels."

All this has been imposed on Syrians and al-Assad. However, even this brutal fact does not permit crimes against civilians, just as they were not permitted against those who occupied Aleppo.

Therefore, in Aleppo, along with everything else, truth, objectivity, ethics, political principledness... everything is a victim. World public opinion has also been sacrificed through the selective presentation of "truth." In that presentation, unfortunately, even civilians are not always victims of the same "order."

Such a dramatic sacrifice of all principles and all universal values - and by the West primarily, and with self-destructive falsification of Islam within the Muslim world itself - cannot pass without dramatic consequences for other countries, for the World in general.