Syria’s conflict is dragging down its neighbours, none more perilously than Lebanon. Beirut’s official policy of “dissociation” – seeking, by refraining from taking sides, to keep the war at arm’s length – is right in theory but increasingly dubious in practice. Porous boundaries, weapons smuggling, deepening involvement by anti-Syrian-regime Sunni Islamists on one side and the pro-regime Hizbollah on the other, and cross-border skirmishes, all atop a massive refugee inflow, implicate Lebanon ever more deeply in the conflict next door.
Also in the news this morning:
DAMASCUS — The Syrian information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, said Sunday that President Bashar Assad’s troops have the right to enter the Israeli-occupied Golan whenever they wish, a veiled threat toward Israel to stay out of Syria’s conflict.
‘‘The Golan is Syrian Arab territory and will remain so, even if the Israeli army is stationed there,’’ Zoubi said at a news conference. “We have the right to go in and out of it whenever we want and however we please,’’ he said.
Fightin’ words!
Assad has lost Syria, for these overtures signal a madness that knows it cannot do good — cannot take care of the country, the countryside, the economy, or the people — but it might feel better if it could destroy something even as it destroys itself.
With that last sentence, I have not been merely rhetorical.
On the world map, Syria remains a country. On the ground, it has devolved into a battlefield warred over by sectarian fiefdoms, guerrilla outfits, extremist militias, criminal gangs and a regime clinging grimly to its dwindling sources of power and legitimacy.
If you click on the above URL, you will see what war looks like on the face of the earth when viewed from outer space. Included in the remote sensing comparisons: Damascus, Homs, Daryya, Aleppo.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Source: Wikipedia. “Ozmandias”.
# # #
BackChannels 