‘In the document drawn up by a top secret and high-level working group that met in Washington in September 1957, Mr Macmillan and President Eisenhower were left in no doubt about the need to assassinate the top men in Damascus.’‘Documents show White House and No 10 conspired over oil-fuelled invasion plan’, The Guardian, 27 Sept 2003

During times of war, when hard truths about ourselves and our ‘enemy’ are so seldom told, our naivety and credulity are exploited. The work for peace and reconciliation become nigh impossible.

Can seeking the truth and putting ourselves in the shoes of the ‘enemy’ be antidotes against the allure of war?

When I lived in pre-war Damascus, I was so often buoyed by the warmth of Syrians. The direct, engaging eye contact I so often received from students, colleagues, even waiters and shopkeepers, would have me feeling in sync with those around me; I felt accepted, at home.

’I love Syria’ was a declaration expressed by Syrians of all backgrounds: a heart-felt truth similar to that expressed by Indigenous peoples about ‘country’. Syrians’ love for country united a diverse population.

To destroy Syria, its enemies had to undermine that love. Plus, they had to undermine the intrinsic trust Syrians placed in their fellows. They had to undermine human kindness.

In the first weeks of Syria’s ‘Arab Spring’, there were random acts of terror by armed gangs. Terror engendered chaos and fear; it sowed hatred and distrust. It inevitably fuelled violence and led to war.

By 2013, the ‘armed groups’ were well-funded, trained and provisioned. They included thousands of foreign fighters who didn’t share Syrians’ love for ‘country’.

In June that year, parents of Tunisian ‘jihadists’ travelled to Damascus, desperate to find their sons and take them home. In the Umayyad Mosque, Muslim and Christian leaders sat together, while the Tunisian parents apologised to Syrian parents whose sons had been killed in the war.

Earlier in 2013, Sheikh Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric described as the ‘spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood’ with close ties to the Qatari royal family, issued a fatwa on his Al-Jazeera program. He gave permission for insurgents to kill Syrian soldiers, civilians and religious scholars (‘sympathisers’) who still supported the ‘unjust and tyrannical authority’.

The most prominent religious scholar to be assassinated was the 84-year-old imam of the Umayyad Mosque, Sheikh al-Bouti, a ‘renowned Sunni Muslim........

© Pearls and Irritations