Opinion: To Be Or Not To Be – By Walid al-Bunni for The 
Syrian Observer


The tragedy experienced by Syrian people has reached its zenith after the speeches of the tyrant of Damascus and that of the Caliph of the Islamic State.

The two men have put the Syrian people in front of the critical Shakespearean question: 
 »To be or not to be, that is the question ».

The continued international indifference to the fate of Syrian people – the result of the interests of the major powers and Israel to leave Syria to be destroyed at the hands of its sons, and to use Syria to weaken and drain their opponents – makes this question legitimate. Will we as Syrians, the people and state, be or not be?

We have to ask ourselves this question because the answer is our responsibility. If we choose to be, then there must be honest contemplation with ourselves. We must review comprehensively what we have done so far over forty months. 
We may forgive our confusion, misled by bright and false promises in the first year of the revolution. But after all what we have learned, or at least what we should have learned after all these sacrifices, we must review all the methods and rhetoric and approaches to deal with the disaster which has almost eliminated us.

We have heard from those whom the international and regional powers wanted  to impose as representatives of the Syrian people and their revolution, we have heard a lot about the limited days and changes to the balance of power to impose a political solution, about the unlimited support to the moderate forces and the quality weapons which will topple the regime. We still listen to the same speeches now.

But what happens on the ground is almost a complete recession in the control of the moderate forces, in favor of  the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda organizations on the side of the opposition, which imposed themselves in an equation that includes the regime’s Shabbiha, the sectarian Lebanese and Iraqi forces under the Iranian umbrella.

It seems as if an ideal situation for an abhorrent sectarian war is being prepared in the whole region, especially after its extension to Iraq after IS took control over large areas and gained weapons and money, and after the insistence of Maliki – the ally of Assad and Iran- on sectarian recruitment to face it.

After all this, it is no longer possible to rely on the same speech and the same strategy practiced by the same institutions and the same people who have become dependent upon the the constant tragedy on both sides, which are in turn dependent on their sponsors and supporters who led us to this situation in the first place.

In order to be able to be as Syrians, and to avoid the option of ceasing to be, all of us – and here I mean all the forces I mentioned previously, all the national democratic forces, without exception, with all intellectuals, thinkers and creators who want, regardless of how they looked at things so far, or the position they have taken towards the revolution and its developments – to combine their efforts and their vision to create a civilized alternative far from the sectarian incitement and from the desire for revenge and counter-revenge.

We need an alternative able to prevent the two beasts – the tyrannical killer and the lethal obscurantis m- from erasing our existence as a people and a civilization, and to prevent them from continuing to use our youth as fuel for their insane war, to rebuild Syria, which we deserve if we manage to be.