Views /Opinion

As the world witnesses massacres, genocide, forced displacements, and sectarian cleansing in northern Syria, one wonders about ‘mercy’ and cruelty of air raids and strikes.
For months, Syrian cities, without exception, have been subjected to relentless, seemingly random Russian air strikes. The Russian bombing raids make no distinction between what is civilian and what is military. This is a carbon copy of the scorched-earth campaign in Grozny.  Which Russian President Vladimir Putin adopted in “Grozny”- the capital of Chechnya, in the mid nineties, to put down the Chechen rebellion. The UN declared Grozny in 2003 as the “most destroyed city on earth”.
In 1991, when the world, led by the US, launched an air campaign in “Operation Desert Storm” against Baghdad for the liberation of Kuwait, numerous demonstrations roamed several Arab capitals in protest at the “barbaric, savage and treacherous” air strikes. Similar demonstrations erupted in different Arab cities protesting the Israeli air campaign against Lebanon in 2006, Gaza strip in 2008 and the summer of last year-2015. The then demonstrations were a rightful expression of Arab-Islamic and humanitarian solidarity with the targeted Arab cities.
But why weren’t similar demonstrations carried out in the very same cities that protested the strikes against Baghdad, to protest the horrific Russian air campaigns against Syrian cities; the great city of Aleppo in particular? I don’t claim to have a logical answer for this rather naïve query. For if Baghdad was the Capital of the Great Haroun Al Rasheed, Aleppo was the capital of the Hamdani’s dynasty, and was the city of the greatest Arab poet of all times; Abu Altayyib Almutanabbi! The city is an icon of human heritage as it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Syria, as a whole, is the cradle of the orient and the castle of Arabism.  
Why were there selective protests against the destruction of some great Arab cities but not others? Have we become desensitised to violence and lost our sense of empathy and compassion to the extent that we now harbour such inhumane indifference? Or have we become so frustrated with lack of impact such that demonstrations, shouts and slogans are no longer sufficient expressions of our rage?
Perhaps it is because the relentless raids on Syrian cities are Russian and NOT American or Israeli? Is the mayhem caused by the Russian Sukhoi jets more merciful and different from that of the F18s?
Is this indifference caused by the nostalgic remnants of the Arab left who long for the illusionary days of the “late” Soviet East- Tsarist Putin?
Or, dare I think that this apathy is caused by the position of the people and governments of the Arabian Gulf; they are against the Russian raids, hence others are for the Russian raids? This pathological attitude stems from the GS “Gulf’s Syndrome” that some non-Gulf Arabs suffer from.
Maybe the reason behind the lack of sympathy with the Syrian cities in the face of the horrendous Russian air raids are all of the above- a combination of many reasons that have lead to one result.
In conclusion, I don’t have an answer to why Arab peoples seem to have an attitude of apathy towards the non-stop Russian air campaign against Syria. Fury and wrath was dominant amongst many Arab capitals when Baghdad, Gaza and Beirut were bombarded, but the same capitals sit idle as the Syrian cities and nation are being systematically turned into ruins, for the eyes of Bashar Al Assad.
One hopes that these events and thoughts could awaken our consciences and offer us an opportunity to review our selective judgments about what is a true crime against humanity, irrespective of the nationality of the perpetrator or the city where the crime is committed.

The writer is an academic and media expert.