In his opinion piece published Monday, February 6, 2023, in Asas Media, Khairallah Khairallah writes that the earthquake in southern Türkiye and northern Syria is “an extraordinary event in a region whose people do not need more tragedies and suffering.”
Khairallah explains the difference in how the two countries will manage to weather the crisis by saying that on the one hand “Türkiye will manage its own affairs due to several reasons, foremost of which is that it is not isolated from the world, in addition to the fact that its economy can bear the consequences of the earthquake,” while on the other hand “Syrians living on both sides of the border and in areas of Syria, some of which are under the control of the regime, and the other outside of its control seem to be the first victims of the earthquake, especially in light of the absence of a Syrian state that has become reduced to a regime isolated from the world.”
What is making things worse is that the regime “refuses to even acknowledge reality. The reality is that the country is under five occupations, and it is rejected by most of the Syrian people, especially by the Sunni majority, the majority of the Druze, and a good portion of the Alawites.”
the natural earthquake that Syria was exposed to […] is nothing but an extension of a political earthquake that practically began in 1949
Khairallah Khairallah
Khairallah stresses the self-serving nature of the Assad regime and draws a correlation between the recent natural disaster and the ongoing crisis in Syria when he writes that “the natural earthquake that Syria was exposed to, and in which the regime finds an opportunity to obtain foreign aid, is nothing but an extension of a political earthquake that practically began in 1949” with a military coup carried out by Hosni al-Za’im which led to “the army’s departure from its primary mission, that is, to defend homeland instead of interfering in political affairs and the life of the citizen.”
Khairallah gives a brief description of how, in the aftermath of this political earthquake, “Syria walked, with unremitting steps, on the path of collapse from within” culminating with the rule of Bashar Assad, who succeeded his father Hafez in 2000 and opened “the door wide to full Iranian control over the Syrian regime,” and this control “increased after the fall of Russia into the Iranian bosom as a result of the Ukrainian war.”
the regime believes that the earthquake represents a stage of salvation for it and that it will open the doors to Arab and international openness to it
Khairallah Khairallah
Khairallah points out that the natural earthquake that “struck northern Syria indicates the extent of Syria’s fragmentation. It has become so fragmented that the regime believes that the earthquake represents a stage of salvation for it and that it will open the doors to Arab and international openness to it.”
“The regime does not know that the world has come to know that it is nothing but an Iranian puppet […] and that there is no character, other than the human character, for any aid that can reach Syrian territory,” Khairallah concludes his article.
