There is a saying that goes like this: “The road to hell is
paved with good intentions.” I have no doubt there are groups of righteous
human beings out there who sincerely wish to help the Syrian people that lost
so much, and can use all the help they can get.
The problem is that a case like this can have unforeseen
consequences. To see how things could unfold in a way that may not be
desirable, we assume that the choice to act is between implementing Plan A or
Plan B. We deem that A is the better plan and implement it. This means we did
not choose B. Unfortunately, the passage of time proves to be the cruel factor
that spoils everything for us. It shows that plan A has yielded a negative
result. And this means that doing nothing would have been a better choice than
plan A.
More than that, the passage of time also shows that plan B
would have yielded a positive result if only we had chosen it. And so, the net
effect of what happened is that we had two plans and three possible choices,
and we chose the plan that yielded a negative result. In effect then, we
started out with good intentions but the road we took led us and the people we
tried to help to the front gate of hell.
This example sheds light on what could go wrong with a plan
that some groups are advancing to help the people of Syria . Such a plan is discussed in
an article that came under the title: “Trump's bid to keep Syrian refugees safe
– at home,” written by Benny Avni and published on February 8, 2017 in the New
York Post. In a nutshell, Avni says that the plan consists of carving out a
piece of Syria
and turning it into a safe zone “to keep Syrians from becoming refugees in the
first place”.
This is a great idea on paper, but time may prove that –
like Plan A in the example above – it was a bad idea that yielded a negative
result. The conclusion will have to be that doing nothing would have been a
better choice. So the question is this: Might there be another plan that could
yield a positive result such as Plan B in the example above.
The answer to that question is yes: it would be to get
everyone working on making all of Syria – not just a piece of it – a
safe zone. It will be the place where Syrians could go back to their own
“beautiful” homes and rebuild their lives. In other words, the best way to
handle this crisis is to help end the civil war in Syria , and make sure that the
resulting peace will be permanent.
But what could go wrong with carving out a piece of Syria , and
turning it into a safe zone? The answer is that ever since Sykes-Picot, the
idea of breaching the territorial integrity of an Arab country, for whatever
treason, has been viewed as an attempt to weaken and recolonize the Arab world.
The resentment will build in the hearts of Arabs and will manifest itself in
ways that cannot be predicted at this time.
What will make things even worse is something that Avni has
alluded to. It is this: “Erdogan would love to move them [refugees] into
Turkish-controlled areas inside Syria .”
Given that Turkey was the
colonial power behind the Ottoman Empire that
subjugated a good part of the Arab world, a development such as that will turn
the region into a powder keg that will keep festering and most certainly
explode at some point.
Add to that another complication which Avni calls “The
catch,” describing it as: “Moscow , always
fearing an American occupation and US military mission creep, won't
bless any of this,” and you'll have a mix that will make the current horror
look benign by comparison.
And of course, there is also the warning that was issued by
the Secretary General of the United Nations who reminded the world that “we
have in history different examples of safe zones, and some of them were
tragic.” Benny Avni takes it from there and explains: “The UN is traumatized by
Srebrenica, a supposedly 'safe' zone in Bosnia , where 8,000 Muslims were
massacred as UN guards helplessly watched”.