Beneath the Regime

At school, I loved history – British history. It was about Kings and Queens, wars and dates. History was about great men who were born to greatness. I absorbed it all and remember the best bits still. The history I loved was written by the victors and those who held power. Back then, I saw it as an absolute truth of how things were. Now I lean towards Tolstoy’s view that history is shaped by events, broader forces and the collective will of ordinary people.

And so it was in Syria. It was the collective will of its citizens that has finally transformed their country from the stranglehold of the Assad regime to a new regime that garners new hope that transcends beyond the borders of the land. That collective will came at a price – a big one.

I compare the effect of the war on Syria with the way we here in Britain still remember the slaughter of WWI. Back then, the population numbered forty million, there were 880,000 deaths and two million injured. We remember them still. They were the great, great, grandfathers of today’s population. The imprint of those four years of Hell lives on in our churches, on our village greens and in our hearts.

Syria has a population of twenty-three million. Half the population are dead, missing, or displaced from thirteen years of war. These numbers are far higher than Britain’s for WWI. How future generations will reconcile this overwhelming destruction of their homeland is beyond anything I can comprehend. How will they heal?