I remember viewing footage of a handcuffed
Vietnamese man being led into a Saigon street. As he stood there in his plaid
shirt, expression of pain on his face, his captor produced a handgun and,
placing the muzzle inches from his temple, pulled the trigger. It was
February,1968. The image, which energized the Vietnam anti-war movement, was
captured by an AP photographer and landed on the cover of at least one major
magazine. I remember the picture. It captured that instant just when the bullet
entered the man’s head. The man had tilted his head away from the muzzle, as if
it might protect him. I can still see his hair, flung straight upward and
outward, the way a boxer’s hair goes straight at the impact of a disabling upper
cut. The point of the article? The U.S. and its military might were on the side
of the man with the smoking gun—Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Chief of the South Vietnamese
National Police. The incident made America look inward, questioning whom we had
become friends with, as much as the cause.
It is forty-five years later, and all that has changed are
dates and scenery.
The scene this time is the town square in Aleppo, a town in
northwestern Syria surrounded by olive, nut, and fruit orchards and known for
its domes, minarets, stark apartment buildings, and war. It is an ancient city,
among the oldest inhabited ones on earth. If it were human it would have
celebrated nearly 8,000 birthdays.
It is a Saturday, June 8th, 2013.
Fourteen-year-old Muhammad al-Qatta is working at his coffee kiosk in the
working-class Shaar neighborhood. Two years of civil war have left the Syrian
economy and currency in free fall and he is glad to have a way to help with his
family’s needs. When a man approaches and asks for a free cup of coffee,
Muhammad’s smiling reply, variously reported, seems to have been, ‘If Muhammad,
peace be upon him, were to come to this earth right now, I would still not give
a cup of coffee to anyone unless they pay for it.’
Nearby,
three men overhear the comment. They accuse him of insulting the prophet.
He is forced into a car and driven away. When he is returned, his head is
covered with a shirt and he is blindfolded. Visible on his body are whip marks.
The three men, who speak in a clear Arabic accent as opposed to a Syrian
accent, announce to bystanders that the youth is guilty of blaspheming the
prophet and that all who blaspheme will suffer his fate.
The
teenager’s mother is watching from an upstairs window when it becomes clear the
men intend to shoot her son. When she rushes into the street her son has
already been shot at least once. She pleads with the men who stand over him.
‘That’s haram, forbidden! Stop! Stop! You are killing a child.’ The answer was
another shot. Then, the men leave by car, driving over an arm. Muhammad is left
in the street. Entry wounds have left his lower face bloody and grotesquely
deformed; another bullet hole gapes in his neck.
The
men who shot Muhammad al-Qatta are members of the Islamic State of Iraq. In the
continuing struggle to overthrow al-Assad, they are part of the diverse mix of
opposition forces receiving millions of dollars in non-lethal aid from around
the world, and just one of the Al Qaeda affiliates. And while the United States has taken pains to deny aid to
extremist groups, many question whether there can be any effective way to
accomplish this goal given the thin lines separating factions fighting
alongside one another in shelled ruins, or dashing from building to building in
the beleaguered cities and towns of the crumbling state.
Over
the past month, concerns took on a new urgency as President Obama, faced with a
growing humanitarian crisis and a death toll approaching 100,000, agreed to send arms. And though the
president’s plan—for the moment stymied by Congress—would limit supplies to the
more moderate rebel groups, it is difficult to discern who, if anybody, fits
the definition of moderate. Certainly not the group that armed Muhammad’s
killers, or the militia unit that recently stormed the convent of the Custody
of the Holy Land in the village of Ghassaniyeh and put eight rounds into the
chest of Father Francois Murad while he tried to protect the nuns. Nor would it be those represented by Khalid al-Hamad, who was
videoed biting into the heart of a fallen Syrian soldier (medical experts say
it was actually a lung). The fact is, moderate rebels in Syria are as rare as
Baptists in the Vatican.
By far, the most well-organized and most
effective units of the opposition are the Al Qaeda affiliates; and to them the
war is not part of a democracy movement: it’s about killing Shiites and
establishing Sunni rule. One spokesman has even gone so far as to call fellow
Sunnis traitors worthy of death who support democratic elections. Even if these
groups are barred from receiving any U.S. weapons shipments, there is no
guarantee that supplies of arms and ammunition would not be shared with, or
even captured by them or other unsavory members of Syria’s opposition forces.
The
atrocities committed by the Assad regime are undeniable. His aircraft bomb
civilians, his paramilitary thugs crash through doors to stab, shoot, and
incinerate the bodies of those within. His use of chemical weapons has been
confirmed.
But the existence of a cruel, dictatorial regime must never be
the sole qualifying criterion for U.S. aid—lethal or non-lethal. In determining
who should be friends and beneficiaries, there are certain things we must first
learn about them. After they have prevailed; after they have paraded the bloody
body of the dictator in the street; after they have posed before the cameras,
lighting up the air with their U.S-made automatic weapons, how will they
govern? What system of law will they impose? How will they treat dissenters or
those who do not conform to their religious views? These questions must be
answered in a way that does not offend our basic instincts and values.
