The Noble Syrian Opposition

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 8^th, 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.

Like individuals, nations can be measured by who their friends are. Remembering the police chief in Saigon, and getting a clearer view day-to-day of what contributing to a Sunni victory in Syria would say about us, I, for one, am inclined to be selective.