Who mourns Assad, who weeps for him?

Neither the revolutionaries who overthrew a regime that inflicted the worst oppression on its people for 54 years in Syria, nor any of those who rejoice at this revolution, have charged it to the account of any religion, sect or nation. For that reason, at the end of great hardships, they have not made any people or any ethnic group a target of revenge for the heavy suffering they have endured until now. Moreover, the leader of the revolution, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and his comrades said, "A victory without vengeance was our greatest goal," and from the very first day they really did try to carry this out.

The blinding, sun-clear proof of the oppression and crimes against humanity this regime has inflicted for 54 years is the inhuman scenes that have spilled out of Sednaya, Palmyra, Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and all the other prisons. Any member of the Syrian people could have fallen into these prisons at any time. It appears that the most orderly and busiest institution of the Assad regime was this prison system, within which every kind of torture and inhuman treatment took place.

In the face of the scenes visible from there, no one should be left to weep for the Assad regime. Everyone who weeps for Assad and sings dirges after him must surely be prepared to be a partner in these crimes against humanity as well. As a symbol of this entire prison system, Sednaya is a place where all the values belonging to humanity were trampled underfoot. It is a terrifying place built purely to do evil, where evil is carried out as human intelligence and will meet, and this place is the quite ordinary mode of conduct the entire regime inflicted on the entire people. This prison system, spread across the whole country, is a sufficient explanation of why the Syrian people have been fleeing the country for 14 years, and of why those who fled have not trusted and returned even in the recent period of relative quiet. The conscience of a humanity that ignores the traumas of a people whose most ordinary treatment from their own state was Sednaya, and that is willing to leave them to their own devices, withers away.

There was no state in Syria; there was a gang, formed purely to commit crimes and blinded by bloodlust. The very fact that this gang was treated as a state at the UN until its last day is a scandal of the world system we live in. Of a Syria of 22 million, some 10 million people who were forced to flee and take refuge in other countries, and millions more who were forced to move within their own country, were in themselves sufficient proof that what existed in Syria was not a state but a terror and crime organization threatening humanity.

About 1,350 cars were found in Maher al-Assad's personal garage. When it was commented that these cars had been bought with the people's money, a Syrian friend of mine asked, "Do you think they bought those cars with money?" and then explained another dimension of the matter: "Maher or one of the family could easily seize any car they saw on the road or liked while out and about. Of course it took the form of car theft on the surface, and the owner never had any chance or possibility of getting his stolen car back. After a short attempt, he would in any case face the fact that searching for his car was a hopeless path."

Now there are people in Turkey mourning over the fall of this inhuman gang, which poses a complete threat not only to Syrians but to all of humanity. The most fair-minded among them sing their dirges not because Assad has fallen but by finding faults in the revolution that has saved humanity from this danger, criticizing it barely a minute in. They say that dark days await Syria on the basis of the roadmap announced by Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has saved the Syrian people, and in fact us as well, from this great calamity, and which presumably envisages moving toward elections in up to 4 years. What shamelessness, what blindness! Anyone hearing this would think that until now there had been a democracy in Syria running like clockwork and that the process now under way had interrupted this democratic process. No, nobody will think that; one only sees what it is these people raising this uproar are sad and in mourning for, and thus sees the shameless accomplices of these crimes.

And what of raising an outcry that "Alawites are being massacred" by looking at the footage of arrests or executions of people from the Shabiha, who killed dozens, hundreds of innocent Syrians with criminal and bestial feelings, taking pleasure in it? Were Assad and his Shabiha committing these inhuman crimes, which can no longer be concealed in any way, in the name of Alawism? Did those who made no sound against them until now stay silent because they were Alawite? What kind of blindness, what kind of irresponsibility, what kind of senselessness is this? Saddam was Sunni, but which Sunni of conscience owned what he did? Mubarak was Sunni, but who described the revolution against him as a coup against Sunnis? Weren't Ali Abdullah Saleh, Muammar Gaddafi, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali Sunni? Who tried to overlook and pardon their crimes because they were Sunni? Didn't their own oppressed peoples, who were likewise Sunni, rise up against them? Was the people's stand against Assad because of his Alawism, or because of the oppression they suffered, which directly burned their lives?

Moreover, many Nusayri sheikhs from Latakia and other places have issued statements saying that they were Assad's greatest victims, that what Assad did had nothing to do with his Alawism, and that they support the new administration to the fullest. Setting aside the question of what those among us are doing, shouldn't one ask what exactly they are weeping over regarding Assad after all his oppression?

The revolution that took place in Syria is not a revolution against Alawites-Nusayris; it is a revolution against an inhuman bandit structure. This bandit structure never bore the responsibility of a state toward the Syrian people. It never had any service priority that looked after its people's security or economic welfare. Those who go to Syria today see no trace of a state that cares to serve its people. But they can see plenty of prisons, torture sites, drug workshops, and car-theft depots run directly by the Assad family itself. Apart from some businesses, such as communication services, that brought direct and most crude income to the Assad family, there is no state service offered to the people.

As far as we can see, there is no one among the Syrian people weeping for this regime, which in this age is a complete scandal for humanity, yet it is as if the house of mourning has been set up with us.