Shouldn't those who ought to be ashamed before Syria stop giving advice too?

In Syria, the most criminal, most disgusting, most despicable and most oppressive regime of our age, which lasted 61 years, came to an end through the will of the Syrian people themselves to determine their own destiny. We are witnessing those who for 61 years ignored all of this regime's massacres, murders, tortures and crimes against humanity, who looked at the sky as if nothing were happening and continued their relations with the same regime as if they were normal, now getting up and entering a race to give advice to the new government.

Even this sight alone is so instructive, and brings out such strange human specimens. People who for 61 years, while all the values of humanity were trampled underfoot, withheld every kind of help from the Syrian people are showing an incredible speed and officiousness in a race to give advice on human rights, the participation of minorities in government and forming a more participatory government to a cadre that has only just freed its country from this tyranny.

The foreign ministers of Germany and France and US officials, visiting Syria amid a series of protocol scandals, have opened their mouths and shut their eyes and are giving advice of "minorities, minorities," as if the first thing they saw in Syria, the possibility of minorities being subjected to discrimination within a government not yet even a month old, were an urgent problem.

TO THOSE WHO SAY MINORITY RIGHTS, LET US REMIND: UNTIL NOW A MINORITY WAS RULING THE COUNTRY

I cannot say they are making themselves very ridiculous. There is nothing to laugh at in those who talk this way. There is something to be disgusted at. In a Syria they have been able to visit for the first time in years, is the first thing they should see really the rights of minorities, for God's sake? Was Syria not already being ruled by a minority until now? Did this minority have a problem concerning rights? Yes it did, but what kind of problem was it? The problem was not that their rights were not recognized or that they were subjected to discrimination or oppression as a minority.

Let us remind: was Syria's main problem not that excessive rights and privileges had been granted to a minority group, and that a minority had applied an unparalleled apartheid rule over the majority? Moreover, this minority dictatorship was not established only in Assad's time. As far back as the period when the French built the state and army structure, the whole system was built in favor of minorities and against the majority. The military council Hafez Assad set up after carrying out his coup within the Baath carried out a coup against the other minority groups as well and was based solely on the Nusayri minority. Although from time to time it included a few Druze and a few Sunnis for the sake of some representation, the entire regime was established as a complete Nusayri minority dictatorship.

Is it not clear enough what this minority rule turned Syria into over 54 years and how it governed? Do not the prisons, torture and massacre machines identified in Sednaya, Palmyra, Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and all over Syria, the mass graves, the existence of millions of Syrians deported abroad or within the country, tell it well enough? Today, while all of Syria celebrates because this minority regime has come to an end, what is this rush in running up to ask "what will become of the minorities?" Meanwhile, let us also say something that may surprise them:

THOSE WHO REJOICED MOST AT ASSAD'S FLIGHT FROM THE COUNTRY WERE THE PEOPLE BELONGING TO THIS VERY MINORITY, THAT IS, THE NUSAYRIS.

Because Assad, who wanted to set up a regime based on a minority, never fully made this minority a partner in his government either. He only used them as human resources for his own criminal organization. The state of the Nusayris whom he had brought from Latakia in the very first years of his regime to protect himself and his regime and settled in Damascus is heartbreaking even today. The neighborhoods they live in are crumbling from misery. The Assad regime was a minority rule within a minority. For Assad, what we call regime and state was nothing but a family company. A criminal organization in which no one other than his own family had any rights, any standing at all. That is why, when the regime dissolved, the first to abandon it were these very minorities. Because he also made these minorities, whom he had made partners in his own crimes as an extra, targets for the majority of the Syrian people. But the new administration, which represents the majority in Syria, is aware of this and has no inclination whatsoever to deviate from justice.

THERE WERE ALSO A GOOD MANY SUNNIS WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE CRIMES OF THE ASSAD REGIME

If they are running to protect their own collaborators by saying "minorities," let them know that those involved in crimes against humanity cannot be forgiven, but the ethnic or religious-sectarian identity of whoever committed them will not be looked at either. There were also a good many Sunnis who participated in the crimes of the Assad regime. Just as these will not have their crimes forgiven for being Sunni, no person who did not directly take part in crimes against humanity will be wronged merely for belonging to this or that minority. This is the approach I have personally heard plentifully both from the revolution's leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and from the whole command body of the revolution.

NEITHER QUOTAS NOR AUTONOMY: SYRIA WILL NOT BE LEBANON AND IRAQ

Against those who put forward minorities and propose to them a quota system based on ethnic or sectarian representation in government, al-Sharaa's stance also appears very clear and unambiguous: a quota system in government, or granting certain groups privileges and autonomy in government or in bearing arms, is out of the question. In a Syria with ethnic and religious-sectarian pluralism, such a quota system would be of no use whatsoever; on the contrary, it would be harmful. What the quota system imposed in its time by outside powers on Iraq and Lebanon has turned both countries into is plain to see. The quota system has made both countries ungovernable. The offices and positions determined by quotas have sunk the country into a swamp of corruption and paralysis in government. As Faisal Qassem also rightly noted in Al-Quds Al-Arabi, the sectarian quota system, which began with the supposed sensitivity of looking after minorities, turns countries not into a joint-stock company but into a bargaining company. Have you ever seen a successful company in which the shareholders constantly play the game of bargaining?

The situation of these two countries (Iraq and Lebanon) alone explains well enough why Syria should not be drawn to a quota system or a federative structure. Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs, Sunnis and Alawites, Druze, Armenians and other Christians can, as equal citizens of this country, receive equal and honorable treatment that they have never seen in this country until now. The conditions, approach and capacity necessary for them to see this are abundantly present in the faith, philosophy and approach of the present administration. Those who should be ashamed of the minority dictatorships about which they have remained silent until now have no advice to give.