I have just returned from a week in Syria with the British-Syrian diaspora, who have done much over the past 12 years to keep the flame of hope alive. If smiles and positivity are anything to go by, I for one am overwhelmed by a sense of hope after a few days in Damascus and Homs with the people I’ve been involved with.
This is something I never expected after the years of death and destruction witnessed in the north-west province of Idlib. The old Syrian regime and their Russian backers tried to subjugate the people with gas attacks and a scorched earth policy designed to raze the place to the ground – but they could not put out the fire in people’s hearts for a free Syria.
It was ostensibly the British-Syrian diaspora, from the Syrian British Medical Society (SBMS) and UOSSM (Union of Syrian Medical Charities), who kept the medical facilities in Idlib running, giving the residents some hope and the will to carry on.
They were ably supported over all these years by eminent and some wealthy Syrians, in effect in exile in the UK and Europe, who would often be in north-west Syria using their own money and resources to keep the lights on and put food in people's mouths as [removed president Bashar Al] Assad and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin tried to kill them.
The revolution that toppled the old guard in Damascus grew out of north-west Syria, and the interim President Ahmad Al Shara, though once an extremist, now appears to be a viable leader who seems to be steering the new Syria into a path to become a moderate, secular and democratic country, which it once was in the mists of time before the Assads.
The Syrians I know, some very close to the new team, tell me they are the real deal, but Al Assad and Putin have bankrupted the country and most immediately Al Shara needs money and advice to keep the mechanics of government moving.
Those of us in Iraq in 2003 saw what happened when the Saddam regime was deposed and the government ministries were folded, causing disaster, and allowing the extremists to develop and almost fatally destroy the country.
This must not be allowed to happen in Syria. Britain is uniquely placed through the British-Syrian diaspora to make a real difference, and opening the British embassy in Damascus cannot happen soon enough.
There may not be a grand building readily available, I’m sure one could be sourced very quickly. I urge the FCDO to take a "bit" of risk with their own, no doubt extensive and elongated threat assessments, but I gauge as one who knows a bit about this place and a bit about security and protection, that if we use the usual "over-abundance" of caution we may miss this fleeting opportunity to stabilise this place.
If we do miss it, expect more threats to the UK itself. I visited the new Syrian Health Ministry, which would like to replicate what SBMS and others did in north-west Syria across the whole of the country.
In the same vein, they have asked the White Helmets, the civil emergency teams set up with British government funding and by the likes of former British Army officer James Le Mesurier, to now run the emergency services countrywide.
Of course, this part of the Middle East is a tinderbox at the moment, with Israel to the south and Lebanon to the west, but at least with the demise of the Russians and Iranians, Syria is now being run by Syrians and not by tyrants and dictators who are out for all they can get.
The Labour government in London still appears to bear the scars of the disastrous Iraq invasion of 2003, and its inexperienced team seem to confuse what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan as a possible blueprint they do not want to replicate in this place.
But I can assure them, that as one who has spent considerable time in all three countries at the worst of their times, the Syria today is different and can, if we act quickly and decisively, be put on the path to a much brighter tomorrow.
The new government in Damascus does not need us to tell them what to do. They know what they want to do, but they want and need our advice and resources to ensure they can do it.
- Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a former British army officer who has written extensively about Syria and visited the country regularly over the past decade
