Managing the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East , the unraveling of Syria

  The ongoing conflict in Syria is a great tragedy involving the lives of millions of people being killed and rendered homeless and stateless because certain groups of nations have taken sides and are engaged in score settling while a human tragedy is unfolding on a monumental scale.

When the Arab spring started in 2010 and governments and ruling houses were collapsing in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and eventually Yemen and Syria it was hailed by many as the dawn of a democratic transition sweeping through the Middle East by many Western governments and generally encouraged or tolerated even when legitimate governments and regimes were being undermined.

 It took the descent of Libya into chaos for the global community to realise that every time a legitimate government is overthrown through violence it creates an opportunity for other elements albeit undesirable to fill the vacuum.

History has always shown and revealed that the violent overthrow of a legitimate government no matter how oppressive its policies may be has hardly ever led to the establishment of a just and humane society.

Violence always tends to breed violence and any form of reform rooted in violence will only spur another cycle of violence to alter it. Those who come to power by the sword always invariably fall by the sword. The Western democracies have always tended to look the other way when a repressive regime is being displaced by a violent uprising except when the regime in question is in their good books.

The universal fact still remains that government to be just and equitable ought to be borne out of a negotiated settlement and a out of a shared consensus. The idea of forcing a regime change at the barrel of a gun ought to be condemned and discountenanced by the civilized world no matter how abhorrent the regime in question maybe.

 In Africa for instance none of the regimes that were borne out of a guerilla or bush insurrection has ever given birth to a stable and dependable democracy. Such governments have tended to imbibe the stay put mentality and are themselves always needed to be forced out of office.  It was pretty obvious to the West that a regime as oppressive as that in place in Syria could only be 'forced' out but at what cost ?  

Can the human tragedy unfolding in Syria justify the arming of guerilla groups to overthrow a legitimate government ? This is a question the great Powers must answer, if not the Syrian scenario can easily repeat itself again. All the major powers looked askance as Syria descended into chaos and only began to be concerned as the chaos translated into the greatest exodus and migration of men across boundaries since the end of WW2.

 As Europe is now inundated with a refugee crises of unimaginable proportion, the evil of unsettling a legitimate government has begun to seep into the consciousness of policy makers worldwide.

The world must come to realise that governance is a serious business that must be addressed squarely and legitimately through consensus and dialogue and not by force or coercion if not the kind of tragedy we are seeing in the Middle East today will remain common place.

The notion of regime change that is being bandied in certain diplomatic circles in the West must give way to a notion of a legitimate democratic and constitutional transition no matter how painstaking the process may be.