Only justice can bring lasting peace to Syria

The barrel bombs are still falling and people still live in fear, but Syria’s shaky “cessation of hostilities” has instilled some hope, a hope that Syria doesn’t have to be like this, racked by conflict and suffering for interminable years to come. With the breathing space afforded by the truce, someSyrians have come out on to the streets with banners saying “Our peaceful revolution is still in progress” and “A revolution is an idea, and ideas cannot be killed”. What fortitude. It won’t restore to life the hundreds of thousands of dead or rebuild the millions of shattered homes, but principled defiance like this is still a breath of fresh air. Five years ago today, Syrians massed for the first significant “day of rage” protests on 15 March 2011, and the country has suffered terribly ever since. It’s thought that nearly half a million people have died – many perishing needlessly because Syria’s healthcare system has all but disintegrated. Around two million people have been injured, and in excess of one million people are enduring life under some kind of military siege, in most cases surrounded by pro-government forces. Tens of thousands of people have been abducted and “disappeared”, most at the hands of the government, and many of these have been tortured to death in horrific circumstances in prisons. And of course an even greater number – a staggering five million people – have fled the country, with most of these now residing (often in great difficulty) in Turkey, Lebanon and other nearby countries.

By any measure, what has happened in Syria is a human catastrophe. If the fighting ended tomorrow, it would still take generations to restore Syria to where it was five years ago (not that a restoration of a police state under Bashar al-Assad’s ruthless intelligence agencies and police forces would be much of a restoration). I’m not going to pretend that I have all the answers as to how Syria can be nursed back to some kind of health.

Clearly, though, it must mean the EU and other countries being far more strategic in dealing with the refugee crisis. Which means putting common humanity before borders, and sharing funding and responsibility in ways that have hitherto been mostly absent. It ought to be recognised that most of these refugees will, if conditions allow, eventually return to Syria. Europe should be helping to shelter, feed, educate and re-skill this future Syrian population.