The real issue in Syria

French President Emmanuel Macron fears turning the Syrian conflict into a copy of Libya’s, and therefore decided not to make the removal of Syrian President Bashar Assad from power a priority.

At closer look, though, this reasoning is flawed for the simple reason that the Syrian conflict is already worse than the one in Libya, and has been this way for years.

It is also flawed because it ignores the fact that the chain of events that led to the current quagmire in Syria were initiated by Damascus and can be traced to the violent repression of the Syrian demonstrators in Daraa, in early 2013, which eventually turned into an all out civil war in which outsiders got involved.

The crux of the crisis in Syria remains the unfortunate and shortsighted policies of Damascus, which did not yield to logic and give way, even gradually, to real democratic reforms in the country where thousands of prisoners are languishing in horrible conditions and the war machine has killed more civilians than terrorists.

The French president comes from a proud nation that was founded on liberty and knows very well the value of freedom and self-determination, for which the Syrian people “revolted” in 2013, long before the outsiders joined the battle, only to be brutally crushed.

This is now history as the Syrian civil war is entering its seventh year with no end in sight, except that it has become even more complex as additional actors came at the scene.

In the final analysis, the real issue is not whether Assad himself remains in power or not, it is the introduction of real democracy, freeing the thousands of prisoners from jails, stopping summary executions, ending torture and ill treatment, and, above all, giving the Syrian people the possibility to express themselves.

Had Macron added all these basic requirements for saving Syria from becoming another Libya, he would have been on a sounder track.