The Syrian war is the brand of our generation

Today is ten years since the start of the Syrian uprising. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives and millions were sent on the run. The man who made the whole thing so horrible, is on the move with power in Damascus.

It is perhaps the refugee crisis that people think best. Or terrorist group IS. But the war in Syria is actually the story of the popular uprising against dictator Bashar al-Assad.

On March 6, 2011, the spark came in the city of Daraa, near the border with Israel and Jordan. 15 boys were arrested for writing scribbled slogans from the Arab Spring on one wall. The kids were between 10 and 15 years old, and were tortured.

They were knocked up. Their fingernails were pulled out. The boys were branded. The general behind it was Assad’s cousin. Nine days later the riots start. The torture happened far more.

Those who do not save lives that can be saved must also take responsibility. It is us. The world community saw how Assad burned Syria to the ground – without intervening.

It is our generation’s brand.

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The war did not create terrorist group IS – it was established in 1999. But it was in Syria that they were powerful. Beheadings, torture and massacres in Syria, then spread to Iraq. The group was behind a number of terrorist attacks in Europe.

But IS was Assad’s work. The two share bloodlust, but not ideology. For Assad, Islamist extremists were a useful tool to quell the more popular uprising. There is no doubt that he is closed.

We were appalled by the IS ravages – rightly so – but ignored Assad. He got barrel bomb civilians. Gasse districts. Even villages with land. Assad could do this, because ten years ago he gave the terrorist group its renaissance.

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Then the uprising against the president was in the starting pit, Assad dragged namely thousands of Islamist extremists out of their prisons. Many of these ended up in the IS leadership after a quarter of an hour, and those who fought against the Assad regime lost many soldiers and civilians in the fight against IS.

While Assad cleared out much of the moderate opposition, he let the extremists ravage in peace. Then Assad could point to these, and say that the opposition was extreme. It worked.

As so often before, Western medical leaders see uprisings in the Middle East as destabilizing. Assad, who bombed hospitals and marketplaces using gas and torture, was seen as a stabilizer.

Many pointed out the absurd fact that he is secular, whatever that means in this context. As if it is worse to kill the population say as long as the founding is religious.

In pure numbers, the Assad regime has stood for far more civilian killings than IS.

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The world community went to war against IS, and liberated large cities and territories to which they had been subject. There was no moral alternative where IS could control Raqqa in Syria or Mosul in Iraq.

Therefore, the outside world intervened. I let Assad be.

There is no other reason for this than that Assad was a state actor. The reluctance to intervene had taken place long before both Russia and Iran entered Syria on Assad’s side.

The lesson is that one can bomb as many of one’s own civilians as one wants – as long as one represents the state. This is how the international world order no.

The humanitarian intervention that saved many lives in Kosovo no longer exists. Everything is allowed.

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The refugee traumas were huge, and made the Syrian war suddenly about ourselves. Now asylum seekers came across most European borders – also in Norway.

The handling was parodic.

Millions of refugees had gathered in Turkey for several years, probably in the hope that they would soon be able to return to their homes in Syria. When they gave up, the EU and Turkey were suddenly in a fight to stop the refugee trauma.

All options were on the table to stop civilians moving. No one raised a finger to stop him sending people on the run.

Syria was there the Arab Spring came to die. Along with it, hundreds of thousands of civilians died. Half of the Syrian population is driven on the run.

They live under a brutal dictator, who for the future has shown what the world community tolerates. When the fall of a dictator can never be so unpleasant for the West, we are on the side of the dictators.

Not in words, but in the absence of action.