About Practicing Good Deeds

You don't have to travel around the globe to find people who need your help. You don't have to risk your life crossing battle fields to reach people who need your help. And you don't have to refuse the thought of aid in general because of that article you read uncovering the sinister practices of the humanitarian organization X giving you the flat excuse no longer to donate.

It was a good friend of mine who cleared his winter wardrobe out not knowing where to bring the warm jackets. Facing his dilemma I got an idea: why not taking his package of clothing together with some stuff I can set aside and searching the most direct way to deliver all that to the deserving poor?

All I needed was to investigate a bit in the city I was staying at that time. Very fast I got the adress of a hostel for the homeless in the Southeast of the town. (The name of the city is irrelevant because it can be every city, every town, every village in the world.) A last look around what I could spare and a big bag full with winter jackets, winter boots, scarfs, warm gloves was packed and ready.

The hostel for the homeless was easy to find but nevertheless a discrete place, drop-in center for those human beings registered under failed existences searching a warm bed for one night during an unusual cold European winter. The guy at the reception was indecisive about my appearance until I showed him the bag full of clothes for his 'clients'. In the first moment he couldn't believe the out-of-the-blue donation but during the unpacking his face brightened, relaxed more and more, he started an informing conversation and I learned at least two more than interesting facts:

The first one is that private initiatives and donations are sadly still rare. Time to change that. By just doing it. The second one is an often overseen fact - many of the homeless need besides upper clothing also underwear. If your boxer shorts aren't too worn out just collect and donate them. Sounds not only simple, it is simple.

I left the hostel for the homeless with the priceless feeling of having done something good. Not like a pathfinder trivia, more from the pragmatic aspect. And of course from the aspect of humanness. For straight direct help you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes the solution lies in simplicity.

Syria: From A Distance

How long has it been since I entered Turkish territory coming back from Syria? Two months? Three months? Sometimes it feels like it was two or three days before, sometimes it feels like it happened in a previous life.

I searched certain answers. I found them. Not always the ones I wanted to find. One, if not the crucial question you have to ask yourself before entering Syria is: am I here to save lives or to take lives? And even if you insist with your full conviction that you solely want to save lives there is the percentage possibility that you find yourself in a situation where you have to take at least one life to save your own. I haven't met one single life-saver honestly admitting 'before I kill someone I allow being self killed'. Don't know how it is in the rows of the life-takers. Haven't discussed that topic with those I met.

The only advice I can give is: avoid to be part of the game. You can call it the gun game. The rifle game. The grenade game. Whatever you call it there's one meta-level above it. Arms. All kind of them. 'I must win and to underline my claim I'm walking through the streets with a Kalashnikov.' Due to the law of attraction from that moment you lay your hands on the gun you're tracking the attention of other guns and inevitably their owners. Kind of Buddhistic perception. I'm not expecting too much agreement, see it as my personal view.

It's all about arms in the meantime. For a long time the focus to overcome the regime was on the activities based on non-violent resistance. But the regime had decided to strike the rough path being so seen responsible for the vicious circle of violence dominating the country nowadays. But it is one thing to blame the rulers for starting the mess and another to act constructively instead of react destructively. The ghosts of stalemate are turning the uprising faction with the time in a moral twilight while the regime's ruined reputiation is gaining some thoughts like 'well, maybe they aren't as bad as always reported'. And a third party becomes more visible; those who are neither with the regime nor with the rebels. The longer the stalemate the more this faction is increasing.

What to do in case of the revolutionaries? Definitely not to converge the regime strategies. Wouldn't be clever because the people, the indecisive ones, the sceptical ones, would sooner or later notice both sides as equal exhausting. The greatest challenge the revolting Syrians actually have is to get a united command over the armed groups - each one of them, from fundamental to secular - and a functioning network of responsibles on the ground able to manage a reporting without gap. No, it was never easy to embed a greater group into a structure; yes, it takes a lot of discipline and the ability to handle backlashes. Sometimes you don't need heros. You need simply people doing their job. Doesn't sound as exciting but is at least as important.

Even the slightest thought of the political ongoings under the umbrella of the Syrian revolution causes me lasting headaches. Why? Well, in the beginning it was Burhan Ghalioun, I remember his legislating well, those where the times of a collective confidence, so I perceived them. Today after I-dont-know-how-many successors being more likely replacements I read about Moaz al-Khateeb's withdrawn resignation while I'm studying the profile of the newest player in town, A Syrian-Texan who's position in-between the political structure is .. above al-Khateeb? Or equal? What now? Sigh. The greatest lack the political faction of the Syrian revolution is offering is in my opinion the lack of continuity regarding the staff at the top. I mean, what kind of support can you expect if your efforts to create a representative transitional government appear in the eyes of German, French and Dutch politicians like a blueprint of Italian politics? Sorry, dear Italians, you are all but a role model for stable governments. Silvio of all people was the most long-termed head of .. but that was more the proof that democratic elections are valid even without using the brain. With a raised eyebrow Western European responsibles will think 'Gosh, another problem child ..' while they are shaking your hands with a professional smile in their face promising you 'immediate unbureaucratic aid', another contemporary term of 'Don't know if and how to help'. Yes, there should be a warn sign above each political column: too much studying politics can cause migraineform headaches ..

Don't ask me how the whole thing is going on the next weeks, the next months. Can't predict that. Maybe the revolutionaries are able to gain strategically eminent territory. Maybe the regimers proof their ability to keep up the grueling stalemate until their demands for dialogue are fulfilled. Maybe. But nevertheless it's high time that something happens. The actual condition is indicating a growing resignation, decreasing motivation, the impression that the daily hostilities are becoming normality. That's a dangerous tendency.

Farewell thawra ..

Has the actual reality on the ground still something in common with the origins of the revolution?

A justified question regarding the lack of unity Bashar al-Assad's counterparts are presenting. Let me figure this out by summing up the different streams and players out there:

1) The FSA. The biggest problem with the Free Syrian Army is that actually each and everyone impartial from the goals following can brand himself/themselves as FSA branch. There's no control over the fighting parts 'in the name of the FSA' and that leads to the desastrous situation that looting thugs and criminal minds are more or less terrorizing some regions and neighborhoods in Syria causing a more and more general rejecting stance towards the gesh-al-hor. Even if there exist some special units to investigate crimes in their own rows they are not able to overlook all katheebas fighting all over the country. This lack of structure is a bigger threat than the regime guards: and the regime responsibles know that, it's one of the cards they are holding in the backhand during the pokergame about power. Those calling themselves the 'friends of Syria' are not interested in supporting the Free Syrian Army to get an effective structure because this would mean that they have to take more responsibility for the FSA movement inside Syria and they don't want that for sure. The hard-working part for the FSA is it to build up an effective structure on their own which reaches even the smallest katheeba units on the landside - a kind of Sysiphos work but after two years of tenacious resistance it is high time to install such a structure before the liberation fight will become an eternal struggle.

2) The Islamists/Salafis/Religious Radicals. The most known wing of that faction is actually the Jabhat al-Nusra, a more than suspicious unit working more against than with or for the FSA and getting infamously known for terrorizing secular revolutionaries as well as liberal freedom fighters for being 'not Muslim enough' to gain a respected place in the common caliphate they want to install after Bashar al-Assad's downfall. From one terror reign to the next one described in one sentence. But the suffering, exhausted population is after two years of witnessing death and destruction in continuity in the meantime willing to accept each helping hand not really proving to which body this hand belongs, what real aims and purposes this body might have. Fact is that such extremists abusing the religion for their own selfish goals - in some cases back-upped by foreign powers trying to imply their own interests on Syrian ground - are counterproductive acting towards the original principles of the revolution: regaining freedom and dignity. They aren't interested either in real freedom or in dignity for all, they only want to embed their way of repressive ruling.

3) The Kurds fighting under the label of the PKK. I don't know what kind of fishy deal Bashar al-Assad has made with the Kurds but their behavior in the recent year is all but being part of a united Syrian front against the regime. In contrary, especially the FSA has now to fight in the Northern parts of Syria the armed PKK/Kurd katheebas instead of the regime batallions. And there are no signs of coming together fighting united against the gesh-al-nizam. The behavior of the Kurds is symptomatical for the lack of unity in the rows of the uprising Syrians.

Regarding all those tendencies Bashar al-Assad and his allies can calmly lean back simply watching the revolution destroying slowly itself. From time to time a handful of Scud missiles fired into the neighborhoods to show the humanity: 'Hey, we are the bad guys, we're still there and all you can do is watch and complain about our ruthlessness but that's all, and one day you will have forgotten what we are doing actually because that's the tide of events in this world ..'

Call me a traitor of the revolution, like you did before to those expressing their justified concerns, call me an enemy of the freedom striving Syrian people, like you did before to those announcing their well-founded constructive critic when this revolution turned towards the tattered chaotic actual state we have to witness in the meantime, but the failure of reaching waheda, unity has killed in my eyes the original revolution. And not only in my eyes ..

The regime has to pay the price for their crimes, that's for sure. And I would never defend one of their infamous actions towards the Syrian civilians. But the innocence of the Syrian revolution is lost since there are influental parts profiting from the stalemate, turning the uprising into a bloody war business ..