--"It is happening in Syria and affecting various groups of Syrians. I continue to say and do nothing, in fact pursue my daily activities, because I am not in Syria and not one of the people affected."
The above is my own paraphrased echo of the German Pastor Martin Niemoller's famous quotation of the 1940s:
"First, they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. Then, they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist…Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."
The essence of Pastor Niemoller's lamentation, and my rephrasing of it in relationship to Syria, is that the best expression of our humanity is in the expansion of our universes of moral obligation or circles of ethical concern. When we expand our ethical spaces to accommodate those whom we do not even know; with whom we share no racial or ethnic markers, and who may even live far away from us, we reconstruct a worthy human bond. We should feel for the dead and dying in Syria and do what we can for them. It is empathy towards those locked in the throes of death, far away from us, that transforms distance into the closest of proximity. Syrians are our closest neighbors in their time of need.
Today, the plight of many in Syria should remind African leaders that circumstances generated from within, or stoked from without, can make everyone vulnerable to death. Therefore, the search for an end to death in Syria should not be the exclusive duty of some vague entity called "international community." Who is part of it and who is not is often determined by some nebulous and arbitrary criteria. Preserving human life and dignity, everywhere, is a moral obligation that should stir up the human in everyone, anywhere.
It is, therefore, the silent "African voices" that trouble me as an African with a Conscience. It seems to me that those who represent our "official" national and continental opinion have either lost their moral templates, or hopelessly ceded their voices on this Syrian matter to some "senior prefects" in national capitals outside of the Continent. What is going on in Syria is the result of a combination of moral hazards and it is moral voices that can help Syrians.
There is a moral hazard in what African leaders are doing by passing the "responsibility to protect" the dead, and soon-to-perish, in Syria, onto some nations in the "international community." Some of those nations are actually the stokers of the fires of war in Syria. They have not hidden their morally hazardous interest in a particular outcome of the violence in Syria that advances their "strategic" goals. Equally hazardous is their constant blaming of the Syrian government for the violence and carnage and, thus, legitimizing the morally hazardous behavior of the Syrian government's armed opponents. The Syrian government continues its own hazardous approach to warfare by conflating civilian and combatant in its punitive campaigns. But, in this bloody affair, can one even discern the legal boundary between civilian and combatant?
The era of minding our own business while states treated their citizens the way they desired ended at the Nuremberg trials. And the period of time when African countries passed the responsibility to speak on grave international matters to the United States, Great Britain, France, China and Russia should end NOW. Africa should no longer relegate itself to irrelevance on these serious international matters.
What is going on in Syria has the potential to descend into a grave moral catastrophe. Those so eager to win by fighting to the end, and those bent on seeing one side victorious, will not stop until they have pushed this duel beyond its ethical boundaries. When the combatants in Syria (government and its armed opponents) reach a dangerous frontier where friend and foe can no longer be determined in the fog of war, they will begin to convert real ethnic and religious groups into "terrorists" and "political enemies" to be destroyed with impunity. When Syria reaches this dangerous frontier, we will not be talking about war , but rather genocide. We will only know that when the crime has already been committed. What happened in Rwanda, in the 1990s, should embolden African leaders to speak out about Syria.
African nations should not thrive in silence when grave matters of life, dignity and death are discussed in the world. Summon the most influential Imams, Prosperity Gospel pastors, successful pastoralists; add some peasants, and some community leaders of conscience, and transport them to Syrian Embassies in your respective countries on the Continent. Send a message to the Syrian Government and its armed opponents that our common humanity summons us to Syria's door to protect the vulnerable. Call in the Ambassadors of the Security Council nations and be stern in your words to them that we share this Planet, and the lives of the vulnerable in Syria are too precious to be left to the whims of nations that have already taken sides in that war. Put forth a position, Africa. Find a way to get to Damascus and Istanbul and speak so loudly that the Heavens will hear you. Offer your collective continental or separate national or regional suggestions. It is better to speak out and be dismissed when the times are evil than to dismiss oneself from speaking while Evil is running amok and even the Righteous are subdued by it.
FOR THE LEADERS OF THE VARIOUS NATIONS IN AFRICA, SYRIA SHOULD BE YOUR "DAMASCUS" MOMENT-----your conversion from perplexing silence on grave international matters to visible voices of conscience on the Continent and in the World.
Edward Kissi
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