Gamal Nkrumah discovers the Wall of Damascus Ironically, Egypt was uppermost in the minds of pundits across the Arab world. Yet, Syria ultimately stole the show. The battle of Aleppo was the turning point. In an insightful article entitled 'Syria and the other battle', Hussein Shubokshi, writing in the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat, urged his readers to scrutinise the books of Daniel in the Old Testament and Revelations in the New Testament. Only by reading these Biblical books can we unravel the secret code that describes in detail the Syrian endgame. The columnist concurs with most Arab commentators that the tide is turning against the Syrian regime and that there is a shift in the balance of power in favour of the Free Syrian Army. "It is with much sadness, pain and revulsion that the world watches closely the events taking place in Syria during the past 17 months. But what I find astounding is that there are some people who analyse what is happening in Syria from a different perspective and for reasons other than those presumably deemed imperative. There is a huge constituency in the Muslim world that watches closely as events unravel in Syria and consider it to be a sign of the times. The Doomsday scenario is upon us and in Syria it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. As in most things political, the bashing of the wavering regime seems studied and methodical. Still, the Syrian regime mocks the suggestion that it is on the verge of collapse. It is putting a brave face on even after the blast in Damascus that destroyed the Syrian national security headquarters and killed the defence minister and a former military intelligence head. The biggest blow, however, was the death of President Al-Assad's own brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, one of the most high-profile officials in the Baath regime. In Revelations the Christian Apostle John writes, "Blessed is he that reads, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things that are written therein: for the time is at hand". Ominously, Shubokshi makes it absolutely clear that he thinks that the Biblical Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse, must be read diligently from beginning to end. Revelation has a special suggestiveness in connection with the civil war in Syria. Persecution has ultimately been fatal to the persecutor. The Revelator, Saint John, beheld the spiritual idea of progress and emancipation from injustice as a woman clothed in light and in travail. The woman in the Apocalypse symbolises the Syrian refugees and innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, the most vulnerable members of society -- women, children, the elderly and the disadvantaged. Revelation is replete with symbolism. There is the blood of the Lamb, the Dragon and the serpent having great wrath just like the Syrian regime. "But it is not only Muslims who are closely observing the goings on in contemporary Syria. There are the Christians who read the Syrian tragedy from the perspective of the Book of Revelations," Shubokshi extrapolated. Aphorisms and euphemisms galore, peculiar characters people the Book of Revelations. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away." Is this an oblique reference to the demise of the Syrian regime? Was Shubokshi referring to Daniel or Deuteronomy? Deuteronomy or Ecclesiastes or is it the New Testament's Revelations? It is the latter, and more precisely, the Apocalypse that interests the writer. Not to be outdone, Hamad Al-Majed wrote "Ramadan through Bashar's eyes". He was forthright. "The countdown in the holy month of Ramadan begins with the demise of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The butchery has reached an unprecedented stage of barbarism committed by the Syrian regime against its own hapless citizens. The regime decided not to fast during the day in Ramadan and gorge itself on the blood of the residents of Syrian cities. Qamareddin [apricot drink] is the favourite Syrian beverage for breaking the fast with. Yet the favourite drink of the Syrian regime is blood of its own people," wrote Al-Majed in Asharq Al-Awsat. Disorder, disaffection and discontent are palpable everywhere in Syria from the political capital Damascus to the economic capital Aleppo. "There are no crescents in this Syrian month of massacres," Al-Majed continued in his poetic prose. So whether the Al-Assad regime hangs on for many more moons or not, the horrendous bombing of the Syrian cities by the ruling Baathist regime may tip the regime itself into a swift decline. Al-Assad's days are numbered and the people of Syria are psychologically preparing themselves for the day when they are at last rid of him and his henchmen. Editor-in-Chief of the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat Ghassan Charbel concurs. He compares the Berlin Wall with what he terms the Wall of Damascus. While the Berlin Wall was tangible, the Wall of Damascus is invisible. "I was stopped in my tracts by the implications of his comparison between the Berlin Wall and the Wall of Damascus. The distance may appear to be far between Berlin and Damascus, but the ongoing war in Syria has aroused all sorts of questions and posed difficult questions," wrote Charbel. "The Kurdish card is the most explosive question that has been used by the Syrian regime to frighten Turkey, the country most impacted by the Kurdish conundrum in the region. It is preposterous to think that the Kurds will accept to continue living under the same conditions that they have suffered under the Syrian regime. There is also the question of Syria's Christians," Charbel warned in Al-Hayat. The Saudi writer Abdel-Nasser Al-Oteibi penned a most interesting column entitled 'Welcome Tehran in Mecca' in which he praised the Saudi monarch King Abdullah's bold decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation summit that convened in Mecca on 14-15 August. The OIC suspended Syria's membership in the organisation in spite of Iran's protestations. "Iran supposes that playing games with the domestic affairs of Muslim countries is the only way to impose its international standpoint. I, however, suspect that the main objective of the OIC summit is to contain the rapacious ambitions of Iran," Al-Oteibi concludes. In much the same vein, other writers highlight the internationalisation of regional conflicts. In 'Arabs between internationalism and regionalism' Mustafa El-Feki, former head of the foreign relations committee under ex-president Hosni Mubarak's regime and a distinguished Egyptian pundit, appears to have ruthlessly winnowed the entire experience of the Arab world's political culture. "Even though Arabs are one nation [El-Feki used the Islamist term Umma, the Islamic nation], their classification at the international level takes various and distinctive forms." El-Feki stressed that each Arab country is categorised according to its international standing and its capacity to influence the course of events in the Arab world.
