While the world rallied behind Ukraine with open borders, foreign volunteers, and trending hashtags, the people of Syria have endured over a decade of war, displacement, and unspeakable atrocities in near-total silence from the international community. Dr. Safar, president of the Syrian Forum USA and a practicing attorney, provides an unflinching look at the double standard and the ongoing crisis that has shattered the lives of 10 million Syrians out of a pre-war population of 23 million.
The Double Standard the World Cannot Deny
When reporters covering the Ukraine crisis openly said “they look like us — blonde hair, blue eyes,” the prejudice was not even hidden. Thousands of foreign fighters were welcomed into Ukraine to fight for democracy while Muslims who attempted similar acts of solidarity in Syria would face life imprisonment. Hungary opened its borders for Ukrainians while Syrian refugees still live in tents under the snow after a decade of displacement with no one looking at them.
“The moral failure of Western civilization in Syria will bring about its downfall if not corrected. Only three months ago, videos showed government forces digging holes, marching out everyone they suspected of opposition, shooting them in the head, and pushing them in — the exact system that Hitler used.”
Life Under Assad: Choose Oppression or Bombardment
Syrians face an impossible choice. Under government control, you are safe from bombing but live under the most oppressive conditions imaginable — secret police can stop you at any moment, and 55,000 photographs of 11,000 people who died under torture were documented with the same systematic record-keeping that the Nazis used. Outside government control, you can be bombed at any moment by regime forces, Russian jets, or Iranian militias. Electricity runs three to four hours a day, and children clean car windows at traffic lights to earn pennies for their widowed mothers.
“One of the most difficult scenes is seeing a little Syrian child coming up to cars at the traffic light to clean windows for money, and almost always you look to the side and find his mom sitting under a tree waiting for him to collect those little coins — because her husband got killed in prison.”
Rebuilding Syrian Lives: How You Can Help
- The Syrian Forum USA focuses on long-term empowerment rather than temporary handouts — providing sewing machines, seeds for farmers, small business loans, and livestock to help Syrians stand on their own feet
- One woman who started with a single sewing machine now employs 25 other women as an entrepreneur
- The organization also provides psychological support and social counseling until families can sustain themselves independently
- Russia’s aggression in Ukraine was emboldened by the international community’s failure to act in Syria — making the Syrian crisis a matter of global consequence, not just a regional conflict
