Our own Aleppo

Unproductive cease fire after cease fire has made a mockery of international diplomacy, and a deepening of the depression that the hostages of this war, including women and children must feel under a life where the next noise hey hear might be their last.

It is in this context that Presbyterian minister, Rev Daniel Teelucksingh, in a week-end Christmas sermon, may be entitled to invoke Aleppo to vent his exasperation at Trinidad and Tobago’s horrific crime situation of murders, robberies, rapes and abductions, and our shared feelings of helplessness to turn the tide of lawlessness. Fortuitously, however, his remarks amount to the use of hyperbole to try to spur action against our own recklessness.

While each of the families of a murder victim in TT might be said to be experiencing their own personal “Aleppo”, this country overall is not in the depth of destruction and despair as the ancient Syrian city, and thankfully, shows no evidence of getting there.

We underscore this by looking at the differences between the real Aleppo and what the goodly Reverend believes is our own.

Atrocities occurring in Aleppo are the result of a civil war between at least four armed groups, one of which has laid siege to the vast city to oust its rivals, with the fighting having destroyed the city’s infra-structure including buildings and water supply, and general way of life as civilians cower from explosions and starvation.

A second characteristic of the Aleppo Siege is that death is dispensed largely in the name of an array of ethnic rivalries which dictate group-loyalties, including being either pro-regime or anti- regime. The third difference between the mayhem in Aleppo and in TT is the use of terror.

While TT has seen awful cases of killings being “done to send a message” including several residents of East Port-of-Spain killed so as to scare others into leaving, this is not at a level of terrorism that sadly is happening in Aleppo.

An act is defined as “terrorist” not by its horrific nature but by the fact of it being targetted indiscriminately at random victims so as to induce a sense of defeat in a wider population. The reckless use of bombs, poison gas and the like against broad swathes of the population of Aleppo but often without an assailant even knowing the identity of his victim, clearly falls within the classic textbook definition of terrorism, whether the perpetrators are labelled as State actors or rebels.

Thankfully this is not the case in TT, which may have all kinds of lawlessness (plus domestic violence incidents) but is not now subject to terrorism as an everyday reality.

It is crucial for us to point out these limits to any attempts at simile between TT and Aleppo, not just for academic exactness, but because of reports of several TT nationals being linked to the Middle East theatre of war. Several persons have reportedly enlisted in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, while the Government recently revealed that some TT nationals are suspected of donating to groups deemed to be terrorist.

Despite the crime wave, TT remains committed to an equal place for all citizens regardless of ethnic/religious origins or political leanings, all of which we trust will shield our twin-island nation from ever facing the horrors of Aleppo, and prove Reverend Teelucksingh wrong.