Mixed reaction to airstrikes
Syrian Canadians express optimism, worry after U.S.-led bombings
MONTREAL— Syrian Canadians expressed a range of reactions to the recent U.S.-led airstrikes against Syria’s government, with some denouncing foreign aggression and others calling for even stronger action to end the conflict that has devastated the country.
Toronto resident Bayan Khatib was at a community fundraiser with other Syrian Canadians on Friday night when she learned the U.S., the U.K. and France had launched the joint airstrikes in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack April 7 that killed 43 people and injured hundreds more in a rebel-held enclave near Damascus.
She said most of the Syrians in the room felt a mixture of optimism and worry.
“Many were excited there is finally something happening, that the (Syrian President Bashar) Assad regime will see some consequences, but other people were quite worried about civilian casualties, further destruction of Syria,” Khatib said.
“We worry that’s it’s not part of a larger strategy to end the war crimes in Syria, but just a show of power that’s going to scare the regime a little bit but then everything goes back to normal.”
She said too many governments are ignoring the atrocities in her home country and would like to see Canada take more of a leadership role in ending the conflict.
She’s also not impressed with the reaction of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who expressed support for the strikes but seems reluctant to get directly involved.
Khatib said she doesn’t believe most Canadians are aware of the true scale of the human rights atrocities that are striking her home country.
Were they to see the images she sees of bloodshed, torture and bodies being pulled from the rubble, she believes Canadians would rise up and demand action, as they did in 2015 when a photograph of a lifeless Syrian toddler on a Turkish beach prompted an outpouring of humanitarian action.
Muzna Dureid, a Syrian who came to Montreal a year-and-ahalf ago, agrees that Friday’s strikes don’t go far enough in putting pressure on Assad.
“We need more serious steps, more pressure to go to the negotiating table to find a political solution,” even if that includes military intervention, she said.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration plans to impose new sanctions against Russia on Monday to punish it for enabling the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons in its civil war, the latest in a series of actions by both sides underscoring the deterioration in relations between Moscow and the West.
The sanctions are meant to signal that the United States holds responsible not just the government of President Bashar Assad but also his patrons in Russia and Iran. President Donald Trump has vowed that Syria’s allies will pay a “big price” for facilitating the suspected use of poison gas.