Editor,

RE: "Who caused the refugee crisis?” (The New Times, September 25).

You don’t have to like Bashar al-Assad to see that those foreign powers (both regional and from far afield) who have decided on regime change in Syria (as they did in Iraq or Libya) are overwhelmingly responsible for the systematic destruction of Syria and the consequent massive population displacement and refugee crisis.

Trying to spin the facts to shift the focus from foreign-sponsored aggression as the primary cause of the ongoing Syrian tragedy in Syria won’t change that reality.

What used to be a complex mosaic of ancient communities living side by side in relative harmony for thousands of years has over the space of barely five years completely unraveled in the world’s most savage orgy of murderous terror.

The leaders of Western powers should be ashamed of this savage destruction of a country and its ancient civilizations, which they are closely sponsoring mainly through their wide-ranging support of the foreign Al Qaeda-linked jihadist terrorists of ISIS and Al Nusra Front.

No geopolitical goals could ever be worth the degree of death, destruction and human suffering they have unleashed on an innocent defenceless people.

And, don’t these Masters of the Universe ever learn? The creation of Osama bin Laden’s original Al Qaeda (The Database) of terrorists that morphed into Al Qaeda, which Western powers were previously said to be in a mortal fight against but are now in bed with, started in similar circumstances, with the West using Muslim fanatics from across the world to try to weaken a rival power, the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

What blowback can we expect for those sponsoring this new lot of multinational fanatics to rearrange the Middle Eastern chessboard? For, mark my words, serious blowback there will eventually be, including for today’s sponsors of these fanatical killers who are destroying Syria.

Mwene Kalinda

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Worst of all about Western hypocrisy in Syria is that the US threatened those who did not immediately join its crusade (has any one forgotten George W. Bush’s stentorian edict, "You’re either with us or with the terrorists!”?) with the direst of consequences.

Whatever happened to international law! When did international relations descend into the arena of the law of the jungle where only might makes right? When did it become the prerogative of Western countries to decide for everybody else across the world which government is legitimate and which should not be?

Has the community of nations lost its way so much that we should accept that one country or group of countries should have the right to destroy another country and transform its people into a mass of refugees or internally displaced populations without prospects of ever regaining a measure of peace and security in a generation?

Does the world no longer have men and women worth of the name statesmen to help put a stop to this madness?

And when, tomorrow, these newly empowered fanatical organisations of ISIS and the Al Nusra Front, having taken over Syria and large swathes of Iraq and other Middle Eastern states then turn their malevolent attentions to the various Arab allies of the US and the West, how do these imagine they will be able to overcome people’s cynicism when the West tries to rally the world once too many times against their erstwhile allies in the destruction of Syria?

K. Kagaju