Heart of Europe could be threatened after Palmyra falls to IS militants

By Vasilis Trigkas Source:Global Times Published: 2015-5-25 21:53:01

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT



  

The news coming from Syria is painful. The barbaric forces of the Islamic State (IS) supported by "oil money" and Western military technology have defeated the Syrian government army and have occupied the historic town of Palmyra.

IS forces despise all non-Sunni historic monuments in the Middle East, including Babylonian ruins and Shiite and Sufi shrines, and are determined to demolish temples and other parts of global heritage that are central for preserving the memory and the accomplishments of our ancestors.

Palmyra in particular bears great significance, as it was a city born out of the peaceful syncretism between East and West, Europe and Asia. Palmyra's architecture encompasses Greek, Roman, Assyrian, Persian and Phoenician elements and has stood as a symbol of the Mediterranean and European civilization's links with the East.

Recognizing the importance of Palmyra for world civilization, Irina Bokova, UNESCO's director-general, had made pressing public calls to the international community to prevent the fall of Palmyra to the outlaws of IS and prevent the destruction of irreplaceable art.

To Bokova's call, Europe answered with indifference, if not with silent consent to IS expansion against the Syrian government.

For the past three years, European governments have aligned with anti-Syrian forces against the Bashar al-Assad regime, romantically believing that Western-type liberal democracy can easily fit the non-Western cultural norms of Syria. Aligning with the US-supported Arab Spring that Hillary Clinton herself has characterized as an unbreakable trend of history toward liberal democracy, the EU contributed toward anarchy and chaos in its close periphery.

To be sure, EU society is paying the price of incompetent foreign policy as millions of impoverished immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa are flooding Europe. Yet European politicians remain myopic and irresponsible failing to predict the great apocalypse that is encircling Europe. They are as ignorant to their French and British predecessors who after WWI designed the borders of the area by drawing imaginary lines on the map, leaving 20 million Kurds without a state and creating unstable multicultural states.

Apart from the geostrategic and societal disaster of allowing EU's close periphery to be surrounded by extremists and letting IS expand, Europe is also committing an ideological suicide.

Europe and the Middle East did not always have a confrontational relationship. Colonial occupation and the crusades are one part, but pre-modern and pre-Christian Europe built an empire within which the Middle East was a beacon of learning and art.

In the Hellenistic and Roman world, libraries, academies and theaters were widespread throughout the Middle East. Syria and Egypt in particular were centers of great learning and the birthplaces of world famous philosophers. Middle Eastern institutions like the Library of Alexandria spread learning to the world and attracted elite students from Rome.

Palmyra symbolizes this very world, which is not completely lost and which still survives in Palmyra's marvelous Greek theater, in its Ionic columns, and in its Roman arches. These splendid structures stand as irrefutable evidence that this now turbulent area was once the land of a stable and flourishing society.

European foreign policy has failed badly in the Middle East. It has been unable to deal with US democracy-building abroad or promote EU's normative power without unleashing disastrous revolutions.

Constantine Cavafy, an English-educated Greek poet who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, captured the significance of the Middle East for Europe with great eloquence, declaring that "We must not be ashamed of the Syrian and Egyptian blood in our veins; we should really honor it, take pride in it."

As Europeans we have no choice; we cannot and we should not insulate Europe from the Middle East. If the Middle East falls to IS, it is part of our own body that will have succumbed to gangrene. Palmyra fell and Rome could well be next. IS does not have to physically occupy Rome. It can simply exterminate every Roman influence left in the Middle East with Europe standing as an idle spectator and committing cultural suicide.

The author is a visiting research fellow at the Research Center for China-EU Relations at Tsinghua University. He is also a non-resident WSD-Handa Fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

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