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God save the Syrian Army
By Anwer Mooraj
Published: February 2, 2013
[email protected]
God save the Syrian Army, is a phrase from the documentary, Syrian Diary, which was screened at the Russian Consulate General last week, in which the only consul general who attended was the Iranian. The Westerners boycotted the function. The thinking man in Karachi who wants to know what is happening in the rest of the world usually does so by tuning in to one of the Western channels or Al Jazeera. And they are told that the Syrian Army is being quite beastly to the freedom fighters who are trying to liberate the country from a tyrannical leader. US President Barack Obama endorsed this view by saying the Syrian government should allow the peaceful demonstration of the protestors. Now where have we heard this line before? Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya? The message is more or less the same and one gets the distinct impression that all these channels employ the services of the same news editor. Syrian Diary, in a sense, shows us the other side of the coin and chronicles the atrocities committed by the militants on the civilians, rather than the other way round.
The Russian consul general in Karachi, Andre Demidov, said in his welcome address that he didnt necessarily want the audience to like the film, but just to watch it with an open mind. Perhaps, it was because the story line is littered with scenes of the most horrific violence, or perhaps, because people in this neck of the woods have been so brainwashed with Western propaganda that they would be suspicious of any approach that didnt toe the official line. The film, which is more like a series of news reports rather than a documentary, took seven months to complete and was produced a couple of months ago by an attractive Russian lady journalist named Anastassia Popova. It is dedicated to the Syrian soldier and all the civilians who have died at the hands of the terrorists. It consists of a series of interviews interspersed with scenes of executions and decapitation of civilian prisoners by the militants all cobbled together to form a gripping commentary on the secret war taking place inside Syria.
Documentaries produced in the West are often shot in the safe past tense, clinical and detached, ending with the usual clichés about free speech and freedom, which apparently is only possible under a Western-style democracy. Syrian Diary takes place in the present tense and has a freshly minted terror. It is, in many ways, a sad, sad film a movie that shows the savage nature of mercenaries who call themselves liberators and make the TTP look like boy scouts. Sure, our local militants attack military and police targets and blow themselves up in crowded places, but they dont go around raping six-year old girls and ripping open pregnant mothers and using the baby as a football as some of the freedom fighters in Syria have been accused of doing.
In Syrian Diary, there is no sermonising, no moralising and no calls for help. It tells the story of a people who love their soldiers. Cynics might dismiss the chronicle as a bit of emotional prurience and mawkish sentiment a bravura exhibition of quivering lachrymosity an amateurish attempt to cover up the excesses committed by the Syrian Army. But the scenes are too authentic, too real and too stark to have been fabricated in some studio in Moscow. It should be screened on one of the Pakistani television channels so that the public can get a glimpse of what the average Syrian thinks about what is really happening in the country.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 3rd, 2013.
By Anwer Mooraj
Published: February 2, 2013
[email protected]
God save the Syrian Army, is a phrase from the documentary, Syrian Diary, which was screened at the Russian Consulate General last week, in which the only consul general who attended was the Iranian. The Westerners boycotted the function. The thinking man in Karachi who wants to know what is happening in the rest of the world usually does so by tuning in to one of the Western channels or Al Jazeera. And they are told that the Syrian Army is being quite beastly to the freedom fighters who are trying to liberate the country from a tyrannical leader. US President Barack Obama endorsed this view by saying the Syrian government should allow the peaceful demonstration of the protestors. Now where have we heard this line before? Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya? The message is more or less the same and one gets the distinct impression that all these channels employ the services of the same news editor. Syrian Diary, in a sense, shows us the other side of the coin and chronicles the atrocities committed by the militants on the civilians, rather than the other way round.
The Russian consul general in Karachi, Andre Demidov, said in his welcome address that he didnt necessarily want the audience to like the film, but just to watch it with an open mind. Perhaps, it was because the story line is littered with scenes of the most horrific violence, or perhaps, because people in this neck of the woods have been so brainwashed with Western propaganda that they would be suspicious of any approach that didnt toe the official line. The film, which is more like a series of news reports rather than a documentary, took seven months to complete and was produced a couple of months ago by an attractive Russian lady journalist named Anastassia Popova. It is dedicated to the Syrian soldier and all the civilians who have died at the hands of the terrorists. It consists of a series of interviews interspersed with scenes of executions and decapitation of civilian prisoners by the militants all cobbled together to form a gripping commentary on the secret war taking place inside Syria.
Documentaries produced in the West are often shot in the safe past tense, clinical and detached, ending with the usual clichés about free speech and freedom, which apparently is only possible under a Western-style democracy. Syrian Diary takes place in the present tense and has a freshly minted terror. It is, in many ways, a sad, sad film a movie that shows the savage nature of mercenaries who call themselves liberators and make the TTP look like boy scouts. Sure, our local militants attack military and police targets and blow themselves up in crowded places, but they dont go around raping six-year old girls and ripping open pregnant mothers and using the baby as a football as some of the freedom fighters in Syria have been accused of doing.
In Syrian Diary, there is no sermonising, no moralising and no calls for help. It tells the story of a people who love their soldiers. Cynics might dismiss the chronicle as a bit of emotional prurience and mawkish sentiment a bravura exhibition of quivering lachrymosity an amateurish attempt to cover up the excesses committed by the Syrian Army. But the scenes are too authentic, too real and too stark to have been fabricated in some studio in Moscow. It should be screened on one of the Pakistani television channels so that the public can get a glimpse of what the average Syrian thinks about what is really happening in the country.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 3rd, 2013.
