Syria: The World's War

Historically the BBC has done a tremendous job with conflict documentaries, clearly and grippingly covering the causes, preogression, and dynamic of major contemporary wars. Their docs on the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, the Gulf War and the Iraq War are exemplary, so I went in to this expecting more of the same. What a shame.

Unfortunately, the team that was placed in charge of making this documentary was either not up to the job, leant upon by the government for political considerations, or most likely both. Many of the most important events and dynamics of the war are not even touched upon. Unbelievably, there is not a single word spoken about the Kurds of Rojava or the KRG, Kobani, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the events in Iraq that boosted and degraded ISIS and brought Western powers to intervene in Syria, nor about Turkey's campaign against the Kurds, its confrontations with Russia, or other operations.

Meanwhile, some of the most poisonous and blatant propagandists from the Syrian, Russian and Saudi regimes are given cosy interviews in which their ridiculous lies go uncontested. Lyse Doucet can be commended for her work reporting from the frontlines, but she is simply too weak, too deferent, and too spineless for the task of holding the spokespeople of these regimes to acccount. It is excruciating to watch, muddles the documentary's presentation of the facts, and makes it complicit in their propaganda by allowing them to delude the viewers with their lies, unchallenged. What an insult to the victims of these regimes. Pathetic.

A massive missed opportunity to make a comprehensive documentary that explained this conflict to viewers with clarity.

The war in Syria has been an appalling tragedy; but what can be done when a ruler is determined to stay in power at all costs? Lyse Doucet's documentary tells the story of peaceful protests supressed until dispute became war, and of the truly terrible consequences. The Syrian government and their Russian allies come across very badly: the government officials respond to every charge from misjudgement to war-crimes by repeating the word "terrorism" as if the existence of that phenomenon justifies every response. In the end, Pax Assad will be better than fighting for most of the remaining population. It's hard to believe that the West could have made a difference in a positive sense; but that's little compensation for those who have lost their lives, homes and freedom.