Not his war

On June 12, 2012, a year and two months after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the U.N. condemned the oppression of Syrian civilians, including children, by the Syrian regime. According to a special report, Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime was one of the top entries on its "list of shame."

Nine months later, on March 13, 2014, Leila Zerrougui, a special U.N. envoy to Syria on behalf of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, declared that the country had become "one of the most dangerous places to be a child."

On Thursday, August 18, 2016 (the years pass, the horror endures), footage filmed a day earlier of a cute kid, only five years old, being rescued from the ruins of his home in Aleppo was uploaded to the Internet. The clip shows paramedics taking him out of the wrecked home, covered in dust, his face bloody. The little boy was taken to an ambulance. No one could stay with him -- four other children and two women needed to be rescued.

The boy sits there, alone. Stunned. He feels his face with indifference, realizes that he's bleeding. In those moments, the paternal instinct cries out: the main thing is to embrace him, protect him, care for him. He's just a kid, like the ones you have at home, who couldn't help being caught up in this bloody war. In Syria, a kid is willing to settle for anything less than hell.

Yesterday, this adorable boy became a symbol for the terrible struggle for the city of Aleppo. If it hadn't been for the clip, we probably wouldn't be talking about Syria today. Or about Aleppo or the miserable children who live there. Instead of going to school and to the playground, they hide from bombs in a city that has been torn apart and become a nightmare for its million and a half residents.

And the world? Luckily for Assad, it's still divided about the fate of the country and the Assad regime. Every side in the fight -- Syria, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, the U.S., and the EU -- has its own interests. The fate of the little boy in the video, we can assume, isn't part of their considerations. Otherwise, the civil war wouldn't have gone on for five years with no end in sight.

When the first riots that preceded what has come to be known as the Syrian civil war broke out on March 15, 2011, the world was following the Arab Spring in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya. It was obvious that the Syrian crisis would be the most serious one. Too many other countries have vested interests there. It's not a civil war anymore; it's a religious war between Sunnis and Shiites and too many jihadist groups. With too many children caught in the middle.

In a just world, Assad would have been ousted long ago. But in Syria, justice is just a word, and Assad envisions his forces, under the auspices of Russia, Hezbollah, and Iran, retaking Aleppo. He controls the western part of the city, while the rebels hold the east. A million and a half residents, 240,000 of whom live in east Aleppo, are hostages in this fight, which the Red Cross has already called "one of the most destructive conflicts of our time."

The young boy we saw yesterday, whose name in Omran Daqneesh, was fortunate enough to be captured on film. In our world, to avoid becoming just another Syrian statistic, someone needs to document you. Like they did Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb, a 13-year-old boy who disappeared from his home on April 29, 2011 after taking part in a demonstration in Daraa, right when the riots began. On May 25, 2011, his body was returned to his parents. He had been shot, and his jaw and neck were smashed. The cigarette burns on his body testified to the torture he had endured.

Poor Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb cannot be saved. But Omran Daqneesh can. But for this to happen, we need to live in a world where a child's life is more important than anything else. Omran, like many children before him, was born in the wrong time.

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