Rouba Mansour, Ma Bitar:

April 16, 2026

The appropriate topic is the topic of   occasions. Now we have an occasion to talk about hunger in Syria, especially after it became widespread and a quantifiable reality. When a person does not have the means to finance his food and drink, he inevitably becomes hungry, regardless of the possibilities of corruption in providing enrichment for some and providing gluttony for others. Whoever studies the issue of income in Syria and compares it with the very necessary costs of life, reaches the conclusion that confirms the impossibility of life economically in Syria, not to mention the impossibility of life politically, security-wise, and socially in a society that has turned into flies and wolves. 

We have no valid reason to doubt the reality, or rather the “symbolism,” of the images and news flowing from social media pages, all of which demonstrate the Syrian hunger, that is, the loss of food security in terms of both quantity and quality. What kind of water do people drink to avoid dehydration? Are there any who can afford to buy necessary medicines or even pay the electricity bill?! Who doubts the reality of what we see in the images, what we read on social media platforms, and even what we see with the naked eye? Only those who have lost their conscience and their minds would doubt all of this. How can we doubt hunger and its consequences when we see the hungry among us and the sick among us everywhere? The catastrophe is not limited to a village, a town, a city, or a neighborhood. The generalized catastrophe is consuming people alive, burning them alive in cages, burying them alive. Thus, the country has turned into a large graveyard for the living, with an area of ​​185,000 square kilometers.

 It is easy to demonstrate the barbarity of a savage, animalistic authority that will stop at nothing to survive. The few who benefit materially and morally from the Sunni rule still defend that criminal system, which graduated from the schools of Al-Qaeda, then ISIS, and recently from the immature Al-Nusra. In the visual depiction of the hungry and those who live in darkness in the age of electricity, we find no difference between an unfabricated image, a symbolic one, and a fabricated one in a direction that expresses, wholly or even partially, a bitter reality. Indeed, the images produced and fabricated by the hand of an artist or painter may be more expressive than the images produced by cameras. We find no greater triviality than the triviality of the supporters in their doubt about the reality of the images we see, the news we hear, and what we live and experience personally.

Due to poverty, Syrians were divided into a group below the poverty line, a group below the extreme poverty line, and a group below the abject poverty line. The very few residents of the palaces were the class that was above the line of the law, the wealthy from the corruption fund. Previously, there was Hamsho and his ilk and others in charge of the corruption fund, and now there is Hamsho again, in addition to the interim president, then Maher, Hazem, and others of relatives, henchmen, and mercenaries. These people continue to practice theft and corruption in a way that is uglier than the Assad way. So, whoever wants to sit above the poverty line in the republic of fear and thuggery must jump above the line of the law! 

Monopolizing the image as evidence of the regime’s brutality is not always appropriate, as the image may be fabricated, while the reality of life is difficult to fabricate. We know, without fabrication, that no salary can cover the electricity bill except for the salaries of mercenaries from inside and outside, such as the Uyghurs and Chechens. Therefore, it is logical to say that every employee, worker, unemployed person, or retiree is hungry in reality, whether they are photographed or not, and whether Al-Mayadeen channel confirms it or not. 

Hunger is not limited to stomach suffering. The hungry will steal, that is, he will turn into a thief, and perhaps even kill and slaughter. Does the transformation of the hungry Syrian into a thief or a killer represent a civilized, progressive development that secures a good and prosperous future for the country? Even limiting “bliss” to the “bliss” of the stomach is a degenerate, animalistic matter. Whoever reduces the functions of life to the functions of the stomach, intestines, anus, and even the genitals is the one who sees society as a herd for feeding and reproduction. The enormous problem lies in the transformation of the entire people into animals that do not dream of anything more or more refined than the requirements of the anus and genitals. The Assad regime, and then the even worse Golan regime, succeeded in successfully excising the “tumor” of humanity from the Syrian creature, who turned into a wolf or a fly at best.

The previous and subsequent authorities were characterized by meanness and depravity without any blemish. They were all experts in fabrication and lying, even in weather forecasts, as Mamdouh Adwan rightly claimed. Among the tricks of lying, we learned a cunning trick: the authorities allow social media news to circulate among the people, and when this news reaches the stage of maximum circulation, the authorities and their agents leak forged documents suggesting that this news is either 20 years old or from another place. Thus, social media sites fall into the trap of fabrication and lies and suffer the affliction of lack of credibility. The authorities do not hesitate to do anything, and they are ready to blow up their loyal centers in order to gain a negative impact on the reputation of what is circulating in the field of social media  !

The ancients said that a lie has short legs, and that magic often backfires on the magician. Among the signs of this backfiring was the emergence of social apathy and social revenge. Despite the authority raising the banner of the Umayyads, this led to a decrease in the number of its supporters and an increase in its opponents. The absurd and wicked authority has tumbled and fallen into the face of a somewhat enlightened polarization. For many Sunnis, the banner of the Umayyads no longer represents anything more than a rag for cleaning behinds in toilets. The hungry among the Umayyad flock does not hesitate to kick the banner when the kick secures enough food for his stomach. He is polarized for his own benefit and his stomach, and his polarization is justified and logical, not blind! It   is neither logically nor morally permissible to describe someone who refuses to jump over the line of the law in order to jump over the line of hunger and poverty as a wicked traitor!