Trigger warning – this post contains some distressing details about torture.

Wherever events in Syria are being discussed by western media and politicians, one question is asked over and over again: ‘What will happen next?’ A number of commenters on my previous article asked it, I’ve received it from friends and family and I see it all over social media.

But this isn’t a neutral question, whatever the intent of the person asking it. The inference is that ‘we’ve been here before, and look what happened’. Often it’s accompanied by the explicit ‘Syria might end up like Libya’…

I do understand why this sentiment is so common. The Arab Spring of 2011 raised hopes that were largely dashed. We’ve seen corrupt, brutal dictators replaced by elected leaders who then were replaced by new brutal dictators. The UK and our allies bear a heavy degree of responsibility for some disastrous interventions in the Middle East, not least the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But please… Before asking this question, please stop and think. Imagine this was 1945. Imagine you are seeing the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps in central Europe. Imagine you are seeing for the first time the piles of corpses and the machinery of death and destruction. Imagine the tens of thousands of emaciated, brutalised survivors of those camps stumbling free.

Would you, even knowing what we know now about the brutality and corruption of Soviet rule, say to these people “ah, but what will come next?” Would it occur to you to say to the families of the survivors “what comes next may be worse?”

Remember: Assad was not removed in 2011 during the Arab Spring. Everything we’ve seen in Syria since then is the result of him not being replaced. Those worrying about regional stability really need to ask themselves ‘how much stability did Assad actually provide?’ For years we’ve seen governments try to work out how to rehabilitate the regime in an attempt to resolve the ongoing refugee crisis, but unwilling to acknowledge the fact that the millions of refugees that fled the country were largely trying to escape his rule. Even before Assad had gone, we were seeing footage of thousands upon thousands of Syrians heading home. They’d made the decision to return to places that were still being bombed by Assad and Russia, to places that were being administered by the government set up by rebels that include the infamous Hayat Tahrir ash-Sham (HTS).

Lest anyone think I’m overblowing this argument, please take a cold, hard look at Saidnaya Prison. Thousands of prisoners have already been released. These include children born inside to mothers raped by their captors; people who’ve been locked in boxes – not cells, boxes – and have not seen another human for years; people who’ve had their eyes gouged out; people so traumatised they no longer remember who they are. We have seen the industrial presses used to squash human bodies as flat as paper for easy disposal. We have seen the vat used to melt bodies with acid, and the piles of bodies the murders didn’t manage to dispose of. There is a reason why the US Holocaust Memorial Museum considers it appropriate to devote part of its efforts to educating people about Syria.

As I write this, the search for further survivors of Saidnaya has been officially concluded, after painstaking days of searching electronically-sealed underground vaults. The search continues at other notorious torture sites across the country. Unfortunately, though probably not surprisingly, as more and more prisons have been searched it is becoming increasingly clear that most of the 130,000+ people ‘disappeared’ by the regime have been murdered.

I have noticed, over the years, that those talking about the possibility of Syria ending up like Libya have tended to be western journalists and politicians, talking to other western journalists and politicians. Whenever I have asked Syrians this question the response was always, without exception, ‘we would choose being like Libya over our current situation in a heartbeat’.

Syrians are under no illusion that the future will be hard, complicated and may end up being disappointing and even dangerous. Please can we all do them the courtesy of wishing them well, and offering support if it is requested, rather than writing them off now before they’ve even finished freeing and identifying the prisoners from Assad’s concentration camps?

* Jonathan Brown is a member of the Chichester Liberal Democrats and ran the Liberal Democrats for Free Syria.