Turkey to Assad: Cease
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a speech. He spoke to his countrymen, and by extension to the outside world. They're put on notice, and so is the world outside. Theirs not to judge. And it's difficult to assemble all the details, since no foreign news people are permitted entry, and Syria's press is Syria's official press. No reforms until the insurrection has been put down.The country is eager for change, but for those utterly devoted to their President, and they would be Allawite Shia. The Kurds and the Sunni, who figure they've been treated abominably as second- and third-class non-citizens for far too long and who feel justified in challenging the regime and causing such unforgivable instability will continue to be hammered into the ground until they desist.
Of course suspicion of support of the insurgents is a guarantee of being hammered. By sharp-shooters, helicopter gunships, tank artillery, take your pick. And if that's not enough the regime will starve them out, just like a siege in ancient times when a surrounding foreign army would lay siege to a town settlement sheltering within its surrounding protective walls, but lacking water and food.
Syrian troops are massed on the border with Turkey, visiting border towns and villages and farms and paying the courtesy of an uninvited call. Torching bakeries and shops so they may no longer be able to provide food for the thousands of trapped refugees still on the Syrian side of the border. Fruit-bearing trees uprooted, crops plowed under, wells poisoned, what's left?
The Arab League is waiting, and watching and saying little. Turkey has taken the initiative and is sheltering over ten thousand refugees among whom are many who have been badly wounded. Turkey is speaking directly to Syria about Turkish distress over the turn of events. It is most un-Islamic behaviour for a leader of a country to bludgeon his population.
It is not dreadfully unusual behaviour, nor entirely unexpected for it has occurred often enough in the past, and continues to occur to varying degrees in North Africa and the Middle East, but it is civilizationally untoward.
Labels: Chaos, Conflict, Middle East
posted by Pieface @ Monday, June 20, 2011
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