Arab League Observer Mission
The Syrian protest movement remains ungrateful to the rest of the world for sitting by, clucking disapproval of the Alawite al-Assad regime's crackdown on their protests, condemning the regime for its brutality toward its own citizens, enacting UN-sponsored human-rights-abuse citations and vowing to isolate the regime and its political and social elite through sanctions, to little avail.All is not lost, however. Despite the European Union, the United States and Canada's condemnations and partial recognition of the legitimacy of the official opposition coalition, the National Coordination Committee, and its welcome in Turkey, to plan its subsequent steps toward liberation from the repressive regime of President Bashar al-Assad, hope has arrived in the form of Arab League moderators.
The Arab League was finally successful in entreating and coercing Bashar al-Assad to agree to and sign a treaty that would allow observers representing the Arab League into the country for the purpose of assessing the situation. It did seem somewhat concerning to some that the observers were led by Sudan's Lieutenant General Mohammad Ahmed Mustapha al-Dabi,formerly chief of intelligence.
But it makes sense, if anyone would stop long enough to think about it. If anyone is familiar with what atrocities against civilian populations looks like, wouldn't it be General al-Dabi? Hasn't he seen ample evidence of what can only be described as the ultimate in human-rights abuses taking place in Darfur when his government unleashed their military warplanes and attack helicopters along with the Arab janjaweed on black, non-Muslim Darfurians?
General al-Dabi knows menace, danger, brutality, torture, rape and genocidal intent when he sees it. And though the regime of President al-Assad is behaving very badly, it doesn't quite equate with the total abandonment of humanity that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity can boast of.
Little surprise, then, that General al-Dabi commented on his perceptions gained from the original foray into Syria's protest hot-spots with his observer teams that he was pleased to say he saw little amiss; nothing to be overly concerned about. The fact is, for a Middle East or Arab country in turmoil what he and his observer-team have witnessed is not that dreadfully unusual.
A little bit of a nuisance-quality uprising, readily put down by a firm-enough dictator. And President al-Assad is quite firm about the need to halt the disquieting attempt at a revolution. Caused, have no doubt, he assures the world, by terrorists, spurred on by foreign elements whose purpose is to destroy his regime and imperil the stability of the entire Middle East.
That's called perspective.
Labels: Chaos, Conflict, Security, Societal Failures, Syria
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, December 31, 2011
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