Full-Scale Disaster
"With a million people in flight, millions more displaced internally, and thousands of people continuing to cross the border every day, Syria is spiraling toward full-scale disaster.
"We are doing everything we can to help, but the international humanitarian response capacity is dangerously stretched. This tragedy has to be stopped."
Antonio Guterres, UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR)
Take your pick; the Syrian Sunni-led opposition finally defeated, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad back in power, a situation that gives huge relief to its sponsor-ally the Islamic Republic of Iran, and enabling Hezbollah to go back into wait-mode. Or the Syrian Free Army with its back-up of al-Qaeda-linked terrorists along with the hovering Muslim Brotherhood triumphant in finally uprooting the Shia Alawite regime.
Either way there will be hell to pay. Not that what is occurring is any lunatic's notional variety of business as usual. There is more than enough blame to go around, with atrocities committed on both sides, but somehow the international community seems to expect more restraint on the part of a government than it does from a popular revolt comprised of opposing militias.
Civil war will inevitably erupt if the stalemate continues; of course what the world is now witnessing is civil war, but the intensity, difficult though it is to believe that it can become more ferocious, will pick up intensity and the slaughter become more widespread, capturing in its deadly grip more of those desperately fleeing the onslaught.
And then, because of the involvement of opposing sectarian ideologies hostile in the extreme to one another, there is the potential of a much larger regional conflict consuming the geography. With Iran, Syria, Hezbollah/Lebanon, Iraq making use of all those costly new military technologies they have stored. And the Gulf States, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey assembling their armies to clash with the Shia-led militaries for a cataclysm unlike any yet seen in the Middle East.
Unless somehow they can be diverted by something really compelling to draw their attention to a more traditional source of irritated blameworthiness, like the continued presence of a Jewish state in the midst of a Muslim geography, and re-direct their traditional ire against one another toward Israel in a final compelling attempt to obliterate it from the sands of Araby, they may succeed in reprising the bloody deathtoll of the Iran-Iraq war magnified handsomely.
In the meantime, the United Nations struggles along with Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan with the unending waves of helpless, frightened refugees streaming out of their benighted, conflicted country. The 70,000 Syrians that have so far met their death through the struggle of Sunni against Shia will continue until such time as one side or the other has had its fill of blood, and that may not yet be.
Over 400,000 Syrian civilians have joined the ranks of fleeing refugees since the turn of the new year, arriving "traumatized, without possessions and having lost members of their families", in neighbouring countries struggling to accommodate their fundamental needs. In Beirut the UNHCR's regional co-ordinator for Syrian refugees estimates 7,000 Syrians crossing borders every day since December.
"When you stand at the border crossing, you see this human river flowing in, day and night. We are getting desperate. We are going hand to mouth, constantly trying to catch up in a crisis that is complex and dangerous because it has a potential to turn into a regional conflict", said Panos Moumtzis, UNHCR's regional co-ordinator.
The UN refugee agency is desperate to acquire the funding it requires to aid host countries in their bid to cope and manage the refugees. Of the $1-billion pledged at the Kuwait donor conference in January for the assistance of Syrian refugees, a mere $200,000 has been received.
And that is puzzling. Arab countries are so accustomed to Western sources dredging up aid funding they appear not to be able to visualize themselves digging into their vast piles of riches to aid themselves. What is $1-billion in value to oil-rich sheikdoms who garner untold wealth from their petroleum reserves?
So much for compassion for fellow Arabs. Who themselves look not to the Arab League for assistance, but compellingly and hopefully to the West whose auspices they hope somehow, will save them from themselves.
Labels: Atrocities, Chaos, Charity, Conflict, Crisis Politics, Syria, United Nations
posted by Pieface @ Friday, March 08, 2013
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