generalspeaking

Situation Impossible

There are times when presumed choices are not choices at all. They may present as alternatives, but these are alternatives that threaten to loom up and strike back at those who choose them out of a sense of sensitive desperation over the plight of the innocent. The world looked the other way when the Rwandan tribal massacre occurred in a deadly conflict inflicted by the dominant Hutu against the hated Tutsi, and when Sudanese Arabs felt compelled to settle Darfurian complaints by slaughtering black Sudanese, the world deplored the situation and did nothing to respond.

The United Nations has validated a conservative figure of 100,000 dead in the conflict that saw the Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad respond brutally against an initial protest by the oppressed majority Sunni population of Syria. Millions of Syrians have been displaced, reflecting what has occurred and continues to occur in Darfur. Neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan as well as Egypt and Iraq can no longer absorb Syrian refugees in UN-supported camps.

Innocent people continue to die, alongside both government troops and Syrian Free Army rebels. With them also die members of Lebanon's terrorist, Iran-sponsored Hezbollah, and on the other side, Islamists with al-Qaeda links. The civilians living in towns and cities of Syria have been preyed upon by the military and by the Islamists opposing them alike. Atrocities resulting in deaths, in countless wounded civilians abound.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights, referencing information received from their opposition activist networks in Syria report that three men from the Fattouh family in Bayda, near north-West Syria were shot dead by government forces and the Shabiha militia. Once the men of the family were out of the way ten women and children were crowded into a single room in a house, and killed.

Reports emerged that the women and children were burned alive, the house set on fire. Others report that they had been shot before the fire was started. The family was from a mostly Sunni village in a region where government supporters are accused of attempting to cleanse Sunnis from the area. The deaths are thought to be revenge-motivated after clashes in nearby Banias where loyalists died.

This news comes at a time when government forces shelled the town of Ariha in north-western Idlib province, where 18 people were killed. Videos were posted by activists on the ground, showing mutilated bodies. The Sana state news agency claimed government forces killed "a large number" of Jabat al-Nustra Islamists near the western city of Adra. In turn activists claim 28 rebels and a Republican Guard officer died.

And in northern Raqqa province Kurdish forces released the local commander of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. The release of the commander had a definite purpose. The Kurds received in exchange 300 kidnapped Kurdish civilians. This was an exchange reminiscent of the type that takes place regularly between Israel and Fatah and Hamas; the exchange of one Israeli for hundreds of convicted Arab felons.

As the violence continues France and Britain -- both long eager to commit to furnishing arms to the rebel side, particularly with the latest advances of the Syrian army now that Hezbollah made it clear it meant to continue its conflict alliance with the regime -- are latterly seemingly less enthusiastic about providing arms than they were. The situation is critical; Syrians are dying in droves, and 'something must be done', but what, exactly?

Arm the rebels to even out the playing field as relates to available munitions, and you arm the Islamists as well, who have made no secret of their agenda to take full possession of Syria as an Islamist sharia state, an emirate. The rebels of the Syrian Free Army had little choice themselves, it seems, other than to allow the Islamists to support them -- even while knowing they would eventually have to confront and defeat them themselves if they had any aspirations to returning Syria to Syrians

So, said British Prime Minister David Cameron in a BBC interview, though President al-Assad's army may have become strengthened toward the upper hand in the civil war, a "stalemate" appears to have developed on the ground. One requiring some kind of solution, with the international community committing to some form of usefulness in securing a cease-fire and settlement. But, under the uncertain circumstances, excluding arming rebels.




The unfortunate but very real facts lead to the understanding that there exists "too much extremism" among the opposition. Yet, here's the conundrum; the moderate groups among the rebels 'deserve support'.

Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Human Rights, Islamists, Revolution, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, July 21, 2013