Aljazeera is among the outlets reporting on the recent report from Amnesty International: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/09/201291973026403311.html Rights group Amnesty International has accused Syrian forces of waging "relentless” and “indiscriminate" attacks against its people. The London-based rights group, which accompanied its report with video footage, said "civilians, many of them children, are the main victims of a campaign of relentless and indiscriminate attacks by the Syrian army". Amnesty said the findings were based on "first-hand field investigations carried out in the first half of September". During that period, attacks killed "166 civilians, including 48 children and 20 women, and injured hundreds in 26 towns and villages" in the northwestern regions of Idlib, Jabal al-Zawiya and the northern Hama area. Donatella Rovera from Amnesty International told Al Jazeera that she witnessed “evidence of indiscriminate air bombardment and artillery strikes” in all of the 26 towns and villages she visited in northern Syria". “The use by [Syrian] government forces of what are essentially battlefield weapons cannot be aimed at specific targets but that fall randomly over civilian residential areas is what has made the situation so much worse over the last six or seven weeks,” Rovera told Al Jazeera from neighbouring Turkey. “The number of civilians that have been killed or injured has increased dramatically,” Rovera said. Meanwhile, the embattled Syrian population expresses dismay that attention is focussed on some silly movie while they suffer and die at the hands of a dictator armed with tanks and jets: http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/syrians-bewildered-embassy-protests-spread-0022341 This combination of developments begs the question of whether international interest in the Syrian problem has peaked and is receding, and we observe Assad and his allies doubling down on the movie controversy in an obvious attempt to divert the gaze of the international community from their crimes against humanity.
I think we both know that unless there are reports of israelis killing palestinians in syria nobody is going to post in this thread.
Now, now don't be cynical. I'm sure that some enterprizing soul can just drive this thread off-topic and onto the subject of Israel oppressing Palestine!
How come no videos are coming out of this like we saw with the Iranian uprising? Nothing on Youtube as far as I can tell, am I missing it?
Google "Internet access in Syria" and you might find the answer. The issue of Syria is one between nations like the USA that seem to at least presently want to prevent totalitarian regimes from murdering its rebelling citizens via air strikes, an approach that worked really well in Libya, and nations like Russia and China that for *some reasons* don't want that kind of intervention in Syria, as a result the Syrian rebels and population have little help from the outside world in their struggle for a new government.
The escalation of civilian casualties is utterly unacceptable. For the record, let me state that both sides involved in this conflict, have and still are, committing human rights abuses. I will further state that Assad should be utterly condemned for using heavy weaponry on areas with known and existant civilian populations. This is a travesty. I will go as far as to state that Assad, for the sake of his country and people, that are being devastated, and notwithstanding the uncertainty around exactly who the Opposition represents, and what or who the interim government may represent, should lay down arms and enter negotiations - facilitated by a neutral party. The conditions being only that - the future or proposed democratic system for Syria is decided by public referendum, foreign interference is kept to a minimum, and that all individuals will get a fair trail if there is evidence of crimes against humanity. Given the current foreign interference, terrorsim tactics and jihadist elements, I am not hopeful that this can be achieved in the near future. I believe things need to settle down for that door to swing open.
What the Syrian rebels need to do is form a coalition government even if its outside Syria to organize the revolution, at least make orders against humanitarian abuses and to be their spokesman to the UN so that the countries that want toe help the Syrian people have something the rally around. That what happened with lybia, not that it didn't prevent them from gaddafing gaddafi ('to gaddafi' being hilarious new urban slang to stab someone in the anus) and clearly torturing him before putting a bullet in his head and desecrating his body, but I guess we can let that one slide. StrawDog, all agree fully if Assad was willing to do that, it would be the best for his country but he is not doing that, he clearly has not intention of doing that and things are getting worse. Now if there was some way persuade him, oh that right it would require foreign intervention, Oh I guess there nothing that can be done but watch the death toll mount.
Put them on a scale. Which way is it tilting? Failing to think this way robs your argument of any ethical basis for standing up. Assad has been murdering his people for decades. It's not simply a travesty. It's murder. Until you firmly establish in your mind that he's a brutal dictator who is long overdue for being removed from power, you're coddling to a sadistic murderer. How can you expect to hope for idealistic conditions of fair trials, or foreign indifference, as long as the atrocity continues? What's the problem with affirming the moral principle that invalidates him? Rulers simply don't wage war on their own people. Not any more. He will probably be one of the last in history as the era of dictatorships is quickly coming to a close. Why not renounce dictatorship altogether? Or is there some overwhelming urge you have to complain about other isses in the process? If so, then you are doing the idealistic equivalent of cutting your nose off to spite your face. That is, you would propose some kind of mediated solution as if that's just and proper, while letting the murderous dictator off the hook (that is, failing to stridently renounce him). It's utterly ludicrous. Assad needs to be dragged into the World Court to face the nature of the charges against him. And it needs to happen yesterday. It's as simple as that. They are as settled down as Assad can force it to be by the worst methods of oppression imaginable. This is precisely why constitutional governments exist--to check power. The sooner he is overthrown, the sooner the Syrians will be able to hammer out their own constitution. But it will never happen by mediation as you imagine. Assad has his own propaganda dept. manufacturing false news feeds to attempt to hide the atrocities. There is zero credibility in him as far as bargaining with a mediator. He simply needs to go.
You're putting the cart before the horse there: the entire reason that the situation got out of hand in the first place is that Assad will not countenance democratic control of Syrian governance - as that would spell the end of his power, and likely freedom and even life as well. He's the one who responded to peaceful demonstrations demanding exactly such a political transition with brutal violence in the first place. He is the aggressor here, and is emphatically not someone who is interested in peaceful negotations and democracy, but is backed into a corner by armed resistance. The armed resistance, "jihadists" and "foreign interference" are themselves exactly the consequences of Assad's having forsworn the path of peace and democracy at the outset. To invoke them as excuses for why Assad cannot lay down his arms and surrender - while ignoring the much greater incidence of violence, aggression and foreign interference on his side - is to blame the victims while apologizing for the war criminal.
At the moment the Israeli-Palestinian conflict pales in comparison to the brutal atrocities in Syria.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always paled in comparison to the brutal atrocities in the arab/islamic world. Just ask any israeli arab if they`d ever voluntarily move to another middle eastern country.
Is all suffering not equal? If not, why not? Its murder. He is a brutal dictator who needs to be removed from power. Not necessarily by route of civil war, which of course effects all Syrians, good and bad and innocent. As I said the atrocities are occurring on both sides. Both sides need to drop arms before talks can begin. By relying on forcible removal you come up against resistance as we are seeing from Assad. This obviously prolongs the conflict. Best course is complete ceasefire and then talk. Clearly the Opposition needs to decide who exactly they are? And who represents ALL of them first. Once there is a some resemblance to a central command and representation, this body can negotiate from a stronger position of unity and perhaps effect a ceasefire - in order to commence talks. Both sides are engaged in propaganda and the manufacture of false news, we really do not have a full understanding of exactly what is the reality is. By insisting that he simply has to go you close the door to a negotiated settlement and the conflict continues. With some flexibility one has hope.
Yes, I would agree with most of that. I think he knows that this will not end well for him, thus both sides are continuing to escalating the conflict at the grave expense of Syrians. Upon much reflection, two points are more clear (not completely clear) - I think ultimately he has only himself to blame for the current situation. No caveat required. Its not quite as simple, but what you say makes perfect sense.
Assad and his regime know full well what will happen to them if the rebels win, Gaddafi horrific final minutes are on video for everyone to see. Even if they were to agree to peace and a democratic reform they would likely be arrest and executed my the new supposedly peoples government for what they have done. At the very best they might escape to a country where they can get asylum, Gaddafi tried that but it was too late. Assad and his regime thus know they are past the point of no return, they have to kill off the rebels and quench the revolution or they will die horribly (or maybe if they are lucky find themselves desuetude in Iran).
Dude, that horse has already left the barn. Your rhetoric might have been salient back in, say, April of 2011. But there are 30,000 dead bodies between then and now. You can't simply wish away a running civil war by demanding that the two sides simply stop fighting and "talk it out." If the situation were amenable to negotiations, Syria wouldn't be 18 months deep in a civil war already. This thing ends one of two ways: Assad uses brutal force to cling to power, or Assad is defeated. This is, again, backwards: Assad is the one who ran up against resistance when he chose to respond to peaceful demands for democratic transition with brutal, indiscriminate violence. That is a non-option. If you want the conflict to end ASAP, then what you want is overpowering external intervention to decisively tip the scales one way or the other. There is no cessation of the conflict in advance of its solution, that's just inane. Again, your prescription is backwards and inane. What needs to happen, is for Assad to realize that he's an illegitimate tyrant with no real prospects and do the honorable thing: suicide, or at least exile. There is nothing to talk about with him, as he is not interested in negotiating away his freedom and life. Only one side is attempting to sustain a system of unaccountable tyrrany through crimes against humanity. If there were some possible "negotiated settlement" somewhere in the offing, you might have a point. But Assad has forcefully, violently rejected every such opportunity, and there is no reason whatsoever to think that there is anything to negotiate. Negotiating his way out of power will just result in his imprisonment, if not death. Negotiating his way into continued power is unacceptable to the majority of Syrians. Seems to me that you're just clinging to irrelevant platitudes as a pretense to avoid making any difficult decisions here. You should develop some moral backbone and recognize that your fence-sitting and equivocation isn't useful or morally defensible.
Believe me, I am grappling with this issue, and you have shown great patience for which I am grateful. If I could be convinced that external agents have absolutely no agenda other than to end the humanitarian crises, and that this intervention would not eventuate in increased civilian casualties, I would most likely fully embrace your position of an external force/intervention to topple the Assad regime.
Of course all "external agents" have their own agendas, and always will. The relevant question is what forces and outcomes those agendas align with. That is a useful yardstick for evaluating intervention, certainly. But it is a bit difficult to assess - it's possible that even a very benign, successful intervention would increase casualties in the short term, while reducing them in the long term, for example. That said, I have heard it argued fairly convincingly that the true "RealPolitick" interest of the USA is actually not so much in an intervention to topple Assad, but rather in a prolonged struggle that the USA (and the West) don't take much direct part in, and which then bleeds Iran and Hezbollah of lots of resources and standing, undermines Russia and China's "non-interventionist" posture in the UNSC, and bolsters the positions of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, before eventually resulting in the demise of the Assad regime. This is supposed to explain America's complaints that Russia and China are blocking action, even as the USA has no real plan of action in the first place, for example. Let me be clear that I do not particularly favor external intervention, at least any time soon. If it gets to a situation similar to Libya, where there is a coherent, organized opposition government that controls territory and requests international assistance to fend off a massed offensive by an illegitimate army with superior weaponry, then that's one thing. But I don't see how having, say, NATO ride into the current fracas is going to fix anything, and nor does NATO leadership seem to think so. Moreover, let's not fall into some trap of equating "external intervention" with a Western/NATO action. There is already extensive external intervention occurring, with Russia and China and Iran supplying Assad with weaponry, diplomatic support and military advisers. Likewise, you have various Gulf states and Turkey assisting the rebellion, Egypt's president causing a stir at the non-aligned summit with his opposition to Assad and Tehran, etc. Syria does not exist in a vacuum, and there is no real prospect of the situation there not involving external intervention. The only question is exactly what form such will take and who it will benefit.
Exactly. I understand that there are agendas on both sides of the equation also. When I support the Russian veto on Syria (given the Libya outcome), although, I believe that there is most likely a humanitarian element from their perspective, I am not so naive as to underestimate their ultimate agenda ie. the retention of allies, economic interests and influence in the region. The same goes for Western nations, there is no doubt there are sincere humanitarian concerns also, the reasons for cynicism are just more obvious. I completely understand. These are not trifling decisions to be making. Yes, I get that. As an aside, I do not share (currently) the paranoia around Iran being a realistic threat to anyone, including Israel, rather the opposite. Hezbollah, on the other hand is a threat and notwithstanding my utter disappointment with Israeli policies, I have a sincere interest in the survival of Israel as an independent, and yes, Jewish, state - in situ. That is a welcome sentiment, and I agree. Yes, and of course the West is supplying arms, logistics and intelligence to the Opposition. Yes, clearly we have a revised regional hierarchy emerging. I understand.
