08/12/12

Translation provided by Syrian Assistance Team

Georges Sabra
Lately we got information that the regime could use chemical weapons! We warn the world of these risks, of the disaster that could occur if the criminal regime uses these chemicals! We appeal to the UN and the Big World Powers!  The regime is determined to use mass destruction weapons and any weapons to destroy the Syrian people. This regime has already committed genocide, crimes  against humanity and war crimes in Hama, Aleppo, Tadmur, Jesr el Shghour.  In the 80th, Houla , Daraya, Treymsse, Homs and Daraa and most of the cities and towns of Syria in the last months. This regime killed more than 40000 in the 80th and in the past months, more than this number! We believe that nothing will  stop this regime to commit many more crimes, especially now that it is close to its end, except if it is faced by a strict and serious International position! We ask the  world to move immediately to prevent this regime from using chemical weapons, not after it uses them but before to prevent a disaster on Syria and its people!

#Syria unrest fuels local tensions in Turkey

While Syrian refugees seek intervention to topple Assad, Alawites reject any interference in neighbour’s affairs.

Thousands of Syrians have fled to neighbouring Turkey seeking safety since the government cracked down on protesters. Many of them have been living in refugee camps in towns close to the Syria border for the last eight months.

These refugees are increasingly calling for international intervention in their home country to help topple Bashar al-Assad’s government.

However, many Turkish Alawites - a branch of Shia Islam to which President Assad’s family belongs - living in the city of Antakya have come out against intervention in Syria, calling it “imperialist intervention”.

Al Jazeera’s Anita McNaught reports from the Syrian-Turkey border.

Published on Monday 20 February 2012 09:35

IT is easy to become disillusioned about the Arab Spring. With the military still in power in Egypt and Libya becoming embroiled in fighting between armed factions following the international intervention there, any hopes of a smooth transition to Arab democracy have long since faded.

To make matters worse, the world is hopelessly divided over what to do about Syria which, as William Hague warned yesterday, is sliding into civil war.

Yet the Foreign Secretary is right to keep the pressure on Damascus in whatever way possible following the shameful decisions of Russia and China to veto the UN Security Council resolution condemning Syrian President Bashar Assad and calling on him to step down.

It is this lack of resolve on the part of the outside world that has directly encouraged Assad to strengthen his murderous assault on the city of Homs, adding to carnage which has claimed 7,000 lives across Syria in the past year.

Yet the impetus for the West to confront Assad arises not merely from the appalling bloodshed.

With Syria occupying a vital position in the Middle East, bordering Israel and allied with Iran, a lengthy civil war would feed religious strife and further destabilise an already dangerous part of the world.

The outside world, therefore, has a duty to its own interests to act, as well as a responsibility to help the civilians being slaughtered daily.

Military action may not be an option, but this should not stop Mr Hague doing all he can to bring the international community together and demonstrate to the world that Syria under Assad has no future.

With the Gulf countries’ recent step, the noose is tightening around the neck of Assad

In a firm move, Gulf states announced that they would withdraw their monitors from Syria thus sending a clear message that the Assad regime has failed to comply with the Arab League’s plan to put an end to the bloody crackdown on protesters. Evidently, the common stand taken by the Gulf countries cannot be more striking. Withdrawing their monitors from Syria is tantamount to saying that the Gulf countries are not going to be part of Assad’s game of buying time while Syrian people are subject to unremitting killing.

It seems that Assad is not in touch with reality. While he has no chance to stay in power as all of his allies in the region are under attack, he still behaves as if he is invincible! He fools nobody but himself when he keeps talking about an external conspiracy that targets his regime.

In a last-ditch attempt to avoid internationalization of the Syrian crisis, the Arab League proposed a road map that states that Assad transfer power to his deputy and a new national government is formed within two months. Presidential and parliamentary elections would be held after that. To the Arabs, this is the best way of curbing violence and averting international intervention. Yet the Syrian regime dismissed it as a “flagrant” violation of Syrian sovereignty.

Against this backdrop, the Gulf states decided to act swiftly by withdrawing all of their monitors (55 of the 165 monitors sent to Syria). Interestingly, Damascus is still employing the same boring false pretexts. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem assailed the road plan was a “plot” against his country abetted by the Arabs. He added that his country would continue targeting “armed terrorist gangs.” If anything, this last statement indicates clearly that the Syrian regimes has reached the no-return point and that it has no real intention to end the long ten-month bloody crackdown on people.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Syrian crisis is on its way to get internationalized. The Gulf states urged the Security Council to take what it takes to force Assad to relinquish power. But Syria is still relying on two allies in the Security Council - China and Russia - to block any effort to that effect. In his dismissive response to the call for taking the file to the Security Council, Walid Moallem said that Arabs could take the whole file to “New York or to the moon, as long as we don’t have to pay for their ticket…Russia will not agree on the foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs, and this is a red line.”

With the Gulf countries’ recent step, the noose is tightening around the neck of Assad. They offered him a safe exist from Syria but it seems that he is not the one who calls the shots in Damascus. The security circle around him is looking for a showdown with all. Yet, the Syrian regime does not understand that Russia is open to a new initiative that can force Assad to leave. Russia is against military intervention and the West has affirmed its intentions not to interfere. But Russia cannot protect the isolated regime forever.  Equally important, China has recently signed an oil deal with Saudi Arabia thus getting closer to the Gulf countries’ position while moving away from Iran. In the Arab League’s deliberation on the new road map, Iraq took a positive step by agreeing to the road map. This might be coordinated with Tehran and thus reflecting a new Iranian approach. For sure, this was bad news for the Syrian regime.

All in all, the Arabs have given the regime in Syria every possible chance to put a cap on violence and embark upon genuine reform. Yet, the regime kept the same line dismissing all efforts to end the crisis. Clearly, Assad and his cronies have failed miserably in reading the new changes that have swept the region. Their miscalculation could not be more striking. While stronger regimes fell under the pressure of people, Assad kept thinking that his regime was different and that his allies from within and from without would stand up to a “Western-Zionist” conspiracy. Finally, the Gulf states are fed up and thus they refuse to play the role of a fake witness to the daily killing of Syrians. In brief, the countdown of change in Syria started once Saudi Arabia announced its intention not to take part in the Arab League mission in Syria. Now it remains to be seen how the rest of the Arab countries are going to behave. Can they continue with a plan without an active Gulf participation? I doubt!

The conventional wisdom in Washington and beyond is that Bashar al-Assad will fall on his own and that an intervention would be counterproductive, but with thousands dying we need to reconsider those assumptions

A Syrian protester faces security forces near Homs / Reuters

The most stunning thing about how American foreign policy experts and elites talk about Syria today is the one aspect of the country’s crisis that they won’t discuss. There is little to no actual debate about direct international intervention into an uprising and crackdown that has cost more than 5,000 Syrian lives. In response to the Bashar al-Assad regime’s violence against largely peaceful protesters, which leaves dozens of people dead every day, the international community has denounced Damascus “in the strongest possible terms,” as diplomats like to say, placed the country and its leadership under sanction, and searched for additional punitive measures short of the use of force. Oddly, at the same time that the United States, Europe, and the Arab League have apparently rejected meeting Bashar al-Assad’s violence with violence, there is an assumption in Washington that it is only a matter of time before the Syrian regime falls. It is largely a self-serving hunch that does not necessarily conform to what is actually happening in Syria, but nevertheless provides cover for doing nothing to protect people who are at the mercy of a government intent on using brutality to re-establish its authority. After all, if the many Syrians who have been in open revolt since March of last year are on the verge of bringing down Assad, then, as the conventional wisdom has it, there is no need for a international response and thus no need for an agonizing debate about whether to use force in Syria. But this logic seems less convincing every day, and it might be time to reconsider our assumptions about intervention.

If the world wants to see the end of Assad, it will likely require international intervention

Despite the now prevailing belief in policy circles that it’s only a matter of time until Assad falls, events in Syria suggest otherwise. Since last March, thousands upon thousands of Syrians have taken to the streets, initially to demand reform and now the end of the Assad regime, which they clearly regard as unredeemable. Syrians have been willing to face down a fearsome army and security forces that were created, trained, and equipped not for war with Israel but for repression. The economic power of the United States, European Union, and Turkey (The European Union and Turkey had previously accounted for almost 30 percent of Syria’s trade) have applied what was hoped would be crippling sanctions on Assad. There is evidence that these measures have created a range of problems for Syria, including spikes in food and energy prices. Still, sanctions have failed to modify the regime’s approach to the uprising. Indeed, the Syrian leadership has long shown that it is more than willing to force its people to suffer in order to ensure the regime’s survival.

Syrians are persisting in the face of regime violence and there have been defections from the armed forces. Yet only a small number of officers and recruits have switched sides: the anti-regime Free Syrian Army apparently numbers only a few hundred. Unlike in Tunisia or Egypt during the revolutions there, it seems that Syria’s military officers still believe that sticking with Assad best serves their interests. Even the recent terrorist attacks in Damascus, against high-value targets such as the State Security Directorate and the Kfar Sousa district military office, do not appear to have not altered the regime’s strategy. Indeed, Assad vowed to use an iron fist against the perpetrators of the attacks, which the opposition believes was actually committed by the regime seeking an excuse — as if it needed one — to use force against the uprising.

It’s true that Assad is more isolated than ever, but to what effect? The Turks, who, over the course of the last decade, tried to convince the world that the Syrian leader could be flipped through engagement and trade, have given up on him. Even the Arab League, long a club for dictators, suspended Syria’s membership. It was one thing when the organization kicked out Qaddafi’s Libya, but quite another to take similar action against the country that is “the beating heart” of the Arab world, as Syria is sometimes known. Despite the international opprobrium heaped upon Damascus and efforts to isolate the regime, Assad continues to have options. Tehran, Moscow, Beijing, and Hizballah all remain committed to their relationships with Damascus.

Ultimately, it seems that Assad still has bullets left, people to resupply him when his stocks run low, and loyal officers to fire them. What more does he really need? Under what circumstances is Assad’s fall “only a matter of when and not if,” as the foreign policy comminity seems to have decided? The Syrian leader may, in fact, be under pressure, but he also clearly believes that he has time. In his speech to the Syrian people on January 10, he gave no hint that he believes he has a political problem on his hands. That may be posturing for public and international consumption, but unlike earlier speeches Assad did not even bother to promise hollow reforms. He has gone all in, apparently believing that he can continue to kill people with relative impunity. Current international efforts are exacting a toll, but it is clear that Assad and his associates — his family, actually — are willing pay a much higher price for their survival.

If Assad is indeed more secure than the conventional view suggests, then the inevitable question is whether it is time to consider more “robust” responses to the Syrian regime’s outrages. Much of the commentary thus far has focused on why hypothetical interventions — Operation Unified Protector: Syrian Edition or Lift and Strike Damascus — would be bad ideas. Opponents of international intervention argue that the Syrian opposition has not asked for such action, but their non-consent could be changing, given what living (or not) at the mercy of the Assad regime looks like. The opponents also claim that intervention in Syria is likely to be harder than it was in Libya. On a technical level, the argument is specious. There is nothing in the Syrian arsenal that would pose an undefeatable threat to Western aircrews. That’s not to suggest that undertaking military action in Syria would be a “cakewalk,” but relatively recent Israeli incursions into Syrian airspace suggest that in terms of force protection, the risks are minimal. The technical issue is, however, a red herring. Analysts who reject the idea of airstrikes suggest that it could actually do more harm than good, giving Assad an excuse to kill even more people. It is a compelling argument and certainly a downside risk, but what is constraining the Syrian leadership now? Nothing. And, what is the metric that flips the cost-benefit analysis? In other words, at what point in the body count is international intervention deemed to be an acceptably worthwhile option that can have a positive effect on the situation? After Assad has killed 6,000 people? 7,000? 10, 000? 20,000?

The other major objection to taking direct action against Assad is Iraq. There are two versions of this claim. The first indicates that the experience of Iraq was so searing and the impact on Iraq’s neighbors so devastating, that the United States should not repeat the same mistakes now. But why did this claim have so little sway when it came to Libya? Post-Qaddafi Libya is far from perfect and its future is uncertain, but the intervention was nowhere near at costly or destabilizing as the 2003 Iraq invasion. Regardless, it seems that when it comes to Syria, the Obama administration has learned the lessons of Iraq. For example, in contrast to the George W. Bush administration’s march to war in 2002 and 2003, Washington has worked particularly hard to be mindful of regional security concerns, particularly Turkey’s, in Syria.

There are actually few analogies to the Iraq experience. Unlike Saddam at the time of the invasion, Assad is engaged in the mass killing of his own people; unlike Operation Iraqi Freedom, there is a chance that the Arab League would support a humanitarian intervention in Syria, and any military operations could be undertaken multilaterally. Getting a UN Security Council resolution would be tough given Chinese and especially Russian opposition, but without being too Rumsfeldian, does every military intervention require a UN writ? It is certainly preferable, but not a requirement.

Would Syria really be so different from Libya? This is big question that the opponents of intervention in Syria have not effectively answered. European leaders, “right to protect” advocates, members of Congress, and a bevy of foreign policy intellectuals (with a few notable exceptions) seemed willing to unleash NATO on Qaddafi on humanitarian grounds, but not on Assad. If NATO undertook a military attacks to protect Benghazi from an onslaught, what about Homs? At this point, Assad has killed more people than Qadhafi had on the eve of NATO operations. The truth is that the arguments against bombing Syria run into the Libya buzz saw no matter how often people insist that “Syria is not Libya.” One of the real reasons that observers seem reluctant to consider an intervention in Syria may be because Libya took so long to bring Qaddafi down, which was the unstated but unmistakable goal of NATO’s missions. It was supposed to be a matter of weeks, not seven months. Had Qaddafi fallen last April, it’s easy to see how the same political pressure that contributed to Libya’s intervention could have shifted to demand the same approach in Syria.

The arguments for some sort of lift-and-strike-like policy toward Syria are not without their problems. There are good reasons that contemplating yet more Western violence against yet another Muslim country can (and maybe should) bring a certain queasiness. That said, if the international community wants to see the end of the Assad regime, as virtually everyone claims, then it is likely going to require outside intervention. Nothing that anyone has thrown at Damascus has altered its behavior and the current arguments against intervention do not hold up under scrutiny. If there is no intervention and political will to stop Assad’s crimes remains absent, the world will once again have to answer for standing on the sidelines of a mass murder. It is also hard to ignore the possibility that bringing down Assad would advance the long-standing American goal of isolating Iran. Any post-Assad government in Damascus would not likely look to Iran for support, but instead to Turkey and Saudi Arabia. That would be a net benefit for Washington and others looking to limit Iran’s influence in the Arab world.

The wild card in the bomb-Syria-for-humanitarian-reasons argument is what post-Assad Syria might actually look like. Syria has similar ethnic and sectarian complexities as Lebanon and Iraq and there is reason to believe that, in the vicissitudes of politics, these groups might seek to settle scores against one another and to gain advantage through violence. Then again, it is worth asking whether analysts are over-correcting as a result of the American experience in Iraq. Given recent history there, it certainly seems that caution is warranted, but that means leaving Syrians to their fate with a regime which seems intent on shooting and torturing its way out of its present troubles.

Syria has become a place where violence, colonial legacies, the mistakes of the recent past, and the hopes for a better Middle East have collided to create layers of complications and unsettling trade-offs for policymakers and outside observers. Yet wrapping oneself in the false comfort that Assad cannot hang on for long seems like the worst possible way to proceed. Washington and the rest of the international community must come to grips with the idea of intervention in Syria or get used to the idea that Bashar al-Assad could stick around far longer than anyone expects.

United Nations (CNN) — Last year, the U.N. Security Council authorized “all necessary measures” to stop the violence when the nation in question was Libya. It has come nowhere close to that on Syria, where the United Nations estimates more than 5,000 people have been killed since March. Why?

Diplomats say the answer is simple: Russia. Tensions between Russia and the other permanent members of the Security Council have always been a factor. But diplomats say that Russia’s conduct in its refusal to condemn Syria, or even negotiate on resolutions in good faith, have reached new lows.

At this point, the only way Western diplomats believe the Security Council will be able to pass a resolution on Syria is with a request for intervention from the Arab League. Russia and China abstained from the vote on Libya after the Arab League and the African Union requested UN involvement in that country.

In October, Russia and China issued a rare double veto of a sanction-less resolution that would have condemned the violence in Syria.

Though China joined Russia in its veto on Syria, and India, Brazil and South Africa abstained, diplomats say that it is Russia that has been taking the lead in opposition to action.

In Russia’s view, NATO overstepped the Security Council’s mandate in Libya, and they fear a similar mistake being made in Syria. Though Western diplomats insist they have not proposed anything approaching military intervention, Russia insists that the Syria crisis should be solved internally.

“I think Libya has been beat to death, overused and misused as an excuse for countries not to take up their responsibilities with respect to Syria,” Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said.

Last month, Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin pushed the Security Council to open an investigation into civilian deaths in Libya. European and American diplomats immediately called foul.

“Is everybody sufficiently distracted from Syria now?” Rice asked the media after a meeting called by Russia. “Let us see this for what it is. That this is duplicative, it’s redundant, it’s superfluous, and it’s a stunt.”

“This is not the kind of issue which can be drowned in expletives,” Churkin countered the next day. “You cannot beat a Stanford education, can you?” referring to Rice’s alma mater, saying she should be “more Victorian.”

Shortly thereafter, Rice’s communications director tweeted a picture of Churkin’s face superimposed on the Grinch, with the text “rough day at the Security Council.” (Churkin later said that he “thought it was a nice joke.”)

Despite Rice’s high-profile tit-for-tat with Churkin, it is the four European countries on the Security Council, not the United States, that have taken the lead on issues Libya and Syria.

Those countries — France, Germany, Portugal and the United Kingdom — have expressed deep frustration at Russia’s scuttling of attempts at a resolution.

In December, Russia held the rotating presidency of the council, which gave it significant power to determine the agenda. Diplomats complained of having to fight tooth and nail for even routine briefings.

A senior Western diplomat said that Churkin routinely interrupted other diplomats and cut off debate. Churkin’s conduct was “outrageous” and “disrespectful,” the diplomat said, who had “never seen anything like the atmosphere in the Security Council now.”

Western Diplomats admit that Russia has been using its close relationship with Syria to apply pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But their criticism of Churkin’s conduct at the Security Council is unequivocal.

“Churkin is practicing shoe diplomacy,” another senior Western diplomat said, referring to Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev’s famous shoe-banging speech in the General Assembly.

“Russia and Syria are the last two members of the Warsaw Pact, and Russia is behaving in an imperialistic manner,” another Western diplomat said.

Churkin does not disagree that the mood is contentious. But he says that the root cause is a “my way or the highway” attitude. He called December the toughest of his five separate month-long terms at the helm of the Security Council.

“There is a lot of nervousness, a lot of expectations that things are going to be done my way or no other way,” Churkin said. “That what I need to have, I must have now. … I think that if this trend were to continue it might seriously hurt the ability of the Security Council to work.”

Russia surprised even its allies last month when it introduced its own draft resolution condemning the violence in Syria. Publicly, Western diplomats seemed encouraged by the move but privately were deep cynical.

Western Diplomats said Russia had expected the Europeans and Americans to reject the draft out of hand, because it did not include some of the provisions they consider non-negotiable. (And, for example, they say it drew an unacceptable equivalence between violence perpetrated by the government and violence perpetrated by protesters.)

Since then, Western diplomats say that Russia has not engaged in negotiation on their proposed additions.

They also complain that Churkin has misrepresented to the media the content of closed Security Council meetings. He claims productive work on the draft Syria resolution, they say, when in fact he has been stonewalling.

“We are working all the time,” Churkin said Tuesday of Russia’s draft resolution.

They have not held a single negotiation on the text since Christmas, Western diplomats say.

Western diplomats admit that when it comes to Syria, they are at a “dead end.” The only way around it — the “only game in town,” as French U.N. Ambassador Gerard Araud says — is the Arab League.

The Arab League has a group of observers in Syria, who were sent there to gauge the situation on the ground. Their report is expected on January 19.

If that report is unequivocal about the Syrian government’s culpability — an outcome Western diplomats admit is a long shot — then they may have enough political capital to push forward. And in-person briefing from the Qatari prime minister, who has been very outspoken on Syria, or the secretary general of the Arab League, may help to push Russia, they say.

The Arab League report, a Western diplomat said, is a necessary condition for action. But it may not be sufficient.

Russia received information that members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and some Persian Gulf countries are preparing military intervention in Syria, the head of the Russian Security Council said.

Turkey, a NATO member, may play a key role, Nikolai Patrushev, who is also a former director of the Federal Security Service, told Interfax in comments confirmed by his office. The U.S. and Turkey are working on the possibility of creating a no- fly zone to protect Syrian rebels, Patrushev said.

“We are receiving information that NATO members and some Persian Gulf states, working under the ‘Libyan scenario’, intend to move from indirect intervention in Syria to direct military intervention,” the Russian security chief said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday that the Arab League monitoring mission in Syria should end after failing to deter the government’s 10-month campaign of violence against dissidents. She spoke after meeting Qatari Foreign Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor al Thani, a day after President Barack Obama held talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal at the White House.

Russia, which has Soviet-era ties with Syria, argues that the UN-sanctioned bombing of Libya by the NATO was used to bring about regime change and that Western governments are trying to repeat that scenario in Syria.

The West is putting pressure on Syria because the country refuses to break off its alliance with Iran rather than for repressing the opposition, said Patrushev, who served with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the Soviet-era KGB.

Turkish Involvement?

“This time, it won’t be France, the U.K. and Italy that will provide the main strike forces, but perhaps neighboring Turkey, which was until recently on good terms with Syria and is a rival of Iran with immense ambitions,” Patrushev said.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rejected calls for his resignation on Jan. 10, accusing “foreign conspiracies” of aiming to divide his country. Unrest in Syria since March 2011 has claimed more than 5,000 lives, according to the United Nations.

The Arab League imposed sanctions on Syria on Nov. 27. Russia and China have blocked efforts by the U.S. and the European Union for the UN Security Council to condemn the crackdown.

To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net; Ilya Arkhipov in Moscow at iarkhipov@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net

While Arab League monitors have failed to stop the bloodshed, this may be preferable to protracted talks about political ‘reform’

A protest against Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Photograph: Reuters

A sign in Kafranbel, Syria

Kafranbel, Syria has some remarkable residents. “NATO leaders!” reads one revolutionary sign in the city, “if the Libyans could pay oil for you, we will sell our houses to cover the cost”. Another placard calls for the “construction of 5-star hotel to attract the Arab monitors.” Then there’s the sign wielded by a little girl already versed in the quandaries of ancient philosophy: “We demand observers to observe the observers while they observe!”

Whatever you think of the idea of humanitarian intervention in Syria (an argument that evidently makes the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the head of the Free Syrian Army and the French Foreign Minister all neoconservatives), or about the very real and tragic plight of Christian minorities in the Middle East, you ought to consider the following:

The Arab League delegation was only sent into the country after the Assad regime negotiated the terms of its remit, and it is held in such low regard by the Syrian people because the organisers have made insultingly little effort to mask the true intention of their Potemkin farce.

The delegation is headed by General Mohammad Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, the former head of Sudan’s military intelligence service and the founder of Omar al-Bashir’s genocidal janjaweed militias in Darfur. As one Syrian human rights campaigner aptly described this appointment, it is like “a rapist … act[ing] as a forensic expert assistant while examining the victim”.

Last week, al-Dabi visited the battleground city of Homs and reported that he didn’t see “anything frightening,” no tanks but “some armored vehicles.” Here are the orange-jacketed monitors in Homs standing right in front… a tank.

In this video, protestors in the Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs did al-Dabi the favour of laying the corpse of a slain boy on top of a League vehicle, complete with the spent cartridges used by regime forces to kill him. Though I suppose this is no more frightening to the godfather of Sudanese genocidaires than a football match played with human skulls would be to the Khmer Rouge.

Then in this video Baba Amr resident Khalid Abou Salah explains to al-Dabi that his remit is the problem in itself and that the delegation hasn’t ended the murder of civilians. Al-Dabi tells Salah to hang in there and believe in “dialogue.” Salah is unimpressed and responds that once the delegation leaves an area, the shooting starts up again. Sure enough, al-Dabi and his team eventually quit Baba Amr. Here’s what happened.

The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Nabil al-Araby, actually gained some credibility several months ago for suspending Syria’s membership and even hinting at a Libya-style humanitarian intervention. But he has lately shown himself and his organisation to be guardians not of besieged civilians but of the defunct status quo of Arab authoritarianism. What al-Araby is saying about the fundamental legitimacy of his mission amounts to the old saw about not being able to make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. When Panaït Istrati toured the Soviet Union in the 1920s, he famously replied to that: “All right, I can see all the broken eggs. Now where’s this omelette of yours?” The people of Kafranbel might ask the same.

Saturday, 31 December 2011

An Arab League peace mission to Syria was in crisis on Wednesday night, attacked by opposition activists for failing to get to grips with the scale of the violence even as more people were shot dead in fighting.