Homs continues to endure an onslaught of rockets and mortars in the Bashar al-Assad regime’s worst massacre of civilians since the uprising in Syria began 11 months ago.
The attacks are unremitting and merciless, and the opposition is in chaos. As Dr Benjamin MacQueen explained in Crikey last week, “unlike Libya, where an identifiable opposition movement was able to garner international support against the late 20th century’s pariah poster-boy in Gaddhafi, the situation in Syria is far more opaque. Indeed, the US and the EU still have little idea of who to support”.
Why? An excellent post by a Syrian exile by the name of Ehsani returning home published on Syria Comment attempts to break down the “cocktail of the new Syrian revolution”:
Sunni versus Alawi
Poor versus rich
Rural versus urban
Homs and Hama versus Aleppo and Damascus
Baathists versus Non-Baathists
Religious versus Secular
Saudi Arabia versus Iran
USA versus Russia
Ehsani attempts to connect the dots by documenting three different encounters: two with taxi drivers, one with a soldier. All of the men he speaks to were deeply pessimistic. All of them sensed that this was just the beginning of the conflict. But the conversation with the soldier, which took place some time in mid January, was perhaps the most accurate hint of what was to come.
The 20-year-old soldier was on leave from serving in Homs, visiting his family for three days. A Christian serving with five Sunnis, he stressed that the Syrian army is a lot stronger than many believe and that only 10-20% of its capacity has been used thus far:
Ehsani: If Damascus decides to end the Homs insurgency and use its full might, how many people would die?
Soldier: 50,000
Ehsani: What about all of Syria?
Soldier: 100,000. Presently, we have orders not to shoot. We gain little by shooting as the guns will be grabbed by others and the anger will ensure that many more join the revolution. Our unit is one of the weakest. Damascus could easily replace us with stronger divisions if the objective were to take over these neighbourhoods and kill the armed elements. This is what I expect will happen at some stage, however.
Ehsani: What will you do once you are done with your service?
Soldier: “Get out of here as fast as I can. I don’t care where I go.” His cousin is sitting next to him nods in agreement. “I will swim across to Cyprus soon,” he adds.
As we publish, CNN has just reported it believes the Pentagon and the US Central Command have begun a preliminary internal review of US military capabilities. Two senior administration officials who spoke about the review to CNN emphasised that US policy for now remains the use of non-military options — the options are being prepared in the event President Barack Obama were to call for them.
Short of swimming to Cyprus, intervention could be Syria’s last hope.
7 thoughts on “Swimming to Cyprus”
Venise Alstergren
February 8, 2012 at 2:38 pmAnd America will come in on the side of the over dog, Basher the butcher Assad. Modern warfare appears to favour the under dog.
michael crook
February 8, 2012 at 2:51 pmCivilian deaths in Libya (and everywhere else for that matter) increased sugnificantly after our intervention.
Observation
February 8, 2012 at 5:16 pmI would like a thorough investigation into who these insurgents actually are! Our media seems to portray them as the general civilian population but are they a good spread of representation of the Syrian civilian population?
Is this a fight between different Muslim faiths like Iraq, or is it a fight between opposing business interests or is it as we would like to think, an oppressed people struggling for democracy and their rights.
klewso
February 8, 2012 at 6:07 pmWhile the US grandstands about “the role of Russia and China in this” – how often has that boot been on the other foot?
And how much better off would the “international refugee situation” be, if the UN was “refereeing/policing” trouble-spots around the world, as it was set up to do? We wouldn’t be making poltical footballs out of them for a start, because there wouldn’t be as many (I reckon most of them would sooner be “at home”, than in harms way).
AR
February 8, 2012 at 8:39 pmThe one certainty is that the US will choose the wrong faction to bolster. And if there isn’t a ‘wrong’ side, they’ll create one.
extra
February 8, 2012 at 9:50 pmThank you for giving coverage to the Eshani article, and to the valuable blog SyriaComment.
Finally, there is emerging some mainstream recognition that the Syrian situation is not the same as other Arab Spring events, so that calls to respond in a similar, straightforward manner on the basis of human rights are doomed to founder on the complex cocktail of local affiliations, loyalties, and economic status. The simplistic reporting in our mainstream media carries significant risk of encouraging ill-informed calls for actions that have little chance of being effective, but are more likely to make a long-term solution even more difficult.
While Russia and China have been criticised for not supporting US/European initiatives, readers may be interested in an official Chinese perspective, at Juan Cole’s ‘Informed Comment’, http://www.juancole.com/2012/02/chinese-envoy-veto-aimed-at-protecting-syria-from-civil-war.html. The Bush and Cheney chickens are truly coming home to roost.
Curiously, Ehsani’s cocktail left out two other important ingredients- clan loyalties, and Israel. In Syria, clans usually have not only religious aspects, but geographic aspects, and economic importance too. Expecting a response to some international initiative to be based on, say, religious concerns alone may well be confounded because the people concerned respond based on some non-religious but equally important considerations instead.
Israel has been very quiet. Although it may prefer to be surrounded by non-threatening weak/failed states, weak unstable states carry threats of their own. Given Israel’s popularity with Syrians in particular and the Middle East’s population in general, a major dilemma for the USA in considering any action would be to avoid suggestions that its actions were actually advancing Israel’s interests. That’s an awfully thin tightrope to walk.
Venise Alstergren
February 9, 2012 at 2:22 pmI don’t know if Al Jazeera (in English) qualifies as MSM, but it is, at least, the way to go for up to date news. It may concentrate more on events in the Middle East but the news readers are informed and impartial. Light years beyond anything Rupert Murdoch, and the Rhine Maiden could ever come up with.