Syria: The world sits on its hands

Remember all the rhetoric before the Coalition of the Willing waged war on Iraq.  Not only did the Saddam regime have WMDs (which they didn't!) but Saddam was a dictator who had massacred his own people.     Same story about Gaddafi in Libya.    Now, the UN estimates that some 15,000 people have been killed by the Assad regime in Syria.   And what is the West doing?  Talking.....

The Independent editorialises:

"That something utterly appalling happened outside the Syrian city of Houla on Friday is beyond doubt. As the sickening pictures of murdered children showed – pictures rightly reprinted by several British newspapers, including our sister paper The Independent on Sunday – many victims were children, at least some of whom had had their throats cut. Even as the Syrian authorities denied responsibility, blaming Islamists and terrorists, they conceded that at least 90 people had been killed. Of these more than 30 were children, slaughtered, as the pictures attest, in cold blood. Opposition activists accused pro-regime gunmen of the massacre."

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"At which point the argument becomes more complicated. For all the expressions of outrage from Western leaders and the calls for something to be done – an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council (Britain), a summons to the Friends of Syria group (France), "intensified pressure on Assad and his cronies" (the US) – direct military intervention, as hoped for by Syria's opposition, is unrealistic.

Syria is not Kosovo, nor is it Libya. It is a big country in a highly volatile neighbourhood and is slipping ever closer to all-out civil war. While there are entrenched areas of resistance, the opposition itself has been plagued by splits and by no means all Syrians are convinced of the need to remove the Assad clan. Any change of power needs to be supported and sustained by Syrians themselves."

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"If any one country can wield influence in Syria, it is Russia. But its co-operation is also crucial if the international community is to show a united front, which is essential if anything is to change. In present circumstances, the temptation will be to write off the UN process and Kofi Annan's six-point plan. But it has not been exhausted. While there have been violations of the ceasefire aplenty, of which the Houla massacre is by far the most egregious, the ceasefire did bring some diminution of the violence and might have brought more, had there been more observers than the 260 now there. Massively beefing up this operation should be the priority."