Protesting al-Assad's regime. Photo credit: Maggie Osama http://flic.kr/p/9Co1BJ
The UN-imposed deadline for a ceasefire in Syria looks unlikely to be met as violence continues. Kofi Annan, UN and Arab League envoy to the country, had set out a six-point peace plan that required government troops to withdraw from populated areas by Tuesday, and for both the military and armed rebels to lay down their weapons by 6 am on Thursday. But various media outlets have reported shelling in the city of Homs, as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime maintains the crackdown against anti-government forces.
According to the BBC, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem insisted the government had withdrawn some troops and blamed “armed terrorist gangs” for the continuing violence. But many observers have questioned the Assad regime’s commitment to the peace plan from the very start, after Damascus attempted to impose new conditions on the ceasefire.
Regime self-sabotage. “Far from withdrawing its tanks from the city centres, the Army is stepping up its slaughter of civilians, attempting to snuff out all resistance before the deadline for the United Nations ceasefire plan comes into force,” said a Times (£) editorial, accusing the Syrian government of trying to “sabotage any outside attempt to avert a bloodbath”. But the regime’s tactics are going to backfire, according to the editorial: “This fight to the death is not only state-sponsored sadism; it is suicidal politics. Syria long ago lost the support and sympathy of its Arab neighbours. Now it is stoking up anger in the only two capitals prepared to defend the Assad regime from global denunciation: Beijing and Moscow.”
Russia and China must act. A New York Times editorial pointed out that Russia is still supplying arms to Syria, and that both Russia and China have blocked Security Council sanctions against the Assad regime in the past. “Any chance of ousting Mr. Assad — and restoring stability to Syria — will require Russia and China ending their cynical and perilous game,” the editorial said.
Too late for mediation. The towns of Syria are now “convulsed by mini-civil wars too bitter and bloodstained to end by mediation”, wrote Patrick Cockburn in The Independent. Foreign intervention seems unlikely, Cockburn said, but without this there is no end in sight: “The only alternative for the Free Syrian Army is to wage an escalating guerrilla war against Bashar al-Assad’s government which is unlikely to bring about a collapse of the regime.”
Refugee crisis. An estimated 24,300 Syrian refugees have fled across the border to Turkey, pointed out Michael Weiss in The Telegraph; that number is set to rise to half a million, which is simply not sustainable for the country. “Turkey may be forced to impose a buffer zone in Syria not out humanitarian concern but out of sheer national self-interest,” Weiss said. And Assad is playing a dangerous game by provoking Turkey, after Syrian forces fired across the border at a refugee camp: “Any attack on her soil would be perceived as an attack against the entire Nato alliance to which Turkey belongs. Assad is fashioning a noose for his own neck,” Weiss predicted.
