World must stop slaughter of civilians in Syria
British Foreign Secretary William Hague, commenting on the Syrian situation, said that it is “so grave, so serious and so rapidly deteriorating” that the world must act.
The question that faces the world is how many tens of thousands of innocent Syrian women and children must be killed by Bashar al Assad before the world intervenes.
Must thousands of Syrians needlessly die before the regime is overthrown?
What will make Russia change its mind for innocent lives to be saved from this murderous regime?
My guess is that it is a matter of time before the world eventually intervenes in Syria, Russia’s intransigence notwithstanding, by arming the Free Syrian Army, the rebel group that seeks the overthrow of the Assad regime.
But the free world must realise that the earlier the rebels are armed the better. The eventuality of the regime collapsing is probably inevitable.
What the world must influence and positively mitigate is the cost in human lives and course of the struggle in the eventual overthrow of the Assad regime.
The world, under the usual leadership of America, can and must mitigate positively both the cost and the course of the struggle and help the Syrian people overcome this doomed Alawite regime.
Last week’s massacre of over 100 mostly children and women in the town of Houla shocked the world.
The children and women were slaughtered like lambs by the army and the Shabiha militia that consists of the President’s Alawite clan. Meanwhile, hundreds of civilians are killed daily by the regime.
It has been common knowledge that all the killings are carried out solely by either this militia or members of the army who are ethnically Alawites.
Arab regimes once faced by the Arab spring have reacted in different ways.
The reaction, at times, depends on their levels of delusion of the ruler, how entrenched the dictatorial regime is, the strength and weakness of state institutions, and the influence and strategic interests of foreign powers in a given country among other factors.
In the case of Tunisia, the president simply fled to Saudi Arabia, and the transition to democracy was peaceful.
In Egypt, the transition was managed by the army – a powerful and professional army. In Libya, we all know how the revolution ended in a bloodbath.
Two countries have slight semblances with Syria. These are Yemen and Bahrain.
The Arab springs in these three countries have been blurred by a divergence of communal interests and the political tussle between Shia and Sunni Muslims.
In Bahrain, for instance, the overwhelming majority are Shia Muslims subjugated by an unaccountable Sunni king.
The democratic struggle in the country has, as a result, been consumed by the wider historic competition between these two groups. Yemen has similar dynamics.
In Syria, we have further dynamics. The country has Orthodox Christians who are about 10 per cent of the population.
Assad’s Shia Alawaites also constitute 10 per cent. The rest are Sunni Muslims and the driving force behind the revolution.
Russia’s policy against intervention is primarily dictated by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Russian Church, for supporting President Putin in the last election, has extracted a concession that Russia will oppose all kinds of intervention in Syria.
Syria, on paper, has a formidable fighting force. With 295,000 men in arms and an active reserve of 300,000, a majority of whom are Alawites, this is a strong force. But the world has seen bigger forces in Iraq.
The world saw better weapons and richer regimes in Libya. Regimes that don’t have the support of their people are easy to defeat. It is time the Arab League and Nato plan the overthrow of Assad and his clansmen.
Ahmednasir Abdullahi is the publisher, Nairobi Law Monthly [email protected]
