Syria: Famine and Civil War - Killed
The Faltering Annan Peace Plan
24 May 2012
By Juan Cole
The Syrian government massacre at Houla has probabaly
killed the faltering Annan peace plan, which
envisioned a ceasefire between the Syrian Baath army
and the rebel Free Syrian Army that would be monitored
by UN observers. The ceasefire not only has not held,
the fighting has intensified as the regime has
insisted on using tank and artillery barrages against
urban quarters that the FSA controls. Having UN
observers watch the carnage isn't useful. Syrian armor
is controlled by Maher al-Assad, the brother of the
president, who clearly is not interested in any
ceasefires and is willing to bombard civilian areas
despite the certainty of killing e.g. children. Some
36 children were among the 108 estimated dead at Houla.
Increasingly, you could see the al-Assads on trial at
the Hague for war crimes not so long from now.
Even after Houla, the regime did not take a breather,
going on to kill dozens Sunday into Monday with
artillery barrages in Hama and sniping at protesters
elasewhere.
The Free Syrian Army warns that it can hardly afford
to maintain Annan's supposed ceasefire if the UN can't
stop the massacre of civilians.
Even the Russians and the Chinese did not stand in the
way of a UNSC condemnation of the use of artillery on
civilian neighborhoods. Since only the Syrian army has
artillery, the party being blamed was clear.
Annan was in Damascus Monday but it is unclear what
further he can accomplish.
Even the current international sanctions have driven
the Syrian economy toward full collapse and put in
doubt the government's ability to import enough grain
and foodstuffs. Syria's own grain crop this year is
disappointing. It is not clear that Syrians will put
up with this situation much longer, and they only have
two choices– to acquiesce in the Baath dictatorship or
to rise against it.
Regional intervention to counter Russian and Iranian
arms and support is not impossible. Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood, which dominates that country's parliament
and is in the running to hold its presidency, called
on the international community Monday to do something
in the wake of Houla. Qatar and Saudi Arabia, both
with links to the Brotherhood, want to smuggle arms in
to the Free Syrian !army.
The Baath regime seems incapable of real reform. Early
in the crisis they could have demoted themselves to a
political party and then contested elections, as Ali
Abdullah Saleh in Yemen did in the 1990s. His national
Congress still dominates the Yemeni cabinet. Likewise,
the dissolved National Democratic Party in Egypt is
reforming around Ahmad Shafiq and has a shot at the
Egyptian presidency. The Syrian Baath wasn't doomed,
only the one-party state and the al-Assad cult of
personality. By acting like Muammar Qaddafi, the al-Assad's
are risking his fate.
The question is now not what new peace plan can be
proposed but how the Syrian Civil War will end.
Satellite Images Show Syrian Army
Siege of Houla (BBC)
The UN is debating whether to withdraw its observers
from Syria, given that there is no point in deploying
observers if they are just going to witness the
violence. The point of the observers was to enforce a
cease-fire by moral suasion, but there is no
ceasefire. Meanwhile, the UN has found evidence of a
further massacre, this time at Deir al-Zor, with 15
bodies surfacing, executed as though by criminal
gangs.
The BBC has obtained satellite photographs of the
central Syrian town of Houla at the time of its siege
by Syrian artillery. Analysts confirm that the Syrian
positions are consistent with their being in control
of the scene. The artillery likely gave cover to the
Shabiha paramilitary thugs deployed by Damascus, who
infiltrated the town and massacred the inhabitants
with knives. Others were killed by punitive artillery
strikes. The faintly absurd denunciations of the
massacre by the Baath spokesman as the work of ‘armed
gangs' are given the lie by the photographs. How
likely is it that armed gangs could operated with
impunity under the nose of the Syrian artillery corps?
As I predicted, the Houla massacre knocked some
Syrians off their fence. Earlier this week, Sunni
merchants of some quarters of Damascus staged a
general strike, declining to open their shops. These
Sunni merchants are a backbone of the regime, and they
were risking government contracts by this protest. The
regime is losing more and more of the country.
A dark cloud on the horizon is the possibility of
direct intervention in Syria, or on the Lebanon-Syrian
border, by Israel. Any such Israeli action would
destroy the uprising, making it impossible for Syrians
on the fence to oppose the Baath regime, since that
would make them de facto allies of Israel.
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments