THE international community needs to act fast in order to save Syria from a major descent into genocide after a nerve gas attack last week by the Bashar al-Assad government in Ghouta, Damascus, reportedly killed 1,400 people, including 300 children. Hundreds of Syrians were critically injured in the attack, while the death toll is expected to rise. This is because 35 per cent of hospitals in the troubled Arab country are out of service following the 2011 uprising that aimed to force al-Assad to implement political reforms degenerated into war.
In spite of its denials, the foreboding images from the attack, in which the dead victims were arranged in long rows, tell a compelling story of the atrocities of the Syrian government against its own citizens. The government has been fighting protesters and military defectors of the Free Syrian Army, who have demanded reforms of the 40-year old dynasty that has been in power since the early 1970s.
Ominous allegations that Syria, believed to have the third-largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world, has started using the lethal weapons emerged in December 2012 when a suspected gas attack killed seven civilians in the rebel-held al-Bayyada area of Homs. Though the government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons, yet, cases of such attacks have been surfacing regularly since then, with many deaths in tow. As expected, international outrage trailed last week’s attack. William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said the United Kingdom was “deeply concerned,” while France said “the international community would need to respond with force if allegations that Syrian government forces had carried out a mass chemical attack on civilians proved to be true.”
George Sabra, a main opposition figure, described the images “as a turning point in the regime’s operations. This time it was for annihilation, rather than terror.” According to United Nations estimates, over 100,000 people have died since the conflict started in 2011. The more pressing danger is that the war, which was ignited when the government of al-Assad launched a brutal crackdown on civilians calling for political reforms, is spreading to other parts of the Middle East, with fighting breaking out in northern Lebanon and Tripoli, Libya, among the supporters and antagonists of the regime. To prevent an escalation and pave the way for a quick resolution, the international community, especially the League of Arab Nations, has to move in firmly and apply sanctions, or even force, if necessary.
As President Barack Obama said last June, al-Assad, who came to power in 2000 following the death of his father (Hafez al-Assad), was in danger of crossing the “red line” if it was proved that it had used chemical weapons to prosecute the war. The use of chemical weapons to prosecute wars is against the United Nations Convention on Chemical Weapons, which has been adopted by 189 countries. Russia and China, two of the al-Assad regime’s backers, have to support efforts by the international community to end the human tragedy in Syria, a nation of 21 million people that has the minority Alawites (12 per cent) in power and the Sunni majority outside of it.
But the 22-member Arab League has a major role to play in the Syrian conflict. The measure taken by the League so far – suspending Syria’s membership of the body – is a tokenism that will not force al-Assad’s repressive regime to halt the decimation of its people. Contemporary history is replete with examples where regional and international efforts have brought an end to conflicts in other parts of the world. NATO air strikes played a major role in ending the internecine war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and ECOWAS forces, in concert with France, brought a relatively quick end to the Islamist insurgency in the West African state of Mali earlier this year. The African Union played a major role in ending the genocide in Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the wars in the Sudan and Libya, when the UN joined in to enforce a no-fly zone that weakened Muammar Gaddafi’s hold on his country.
The Arab League, therefore, should wake up. It should not sit back and be enjoying its oil wealth in the hope that the rest of the world would carry the can for it (the Arab League). It needs to launch a new radical approach to force al-Assad to come to the negotiation table, and if he remains adamant, it should then organise how to force him out of power so that a process for an all-inclusive government can begin. The US, Britain, France and other Western powers, as well as the United Nations, must also not relent until peace returns to the beleaguered nation.