Will the "normal" president be up to the task?

It was a sweet victory indeed for those who longed for a successor to François Mitterrand.
For just this evening, this one day, allow us to express our emotions. Nothing will be easy, simple or free. Yet, one can sense, however fleetingly, a sense of hope, of fraternity in the air.  Greater justice for the downtrodden, less arrogance in the elite.
We are not asking for much, so please do not deny us this hope, which justifies ten years of patience, wrote the columnist Laurent Joffrin in the leftwing weakly, Le Nouvel Observateur.
The Socialists had not won a national election since 1997, and a presidential poll since 1988...
But last Sunday, May 6, François Hollande, the Socialist party candidate, defeated the incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy (51.6% to 48.4%) to become only the second Socialist president in the history of the Vth Republic.
The financial meltdown of 2008, the economic, debt, Greek bankruptcy and Euro crises that followed greatly facilitated Mr. Holland’s task in winning the presidency. Mr. Sarkozy however, was also responsible for his defeat, which he readily admitted in his concession speech on Sunday night.
Although widely admired for his limitless energy, determination, drive, and ability to handle international crises deftly, Mr. Sarkozy’s abrasive personality and aggressive style alienated may, too many in France.
Sarkozy sought to tackle all the major issues simultaneously. Micromanaging government business, he hardly left any breathing space to his own ministers.
One of the latter once quipped that Sarkozy was the first politician he had ever met who wanted to be elected president so he could be prime minister…
In addition, his determination to modernize the presidential function (he rejected the traditional model of President as the wise, aloof arbiter above the fray), his unabashed admiration for those who succeeded, and willingness to socialize with them openly, antagonized the French who still view money and success with suspicion.
He was lambasted and caricatured relentlessly as the president of the rich who wore 70,000 Euros watches and spent weekends on the yachts of millionaires…
Hence, the French condemned his hyper presidency as divisive both socially and politically.
As a result, Mr. Hollande, affable, friendly and wily, campaigned on the promise that, if elected, he would be a normal president.
Mr. Holland will officially become president next Tuesday. It will then become his responsibility to deal with the budget, debt and Euro crises that are threatening French and European prosperity.
What will he do?
During the campaign, he promised that he would put an end to austerity.
I don’t want a Europe of austerity, where nations are forced to their knees, he added, obviously with the plight of the Greeks in mind.
In order to increase state revenue, he pledged to establish a 75% tax rate for top earners. Yet, he also promised to increase the minimum wage, as well as the back-to-school-benefit allocated to low income families each September.
He also plans to hire 60,000 additional schoolteachers (at a cost of 2 billion Euros) and restore the retirement age to 60 (from the current 62, following the 2010 Sarkozy reform) for those who joined the labor force at age 18.
At the same time however, he has vowed to pursue a strict and disciplined budgetary policy, in order to reach a balanced budget by 2017, the end of his term. Incidentally, France has not had a balanced budget since 1975...
Yet, Mr. Hollande believes that austerity alone cannot bring about the coveted policy goals of balanced budgets and reduced debt levels.
Only economic growth can allow such objectives to be reached, he argues.
Hence, on the day of his inauguration, Tuesday May 15, he plans to fly to Berlin and meet with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor (who had supported Sarkozy during the French presidential campaign), in order to renegotiate the European Union Fiscal Pact, devised by Merkel and Sarkozy last fall, and that was signed by 25 of the 27 members of the European Union. Only Britain and the Czech Republic declined to do so.
The pact institutionalizes budgetary discipline. Each nation agreed to incorporate into its constitution the Golden Rule, which compels the government to introduce only balanced budgets, hence putting an end to deficit financing, a practice long abused in Europe and that has led to its current predicament.
During his campaign, Mr. Hollande, who is opposed to the Golden Rule, demanded that the pact be renegotiated. Germany resisted such calls, leading Mr. Hollande to insist that Germany should not decide for all of Europe.
Mrs. Merkel however, has refused to budge on the issue. The fiscal pact is not negotiable, she reminded Mr. Hollande this week.
The Germans fear that Mr. Hollande’s Growth pact, which he wants to incorporate in the initial agreement, will lead Europe back to square one: more deficits and debt.
Germany is not here to finance French election promises, Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader of Merkel’s party, the Christian Democrats, emphasized.
Merkel believes that economic growth can and should be stimulated by structural reforms such as the liberalization of the labor market; increasing the retirement age and eliminating barriers to trade, for instance.
Many outside France believe that its economy would greatly benefit from the implementation of such policies, but the newly elected French president and his supporters have long been adamantly against such measures…
Since Merkel will not budge on the fiscal pact, Hollande may propose an addendum instead, containing the following more consensual  measures: a more prominent role for the European Investment Bank; the issuing of European bonds to finance infrastructure projects in Europe; a tax on financial transactions to raise revenue and the more efficient utilization of European structural funds designed to help Europe’s poorer regions.
Though such measures could be helpful, their actual economic impact could take years to measure.
They should prove more palatable to Mrs. Merkel however,  provided the original fiscal pact remains intact.
France and Mr. Hollande are thus in a very precarious position.
According to figures released by the European Commission on Friday, the French economy is expected to grow by 1.3% next year (and not the 1.7% predicted by Mr. Hollande and on which his economic program is based).
In addition, the budget deficit should reach 4.2% (if no additional measures are taken) and not 3% as the outgoing government had planned, an objective Mr. Hollande has pledged to pursue.
Before the revised predictions issued by the Commission, France needed to cut 20 billion Euros in spending per year simply to reach its deficit targets…
As a result, significant cuts in France’s budget are inevitable…
Our economy is weak even though we have yet to experience rigorous budgetary discipline. This is very worrisome, Mathieu Plane, an economist, told the French business weekly L’Expansion.
Yet steep budget cuts will necessarily lead to higher unemployment, thus higher budget deficits, and a lower growth rate, if not outright recession. The Greek debacle is a case in point.
Such plans are anathema to a French socialist…
Moreover, Hollande has not outlined any measures to reduce the budget, on the contrary.
He plans to limit its growth to 1% per year, albeit lower than the inflation rate.
He never explained however, what cuts he would consider making, if any, in the state budget, and thus whom they would affect…
Mr. Hollande is keenly aware that France’s budget deficit is deteriorating, and he has asked France’s Cour des Comptes, its public-accounts office, to evaluate the extent of the deficit. Its report is due late June, conveniently after France’s parliamentary elections. President-elect Hollande hopes to win a comfortable majority in the National Assembly, one that will support his economic program.
Hence, no potentially unpopular measures will be taken before July.
Mr. Hollande has said that he will respond appropriately once he has studied the report.
What is clear is the following: he cannot reach his numbers (deficit reduction targets) by tax increases alone. He will have to do more to cut spending, Guillaume Menuet, a Citigroup economist, told The Economist.
France needs to borrow 180 billion Euros in 2012, and 240 in 2013.
If Hollande’s economic program is deemed not sufficiently robust and credible by the financial markets to tackle the budget deficit and debt issues, then yields on France’s sovereign bonds will rise, thereby deepening France’s budget woes.
Mr. Hollande has thus very little room to maneuver. He needs to confront France’s budget deficit and growing debt (90% of GDP by the end of 2012) head on, and as early as Tuesday.
The corrective measures that need to be taken, significant budget cuts; tax increases, and not only for millionaires, as well as structural reforms will no doubt alienate many of those who voted for Hollande and against Sarkozy and the recession last week, and who took his campaign slogan, le changement c’est maintenant (change begins now), seriously.
The German newspaper Die Welt made the following assessment of France’s predicament earlier this week.
The saying that nothing happens in Europe without France is accurate. But what can be achieved with a France that psychologically represses the consequences of globalization, toys with the idea of a fundamentally different monetary policy and considers austerity to be a Teutonic vice?
This is the France that Hollande has inherited, and it will be his responsibility to provide an answer to that pertinent question.
Is he up to the task?
Does he even want to reconcile France with globalization and its demands?
If so, will he do what it takes to revitalize the French economy, and render it more competitive, even if that entails betraying his leftwing supporters for whom globalization is not an opportunity, but an abomination?
Will he, instead, tread the easier path and simply tinker with a social model that is bankrupt, but can probably be propped up a few more years, until the next Presidential election?
In 1996, Alain Juppé, Sarkozy’s foreign minister, but then Jacques Chirac’s prime minister said the following:
The French are a conservative and reticent people, who cling to their privileges and prejudices, and are paralyzed by their past.
The assessment, blunt and not particularly flattering, may be even more accurate fifteen years later, four years into the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
There is only one possible remedy in such a context, it is called leadership, and there is no such thing as leadership without courage.
If Hollande is to succeed and steer France away from the clutches of bankruptcy, he will have to ignore the program on which he ran; unequivocally tell the country the state in which it finds itself; what must be done and done now to resurrect its economy and the sacrifices that endeavor will entail.
That is what a leader would do, whatever the potential political and electoral consequences may be.
In the end, Hollande will be judged on what personal sacrifices he was willing to make in order to prevent his country form following Greece and now Spain into the abyss…
(the phograph above is by Thomas Samson/AFP PHOTO)










 

«This is a revolution of ideals and principles»

Having more pressing business elsewhere, the Syrian army deserted the area last December.
Left to its own devices, the Free Syrian Army hoped that the province of Idlib would become the Syrian Benghazi, an opposition bastion from which to launch the military campaign that would liberate all of Syria.
The fall of Baba Amr after four weeks of sustained shelling, which the civilized world did nothing to prevent, stunned and dismayed many activists in the area.
That the Syrian army would now focus on Idlib seemed obvious to many.
We are expecting something like Baba Amr, an activist in Idlib told AP, as the shelling began last weekend.
The Free Syrian Army also knew that it would fare no better than its Baba Amr colleagues against the Syrian army, and for the same reasons.
We have no weapons-we have nothing to fight the Syrian army, a senior FSA commander told Anita McNaught of Aljazeera.
The FSA cannot effectively retaliate without RPGs and shoulder-launched missiles necessary to target Assad’s tanks and helicopters…
Foreign supporters of the Syrian opposition have provided next to nothing.
The weaponry coming from Iraq is old and inefficient.
On the black-market, a Kalashnikov goes for $1,300. Bullets cost $3 a piece, rates the FSA cannot afford.
Consequently, the FSA is an army devoid of weapons…
After four days of shelling, Idlib fell yesterday.
The Syrian army moved in and regained control of the city and its surroundings.
Since last night there has been no more fighting. The Free Syrian Army has withdrawn and regime forces have stormed the entire city and are carrying out house-to-house searches, Noureddin al-Abdo, a Syrian activist exiled in Beirut told AFP.
The Syrian army, according to a local activist, targeted residents trying to flee the city.
More than 20 people were killed and their bodies discarded in the al-Bilal mosque, he told Reuters.
The news agency also reported that FSA fighters had killed 10 regular army soldiers in an ambush in the Idlib region.
To prevent waves of residents of Homs and Idlib from seeking refuge in neighboring countries (as 30,000 Syrians have already done), the Assad regime last month planted thousands of Russian-made PMN-2 pressure mines along the border with Turkey.
Those fleeing their besieged homes (200,000)  have therefore, nowhere to go.
That seems to be the price to pay for those suspected of supporting the opposition and the FSA.
At a UN Human Rights Council meeting held in Geneva earlier this week, Paulo Pinheiro, Chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, denounced what UN investigators have called collective punishment of civilians in Syria.
We are referring to indiscriminate bombardment of cities. Mortars sent on residents’ houses because they are under suspicion they collaborate with armed groups, the opposition. In that sense, we use the term collective punishment, Pinheiro said.
Assad’s assault on the Syrian people has killed 8,500, including more than 500 children…
In a report issued today, Amnesty International explained that the scale of torture and other ill-treatment in Syria has risen to a level not witnessed for years and is reminiscent of the dark era of the 1970s and 1980s…
The testimony presented in this report, taken in the context of other human rights violations committed against civilians in Syria, is yet further evidence that torture and other ill-treatment in Syria form part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population, carried out in an organized manner and as part of state policy and therefore amount to crimes against humanity, Amnesty International declared, according to Reuters.
Ann Harrison, of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa program, likened the experience of Syrian civilian victims to that of detainees under former president Hafez al-Assad-a nightmarish world of systematic torture.
Not surprisingly hence, Syrian opposition activists reported that a massacre of civilians had taken place in the Karm el-Zeytoun neighborhood of Homs this Sunday.
The bodies of 47 residents including women and children were found, some with their throats cut.
We were arrested by the army, then handed over to the shabiha. They poured fuel over us. They shot us-30 or 40 persons, a victim who managed to escape said, in a video posted on YouTube.
The shabiha (from the Arabic word for ghost) are militias composed of thugs armed and financed by the Assad regime.
Some of the children had been hit with blunt objects on their heads, one little girl was mutilated and some women were raped before being killed, Hadi Abdallah, a Homs activist, told AFP.
The regime denied it was responsible for the massacre and blamed terrorist armed groups instead.
It is in this context that Assad issued a decree yesterday scheduling parliamentary elections for May 7.
A free and fair election organized by a regime accused of committing crimes against humanity and that has arrested, tortured and killed thousands of its own people?
Parliamentary elections for a rubber-stamp parliament in the middle of the kind of violence we’re seeing across the country-it’s ridiculous, Victoria Nuland, US State Department spokeswomen said in Washington yesterday.
So the war against the Syrian people grinds on.
Assad can sleep soundly for now. His Russian patrons are not about to abandon him, yet.
We have specialists in Syria and we cooperate militarily with Syria. This is not a secret. We have a good, solid, military and technical cooperation with Syria. And today, we don’t have a basis to reconsider this military cooperation, Anatoly Antonov, Russian deputy defense minister told journalists in Moscow earlier this week.
Opposition activists cannot boast of similar support.
We are alone. We face this alone. No one is helping us, a FSA commander lamented.
These revolutionaries do not need nor desire a foreign military intervention.
They merely request the means to defend themselves against a brutal regime bountifully armed by Moscow.
We can do this revolution on our own-we don’t need the West to fight it for us, but we can’t do it without weapons, a young fighter told Aljazeera’s Anita McNaught.
In any case, though dismayed by the civilized world’s unwillingness to help them in any significant fashion, opponents of Assad are not about to relent.
We prefer death to more humiliation. We don’t want bread and fuel, although we need them. This is a revolution of ideals and principles. It’s a revolution of human beings who have been deprived of their humanity. We tasted freedom and we can’t go back again, an activist told Anita McNaught.
The Assad regime is doomed precisely because it will never succeed in annihilating those ideals and principles.
Only one relevant questions remains to be posed:
How many more Syrians will have to die before the civilized world finally steps in to help the Syrians remove Assad?
(the photograph above of a woman recovering from her wounds following the shelling of her house in Idlib last Saturday which killed her husband and two of her children is by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

What has Assad done to the residents of Baba Amr?

Valerie Amos, the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, was finally authorized by the Syrian government to enter Baba Amr on Thursday.
This Homs neighborhood was shelled continuously by the Assad regime's armed forces for four weeks.
At least 950 craters are visible on open lands, such as roads and farmland, from the impact of indirect fire weapons. The number of craters indicates the frequency of attacks and how many artillery and mortar shells have fallen. There are 640 buildings in the neighborhood with visible damage. However, the damage to buildings is likely to be significantly underestimated from viewing the satellite image because views from satellite images do not show hits to the sides of buildings made by explosive weapons, Human Rights Watch said after having examined a satellite photo of Baba Amr taken on February 25, five days before the shelling stopped.
I was horrified by the destruction I saw. Almost all the buildings had been destroyed and there were hardly any people there. I am extremely concerned as to the whereabouts of the people who have been displaced, Ms. Amos wrote in a statement released on Friday.
The authorities have not provided any information concerning the fate of Baba Amr’s residents.
Did they flee; were they victims of mass arrests, or killed? We do not know...
Ms. Amos has asked for unrestricted access to all areas subjected to violence in Syria, but has yet to receive an official response from the Assad government…
According to the BBC, activist groups continue to report the summary execution of men in Baba Amr, the butchering of entire families, and the systematic mass rape of women.
Outside of Homs, scores of civilians were killed in what was described as a new massacre by opposition activists.  Forty-four of them reportedly belonged to just two families…
A similar massacre was reported near Idlib, when troops opened fire, killing some twenty civilians.
The regime blames the violence on what it calls armed terrorist gangs.
Tanks also targeted the Homs neighborhood of Karam al-Zeitoun.
Thirty tanks entered my neighborhood at seven this morning and they are using their cannons to fire on houses, Karam Abu Rabea, a resident of the neighborhood, told Aljazeera.
Although the uprising began one year, the regime is remaining steadfast, according to senior US intelligence officials quoted in the WP, and Assad is very much in charge.
The Alawite establishment that governs the country has remained unified and determined not to relinquish power.
With so much blood having been shed by its security apparatus, it has no other option but to fight to the finish.
Were Assad to cede power, then he and his inner circle would no doubt face war crimes charges…
Hence, the uprising launched by the pro-democracy movement will be a long and bloody one, no doubt.
That leadership is going to fight very hard. The odds are against them, but they are going to fight very hard, one US intelligence official told the WP.
Meanwhile, the special envoy of the UN and the Arab League, Kofi Annan, will be in Damascus today to try and find a political solution to the Syrian crisis.
We will be urging the government and a broad spectrum of Syrian opposition to come together to work with us to find a solution that will respect the aspirations of the Syrian people, Annan said yesterday in Cairo.
The Syrian opposition did not look favorably upon this initiative, however.
It feels like we are watching the same movie being repeated over and over again.
My fear is, like other international envoys before him, the aim is to waste a month or two of pointless mediation efforts, Burhan Ghalioun, head of the Syrian National Council, told AP yesterday.
Indeed, while Mr. Annan negotiates with Assad, the latter’s forces will continue killing men, women and children…
(the satellite photo of Baba Amr was found here)

It's not a war, it's a massacre...

Baba Amr remains completely sealed off, though it fell six days ago, after Free Syrian Army soldiers withdrew from the Homs neighborhood that had been shelled continuously for over four long weeks by Assad’s army.
The regime’s security forces have now moved in, free to wreak havoc as they please with no one to witness their brutality.
As I’m talking to you now, people are dying. There was no restraint with the cameras there. God knows what’s happening now the cameras are gone, Paul Conroy told Sky News last Friday.
The British photographer was wounded in the attack that killed Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik in Homs on February 22.
French reporter Edith Bouvier was also injured, suffering a broken leg.
Conroy, Bouvier, French journalist William Daniels and Spanish reporter Javier Espinosa were all smuggled out of the city last week, before it fell…
According to witnesses in Homs, the security apparatus is now exacting a heavy price from a neighborhood and city that dared to defy Assad.
The government has control over Homs again. They are arresting many people, a Homs resident now exiled in Beirut told the NYT.
Empty buses were seen moving into neighborhoods, then leaving filled with young men and boys, she said, wrote the NYT’s Neil MacFarquhar.
Other activists accuse the regime of deliberately destroying houses and executing  Baba Amr residents suspected of being Free Syrian Army sympathizers.
The smell of death was everywhere. We could smell the bodies buried under the rubble all the time. We saw so much death that at the end the sight of a dismembered body…stopped moving us, Ahmad, a Baba Amr resident who fled to Lebanon, told The Guardian.
Since the Assad regime’s onslaught on Baba Amr began early last month, over 700  residents have been killed.
A convoy of seven trucks dispatched by the International Committee of the Red Cross have been waiting on the outskirts of Baba Amr since Friday, but has still not received the regime’s authorization to enter and deliver much needed aid to its beleaguered population.
The regime explains it is not safe to go there, even though it also claims that order has been restored in the neighborhood.
At the moment we are blocked by the Syrian army and government. The situation is extremely difficult, the weather conditions are tragic. It is very cold, there is fighting and people don’t have access to food or water, and above all there is a big problem of evacuating the wounded, Yves Daccord, the director general of the ICRC, told RTS (Swiss Radio and Television).
A grisly fate awaits Homs’ wounded should they fall in the hands of the Assad regime.
The French photographer Mani, apparently still in Homs, obtained a video secretly filmed in the Homs military hospital by an employee which was shown yesterday on Britain’s Channel 4 News.
In the video, patients are seen chained to their hospital beds, some visibly showing signs of torture.
I have seen detainees being tortured by electrocution, whipping, beating with batons, and by breaking their legs. They twist the feet until the leg breaks. I saw them slamming detainees’ heads against walls. They shackle the patients to beds. They deny them water. Others have their penises tied to stop them from urinating, the hospital employee told Mani.
The pictures are truly shocking, Rupert Colville, UN High Commission for Human Rights spokesman said Tuesday.
 The UN has received similar information corroborating Channel 4 News’ report, according to Colville.
Torture and killings reportedly took place in the Homs military hospital-which is the one shown in Channel 4 footage-by security forces dressed as doctors and allegedly acting with the complicity of medical personnel. In other words, what the (UN) commission of inquiry reported back in November is pretty much what you see both visually and in the witness account in the Channel 4 footage, the spokesman said.
The UN’s inquiry also discovered that the Homs military and Latakia state hospitals had been transformed into torture centers actually within the hospitals.
Latakia is Syria’s main port city, located in the north of the country.
It was attacked by Syrian armed forces ships and tanks last August.
Security agents, in some cases joined by medical staff, chained seriously injured patients to their beds, electrocuted them, beat wounded parts of their body or denied medical attention and water. Medical personnel who did not collaborate faced reprisals, he added.
The brutality of the country’s security forces is notorious. Methods of torture, most of which are known to have been used in Syria over many years, not just in the past year, include severe beatings, electric shocks, suspension for long periods by the limbs, psychological torture and routine humiliation, he concluded.
The international community, although currently paralyzed by Russia and China’s refusal to authorize any meaningful action against their friend Assad, are taking note, however.
The European Union is currently compiling evidence of war crimes committed by the Assad regime, which will one day be utilized against its dignitaries, once the regime falls, as it inevitably will…
I would like to remind Bashar Assad: his father was not made to account for what he did in this world, but his son will sooner or later account for what he did, for the massacre and the oppression. This time, the blood shed in Syrian cities will not go unpunished, Racep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey’s Prime Minister, declared yesterday.
The Assad regime, although severely rattled by the scope and scale of the opposition confronting it, is by no means finished.
Its armed forces are gaining physical momentum on the battlefield…The situation will get worse before it gets better, Marine Gen. James Mattis, Commander of US Central Command, told the US Senate yesterday.
Assad is going to be there for some time because I think he will continue to employ heavier and heavier weapons on his people, he added.
Syria can also count on Russia’s unwavering support.
The fact that the Russian presidential campaign is now over and that Putin was reelected (in an election marred by accusations of  fraud) will have no effect on its policy regarding Syria.
The latter will certainly not become more conciliatory and amenable to Western pressure. Such expectations would be wishful thinking, according to the Russians.
Russia’s stand on the Syrian settlement has never been subject to any short-term considerations, and hasn’t formed under the influence of electoral cycles, unlike that of some of our Western colleagues, a Russia foreign ministry statement said.
As such, the Assad regime can still afford to remain defiant.
The Syrian people, who have in the past managed to crush foreign plots…have again proven their ability to defend the nation and to build a new Syria through their determination to pursue reforms while confronting foreign-backed terrorism, Assad declared yesterday.
The regime however, has not repudiated all attempts by the outside world to find a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis.
Kofi Annan, a former UN Secretary General, appointed by the UN and the Arab League as their special representative for Syria, plans to go to Damascus on Saturday. The regime welcomes the visit.
Valerie Amos, the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, has finally been granted leave to enter Syria, for a three-day visit.
This afternoon, she succeeded in accompanying a team of Red Crescent volunteers into Baba Amr...
The security apparatus' clean-up operation must thus be over...
Simultaneously however, the regime is escalating its attacks on rebel strongholds.
In Dera’a province, birthplace of the uprising one year ago, the city of Hirak is now surrounded by tanks and under attack.
The clashes are very intense and have been going on since morning, Rami Abdul-Rahman, of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, bases in London, told AP.
Rastan is now also under attack, as is Qusair, near Homs.
In addition, the Syrian armed forces destroyed a bridge over the Orontes river linking Lebanon and Syria, which was used by refugees, wounded activists and journalists to flee the country...
More than 1,500 refugees have made their way to Lebanon in recent days...
Yet, gradually, the regime is slowly losing control of some parts of the country, as the struggle to crush heavy-handedly all pockets of resistance depletes its resources.
Although the government has retaken Homs, it’s losing Aleppo and the broader north, an area that has long been fertile ground for islamist currents, Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria and professor at the University of Oklahoma, wrote on his Syria Comment blog.
The loss of Aleppo, the country’s economic capital, would be a serious blow.
Yet, the struggle is bound to be a long one, particularly since the opposition will have to rely solely on itself to prevail.
The international community is divided, appalled (for the most part) by the regime’s brutality, but terrified at the prospect of Assad’s fall. It sympathizes with the opposition, but has evinced little interest in taking concrete steps to promote its cause.
We may one day regret our reticence to help a people in need.
What does that indifference say about us and the values we profess to uphold?
People brought me in half a baby, saying « where’s the help »?, recalled Paul Conroy.
And I have no answer. I don’t know how we can stand by and watch this. It’s not a war; it’s a massacre, it’s the indiscriminate massacre of men, women and children.
In the years to come we’re going to look back, we’re going to have the shame of sitting back and watching it again, as in Srebrenica, as in Rwanda, and we’re going to say « how did we let this happen under our nose? », Conroy said.
And yet, let it happen we did…
(the YouTube video above is a report compiled by Channel 4 News)

The fall of Baba Amr...

After nearly four weeks of shelling, and as the Syrian army prepared its final onslaught against the rebellious Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr, reinforcements from the elite Fourth Division, commanded by Maher al-Assad, the Syrian dictator’s elder brother, arrived in town.
We were able to identify from the distinctive signs visible on the armor and we have elements within the army who informed us in advance of the arrival of theses reinforcements, Hamza al-Omar, a member of the Syrian Revolution General Commission, told France24.
Among other things, Maher is known as the butcher of Deera for having personally led the assault against protesters in this southern Syrian city last spring.
Once Syrian troops moved into Baba Amr, backed by tanks and armored vehicles, it took them but 36 hours to gain full control.
The Free Syrian Army lacked the military resources to resist accordingly.
The equipment it did possess, such as machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and one tank it managed to seize from the enemy, was simply no match for the Syrian army’s superior firepower, consisting of artillery, multiple rocket launchers, helicopters and tanks firing 120ml rounds.
But by the end we ran out of ammunition. We were under siege for 27 days. We used everything we had. We couldn’t continue fighting any more, Omar al-Homsi, a FSA officer from Baba Amr, told The Guardian.  
Following a month of heavy bombardment and shelling from tanks, rockets, mortars and all kinds of heavy weapons, the Free Syrian Army could not hold on longer, Col. Malik al-Kurdi, a spokesman for the FSA based in Turkey, told the WP.
In addition, living conditions in the devastated neighborhood had deteriorated to such an extent that the fighting had to cease if the local population was to survive.
All the routes we could use to provide the city with food and medication were completely cut off. We simply couldn’t stay there any more, al-Homsi added.
On a Facebook page, the FSA explained why it had decided to leave the area.
We, the Bab Amr brigade, have decided to withdraw strategically for the sake of the civilians remaining inside the neighborhood. The humanitarian situation is at its worst, as there is no food whatsoever, no medicines, no water and no electricity, the statement said.
Yesterday, Baba Amr inhabitants were trying to catch falling snowflakes with pots and pans...
As Syrian troops swept through the neighborhood, checking each building to ensure no FSA members were hiding, activists reported that, in the process, they were detaining all males over the age of fifteen.
Fears that the regime would seek revenge for the city’s defiance on anyone it could get its hands on were rampant.
We are very concerned about the civilians because the history of this regime means they are likely to kill everyone who is there, Wissam Tarif, of the activist group Avaaz, told Liz Sly of the WP, from Beirut.
According to some reports, the bodies of seventeen beheaded victims were found in an area adjacent to Baba Amr, civilians apparently trying to flee the city.
The regime and its supporters were jubilant that resistance in Baba Amr had been crushed.
It’s the beginning of Syria’s final victory over the Qatari, Saudi, French, American and Zionist conspiracy against Syria, Taleb Ibrahim, a pro-government Syrian analyst told a Lebanese Hezbollah TV network, according to The Guardian.
Opposition activists were adamant that the FSA’s retreat did not signify the end of the struggle against the brutal Assad regime.
It will not stop the uprising. There will be a new centre of the revolution and the Free Syrian Army, Sami, a Homs activist told The Guardian.
The FSA, for its part, was defiant.
We warn the Assad regime against any reaction that will target civilians and we place full responsibility on the regime for the safety of the civilians who are caught in the middle of this.
We warn, any action by the regime that crosses the limits and affects civilians will see a severe response from our side. We promise you, the people of Syria, Baba Amr will remain the eye and heart of this revolution until we gain full victory. Whatever the price we have to pay and whatever we have to give up…we are returning stronger, god willing, the Facebook statement said.
The last two foreign journalists remaining in Homs, Edith Bouvier and William Daniels managed at last to reach Lebanon on Thursday evening. They are expected in Paris late Friday
The two French journalists, along with Paul Conroy, a British photographer who had accompanied Marie Colvin and was wounded in the attack that killed her and French photographer Rémi Ochlik, and the Spanish reporter Javier Espinosa had set off for Lebanon on Sunday, guided and protected by Syrian activists and FSA members.
Edith Bouvier had also been wounded in last week’s attack, suffering a broken leg.
They simply could no longer remain in Homs. Syrian troops were deliberately targeting the building in which they found refuge, soon to be reduced to rubble.
The Syrians were firing at them from four different directions. They were trying to kill them, one witness told The Guardian.
In addition, the journalists no longer had access to food and water.
The Syrian security forces however,  monitored the lone escape route leading out of the neighborhood towards Lebanon.
As a result, therefore, once underway, the group was fired upon, leading to its dislocation. Conroy went on ahead, but Espinosa stayed behind to tend to the Syrian escorts wounded in the attack. Thirteen local activists were killed in this attempt to save the journalists…
Although the Spanish reporter was subsequently able to pursue his journey, Bouvier and Daniels were compelled to turn back…
Conroy reached Lebanon on Tuesday and Espinosa the next day.
Bouvier and Daniels, who were moved from Baba Amr to an adjacent neighborhood on Tuesday, were successfully escorted to Lebanon on Thursday.
According to videos posted online on Thursday however, Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik were buried in Homs on February 27.
The lack of electricity and fuel prevented the adequate preservation of their remains.
During a burial ceremony, a physician, Dr. Mohammed al-Mohammed described Marie Colvin as a martyr. She was telling the truth about what is happening in Baba Amr. May God be merciful to you, Marie, as we bury you in this garden, he said.
In a separate video, he commended Rémi Ochlik for doing his humanitarian duty and doing his duty as completely as possible to send the true picture of what is going on in Baba Amr during the most terrible time, according to Aljazeera.
The battle has now moved to other restive n neighborhoods of Homs, such as al Bayada, al-Khalidiyeh and Karm al-Zeytoun.
The security forces will then head to Hama, leveled in 1982 by Assad’s father Hafez, and Idlib, both in open revolt.
The army does not have the resources to attack on several fronts simultaneously, however.
It is not strong enough to fight in the whole country, but it is strong enough to fight civilians and defectors with light weapons. They don’t have enough troops to deal with all these uprisings at the same time, so they go from one to one to one, Akil Hashem, an adviser to the Syrian National Council, and a retired general, told the NYT.
No doubt, the Fourth Division will play a key role in this campaign.
The Fourth Division is known for its brutality and it’s a symbol of the regime’s striking force, Khattar Abou Diab, a political scientist at Paris-XI University, told France24.
This squad of killers is very experienced and highly trained. They are commanded by career officers and have the best weapons available in Syria. Unable to deploy on all fronts, it has been divided into several sections to supervise and direct the various law enforcement operations, Hashem told the French news  network.
They are composed predominantly of Alawites, a Shiite sect representing about 10% of the Syrian population. The Alawites dominate the security apparatus and senior official positions. Assad is himself an Alawite.
Yet, the brutality of Assad’s campaign has rattled even his staunchest supporters.
Yesterday, both Russia and China approved a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Syria authorize immediate, full and unimpeded access of humanitarian personnel to all populations in need of assistance, in accordance with international law and guiding principles of humanitarian assistance,… in all  areas affected by fighting and violence, including Homs, Hama, Deera and Idlib.
Not coincidentally, the Syrian government authorized the International Committee of the Red Cross to operate in the country and begin delivering humanitarian assistance.
Seven trucks carrying humanitarian aid reached Homs on Friday.
Although international pressure on Assad may thus be increasing, he will also have to contend with a resilient opposition that has no intention of backing down.
The Syrian government, due to its brutality, has the upper hand. This is a setback (the fall of Baba Amr), but it does not at all mean the downfall of the revolution. That, I am sure, is mission impossible, Rami Jarrah, a Syrian activist, head of the Activists News Association based in Cairo, told the WP.
Furthermore, the fact that Assad has succeeded in ridding Homs of the presence of foreign journalists (either by killing them or doing his utmost to do so) does not mean he will succeed in preventing the world from witnessing the brutal and abject repression of his own people.
Countless Syrian citizen journalists will continue reporting on Assad’s cruel and criminal campaign to subdue a Syrian population yearning for freedom and justice.
Javier Espinosa paid tribute to these fearless reporters, including Abu Hanin, head of Baba Amr’s makeshift media center. I never saw « journalists » so brave, he wrote in a Twitter message on Friday.
Guns and shells cannot crush that kind of courage and determination.
Assad’s days are numbered, for the Syrians have gone too far and suffered too much to surrender now…
(the photograph of blood flowing in the gutters of Baba Amr is by Javier Espinosa)

"Why have we been abandoned by the world?"

In November 2010, The Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin delivered a speech on the value of war reporting.
It has never been more dangerous to be a war correspondent, because the journalist in the combat zone has become a prime target, she said.
Accompanied by Paul Conroy, a British freelance photographer, Marie Colvin entered Syria clandestinely on February 14 in order to report on the tragic plight of the inhabitants of Homs.
I cannot remember any story where the security situation was potentially this bad, except maybe Chechnya… Before I was apprehensive, but now I’m restless. I just want to get in there and get it over with and get out, she told Neil MacFarquhar, of the NYT, the evening before her departure.
She felt she had to go, but dreaded doing so...
Yesterday, the building in the rebellious Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr, in which Marie Colvin and other journalists were working, was the target of an artillery barrage that lasted over two minutes.
As Colvin, and award-winning French photographer Rémi Ochlik, 28, were attempting to leave the battered building, they were hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and died instantly.
Paul Conroy and a French journalist writing for Le Figaro, Edith Bouvier were also wounded in the attack.
There is a high risk she will bleed to death without medical attention. We are desperately trying to get her out, doing all we can in extremely perilous circumstances, an activist told The Telegraph.
Suffering from a broken leg, Ms. Bouvier asked for help in leaving the country to seek medical assistance in a video posted today on YouTube.
The bodies of the fallen journalists are still in Homs. It is simply too dangerous to recover them and send them home.
There is no way to transfer the bodies. We don’t have morgues to keep the bodies, or ice, no electricity. After 24 hours, we will be obliged to bury them in Homs, Omar Shakir, a Homs activist, told the NYT.
The besieged town of Homs is surrounded by 5,000 Syrian troops poised to enter the city and crush the resistance concentrated in Baba Amr once and for all.
Fearing that such an onslaught was imminent, Marie Colvin had left Homs, only to return, the army finally staying put, Jean-Pierre Perrin, a reporter for the French daily Libération who had accompanied her, told his newspaper.
A total of nine people were killed in the attack on the building that housed a makeshift media center from which Colvin and her colleagues could file their work.
Overall, more than 60  people were killed in Baba Amr on Wednesday.
The Syrian government claimed not to be aware of the presence of foreign journalists in Homs, as they had not entered the country legally.
Furthermore, the regime indicated that the army had only targeted armed terrorist groups who have been terrifying citizens and attacking security forces and robbing public and private property.
In a television interview given just a few hours before her death, Marie Colvin painted an altogether different picture of the events taking place in Homs.
She also accused Mr. Assad’s forces of « murder » and said it was « a complete and utter lie that they are only targeting terrorists…the Syrian army is simply shelling a city of cold, starving civilians», wrote The Telegraph.
I watched a little baby die today, absolutely horrific, a two-year old-found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest and the doctor said « I can’t do anything », and his little tummy just kept heaving until he died. That is happening over and over and over, she told the BBC.
There are 28,000 people in Baba Amr. The Syrians will not let them out and are shelling all the civilian areas, she added.
The very next day, the media center was attacked and Marie Colvin was dead.
It’s too much of a coincidence. There are reports of planes flying around and they may be looking for the satellite uplinks, an activist exiled in Cairo, told the NYT.
Before the building was attacked, Syrian army officers were allegedly intercepted by intelligence staff in neighboring Lebanon discussing how they would claim journalists had been killed in crossfire with « terrorist groups », wrote The Telegraph.
The French journalist Jean-Pierre Perrin is convinced that the media center was not hit haphazardly.
If the media center is destroyed, then no more reports from Homs will reach us. It is Syrian army policy to kill every journalist setting foot on Syrian soil, he told Libération.
Indeed, the journalistic profession has paid dearly its determination to cover the bloody uprising.
Last November, Ferzat Jarban a freelance cameraman was killed covering the conflict, as was Basil al-Sayed, also a cameraman, late last year.
Last month, Gilles Jacquier, a French TV cameraman was killed in Homs while on an officially approved journey.
Earlier this month, Mazhar Tayyara, a freelance reporter was also killed in Homs.
In addition, just one week ago, the fine reporter Anthony Shadid of the NYT, died of an asthma attack while surreptitiously fleeing Syria.
The day before Colvin and Ochlik were killed, a renowned video blogger, Rami al-Sayed, also known as Syria Pioneer, died also in Homs..
Baba Amr is being exterminated. Do not tell me « our hearts are with you » because I know that. We need campaigns everywhere across the world and inside the country. People should protest in front of embassies and everywhere. Because in hours, there will be no more Baba Amr. And I expect this message to be my last, he wrote presciently, just before his death…
In spite of this campaign to staunch the flow of information emerging from Syria, and dissuade professional journalists from reporting inside the country, countless videos showing the regime’s brutal repression of the uprising are being posted daily.
This is the first YouTube war, Rami Jarrah, a director of an organization that collects and disseminates information originating in Syria, called the Activists News Association based in Cairo, told the NYT.
He estimates that 80% of the videos carried by mainstream TV news networks are produced by non-professionals, or citizen journalists.
Khaled Abu Salah, of the Revolution Leadership Council of Homs, shot a video with a cell phone camera that was posted on YouTube shortly after the attack on the media center.
Pointing in the direction of the bodies of the two journalists, he said we ask the EU to do something immediately. Your blood is now mixed with that of Syrians. So you need to act now and stop Assad’s thug.
On Wednesday, 104 videos depicting the preceding day’s violence were available online.
And there is much to report.
They call it the widows’ basement. Crammed amid makeshift beds and scattered belongings are frightened women and children trapped in the horror of Homs, the Syrian city shaken by two weeks of relentless bombardment.
Thus begins Marie Colvin’s last article, printed on February 19, in The Sunday Times.
It is a city of the cold and hungry, echoing to exploding shells and bursts of gunfire. There are no telephones and the electricity has been cut off. Few homes have diesel for the tin stoves they rely on for heat in the coldest winter that anyone can remember. Freezing rain fills potholes and snow drifts in through windows empty of glass. No shops are open, so families are sharing what they have with relatives and neighbors. Many of the dead and injured are those who risked foraging for food, she reported.
The scale of human tragedy in the city is immense. The inhabitants are living in terror. Almost every family seems to have suffered the death or injury of a loved one, she added.
Hadi al-Abdullah, a Homs activist, characterized the situation in the city as catastrophic.
Water has been cut off from Baba Amr. There’s no electricity, cooking oil or even bread. Many people are literally on the brink of starvation. People have fled their homes in fear of being bombed. They took refuge in a mosque, and there they were bombed too, he told Aljazeera.
It is no wonder that the Assad regime is targeting anyone and everyone brave enough to show the world how it treats its people…
What is pitiful, if not criminal, is the international community’s inability to stop the carnage.
Why have we been abandoned by the world, was a question on everyone’s lips, wrote Marie Colvin in her final piece.
It is a legitimate question that no diplomat, and particularly a Russian one, has cared to address directly.
Marie Colvin was an experienced war correspondent, having covered numerous conflicts in Sri Lanka, Chechnya and Libya, to name but a few.
She lost an eye in a grenade attack in Sri Lanka…
Telling the stories of those who bore the brunt of war demanded that reporters share their lot even if that meant putting oneself potentially in harm’s way…
That she knew, but was convinced that there was no other way of authentically telling the story.
And it was a story that had to be told.
Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice. We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?…We go to remote war zones to report what is happening. The public have a right to know what our governments, and our armed forces, are doing in our name. Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians, she said in the London lecture…
She gave her life to accomplish that mission, which is a noble one…
Yet, are we worthy of that sacrifice?
What have we and our leaders done with the harrowing reports she and others filed from Homs?
We are condemning the violence, naturally, but doing next to nothing to stop it.
That is not good enough…
Since the Russians are determined to prevent any meaningful action from being taken at the UN, the civilized world will have to act on its own.
We should start by officially repudiating the Assad regime and closing our embassies and expelling Syrian diplomat, as the Tunisians boldly did recently.
We could also provide all the support that we can, financial, moral and political, to the Syrian opposition, namely the Syrian National Council…
Finally, we may have to consider arming the Free Syrian Army since it now seems clear that only force can drive Assad from power…
Simply wringing our hands and lamenting the loss of innocent life and leaving it at that is an insult to all those who have died for the cause of  freedom and democracy in Syria…
(the photographs of Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik were found in Le Figaro)

While diplomats argue, Syrians die…

Last Tuesday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov went to Damascus for talks with Syrian president Assad.
A few days earlier, Russia, along with China, had vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning human rights abuses committed by the regime, and endorsing an Arab League plan to resolve the crisis peacefully.
Mr. Lavrov characterized his meeting with Assad as very useful.
In particular, President Assad assured us that he is fully committed to the task of a cessation of violence from whatever source it comes, he added.
An yet, Homs is in its second week of continuous shelling, casting doubt on the effectiveness of Russian diplomacy, the wisdom of its veto, and Assad’s willingness to resolve the conflict peacefully.
Indeed, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon himself concluded that the Russian veto encouraged the Syrian government to step up its war on its own people.
I fear that the appalling brutality we are witnessing in Homs, with heavy weapons firing into civilian neighborhoods, is a grim harbinger of worse to come, he added.
I am appalled by the Syrian government’s willful assault on Homs and its use of artillery and other heavy weaponry in what appear to be indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, declared Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She believes Syria should be referred to the International Criminal Court for war crimes, and will address the General Assembly on Monday.
We believe, and we’ve said it and we’ll keep repeating it, that the case of Syria belongs in the International Criminal Court. This would give a very, very strong message to those running the show, Ms. Pillay’s spokesman, Rupert Colville told The Guardian.
Human rights groups are currently compiling evidence, should the UN request the ICC’s involvement, which is highly unlikely at this stage due to Russian and Chinese opposition…
Since the onslaught began in Homs ten days ago, 400 civilians have been killed.
The Syrian army is shelling the town, and particularly the rebellious Baba Amr district, using tanks and artillery from three different positions, the university and the police and air force academies, out of reach of the Free Syrian Army, which is devoid of heavy weaponry.
The regime hopes that this strategy of indiscriminate bombing will drive the inhabitants of Homs to repudiate the resistance in exchange for peace.
They are trying to weaken the social cradle that has embraced the Free Syrian Army in those neighborhoods and to turn the residents against them, Omar Idilbi, a member of the opposition group Local Coordination Committees, and living in Lebanon, told the NYT.
The indiscriminate shelling is killing mostly civilians. Assad cannot push his troops into street fighting so he is content with shelling Homs to bits until civilian losses pressure the Free Syrian Army to withdraw and regime troops can enter these neighborhoods without taking any serious losses, Fawaz Tello, a member of the Syrian National Council who lives in Egypt, told Reuters.
In areas of the city that harbor few Free Syrian Army members, security forces move from house to house and arrest all those considered suspect.
Predictably, living conditions in Homs have sharply deteriorated.
We are seriously dying here. It isn’t war between two armies. It’s between the army and civilians. You hear the rockets and explosions. You feel you are at the front… The situation for civilians is pitiful, Waleed Farah, an inhabitant of Homs, told The Guardian.
Al-Khaldiyeh, the neighborhood through which supplies reach Baba Amr, has been sealed off.
We can’t go out into the street because of snipers. So we have to knock down the walls in between buildings or dig tunnels to move between homes without going outside. We’re mainly looking for bread and medicine. We’re hungry, we’re cold and we’re forced to scavenge for food scraps in rubbish bins. Most of the stores have been destroyed…It‘s impossible to leave the neighborhood-we are surrounded by troops, Abou Rami, who lives in Khaldiyeh, told France24.
It’s impossible to transfer the injured to the hospitals. And there is no more basic medicine left, just a few painkillers. Almost no bread either, so we’re sharing what little remains in the neighborhood. But we’re reaching the end of it, Rami H., also from Khaldiyeh, told the French network.
Violence has also spread to Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city and commercial capital.
Last Friday, two car bombs targeting military and police facilities exploded, killing 28 and wounding 235, according to the Syrian health ministry.
Syrian television repeatedly broadcast grim images of the carnage.
The regime quickly blamed the attacks on what it called armed terrorist gangs.
Yet, residents indicated that these facilities were well protected and under constant surveillance.
This has led some in the opposition to speculate that the Assad regime itself organized the attack to deflect attention form the siege of Homs.
Intelligence analysts in Washington did some speculating of their own, and laid the blame on al-Qaeda in Iraq Jihadists.
In any case, the attack buttressed the regime’s case.
It has been arguing from the outset of the uprising that it is confronting terrorist fanatics bent on overthrowing the regime and persecuting the nation’s religious minorities (Alawite and Christian in particular), and not peaceful pro-democracy activists.
The latter were dismayed by the Aleppo attack.
We are trying to win over Aleppo. Why would we attack it? There is no benefit for us in attacking the city, an activist in Homs told the LAT.
Regardless of who is ultimately responsible for the attack, violence is escalating in the country and may now be impossible to quell.
On Saturday, and for the first time since the uprising erupted last March, a member of the Alawite ruling elite was assassinated in Damascus.
Three individuals gunned down Dr. Issa al-Khouli, a brigadier general and head of the Hameish military hospital, as he was leaving his house.
His uncle had been an adviser to the current president’s father, President Hafez al-Assad, who ran the country from 1971 until his death in 2000.
In the next few months, Syria will transition from civil conflict into civil war. Assad’s power and control over the country will diminish and civilian casualties on both sides are expected to rise, Kamal Ayham, an analyst at Eurasia Group, told Reuters.
International efforts to try to resolve the crisis continue however, notwithstanding last week’s United Nations Security Council setback.
The Arab League is to meet on Sunday in Cairo to discuss the Syria issue.
Whether or not to recognize officially the Syrian National Council may be on the agenda.
Turkey is attempting to assemble a group of Friends of Syria, pointedly excluding both Russia and China, to promote the Arab League’s peace efforts.
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia will be presenting to the General Assembly (since the Security Council is paralyzed thanks to the Russian and Chinese veto) a resolution closely resembling the one that was vetoed last week, and supporting the Arab League’s January peace plan, calling for Assad to cede his powers to the Syrian vice-president, and the formation of a unity government to oversee fair elections.
Although honorable, there efforts seem unlikely to modify Assad’s strategy, which, in essence, boils down to this: survival, whatever the cost…
This is a doomed regime as well as a murdering one.
There is no way it can recover it’s credibility internationally, British foreign secretary William Hague told the House of Commons last week.
Nothing however, will change unless and until the Russians and Chinese share this point of view.
Meanwhile, the Syrian people’s prospects look grim.
Violence will prevail until Assad leaves, for it is now unlikely that the Syrians can be cowed into submission after all they have already endured.
More than 6,000 have already died (although the UN, as of last month, ceased compiling casualty figures since it is now too dangerous to do so), and over 400 children, according to UNICEF.
There are reports of children arbitrarily arrested, tortured and sexually abused while in detention, the organization stated.
What now?
What is going to happen is more killing and more brutality, this I am sure of. He (Assad) will not leave unless we kick him out by force. Protests are necessary but not enough. I see no other choice.
Negotiation, sharing, politics are useless with such a regime.
He came to power by force and won’t leave it any other way, an inhabitant of Homs called Omar told Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
How many Syrians will have to die until what seems now inevitable, Assad’s fall, actually occurs?
(the photograph above of a young Syrian refugee is by Joseph Eida AFP/Getty Images)

Yet another betrayal of the Syrian people…

The shelling of Homs began sometime after 8pm last Friday.
Earlier that evening, the Free Syrian Army had attacked two military checkpoints, killing around ten regular Syrian army soldiers, and capturing thirteen others.
In apparent retaliation, the Syrian army launched shells and rockets on the Khaldiya neighborhood, as well as  five others.
At least four buildings have collapsed. There are still people under the rubble. It’s the middle of the night. They can’t get to them, Dima Moussa, a Syrian-American member of the Syrian National Council, living in the US, told the WP.
Witnesses report that 36 houses, occupied by entire families, were destroyed.
We were sitting inside our house when we started hearing the shells. We felt shells were falling on our heads, a resident named Waleed told The Guardian.
It’s a real massacre in every sense of the word. I saw bodies of women and children lying on roads, beheaded. It’s horrible and inhuman. It was a long night helping people get to hospitals, a resident of Khaldiya told the NYT.
I’ve been told that the main public hospital is completely overwhelmed and people have set up makeshift clinics in mosques. They are running low on supplies of blood. Several buildings have been destroyed, Mysa Khalaf of Aljazeera reported.
After this, no one in the world can blame us for fighting, even if we have to use kitchen knives, Abu Omar, a Homs resident, told the NYT…
The attack  ceased around 1am Saturday.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in London, 217 people were killed. Some 700 others were injured.
From the 19 of March until now, this is the bloodiest day in Syria, declared Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Observatory.
The onslaught also occurred on the day the United Nations Security Council was to vote on a resolution seeking to resolve the political crisis in Syria, and thirty years after the elder Assad shelled the rebellious city of Hama, killing at least 10,000 Syrian civilians.
As the French ambassador to the UN told the Council, l’horreur est héréditaire à Damas (« horrific acts run in the family in Damascus »).
The proposed UN Security Council resolution on Syria emphasizes the Council’s commitment to resolving the Syrian crisis peacefully and that nothing in this resolution authorizes measures under Article 42 of the Charter.
In other words, foreign military intervention to resolve the crisis is out of the question.
The resolution also condemns gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities, and calls for an end to such abuses; condemns the use of force against civilians, and all violence in general, irrespective of where it comes from.
It also demands that Syria honor its commitment to apply the Arab League peace plan of November 2, 2011, that is to say:
End the military assault against the Syrian people; release all prisoners detained since the beginning of the uprising; withdraw all military forces from the country’s cities and villages; guarantee the right to demonstrate peacefully; allow monitors and journalists to operate freely inside Syria and initiate a free and open dialogue with all Syrian opposition forces.
In order to forestall Russian opposition, therefore, the resolution does not specifically call for regime change and dismisses any notion of foreign military intervention in Syria.
The political process is to be led by the Syrians themselves.
Finally, the resolution refrains from calling for an arms embargo on the country.
Syria is a major client for Russian weaponry…
The resolution however, also fully supports in this regard the League of Arab States’ 22 January 2012 decision to facilitate a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system.
This proposal moreover, entailed the resignation of Assad.
We ask that the Syrian regime leave and hand over power. We are one with the Syrian people, with the will and with their aspirations, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, the Qatari foreign minister told Reuters on January 22.
Did the UN resolution hence, demand Assad’s departure?
Not explicitly…
In addition, the Russians were demanding that the resolution hold the Syrian opposition equally responsible for the violence wracking the country.
This was rejected as unacceptable by other members of the Council.
In the end however, the Russians refused to approve even this watered -down version of the resolution. Nor did it see fit to abstain during the vote.
The Russians, meekly followed by the Chinese, voted no, thereby vetoing the resolution.
Incidentally, the final tally was 13 in favor and 2 against, Russia and China…
Why did the Russians vote no, considering that many of their objections had been addressed?
They considered that the resolution was one-sided, designed to favor the opposition.
Russian foreign minister Lavrov objected to the imposition of the terms and conditions of the dialogue, which must be started without prejudging the results…Measures must be taken to influence not only the government but also the armed groups, because unless you do it both ways, you are taking sides in a civil war.
Lavrov knows that the Syrian National Council, for one, will not negotiate with Assad, considering he has far too much blood on his hands, and thus morally disqualified to lead, a point President Obama highlighted as well (Assad has no right to lead Syria, and has lost all legitimacy with his people and the international community, he said., accusing Assad of having murdered hundreds of Syrian citizens, including women and children).
The Syrian National Council notified the Russian authorities accordingly when the latter invited them to negotiate with the Syrian regime in Moscow.
Furthermore, the Russians are deliberately attempting to attenuate the responsibility of the Assad regime in the current crisis.
An armed opposition would never have emerged had the Assad regime not responded to peaceful demonstrations with brutal military force.
The Russians, naturally, are fully aware of this, but are loath to publicly support a brutal tyranny, and thereby hope to shift at least part of the responsibility for the atrocious violence to the opposition, the initial victims of it…
Russia would like to portray itself as an impartial observer, and potential peace broker…
Yet, what is a Syrian opposition activist to do if the simple act of marching in the streets, chanting slogans and holding placards transforms him or her into a legitimate military target?
We have not heard Mr. Lavrov on this subject…
The people have the right to defend themselves.
The Russians clearly intend to do whatever it takes to prevent their client Assad from being overthrown.
Paradoxically, the absence of a credible political process that the resolution was hoping to initiate makes that prospect more likely.
The Russians would presumably support a process of democratization in Syria, provided that Assad dictate its terms…
Vitaly Churkin, Russian ambassador to the UN, defended the veto, arguing that the resolution sent an unbalanced signal to the Syrian parties.
He criticized the sponsors of the resolution (Morocco, France, the UK, the US, Germany, Portugal, Colombia, Togo, Libya, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Turkey), claiming that they were calling for regime change, pushing the opposition towards power.
The Russians, much like the Chinese, do not want to see the UN Security Council’s jurisdiction extend to internal conflicts.
As far as they are concerned, such meddling is a gross violation of national sovereignty.
The autocrats in power in Moscow (no one has forgotten how they dealt with the aspirations of the Chechens…) and the tyrants in Beijing (who killed thousands in Tiananmen, rather than loosen their grip on power) fear that, one day, the UN Security Council may examine how they treat their citizens, and espouse regime change in their homelands!
Hence, their current obtuse refusal to entertain the notion of condemning the savagery of the Assad regime.
We are not friends or allies of President Assad, Lavrov was brazen enough to claim. We try to stick to our responsibilities as a permanent member of the Security Council and the Security Council by definition does not engage in domestic affairs of member states.
What of his responsibility towards the beleaguered Syrian people?
The sponsors of the resolution were clearly angered by the veto.
There is nothing in this text that should have triggered a veto. We removed every possible excuse. The reality is that Russia and China have today taken a choice: to turn their backs on the Arab world and to support tyranny rather than the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people, Mark Lyall Grant, UK ambassador to the UN, said.
It’s a sad day for the council. It’s a sad day for Syria…History has compounded our shame, Gerard Araud, the French ambassador, declared.
The US is disgusted by the veto.
A couple of members of this council remain steadfast in their willingness to sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant, fumed Susan E. Rice, the US ambassador.
By ostentatiously refusing to take sides and thus vetoing the resolution (thereby preserving the status quo), the Russians were in fact endorsing the Assad regime’s strategy for handling the crisis: brutal military repression.
With the UN Security Council divided and thus powerless, Assad has no incentive to refrain from killing en masse his own people…
It’s quite clear-this is a license to do more of the same and worse.
The regime will take it for granted that it can escalate further. We’re entering a new phase that will be far more violent still than what we’ve seen now, Peter Harling a Syria expert at the International Crisis Group, told the NYT.
It seems that the regime has read the stalling by the Russians as a license to stomp this out very quickly and then try to dictate the process of dialogue with the opposition, Andrew Tabler, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the WP.
Assad, rescued yet again by the Russians and Chinese, wasted no time in seizing the opportunity afforded by the defeat of the UN Security Council resolution to escalate his military campaign, particularly in Homs.
It’s a massive attack-a new massacre is happening here. Nobody can go out, we don’t know how many homes have been hit or how many people died, Abu Abdo Alhomsy, a Homs activist, told Aljazeera Monday morning (as of noon, around 50. A further 31 were killed throughout the country on Sunday).
It has been terrible. There is non-stop bombing with rockets, mortar bombs and tank shells. There are more than 50 people injured in Bab Amr (a rebellious Homs neighborhood). I saw with my own eyes kids with no legs, and a kid who lost his whole bottom jaw. It is terrible, Danny Abdul Dayem, another Homs resident, told Aljazeera.
What happens now?
Civil war seems inevitable…
Things are slipping out of control on the ground so much that I’m not sure that (the resolution) could have stopped the killing, Andrew Tabler, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the WP.
Europe intends to do what it can to increase the pressure on the regime, and support the opposition. Europe will again harden sanctions imposed on the Syrian regime. We will try to increase this international pressure and there will come a time when the regime will have to realize that it is completely isolated and cannot continue, French foreign minister Alain Juppé said on Sunday.
Juppé added that French president Sarkozy will strive to bring together all those who consider the current situation absolutely intolerable.
Russian foreign minister Lavrov is to fly to Damascus on Tuesday for talks with Assad.
Yet, since a credible, political solution to this crisis is nowhere in sight, the military option seems to be the sole remaining one.
We were hoping they would change their opinion. Unfortunately they used their veto. The people here are not so much disappointed. We will rely on Allah, the Holy God, and after Allah, we will rely on the Free Syrian Army, Abu Rami, a Homs activist, told the WP.
The commander of the Free Syrian Army, Col. Riad al-Assad, also believes that armed resistance is the only way to prevail.
Only military options are on the table. The political options have failed. This regime won’t end except through force, he told Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
In the end, Assad is wasting his time. His regime is doomed, for he has spilled far too much blood to play a prominent role in the country’s future.
It does not seem that they get it. Even if they kill 10 million of us, the people will not stop until we topple him, an activist from Khaldiya told The Guardian.
Perhaps this shall give even Mr. Lavrov food for thought…
(the photograph of the young demonstrator in al-Qsair, south-west of Homs, is by  Alessio Romenzi AFP/Getty)