"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)