Syrian Civil War

"The Arab League will announce soon a date for a conference to include many of the Syrian opposition groups to discuss the ways and time needed to move to a transitional period." Abdel Basset Sedah,Syrian National Council

Moammar Gadhafi was fond of being a disruptive influence at Arab League gatherings. He enjoyed taunting his Arab counterparts, and insulting them. There was no great love lost between other heads of state and the King of Africa. When push came to shove, they supported a no-fly zone over Libya, and they enjoined NATO to become involved. And there was the unusual spectacle of some Arab military troops working alongside NATO in Libya.

Libya is a closed book now, as far as Moammar Gadhafi is concerned; what will result in his absence is another story. But Syria is still an open, festering sore, one that the Arab League is fully concerned with, although not to the extent that they are yet prepared to call for any foreign interference, much less a no-fly assist to the opponents of the Syrian regime. The Syrian National Council has found a temporary home in Turkey, however.

Ankara is more than a trifle furious with its former friend and ally. As Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated of Bashar al Assad: "A future cannot be built on the blood of the innocent, otherwise history will remember those leaders as ones who feed on blood. And you, Assad, you are now coming closer to opening that page of history."

The Arab League members who have voted to disinvite Syria from membership and who, like Jordan's King Abdullah advised al Assad to step aside, are decidedly unpleased with Syria's military response to an initially peaceful, and to their way of thinking, reasonable request for a lifting of the long-standing emergency laws, to be replaced by some measure of democratic freedoms.

Supporters of the Alawite-sect al Assad government further enraged members of the Arab League when they attacked diplomatic Arab member-state missions in Damascus. For attacking the Turkish embassy, Ankara has gifted Syria with energy sanctions, halted joint oil explorations, and threatened to cut power supplies.

It seems increasingly likely now that the (Sunni) Syrian army defectors who have formed their own opposition militias and attacked a major intelligence complex in Damascus, used rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, inflicting quite a few casualties, killing at least 20 security police officers. That attack spawned a counterattack by government forces.

It certainly resembles the start of a civil war. With an inevitable outcome. In the interim, more lives will be forfeit, while the Arab League peace plan will continue to languish. The burning question is what might compel the League to mount its own collective forces in the interests of closing the issue and helping to turn over the government to the opposition?