Pounding Homs

"We appeal to the international community to help us transport the wounded. We wait for them here to die in mosques. I appeal to the United Nations and to international humanitarian organizations to stop the rockets from being fired on us." Syrian doctor, treating wounded at a field clinic in a mosque, Homs.

It's difficult to imagine, for those who have never lived through the fear and dread of being in the centre of a war situation what it might be like. Safety and security completely gone. Whether one survives or becomes a victim of fate ending lives or sustaining dreadful wounds is no longer in one's control. One becomes a circumstantial pawn. Whatever circumstances decree at any given time is what one can anticipate. Homs is no small hamlet; it is a city of close to two million people.

It is absolutely mind-boggling that a government would order its military to attack, with no reservations, no restraints whatever, an substantial element of their own citizenry. What began as a gaggle of young boys scribbling defiance of the regime on a school wall, costing them their innocent lives and dragging their community into a deadly conflict is continuing as a massive assault on millions of people whose sin is to decry the tyranny they live under.

Eight months later the Sunni population of Homs is under siege by the Baathist regime of President Bashar al-Assad, using weaponry supplied by Russia, and enjoying the support of Russia in the United Nations Security Council which has adamantly refused to lend support to a declaration of condemnation of Syria's regime. China and Russia might have been amenable to an equal condemnation of the Alawite government, and the Syrian National Council.

The failure of the Arab League's observers to serve as a restraining influence on Syria's military in their attacks against the protest movement represented an affront against the collective power of the League. And served to give momentum to the ongoing attacks by the regime against its people. Roof top snipers, tanks in the streets, bombs being lobbed indiscriminately, soldiers entering homes and murdering all those they find within.

And mourners fearing detection of their activities by the surrounding military, undertake to have burials take place at night, under cover of darkness, lest they too join the dead and others have to bury them, as well.

Anonymous/AP Mourners gather around the bodies of people allegedly killed by Syrian government forces, during a funeral procession in Maarat al-Noman, Idlib province, Syria.

"I fear that the appalling brutality we are witnessing in Homs, with heavy weapons firing into civilian neighbourhoods, is a grim harbinger of things to come", wailed Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, helplessly. And sadly, typically.

In a suburb of Homs, where bodies are being pulled from the rubble caused by the incessant bombing, one man explained: "Silence reigns for four to five minutes, then another barrage of tank fire or rockets or mortar rounds comes in. Whole houses have come down and we do not know how many more have been killed. They are not advancing and it seems that they are content by continuing to shell Baba Amro until every inhabitant is killed."

They are receiving advice from those skilled in facing down protests in a society ruled by theistic tyrants as coldly implacable as the Syrian regime. Iran has sent members of its elite special unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, The Quds. It has been estimated that anywhere between hundreds and thousands of the Iranian specialists have been ensconced in Syria. To assist with riot control equipment and techniques.

Intelligence gathering techniques and the monitoring of Syrian protesters' Internet use and mobile phone networks is another area where Iran has had experience and is more than willing to share it with its very good friend and passionate supporter, Syria. With Hezbollah also actively assisting Syria in its time of need, the grim gathering of the MidEast's criminal class is well entrenched.

And the Arab League is most concerned. Not sufficiently concerned to create a situation of potential escalation, however. Leaving it to the possibility that the West, that NATO may yet find it so troubling a situation that it feels forced to step in. And should that occur, what else might escalate out of that, while the Arab League will be left feeling vindicated at its hesitance?