"The World Has Abandoned Us"

The Arab League, still procrastinating, but concerned enough withal, now speak of arming the opposition in Syria. As for marching on Syria with their own armies, well, nothing to speak of in the offing there, though a few may be willing enough. Just too tricky; Syria did warn that a regional conflagration would result if any outside interference breached their borders in support of the insurrection.

Iran's Republican Guard and Hezbollah members are already in Syria and have been there for quite a while, in support of Bashar al-Assad's regime, training the military, teaching them new methods of pacifying the populace. Sounds better than bashing their collective brains in. Two Iranian warships have docked at Tartous, presumably alongside the Russian vessel that docked there earlier.

And although President al-Assad finds himself in a very tight corner, he knows he has China and Russia occupying that tight corner with him. And he can recall that despite Moammar Gadhafi's outdated and inadequate artillery and missiles and his destroyed airforce, his military held out for 200 days under the double onslaught of NATO aerial bombing and the rebels' advance.

President al-Assad knows he has far more going for him; more advanced, sophisticated up-to-date weaponry, and more where they came from, should he require them, China and Russia being only too happy to oblige. Now there's a conundrum; support a brutal regime like the Alawites, or side with the renegade Syrian Sunnis with the ghosts of Islamists and al-Qaeda skirting the background, contesting the government.

It is a tough call for the international community which prefers to believe the embattled demonstrators who have now morphed into an armed combat unit of discrete offsprings here and there, waiting for the formal Syrian National Council opposition and the Free Syrian Army rebels to rescue them. Everything claimed by the regime seems implausible, while everything insisted on by the seditionists is palatable and indisputably true.

What seems to be a reality is that the city of Homs is being pulverized and its people abandoned to their fate; if the barrages don't get them, starvation may. "We are watching the wounded die. All we are doing is using pieces of clothes to cover their wounds then watch them die", grieved a resident of Baba Amro. "We have lost many people and every day we have friends and relatives dying before our eyes. There is nothing we can do."

The International Committee of the Red Cross is negotiating with Syrian authorities and opposition fighters to agree to a truce so aid can be brought to civilians in these desperate straits. Shabbiha militia, the Syrian equivalent of the Iranian Basiji, those motorcycle-driving, black-clad sharp-shooters of the piffled-out Green Revolution in Tehran, are also picking off civilians.

"If people do not die of the shelling they will die of starvation soon", mourned one activist, of the scarcity of food and supplies. Phone lines and Internet are cut. Hundreds of videos of graphic violence in the wake of shelling show the destruction and death facing people who cower in fear at their dreadful plight, wailing "The world has abandoned us".

"We feel that the opposition has let us down ... Everybody is fooling us and using us for their own interests and we are the ones paying the price. We are being bombarded and we are dying. We are living the '80s with all its scenarios and until now you have done nothing. We hold you fully responsible. The people said that the SNC represent us and the people will delegitimize you if you do nothing."

1. Photo By STRINGER/Reuters