Monitoring Syria

"What we didn't find were any bodies of people.  What we did find were tracks on the tarmac (that) the UN said looked like armoured personnel carriers or tanks."  BBC reporter Paul Danahar

Who also, incidentally reported: "You could smell dead bodies and you could also see body parts in and around the village."  He said that it was obvious that a "terrible crime" had been committed there, in Mazraat al-Qubeir. 

And he was there, to testify that what he saw, among other symbols of atrocity, was "a tablecloth covered in blood and flesh and someone had tried to mop the blood up by pushing it into the corner, but seems they had given up because there was so much of it around."

Clearly, something dreadfully vile had happened to alter irrevocably the lives of the 150 people who lived in the village.  When the UN monitors were permitted entry after the event, to verify what they had been informed of, that 78 people were massacred there two days earlier, it was a village void of human life that they found.

They found some bodies, and they found a lot of bits of human flesh, and blood in abundance.  They found frightened villagers, with their identifying features covered, who converged on the village from other, nearby villages, to tell of what they knew had occurred.  And they gave names and numbers of people killed and missing.

Others are fleeing their villages.  Tens of thousands of Syrians are leaving their homes, their possessions, seeking safety from the murderous assaults of the regime's military arsenals.  That appears to have perfected a pattern, a modus operandi targeting villages that have attempted to remain neutral, inhabitants that have not involved themselves in the 'protests', or harboured men who joined the militias.

It's pretty straightforward; the military surround a village, they assault it with their arsenals of rockets, and when they feel enough damage has been incurred on the physical surroundings, they invite the Shabbiha militia to enter and play out their part in the warning to other villages to do nothing, say nothing, simply disappear.

(If, and eventually when, the regime falls, the majority Sunni-led militias will be certain to take their revenge on those villages inhabited by the Alawite sect of Shia Islam from whence the militias have arisen.  When the tables have completely turned, the atrocities visited upon one sect by the other will be reversed in all its bloody gore, because honour must be restored and vengeance taken.)

In that village, just as in the previous one to be similarly wiped off the map of Syria, innocent people were brutally slaughtered.  And the strife is ongoing.  Medical services are badly needed, and people cannot find any to take advantage of; even food is becoming scarce in some areas according to a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

In the capital Damascus, both residents and activists are seeing an increased level of violence. The capital was previously considered a bastion of presidential support and control.  There were small outbreaks easily handled.  Now, events are conspiring to overtake the control of the regime.  "The gunfire is so loud I think some bullets could have hit the house.  I'm afraid to go out to see what is happening", one resident reported.

The entire country is being engulfed in events so dramatically dire that it is turning human resilience to despair, human optimism has been defeated, and human nature has been debased, as bloodlust has been unleashed.  And when, finally, all is done, the people of Syria will have deposed a tyrant whose dictates oppressed them, for another dictatorial regime whose tyranny will similarly oppress them.