Bloodshed And Honour

The vicious civil war spiralling out of control in Syria is complex beyond belief.  It is not only that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and the Syrian Free Army have divided the international community in support of one or the other.  Leaving Russia and China aligned with Iran and Iraq and Lebanon, through Hezbollah, backing the Alawite regime.  And the United Nations, the Arab League, Turkey, the European Union and the United States in full support of the opposition.

The fortunes of the minority Shia Syrian population, just as had occurred in Iraq under Saddam Hussein under his Baath party, were elevated and favoured over those of the majority Sunni population.  What started as a non-violent protest movement appealing for equality, steadily advanced as a result of the government's hard-line approach to stifling dissent, into a matched-violence assault upon one another, with the government sending its military to arrest and/or kill protesters, and the increasingly militant protesters responding in kind.

President al-Assad continues to have support among Syrians, despite his glaring inhumanely violent attacks on the dissenting population.  Among the opposition forces lurks Islamists, those associated with Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, and of course foreign militias representing al-Qaeda.  As evidenced elsewhere within the Middle East Muslim countries once instability sets in to the rule of a deposed tyrant, the Islamists tend to gain the upper hand.

The result of that is invariably a withdrawal of safety and security for any who are not Sunni Muslim.  The country's Christians, Druze, and Kurds are now on notice that the protection of the Alawite regime is in jeopardy, should, as seems inevitable, the opposition forces ultimately win this destructive civil war.  Of course, if and when that occurs, another dimension enters the picture of violence-to-come.

The Shia population in the villages where the Shahiba, the civilian militias that back President al-Assad, can expect to be slaughtered in their homes just as has occurred to Sunni villages after the military has finished pounding them with artillery and the Shahiba enter to deliver up-close massacres.  While Kofi Annan suffers apoplexy from the bland perfidy experienced through the medium of President al-Assad's unfulfilled promises, the Security Council is check-mated, incapable of acting.

The killing and the slaughter, the detention and the torture of Syrians, including children, goes on.  The Syrian Free Army, armed by its sympathizers, Qatar and Turkey and likely France and the United States, has been growing stronger in its response to government forces.  The Syrian military has no lack of weapons from helicopter gunships to artillery supplied by Russia and by Iran.

Into this chaos mired in blood-lust and revenge is added terrorist bombings courtesy of al-Qaeda.  The delusional onlookers continue to call for calm, for a peaceful resolution reached through diplomacy to ensure that the conflict cannot leach out of Syria's borders and into the Middle East in general.  Although Syria has overstepped its boundaries into Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey through careless inadvertence.

Solutions to such a complex web of ill-fated and viciously inhumane conditions of conflict and failed societies do not come easily.  Neither the regime nor the opposition will surrender what they may feel to be their ultimate advantage, to the premise that all may return to 'normal', the result simply being that an exchange comes about between the Sunnis and the Shias.

For each is fed collectively by more than their share of the Middle East heritage of vengeance and revenge, bloodshed and honour to be fulfilled.