The Hero Of Homs

"It is not looking promising, the idea of ending this by the revolt from below. I think we've got a better prospect, now that it looks like a stalemate, of trying to accelerate the moves of political transition from above."
"There will be no political progress unless the opposition is able to withstand the onslaught and put pressure on Assad."
British Prime Minister David Cameron: U.S. public radio, Washington

Doubtless meaning well, purloining opportunities wherever they beckon, including treading on the territory of an American president. He, in any event, along with France, is anxious to increase efforts for a negotiated settlement in Syria. With the realization that without Britain, France, the United States and any other NATO countries interested in the prospect of involving themselves in Syria as they did in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, the rebels and the regime will simply continue their barbarism.

This is what happens in the Middle East. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, urging the West to become involved, that this is not an internal matter, this unease that the splurge of macabre sectarian slaughter in Syria between a terror-mongering regime and a terrorist-led opposition will inevitably spread, as it has indeed begun to creep outward and into Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. Threatening to erupt full-blown into an avalanching eruption of brutality embracing the entire geography.

The crisis must be resolved. And, as Turkey's foreign minister indignantly complained in Berlin, why should Syria and Turkey suffer? The ever-unfolding catastrophe is the responsibility of the international community. Certainly not the region, not those within the Middle East, not the Arab and Muslim countries for whom previous interventions post-occurrence have been viewed with dainty abhorrence as an unbridled attempt by the West to take advantage of the Middle East.

The White House demurs; it has been burnt time and again for intervention which has grasped its treasury and its personnel, military and diplomatic, in greedy embrace, refusing to let go its stranglehold. Arm the rebels as was done in Pakistan so they could counter the Russian invasion, and give birth to the Taliban? Arm the rebels in Libya so they might refuse to surrender their tribal armed militias to a government military? Disarm Saddam Hussein to arm the Shias and deliver them to Iran?

Kremlin support, believes U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, is finally on board, and then perhaps it isn't, with the 'outing' of a CIA agent at the U.S. Embassy infiltrating and attempting to secure Russian traitors as double agents, a set-up if there ever was one, which aptly demonstrates the depth of Russian commitment to American blandishments.

Russia prefers to make common cause with Iran and Syria and Hezbollah. Treacherous perhaps, but less so, the Kremlin judges, than the Islamists it counters in Chechnya, of an entirely different breed. Vladimir Putin has persuaded himself that he can place his trust, at least for the time being, on the Islamist regimes that are Shia-led and averse to any accommodation with the West.  Re-arming Syria with powerful rockets to reach further into Israel is just one little move in a much larger power play.

As for the new proposal coming jointly from Britain and the U.S., the acting leader of the Syrian National Coalition is prepared to consult with its supporters: Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Without whose blessing, where does this initiative go? The rebels have always sneeringly slighted the feeble efforts of the West to give them just enough arms to keep them at it, but never enough to prevail.

They are, of course, the same rebels who declared no need of such intervention as they now demand of the West. Which they felt assured would occur when the 'red line' set down by Barack Obama was recklessly crossed with the use of chemical weapons. Just not enough to mobilize him. It is, in fact, the presence of hardened, battle-scarred and well-armed and -functioning terror squads otherwise known as Islamists who have penetrated the rebel ranks that give the West its anxious hesitation.

The Arab League perused a list of proposed representatives for a new, pacified and unified Syria to emerge from the rubble of the old, sent from Damascus to Moscow for consideration. Unacceptable to the rebels who will receive nothing less than Bashar Assad's head on a silver salver. Nor will Turkey, incensed at the deadly double bombing on its Reyhanli border town, accept that Assad should remain in power.

Who will take his place, then? The Homs "Abu Saqqar" of the infamous liver-eating video whose vivid imprecation: "I swear to God we will eat your hearts, Alawite soldiers of Bashar the dog", will live on in the annals of Muslim honour...?