Syrian Carnage

"[There is] clear evidence, capable of being believed by a tribunal of fact in a court of law, of systematic torture and killing of detained persons by the agents of the Syrian government.
"It would support findings of crimes against humanity and could also support findings of war crimes against the current Syrian regime.
"The procedure for documentation was that when a detainee was killed, each body was given a reference number which related to that branch of the security service responsible for his detention and death. When the corpse was taken to the military hospital it was given a further number so as to document, falsely, that death had occurred in the hospital. Once the bodies were photographed they were taken for burial in a rural area."
UN prosecutorial trio 31-page report

UN agencies warn they may soon be forced to suspend humanitarian aid to Syria [Reuters]

Syrian Sunnis had always known that something quite dreadful and absolutely final had occurred to the thousands of 'disappeared'. They had been arrested, abducted, captured, taken to the dreaded prisons where it was well enough known that torture prevailed, and against all human capacity for hope, it was generally assumed that they had met death. That assumption has been given fresh impetus with what has been sworn to be verifiable evidence proving that the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad destroys the lives of those that oppose Alawite rule.

This is also, lest any permit it to temporarily slip their minds, the very same regime that saw fit to unleash a barrage of chemical weapons on sleeping men, women and children, committing over a thousand to death and many more to gruesome memories of their losses. It is a government that considers its citizen population cleaving to a version of Islam unlike their own, as ripe for being bombed, shot by sharpshooters and helicopter gunships, and maimed and killed through the medium of crude barrel bombs stuffed with sharp metal objects meant to create utter havoc to human flesh.

No matter, this is the regime that Western countries at the behest of Russia and the refusal of China to condemn it outright at the Security Council, are prepared to negotiate with as intermediaries between Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian Official Opposition. The United Nations, while fretting about atrocities committed in Syria by both the regime and the opposition, obviously feels that nothing should disturb business as usual.

In that frame of reference, Syria was unanimously elected toward the end of 2013 by UNESCO's executive board to several committees; one revolving around human rights issues, nominated by the Arab group at UNESCO where Syria was already on the executive board. Joining other human rights luminaries such as Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Algeria. Syria had been nominated at the very time that the League of Arab States moved its suspension in that body's membership.

Syria, however, is now in a league of its own. Almost. For it must share that elevated spot given to notorious human rights-abusive tyrannies to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Which, since the elevation to the presidency of its new, moderate Hasan Rouhani, has ramped up its death sentencing enormously, to about two carried out each day in this new year of 2014. Iran, needless to say, is Syria's main sponsor as a terrorist-breeding state alongside Lebanon's Hezbollah militia trained and funded by Iran's Republican Guard Corps, also exercising their franchise in Syria.

The world press was treated to the latest revelations of horror by a former regime policeman who brought with him as he left Syria evidence of thousands of executions on "an industrial scale" through smuggled photographs. "...This is a smoking gun of a kind we didn't have before. It makes a very strong case indeed", said Desmond de Silva, a former UN chief prosecutor, speaking to The Guardian newspaper. The former Iranian policeman identified only as "Caesar" explained his job; photographing the bodies of those executed, processing up to 50 corpses daily.

Those photographs were vital documentation for authorities to produce death certificates, while withholding the bodies for presentation to the families. They also presented as confirmation that the order to execute the unfortunates had been carried out. Families were then informed of the cause of death; "heart attack", or "breathing problems", all without doubt taken as shorthand for murder, for these were the families of Sunni prisoners who had died while in custody, in prisons their families had no idea they had been taken to.

Eleven thousand dead, deliberately murdered while under tortured interrogation, most throttled, some with eyes gouged out, and all young men. The policeman had contacted the Syrian National Movement for help and they responded by smuggling him out of Syria. He took with him some 55,000 photographic images of the estimated 11,000 victims of Syria's security services. Bashar al Assad is treated with courtesy as an Arab tyrant with whom the Security Council must now negotiate.

In the hopes that such consultations may somehow result in his being removed from power, even while he assures that no such thing will occur. The Official Syrian Opposition has agreed, as long as Syria's mentor-state is not involved in negotiations, to be present for the process of attempting to find some way in which the slaughter can be stopped. The Opposition has no intention of agreeing to much of anything aside from removing Bashar al-Assad, after which some reasonable accommodation on both sides might be arrived at.

Leaving two factions, the regime and the opposition both of which have been accused of committing atrocities against the people of Syria, to hash out a power-sharing agreement. After which time, conceivably, the millions of suffering Syrian refugees may choose to return to a country whose infrastructure has been shattered to resemble the Stone Age. On the other hand, Lebanon managed to survive and partially rebuild, and perhaps then, so too will Syria.

Once they figure out what to do about the mass influx of mujahadeen, the Islamist jihadists whose agenda may be even more evil than that of the Syrian regime's. About which Iran will know what to do, since they're accustomed to dealing with such fascist blood-curdling brutes. It's rumoured in any event, credibly, that there has been a level of accommodation reached between Syria's regime and some al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups to work on behalf of the Syrian government.