Syrian Killing Fields

In Syria, a massive double car bombing. In two of Syria's largest cities a mortar strike targeted neighbourhoods in pro-government areas of Damascus and Homs, killing at least 54 people. This was the rebels' response to President Bashar al-Assad's declaration of candidacy for re-election as president of the country. Despite battlefield setbacks the rebels remain capable of hitting the core of support for the Alawite regime.



There is localized conflict throughout the country that has been at war with itself for four years. The regime controls Damascus and the corridor running to the Mediterranean coast, while the rebels command most of the north along the Turkish border. While the Kurdish minority dominates a corner of its own in the northeast representing perhaps what will eventually become one-quarter of Kurdistan once it wrests control in bits of Iran, Iraq and Turkey.

Not that the rebels are not still ensconced in some suburban areas of Damascus and Homs which remains an opposition stronghold. Government forces are assaulting the remaining pockets of rebel strongholds in the Old City where hundreds of besieged fighters, speak of the possibility of surrender as others lash the government with suicide car bombs in pro-Assad areas.

The double-car bombing near the Zahra and Abbasiyeh neighbourhoods inhabited predominantly by Christians and the Shia-Alawite sect saw 40 people killed. Striking ten minutes apart and 150 metres from one another on a busy residential and commercial thoroughfare the explosions tore people apart. "When I arrived at the scene, fire and smoke and medics were still carrying away the wounded", one returning resident said without permitting his name to be used, in fear of reprisal.

The blasts set cars afire, damaged homes and shops. Homs governor Tala Barazi deplored such crimes that "target security, stability and ongoing national reconciliation in the province". Reconciliation? As though it is possible for the Sunni Syrians to reconcile themselves to the fact that their Shia-led government held no compunction in using chemical weapons to kill thousands of its own citizens?

This is a regime that has shot protesters dead, slaughtered tens of thousands of Syrian civilians in aerial bombardments, tortured and starved activists in large numbers. Finally, achieving the longed-for balance of power by bringing in Shia Hezbollah to turn the tide of victory in his favour, al-Assad is an acknowledged war criminal. Could there be reconciliation with such a slaughterer? Are his followers dreaming in technicolour?

Well they might; the international community seems fairly unconcerned, hardened against the devastating news of one slaughter after another coming out of Syria where a government has seen the usefulness of barrel bombs to destroy entire neighbourhoods and shred the living flesh of men, women and children. Where chlorine gas is now seen as a useful replacement for the surrendered sarin gas in a hypocritical surrender to world opinion.

Another exceptionally useful tool of putting down dissent, even of those Syrian civilians who have done nothing to support the rebellion, just hoping to remain alive through the bloodshed, is the use of encirclement. The regime's military blockading entire neighbourhoods and refugee camps, refusing ingress or egress. Nothing to sustain the people within; food, water, medical aid can enter; no starving residents can exit.

The torture and killing of children, the overwhelmingly repugnant, anti-human -- on the other hand, all-too-humanly malevolent -- practise of unrestrained bloodshed in a conflict that a tyrannically murderous regime remains complacent about, since none of its neighbours collectively care enough to put a stop to it, and the international community while despairing of the barbarity expending their compassion in pity, see nothing they can do to stop it.