Syria's Agony

"[There must be an end to the] indiscriminate employment of weapons in populated areas, including shelling and serial bombardment, such as the use of barrel bombs."
UN Security Council, February 2014

"Because of Western reticence, too few people understand the extraordinary slaughter that the Syrian military is committing with its barrel bombs. Assad's chlorine gas attacks, terrifying as they are, kill a tiny fraction of the barrel-bomb toll, though they have recently attracted more attention than the barrel bombs."
Kenneth Roth, executive director, Human Rights Watch

A fire breaks out after the Al-Tayyuri Mosque hit by Syrian regime forces shelling in Arbin town of Damascus, Syria on July 18, 2015.   Credit: Anadolu Agency

The fascinated gaze of the West is firmly attached to the loathsome self-adulation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's slick videos, promoting themselves as the Islamic warriors of the 21st Century, fully immersed in 12th Century-style barbarity. It is the wretched exploits of the Islamic State, marching as a terrifying, unstoppable instant heroic legend that transfixes the world unable to believe that any group of human beings could behave in such a bestial manner, that no cruelly sadistic act is beyond them.

But beyond them lies the state of Syria. The Islamic State grew from a sectarian hatred against the desecration that Shiite-Alawite Islam-corrupted ideology represented, determined to overthrow a Baathist Alawite minority that has long exploited and oppressed the majority Sunni Syrian population. It is not necessarily that ISIL's collective heart bleeds for the millions of Sunni Syrians fleeing death at the hands of their oppressor-state, but the principle dishonouring Sunni Islam that motivates them.

Smoke rises after the attack launched by Assad regime forces to the residential areas in Jobar municipality of Damascus, Syria on July 27, 2015.  Credit: Anadolu Agency

The world is aghast at the medieval barbarity of the Islamic State which takes absolute delight in its crucifixions, beheadings, immolations, drownings, explosions, mass rape, slave-dealing. With the introduction of the raw human rights abuses the Yazidi and other ethnic and religious minorities, among them ancient Christian sects have experienced at the hands of triumphant ISIL, attention wavered from the ongoing assaults of the Syrian regime against its Sunni population.

The horrifying news that Bashar al-Assad's military made use of chemical weapons, and Russia's Vladimir Putin's deft side-lining of U.S. President Barack Obama's warning against their use, by persuading him to use the diplomatic route instead of the war track, turned attention from the brutality of the Syrian regime. But simply because notice wasn't being taken certainly didn't result in the regime suddenly becoming conciliatory and prepared to bargain for peace, since that would never happen.

Syrian rescue workers search for survivors in the rubble of a buildings destroyed after a plane belonging to the Syrian regime forces crashed into a market in the opposition-controlled Eriha district of Idlib, Syria on August 03, 2015. Thirty-five people were killed on Monday and scores of others injured when a Syrian regime warplane crashed into a market in Syrias northwestern…Credit: Anadolu Agency

The Syrian military had its orders and it was more than willing to fulfill them, along with considerable assistance from terrorist Hezbollah militias, and Iranian-sponsored Shiite militias, augmented by the Republican Guard al-Quds division directing the war effort of a government against its people. And the barrel bombs do their work in destroying those people and their havens, away from the conflict of the front lines. Where civilians normally take shelter away from the areas of conflict, the military has brought the conflict to sheltering cities.

Those oil drums filled with explosives and metal fragments, dropped unguided from helicopters hovering over city neighbourhoods out of range of anti-aircraft guns explode and diffuse deadly shrapnel, pulverizing all that are unfortunate enough to be within range. Buildings collapse into deadly rubble, people are buried, are pierced by sharp, hot pieces of metal and death comes in uncompromising ways to those incapable of escaping its inexorable advance.

A Syrian carries the body of a child among the rubble of buildings following a reported barrel bomb attack by government forces on the Qadi Askar district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on May 20, 2015.   Credit: Anadolu Agency

Markets, schools, hospitals, homes are destroyed in cities and towns like Aleppo, Idlib, Dara'a and other places where entire neighbourhoods are annihilated. It takes a time-stands-still 30 seconds between the time people hear the helicopters overhead, watch as the barrel bomb is dropped, until it hits earth, helpless to protect themselves, not knowing where it will fall, whether they are in its direct path, and will never know anything ever again if it does hit where they are and everything turns black, and life ends.

Syrians, forced to flee those situations are left with no safe place in which to take shelter. Four million people have left Syria fleeing elsewhere for safety. Russia and Iran are disinterested in responding to pressure to influence Syria to halt its barrel bomb attacks on its civilian populations. That the regime is destroying the infrastructure of the country appears to be of little moment to their president, oblivious of any responsibility to posterity.

The Syrian military is careful in one respect in their use of the barrel bombs. The assurance for any fleeing Sunni Syrians is that anywhere near the front lines while they may be threatened by artillery shots gone awry, they will be safe from barrel bombs. Those helicopters dropping barrel bombs will not go anywhere near the front lines for fear of hitting their own troops and wreaking havoc among them.