Syria Is Sliding Into Civil War

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Syria Is Sliding Into Civil War

United Nations human rights agencies have warned on Friday that Syria was slowly descending into civil war as the number of the Syrian soldiers who died in the past weeks has climbed significantly, showing that the conflict is now more of a fight between two well armed and trained military sides.

Asserting that the death toll has surpassed 3,000 civilians since the conflict started, UN warns that a “full blown civil war” could erupt at any moment in Syria, since 25 out of the 36 dead people killed in clashes on Friday alone were Syrian soldiers, citing Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The human rights group added that what is more surprising is the silence of the Syria authorities at the death of dozens of their own troops over the past few days. The group said that the majority of the clashes that ended up in the death of the Syrian soldiers were with defectors from the army, who sided with the people and refused to carry out orders from the officers.

The number of the defectors is said to have increased over the few weeks. A high-ranked officer that turned himself against the regime told the Turkish authorities last week that there are thousands of defectors. The regime has launched a hunt for them, closing cities, and searching house by house.

The Syrian soldiers are most of them Sunni Muslims, whereas the officers belong to the Alawite sect, to which belongs the president of the country also.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that the measures the UN has adopted to stop violence in Syria has shown very few results so far, and that a military intervention was up to the United Nations Security Council to decide.

During the summer she did encourage the Security Council to refer some of the Syrian officials to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Analysts from all over the world consider that the decision of the United States to maintain their distance from this conflict no longer makes sense, considering that the sectarian violence risks to tear Syria apart.

Besides, the program of cracking down on protestors, the targeted assassination of some academics and spiritual leaders, the raping of Sunni women and the hunt for the defectors shows that the situation is past nonviolent protests, which can no longer achieve anything in this country.

The United States did not get involved in the conflict so that the Syrian opposition should not be deemed as “supported by the West” by a regime who is already blaming the entire situation on the Western conspiracy aimed at toppling it.

But now that the opposition requires an intervention of some sort, failure to do it is, in the opinion of some American analysts, a lack of trust in the post-Assad Syria.

The European Union decided on Thursday to add Commercial Bank of Syria, a bank owed by the state that holds much of the Syrian foreign reserves, to the sanction list, following the American example, which has already done that in August.

Syria Is Sliding Into Civil War

The sanctions imposed on Syria are expected to contract the economy by 2 percent, but that is not enough to stop Bashar al-Assad from continuing his brutal oppression on the people.

However, an intervention in Syria would not be possible without a resolution issued by the United Nations Security Council, and so far the United Nations has not been able to compromise in any way so that some sort of condemnation of what is going on in Syria be passed by vote in the Security Council.

The last resolution draft, created by the European powers, was vetoed by Russia and China, which drew very serious criticism from the democratic world.

The Russians were very specific that they were fearing that such a resolution would lead to a military attack on Syria, just like the resolution on Libya led the NATO to support the National Transitional Council rebels with arms.

Even though they opposed the resolution, the two countries warned this week the regime in Damascus that it was about time it implemented the measures it had promised. The Russians even said that unless the regime in Damascus made good on their promise to implement reforms it should step down.

The president of Syria promised last Sunday that a new constitution would be drafted by the end of the year, and on Wednesday thousands of people gathered in the centre of the capital to manifest their support for him, while the army was entering with tanks in the restive city of Homs.

In a statement last week, Turkish prime minister, who used to be a close ally of Assad, said that a president who is bombarding his people from the sea, alluding to the bombardment on Lakatia port which displaced thousands of Palestinian refugees, cannot be trusted.

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