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- iHaveNet.com: Middle East
by Joel Brinkley
Syria is fast becoming the new Somalia -- a nation whose central government wields little control over the bulk of the country while feuding sects and gangs fight each other as well as the thoroughly discredited president, Bashar al-Assad.
Meanwhile, just as in Somalia, vast numbers of Syrians are suffering and dying.
As many as 2 million Syrians remain imprisoned in regime jails. Another 800,000 are refugees in neighboring states, the U.N. says, and others are fleeing at a rate of about 5,000 every day. In squalid Jordanian, Turkish and Lebanese refugee camps, many have little access to food, shelter or clean water -- leading to a full-blown humanitarian crisis, the U.N. warns.
Exacerbating this disaster, Iran is sending militias into Syria to fight for Assad, and so is
Last week, Syrian rebels threatened to attack
"The country is breaking up before our eyes," Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special representative for Syria, told the
As the nation disintegrates and threatens to fall into malign hands, the United States, Europe and
Still, Syria remains a baffling conundrum for the West. Look at the intra-administration conflict exposed during a
Obama refused. And he was correct. With all those rival factions in Syria, who knows where those weapons would go? Consider what happened to all of Libya's weapons after Muammar Qaddafi's government fell. In mid-February, Egyptian security officers seized two tons of explosives on the way to Gaza through Sinai. The materiel was Libyan. The Islamic extremists who took over northern Mali are also using Libyan weapons.
"The flow of weapons from Libya has armed terrorists in the region" and is "empowering al-Qaeda," said Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the
The American officials who advocated arming the rebels also suggested training a cadre of fighters. Look how well that's working in Afghanistan, where scores of American and allied forces have been killed by the fighters they were training. Will we be better able to detect extremists who infiltrate the training operation in Syria than we are in Afghanistan? I doubt it.
So what can the West do? Sit by and watch as al-Qaeda,
Israel demonstrated one possibility. It bombed a weapons shipment and military research facility. Israel lost no planes and paid no price. Why couldn't
Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican, is calling for using cruise missiles to destroy Syrian aircraft on runways (a suggestion I made in a column last June).
Any sort of military action would, of course, infuriate Russia. So what?
A few days ago, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, intoned: "Neither side can allow itself to bet on a military settlement, as this is a path to nowhere, a path to mutual destruction." So, Mr. Lavrov, stop sending vast quantities of military hardware to Assad and blocking every
With the exception of Russia and Iran, the world has reached a broad consensus that, whatever happens, Assad must go. In fact, Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for a war-crimes investigation of Assad because he's committing "crimes against humanity."
In her view, in fact, Assad should be sent directly to the International Criminal Court.
© Tribune Media Services, Inc., "Western Intervention in Syria Long Overdue"
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Western Intervention in Syria Long Overdue | News of the Middle East