In Syria the end of Ramadan was marked just as the beginning had been, by killing. Government forces in several cities shot and killed at least seven protestors and injured a dozen others as violence broke out after prayers. And this was only a day after another eight anti-government demostrators were gunned down by security forces.
What must be obvious at this point is that all the talk and the outside international pressure is not going to help get Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to either leave or stop shooting his own people.
And even some well-intentioned diplomats seem to understand the futility of their efforts. The Euroepan Union’s foreign policy chief is one. After Tuesday’s attacks, Catherine Ashton expressed “her continued deep concern about the violence perpetrated by the Syrian regime against peaceful demonstrators, human rights activists, and the Syrian people at large,” her spokesman said in a statement. “She renews her unequivocal condemnation of the brutal repression”(emphasis added)
Renews? How many times has she made this same plea?
And how about pleas from the UN or any single country or group of countries who all speak with the same voice? What we’ve seen in response is a whole lot of nothing, except more killing.
Give Assad credit, though. He knows well enough that if he really goes to town slaughtering or threatening to devastate hundreds of thousands then the international community might actually muster the unity to forcibly stop him. But a dozen here and a dozen there, no one is going to actually force his hand and meantime he can wait for his people to give up.