Alone

The UN Observer Mission to Syria, already undermanned, decided to suspend its operations beginning this week.

The commander of the mission decided it was too dangerous to continue working in conditions of escalating violence. The UN mission is unarmed.

This can only be bad news for the non-combatants who have fallen victim to the daily rounds of violence. The last two weeks was particularly brutal for civilians caught in the conflict and for the residents of cities that have risen up against the Assad regime.

Since the start of this month, several massacres happened, each becoming distinctly more sectarian than the previous one. Assad forces put more rebellious cities under intense and indiscriminate bombardment. The casualty toll for women and children spirals.

There are increasing reports that Assad’s troops round up children and use them as human shields as they assault rebellious cities. Rebel fighters have increasingly resorted to improvised explosive devices to offset the superiority in arms of pro-Assad troops.

There are also increasing reports that Assad’s army has taken to torturing children to extract information about the rebels. Several children were found burned with cigarettes and tortured with electrodes. This is a heartless war of repression whose scars will remain for generations to come.

The boundaries between sectarian and ethnic groups that form the rich tapestry of Syrian society became wider in the past year of protest and rebellion against the Assad regime. If this tyrannical regime is finally scuttled, it will be a severe challenge rebuilding the sense of nationhood among the ethnic groups after all the communal bloodshed we have seen.

The UN Observer Mission might not look like much at first glance. It is a small multinational team sent in on the assumption that the ceasefire worked out by UN special envoy Kofi Anan would take effect. Although all parties committed to the ceasefire proposal, it never really happened.

The Mission entered Syria to police the ceasefire and document violations. Instead, it stumbled into a rapidly escalating civil war. In the several weeks it was in the country, the Mission was most usually called in to document massacres. It had neither the means nor the mandate to halt the massacres.

As the days passed, as the situation became more and more exasperating, the Mission itself seemed vulnerable. In at least one instance, UN observers were shooed away from the scene of a humanitarian calamity by heavily armed soldiers.

Although they could not stop the massacres, the UN team could at least document them, making evidence available for the use of an international tribunal that might be formed later to punish those responsible for the shuddering atrocities. The observer mission also served as a small umbrella for intrepid international journalists to venture into the ravaged country and deliver images of the humanitarian calamity.

How else might the world have known of children forced to stand beside the windows of military buses as human shields to deter ambuscades. How else might we have fully understood the ethnic and sectarian dimensions of this conflict except through footages showing murdered infants.

The chilling images were once only available by way of blurred amateur videos posted on YouTube. The full scale of the humanitarian calamity in Syria came into global view by way of photos and testimonies by courageous journalists, several of whom have been killed trying to document the tragedy.

The observer mission might be a tiny expedition tasked with covering an expansive battlefield. But with the suspension of its operations, the Syrian people now stand alone to face the repressive wrath of a heartless regime.

The death tolls, a year after the anti-regime protests began, is now estimated at about 14,000. Nearly all of those deaths inflicted by brutal repression of rebellious towns, including heavy artillery shelling and tank assaults on homes.

The Assad regime severely restricts international journalists trying to document the conflict. In place of reliable reports from the main media organizations, the world relies on postings on the internet made by partisan groups. Either that or the world is forced to rely on the self-serving propaganda the regime dishes out.

What will the world do now to help the Syrian people after the last thread of independent international presence, the UN observer mission, was grounded?

No further action may be taken by the UN Security Council unless Russia and China change their positions. The two countries have the power to veto any UN Security Council resolution on Syria.

None of the neighboring countries is inclined to act independently against the Assad regime. The costs of doing so might be unbearable.

None of the major powers is inclined to undertake a military expedition against the Assad regime, especially one without UN cover. Any military enterprise will be like sending soldiers into a sinkhole. Whoever intervenes in this zone will be expected to take responsibility for rebuilding Syria’s future — which is even murkier than the civil war now in progress.

As the world watches helplessly, children are tortured, women are raped and entire communities are bombed brutally. The wound on the conscience of a civilized world just bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.

The Arab League gave up on Syria much earlier. The UN mission gave up on Syria a few days ago. How could it be that civilization has no instrument at hand to stop this barbarity?

This is a nation consumed by self-destruction and all humanity will inherit from this in the end are battered cities and bitter survivors.