The UN’s high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, told London’s Guardian newspaper that the fighting in Syria was the worst humanitarian disaster since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and was already more destructive than the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Several bodies of international law provide standards applicable to the Syrian crisis, including international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and international human rights law
It has become clear in recent weeks that a change in the balance of power would have to precede any form of negotiation with the Assad regime. This change has now been demonstrated in the arming of the opposition, enabling it to deter the regime’s army, break its siege of Homs, and expedite its collapse in and around Damascus.
Because Syria is a country of paramount importance, the issue there is not just about toppling the regime, while retaining the same inherited and historical structure, including the ideology, of the regime itself. Indeed, we are dealing here with a smaller version of countries like Germany and Japan after the Second World War, in that they were countries whose internal circumstances led them to destabilise their regions and subsequently the world.
President Assad spoke Sunday, amid rapturous chanting from loyalists that they are with him with “all their blood and soul.” His speech was met by a roar of protest and mocking from Syrian citizens and opposition groups, as well as the international community. This was his first public speech in six months.The opposition says he lives in isolation and does not know what is going around him.
n Syrian modern history itself we have a dangerous precedent of this, when the Alawi right to eliminate longstanding oppression paved the way for a military coup that engendered a grim tyrannical regime, which is now fighting its last and most devastating battle. Furthermore, the Lebanese know well how the Shiite right to defend the villages of the south became a leverage for Hezbollah, which has now become one of the biggest obstacles to the establishment of the Lebanese state.
Reporters without Borders honors journalist and activist Mazen Darwish for his tireless engagement for freedom of expression in Syria. Since February, he has been held in a Syrian prison and reportedly tortured.
