It was another bloody Friday for Syria today, with at least 30 civilians and 26 soldiers reported killed in violence nationwide, bringing the toll since the Arab League pact was announced at the beginning of the month to over 300.
The Arab League appears to be getting more pro-active about it too, with Saturday’s emergency meeting leading many to believe that the league will suspend Syria’s membership after they failed to follow through on the deal.
Syria’s ambassador to the Arab League told state media that the regime “welcomed” the Arab League efforts to end violence in the nation and were planning to cooperate fully. The cooperation, however, appears to stop short of actually doing anything mandated by the pact, like withdrawing its tanks from cities and releasing some 15,000 political prisoners captured since February.
Whether the league will actually be able to follow through with a suspension depends largely on how its fractured membership falls on the issue. The Saudi government and its allies appear keen to suspend Syria not so much for the crackdown but because Syria is allied with Iran. On the other hand the Yemeni government, which is launching its own bloody crackdown, is seen largely sympathetic to the Assad regime.
Let’s not be too quick to blame Syria for not keeping its end of the Arab League deal…
The figures reported here tell the true story…30 rebels killed (not civilians)…and 26 soldiers killed (and I suppose it was “civilians” that killed those soldiers, right?…it must be since the soldiers then went and killed 30 civilians and not 30 rebels…)
So the rebels are giving as good as they are getting…one has to wonder about the true aims of this Arab League “peace plan…”
Obviously the intent, like Kosovo, is to get the government forces to back off, thereby giving the rebels a free hand to conduct their murderous campaign…
This is Kosovo all over again…we saw the exact same sort of truce plans and other red herrings from various Western agencies like the OSCE…Milosevic acted in good faith and actually stuck by his word…but of course that only freed up the KLA to conduct more terror…against security forces, non-Albanian civilians and even pro-government Albanians…
This is a well-worn template that is being used here…Kosovo, Libya…now Syria…
Unfortunately a lot of people are being fooled…even here on this website…