The Staggers

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"The Syrian people are bleeding": leaders condemn massacre

International leaders condemn the massacre in al-Qubair - but does the rhetoric mean anything?

By Samira Shackle Published 08 June 2012 9:24

International leaders have condemend the massacre in al-Qubair. This picture shows Syrian rebels near Homs, May 2012. Photograph: Getty Images

It is beyond doubt that a massacre took place in the Syrian village of al-Qubair. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 55 people had died, while the opposition, the Syrian National Council, said there had been 78 deaths. Many of them came from just one extended family.

The village was surrounded by Syrian forces. Villagers were then slaughtered, apparently by the shabiha (civilian militia), with what witnesses described as violence that “no-one can bear”. UN observers trying to access the area yesterday came under fire from Syrian forces. Incredibly graphic images of charred corpses and bloodshed have been distributed on the internet.

The level of violence – and the short time gap between this and the Houla massacre – has prompted international leaders to condemn the massacre in their strongest language yet. It’s worth quoting at length from the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s statement yesterday. He said that President Assad and his government “have lost all legitimacy” and “has lost its fundamental humanity". He described the scene:

The bodies of innocent civilians lying where they were, shot. Some were allegedly burned or slashed with knives.

. . .

The danger of a full-scale war is imminent and real. Reports of yet another massacre in Qubair underscore the horrifying reality on the ground. How many more times have we to condemn them, and how many ways must we say that we are outraged? The Syrian people are bleeding.

Soon after this address, Kofi Annan admitted that his peace plan for the country – at present, the only plan the international community has got – was floundering.

William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, reiterated this sentiment:

The Annan plan won't last indefinitely. Syria is clearly on the edge … of deeper violence, of deep, sectarian violence, village against village, pro-government militias against opposition areas, and of looking more like Bosnia in the 1990s than Libya last year.

The Annan plan has clearly failed so far, but it is not dead, all hope is not lost.

Strong language from all sides, yes – but what does this mean in practice? Certainly, continued atrocities will make it more and more difficult for the international community to do nothing.

Perhaps the most telling point in Hague’s comments is his emphasis that Syria is not the same as Libya. The implication is that what was appropriate in Libya – military intervention in the form of a no-fly zone – is not appropriate for Syria. As the increasingly bitter and bloody conflict divides along sectarian lines, it is difficult to see how military intervention from the west – either in the form of boots on the ground, or by arming the rebels – would result in anything other than civil war.

For now, despite the hardening of rhetoric from international leaders, negotiated settlement will continue to be the aim. Yet nothing much has changed here: Russia, Syria’s closest ally, remains the sticking point. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has said that America is prepared to work with Russia on a plan similar to that implemented in Yemen, where the leader was ousted but elements of his regime remained intact. There is no clear sign that this will succeed where other overtures to Russian support for the plan have failed. Meanwhile, Annan has suggested that countries failing to support his peace plan should face sanctions – a stick, rather than carrot, approach.

As diplomats scramble to find a solution to an intractable situation, there is remains no clear answer to the questions posed in Ban’s speech: “how many more times have we to condemn them, and how many ways must we say that we are outraged?”

Tags: Syria

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13 comments

Fri, 2012-07-20 11:02 — Goji (not verified)

Nice article..... interesting.
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Fri, 2012-07-13 18:20 — MarlandSantoso

The FAZ report echoes eyewitness accounts collected from refugees from the Houla region by members of the Monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. According to monastery sources cited by the Dutch Middle East expert Martin Janssen, armed rebels murdered “entire Alawi families” in the village of Taldo in the Houla region. http://www.squidoo.com/best-top-load-washing-machines

Thu, 2012-07-05 21:47 — ahmadnasr89

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Wed, 2012-06-13 01:05 — islamophobe (not verified)

Wogs killing wogs. Who gives a damn? Not me.

Tue, 2012-06-12 21:04 — simoned

OK, everybody is condemning the massacre yet no one is doing anything. I guess, I will condemn it too and feel better about me when I sleep tonight. jocuri

Sat, 2012-06-09 20:10 — pj hales (not verified)

Incidentally,did anyone see the Channel 4 journo who stated that the rebels sent him into the line of fire deliberately so that Assad's forces could kill him?

Sat, 2012-06-09 20:09 — pj hales (not verified)

Interesting piece.....

It was, in the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the “tipping point” in the Syria conflict: a savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media. Within days of the first reports of the Houla massacre, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, and several other Western countries announced that they were expelling Syria’s ambassadors in protest.

But according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. For its account of the massacre, the report cites opponents of Assad, who, however, declined to have their names appear in print out of fear of reprisals from armed opposition groups.

According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts,” the FAZ report continues,

the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.

Already at the beginning of April, Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery warned of rebel atrocities’ being repackaged in both Arab and Western media accounts as regime atrocities. She cited the case of a massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood in Homs. According to an account published in French on the monastery’s website, rebels gathered Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in Khalidiya and blew up the building with dynamite. They then attributed the crime to the regular Syrian army. “Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces . . . the evidence and testimony are irrefutable: It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition,” Mother Agnès-Mariam wrote.

— John Rosenthal writes on European politics and transatlantic security issues. You can follow his work at www.trans-int.com or on Facebook.

Sat, 2012-06-09 22:43 — samtheman (not verified)

There has been widepread condemnation of the Houla Massacre before the full facts emerged. It simply does not make snese when Britain and the US are tiching to intervene militarly, that the Assad regime would provide the humanitarin pretext to intervene. There is now plentiful evidence to suggest that the rebels are behind the Houla massacre but this information has yet to filter through to the mainstream. Yes we should condemn massacres and those who have committed them should be brought to book. We should however get our facts straight as to which countries are actively seeking the overthrow of Assad: Saudi Arabia, Qatar (those great beacons of democracy:LOL) and Turkey which has received millions from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to arm and train the rebels. We should not forget too the hand of the UK, Israel and the US all of whom have been arming the rebels. What amazes me is the extent to which the mainstream version of events on Syria is presented and accepted as fact; when nothing could be further from the truth. I would have expected NS readers to show more insight and nt just accept blindly what the western media is saying.

Sat, 2012-06-09 12:27 — Frederick. (not verified)

Blaming NATO or the CIA for the slaughter in Syria is absurd. Assad heads a Baathist fascist regime and slaughtering children to remain in power is something he will continue to do. The Islamist opposition will slaughter every last Alawite and ethnically cleanse every last Christian from Syria in much the same way as Islamists have ethnically cleansed Christians from iraq.
The problem the free world faces is that neither side merits support. Both are homicidal killers.

Sat, 2012-06-09 22:45 — samtheman (not verified)

It seems that your ignorance in foreign affairs and politics is limitless!!!!!!

Sun, 2012-06-10 00:09 — Frederick. (not verified)

you bet

Fri, 2012-06-08 18:18 — mbrecker (not verified)

No it doesn't. Many Western leaders are more concerned with elections than Syria and other countries. The nice soundbites they put out about "we must uphold freedom everywhere in the world" are merely that. Just empty words. Actually doing this would mean being the world's policeman in the middle of a global depression. How would you afford this? How would you sell this to your population?

If NATO did invade Syria and troops got killed, they know they'd never be able to justify it. If they did succeed in overthrowing Assad or exiling him (the latest destination? Moscow), there's no coherent opposition. Who would you negotiate with? Libya's factions are still fighting. Egypt's are doing the same thing. Yet, when it involves "protecting our national interests in the region", nobody cares about that.

If you think that Obama will save the day, you're wrong. He'd NEVER order a new invasion this close to an election.

Fri, 2012-06-08 15:19 — You look but you don’t see (not verified)

The Syrian people are bleeding because they have been killed by NATO supported CIA/MI6 mercenary groups such as al-Qaeda. This is shameless war provocation, backed-up by despicable propaganda from the state supported media.

The claimed justification for an invasion of Syria is so that innocent lives can be saved; this is a baseless argument, we need only remind ourselves of the millions killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to know that there is more to it than that – these people care nothing of the rights and well-being of innocent people trying to go about their daily lives.

An invasion of Syria – failing that the incitement of a civil war – is all about destabilising the country and the region as a whole. The same strategy has either played out or is in the process of being played out in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran. Ultimately, it’s about subjugation by the west and the seizure of natural wealth, just like the Soviet Union ‘experiment’ and the phoney cold war – do your research.

Here we are again, yet the people within western nations still refuse to see the higher agenda, the hidden hand that is at work and has been for so very many years – the Fabian Society (self-proclaimed wolf in sheep’s clothing) is one of the many instruments of control. One can only conclude that the people are happy in their ignorance and servitude (debt peonage), yet there is the blood of the millions dead on their hands also.

Imperialism: a system that mercilessly exploits humanity and condemns nations and their people to terrible suffering for the gain of a very few. Divide and conquer is the favoured method – supporting both sides in the conflict if necessary – seeding and fostering hatred within mankind so that all may fall. Time for all to unite and begin to push back against this abomination, that which has been the scourge of humanity for so long.