Horror in Syria

IMAGES of children suffering from respiratory distress, probably because of gas attacks, in the Syrian rebel-held town of Douma are horrifying. These brought the spotlight distressingly back on a country that has literally been torn apart by sectarian violence, much exacerbated by the proxy games played by major powers. There are so many players with their finger in the pie — Russia, the US, China, Iran, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, et al — for there to be any degree of coherence of response to war crimes committed by combatants. 

The plight of people — be those who fight for President Bashar al-Assad’s regime or those opposed to it — has unfortunately not got the attention it deserves. The continuing conflict in Syria has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians. Many of those deaths can be attributed to chemical weapons, banned under international law, and by the UN, whose writ is not being allowed to run in Syria, ever since it investigated and called out the 2013 gas attack near Aleppo. Chemical weapons are used by both sides, according to UN war crime investigators who had earlier documented 33 chemical attacks; 27 by the Assad regime. The UN and its organs have been effectively hobbled by the US and Russian rivalry. Vacillation by the Obama and the Trump administrations about the US role in the area allowed President Putin to expand the Russian presence, with Iran supporting the rebels. Even the so-called retaliatory strike on the military airbase near Homs only highlights the boots-off-the-ground approach favoured by the West and its allies. The time for any unilateralism has long expired. Given Russian intransigence, not much can be expected from the UN Security Council meeting too.

The conflict in Syria, however, needs an international monitoring group, like the UN, to ensure that war crimes are not allowed to take place. It also needs help in rebuilding the nation and its institutions. Can India leverage its long-standing ties and goodwill to play a role in this endeavour? Children should be in schools, not hospitals. What the world has seen from the conflict zones in Syria is a horror that begs an answer that is not rooted in further violence.