Will Assad pay only for chemical attacks?
The recent Russian proposal aimed at preventing the United States from launching an attack on Syria — as punishment for the chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of civilians — accepted by Damascus and Tehran and welcomed by Washington and London, led to an agreement between the US and Russia.
This agreement aims to bring about the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapon stockpiles by mid-2014. Our concern is that the international focus seems to have changed from the main issue i.e. the atrocities committed by Bashar Assad’s regime during the two-and-half year uprising. These crimes have, somehow, taken a back seat and the chemical weapons in possession of Assad have become talk of the town.
Since the revolution began in mid-March 2011 the regime backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard mercenaries and with unlimited support of Russian weapons, has opened fire on protestors killing thousands of men, women and children.
On July, 24 2013, the United Nations estimated that over 100,000 had died due to the violent actions of this “human monster” regime and more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees had fled the country to neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq while thousands also ended up in more distant countries of the Caucasus, the Arab Gulf and North Africa. Moreover, dozens of massacres have been carried out during the Syrian uprising to date by the pro-government militias known as the Shabiha, similar to what had happened in the massacres of Houla, in Homs, the Homs massacre itself, Hama Altrimssh, Aleppo and others.
The Syrian regime has also fired dozens of Scud-type ballistic missiles at populated areas causing large numbers of civilian deaths, including many children and destroyed homes and displaced people. Furthermore, this regime has not limited its genocidal massacre to conventional weapons, but progressed to chemical weapons. On Aug. 21 the Syrian regime carried out the largest chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus. This attack killed more than two thousand people, most of them civilians. Therefore, it is not enough to strip him of his arsenal of chemical weapons and force him to join the Treaty for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as punishment for his atrocities; rather the protestors should be supported in their struggle to overthrow this criminal regime.
We have no doubt that the leader of this regime is a terrorist. He is a human monster who revels in the killing of innocent civilians and takes great pride in it, for his insistence on clinging to power and authority is terrorism. We will not shed any tears if this regime is overturned, but will continue to grieve for every innocent person killed in the process.
To continue to neglect Syria’s human tragedy would be very dangerous, not only for the regional stability but for the stability of the whole world.