The UN Human Rights Commission under Navi Pillai has had a team of researchers go through five different lists of casualties in Syria, and they concluded that at least 60,000 have died since the revolution began some 20 months ago.
Some 500,000 Syrians have fled or been made refugees by the fighting, about 2 percent of the population (That would be like 6 million Americans driven from their homes).
Aljazeera English has a video report:
The rebels continue to make incremental inroads against the regime, recently concentrating on attacking airports and military bases with landing strips to stop Iran and Russia from resupplying the regime by air.
Q. What would help alleviate this tragedy?
A. Cohesive UN Security Council action.
Q. Why can’t we have that?
What, and take a chance that other nations led by kleptocrats of one stripe or another might be in danger of some kind of concerted action (to be dictated and warped by the various state security apparatuses and policy czars) to nominally make life for the Little People a little less tenuous and painful and impoverished and terrorized than it is at present? What fun would that be? It’s all about Apres moi le deluge, isn’t it? And dining on hummingbird’s tongues and the meat of the last tiger?
Why?
Because of the omnipresent Russian veto.
Russia is an ally of Assad like the U.S is allied with Israel. They are arming Assad and have an armed presence in Syria they want to retain.
The same United Nations Security Council gridlock that allows Israeli war crimes and human rights violations go unpunished is also allowing Assad to have a free hand in wreaking havoc upon his own people.
The Free Syrian Army has pledged its allegiance to the Syrian National Coalition – the freshly-minted organization founded in Doha, Qatar last November and headed by a moderate Muslim, Moaz Al-Khatib. The Syrian National Council did not have such a commitment.
The Syrian National Coalition’s Al-Khatib urged President Obama to rescind the terrorist organization status of the extremist al-Nusra group.
The Syrian National Council – based in Istanbul – was being seen by some Kurds as a Turkish puppet organization – and at least one Kurdish group refused to join the council. Interestingly, the Syrian National Council is chaired by a George Sabra – a Greek Orthodox adherent who had been appointed to the central committee of the Syrian Communist Party in 1985. The Syrian National Council now holds an impressive 22 of the 63 seats in the Syrian National Coalition.
Feminist leader Suheir Atassi, an attorney, was given a prominent role in the Syrian National Coalition.
The Syrian National Coalition now has been given almost unanimous recognition by Western states as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people – something the Syrian National Council could not get.
The Free Syrian Army has now claimed to have moved its headquarters from Turkey to inside Syria.
Russia has urged the Assad regime to commence a meaningful dialogue with the opposition.
The Syrian opposition seems to be coalescing into a more inclusive “united front” and crystallizing into a single interdependent organization.
Would you be more transparent as to what your sources are for these interesting comments.
My sources are eclectic, however the Syrian National Council has an English-language website and one can subscribe to their e-mail newsletter issued from Seattle.
The Syrian National Coalition has an Arabic-language website.
Wikipedia has an excellent web page for both these organizations with links to the biographies of the key Syrian opposition leaders.
How come no one ever bothered to count host country casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya?
NATO even had the chutzpah to declare that there were no civilian casualties after months of bombing Libya!?!
The US government waxes sanctimonious about human rights but doesn’t even have the decency to count the deaths it presides over.
The dead only get counted when the regime is one we don’t like. Its only purpose seems to be to score debating points, not reduce the death toll.
I think the Administration has been disingenuous on Libya from the beginning. Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice sold thw intervention by raising the specter of a ‘bloodbath’ if the US did not intervene. The lack of responsibility is breathtaking.
Never did the State Department define what a ‘bloodbath’ was in its view, nor did it, as you pointed out, ever give numbers on who and how many were killed during the intervention and since.
There is no way to begin to judge the results if we don’t even have these basic numbers. Did Saddam have WMD? No. Did US intervention help prevent a bloodbath in Libya? Who knows.