World ignores Syria’s agony

An editorial from the Hamilton Spectator, published Feb. 23:

“Ghouta is drowning in blood,” said a doctor tending to the wounded and dying in a tormented region of Syria that is once again under attack from pro-government forces.

And who could say he exaggerates?

Each day this week brought new images of children, caked in blood and dirt, being hauled from buildings pulverized by missiles and barrel bombs.

Each day brought fresh stories of atrocities committed against civilians in a region that was last year declared a “safe zone” in an abortive peace deal.

Each day, ambulances, clinics and hospitals were systematically targeted and struck by airstrikes.

Families cowered in basements or dugout shelters except to venture out in search of a cup of water. The dead bodies of less fortunate residents were pulled out of smouldering ruins - including five children and their parents.

But though more than 700 residents in this region on the outskirts of Damascus have been slaughtered in recent months and more than 335 have died in east Ghouta since Sunday, the international response has been little more than a shrug.

It’s not that the world has turned away because it cannot bear to witness the suffering.

It no longer seems to care.

It could be that the global community, represented most obviously by the United Nations, has concluded nothing can be done about a civil war that has dragged on for seven years, left more than 500,000 people dead, displaced half the civilian population and driven six million Syrians out of their homeland as refugees.

Perhaps compassionate people in countries such as Canada — which alone welcomed more than 35,000 Syrian refugees — feel they’ve done as much as they can.

Perhaps, after seeing NATO forces stuck in the quagmire of Afghanistan for more than a decade or watching the disastrous results of America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, there’s no appetite for boots-on-the-ground interventions.

Whatever the reasons, the wholesale butchery of civilians in Ghouta — and this may involve the internationally-proscribed use of chemical weapons — is a shameful reminder of the international community’s failure to come to the aid of this shattered country.

In doing so, the international community has committed a grave error.

Basic humanitarian principles would argue for action of some kind. This is a massacre, not a war.

But lacking a more compelling United Nations response or a convincing display of American muscle, the situation has deteriorated beyond what humanity should tolerate.

As bad as the bombings are, they are likely a prelude to a ground assault meant to capture the area and bring it under the heel of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad once again. Ghouta’s pain will only intensify.

Could the world not ensure that, at the very least, food and medical supplies get through to the 400,000 civilians under siege?

The military forces of America, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Israel have all been sucked into the Syrian maelstrom.

The failure to stop a civil war may result in a more profound failure to stop a deadly, new Middle East conflict.