We have become numb to Syria’s growing horrors
IT is not as if we did not know what the Assad regime was capable of.
Even before it turned to chemical weapons, the violence its army used was extreme, public and shameless. This did nothing to lessen the determination of his international supporters, including some in the Western media, that whatever his sins, it would be better for President Bashar al-Assad to remain in place.
They have argued that it is better for a regime that has gunned down protesters, killed tens of thousands of civilians in aerial and other bombardments of residential areas, and tortured and starved activists to death in industrial numbers to remain in power than that the rebels should overthrow it, or the West should once again take the risk of trying to shape events in the Middle East to help bring about this outcome.
They persevered in that determination even after the chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs last year, when regime Volcano rockets and M140 missiles delivered huge quantities of sarin to areas already under army attack, killing perhaps 1 400 people.
Indeed, Assad won new converts as the conspiracy theories, created by his backers as a blind to what had happened, won a new crowd of enthusiasts — as such theories always do.
At this stage, the Russians played the part expected of them, stating sternly that they had definitive evidence the attack was ordered by the rebels, not Assad.
Vladimir Putin and his mouthpiece, Sergei Lavrov, then went mysteriously silent when asked why they could not present this evidence to the world, even in summary.
Effectively, their argument has now won the day. The balance of terror in this war — the use of chemicals, mass murder, the torture and killing of children, the totally indiscriminate use of force — remains overwhelmingly on the side of the regime; no one seriously doubts this or argues otherwise.
Most countries, including Syria’s Arab neighbours, want to see Assad gone, yet it is as if his ability to stay in place has become boring and his very stickability a reason for the rest of the world to lose interest.
There is nothing to be done, so why bother caring? The latest chemical attacks Assad has carried out have mustered a few paragraphs on the back pages of the world press.
It is like a football league whose title has already been awarded to a terrible side without merit through some technical default. The rest of the season’s games are still being played, but they do not matter and no one takes any notice.
In September last year, I interviewed a Syrian army general, Zaher al-Sakat, who ran a chemical warfare unit before defecting. He described in detail how the army prepared the low-level, chlorine-based attacks used by the regime in the war until it turned to sarin in the second quarter of last year. I thought the reaction to my article was interesting — like Sherlock Holmes and the dog that did not bark.
There is nothing to be done, so why bother caring?
There was no reaction. No one came forward to dispute his account or question the details on scientific grounds. No one denounced the general as a fraud or said I had been duped. Once the world began focusing on the bigger horrors, the lesser ones came to be happily accepted. This is the process by which we are inured to what is going on in Syria.
My interview with Sakat coincided with Assad’s confirmation that he had a huge arsenal of chemical weapons, something he had never admitted before, and a confession that did nothing to dent the belief of many in his veracity on other issues.
We now know he has long had a large chemical inventory, the expertise to use it, the weaponry to deliver it.
Sakat has described how it was done and we have videos of the weapons being dropped from helicopters and landing in villages.
Now we have the readings to show the presence of the chemicals in the environment where they landed. Will it make any difference? Will the killing stop? There seems little reason to think so.