The Syrian civil war

The brutality of the Syrian rebels asks question of the West

A chilling video showing a Syrian rebel commander cutting open a dead man’s chest, ripping out his heart and biting into it has emerged. Is this the future of Syria’s future envisioned by the West? While bringing democracy to Syria may be a noble cause, what is the limit of the crimes we are willing to accept in its name? The rebel commander in question, known as Abu Sakkar, admitted the act to the Time magazine and made a chilling claim, “Hopefully we will slaughter all of them [Alawites], have another video clip that I will send to them. In the clip I am sawing another Shabiha [pro-government militiaman] with a saw.”

Like Libya before, the US and its allies appear to be set to arm a breed of sectarian killers to Syria, including those affiliated with Al Qaeda. It is a strange matrix, while on one side, the US and its allies claim they are fighting a war against Al Qaeda and terrorist networks around the world, on the other, it continues to fund extremist militants bent upon committing a sectarian genocide in Syria. The strategy is reminiscent of how the CIA brought the Taliban in power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, only later to decide they were not their ‘preferred option’ in the land of the Afghans.

While there is no doubt that the Bashar al Assad-led Syrian government committed war crimes during the civil war, but the barbarism of those out to remove the Syrian regime surpasses them. Despite the brutalities coming to the fore, the British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that Britain would double its aid to the Syrian rebels. The question to ask is: who will be responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the Alawites that certain rebel commanders are promising. Russia has continued to insist that a violent overthrow of the Syrian regime shall also destabilise Muslim majority regions in the Russian Federation, from whom links are emerging to the Boston Marathon bombing. There is a need to enforce the suggestions of the Geneva peace conference in June 2012, which called for the Syrian government and the opposition to create a transitional government to steer the peace process in Syria. The proposal of Russia and the US to host a joint international conference this month to “persuade the Assad regime and Syrian opposition into talks on a political transition” is a positive one. But no positive step will be taken unless the US abandons the demand that al Assad steps down before the process begins. One has to come to terms with the fact that the rebels are not committed to due process and as the Human Rights Watch has insisted: both the government and rebel forces should be subjected to international conflict laws. Whatever the result may be, the brutal violence of today is not Syria’s fate and a way out is required.