Dubai: With Kofi Annan pronouncing the death of his mission to bring peace to the 16-month bloody conflict in Syria, the issue that had started as a typical public demand for democracy and freedom is entering its darkest stage with no political efforts in place to stop the killing in the country.
Political analysts and activists from inside the country and in exile told Gulf News that the conflict in Syria is now open to more escalation of violence since no oneseems capable of stopping the killing machine.
Since Annan was appointed as the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria in 23 February, more than 4,000 people were killed and nearly one million were displaced from their homes. Annan failed to convince the government to start the implementation of his six-point plan by pulling heavy weapons from residential areas and start political operation that would eventually lead to the allow Syrian to decide the shape to their political system and freely elect their leaders.
Annan told the French newspaper Le Monde yesterday that international efforts to find a political solution to the violence in Syria are failing.
“Evidently, we haven’t succeeded,” the former UN secretary general said
Annan’s mission is the third political initiative after two previous initiatives by the League of the Arab Countries failed to achieve their goals.
Michele Kilo, Syrian political analyst and former prisoner of conscience, who left Syria five months ago to live in Paris, said the uprising than had began peacefully some 16 months ago had evolved into a deadly confrontation has resulted in the death of 16,000 people, the imprisonment of 100,000 and more than 1.5 million people were forced to leave their homes — with more than 150,000 fleeing to neighouring countries.
She said the international community has to reconsider its strategy, and it has to force President Bashar Al Assad, whose family has seized the power in military coup in 1970 ,to leave Syrian to forge its future in a democratic manner.
Kilo, who was invited to visit Moscow in this week along with the chairman of the Syrian National Council in exile as part of Russian efforts to initiate a dialogue between the opposition and the government, said there is nothing to stop the escalation of war between Al Assad forces and the people of Syria.
The current stance of Russia is not going to help putting an end to the conflict it will rather allow intensive militarization of the revolution.
“I, who had always called for a peaceful uprising to change the dictator regime of Al Assad family, have recently convinced that Syrians should be enabled to defend themselves and their families against the blood thirst forces of Al Assad,” he said.
Bassam Jaara, a London-Based representative of Syrian revolution in Europe told Gulf News that Annan’s mission has started with no life line because it was born without teeth. He said the death announcement of mission was not a surprise for many people, including those in the regime.
“The regime will not leave the power voluntarily,” Jaara said. “There should be a kind of force to oblige it to leave. If the Security Council resolution is not possible because of Russia-China vetoes, the world have been left with no option but to form a coalition for peace outside the United Nations. Syrian conflict is a threat to international peace and it must not be allowed to continue unchecked,”
The other option, he said, is the full arming of the revolution.
“What is quite clear at this stage that the regime can not continue to rule Syria and the nation has exercised enough resolution to prove to the world that people of Syria will not accept anything less than full democratic system,” he said. “ If the world is not willing to fight the regime then arming of the revolution, although it is dangerous, could bring an end for the killing of civilians by the forces and the militia of the regime.”
