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Arab League Advisors Say Withdraw Monitors

 

Bashar al-Assad did what ten months of protests didn’t – he convinced the Arab League that he is a lying, murderous despot with no intentions of living up to his agreements.

An advisory board to the Arab League has recommended that the monitors be withdrawn, because there has been no relief of the crackdown on the protesters and for the safety of the monitors themselves. The al-Assad regime arrogantly thought they could open fire on the protesters just a block from the monitors and get away with it. Approximately 150 people have been killed since the monitors arrived. The United Nations estimates the death toll at 5,000 civilians. They do not count members of the Syrian military or security forces who have been killed by defectors from the Army.

The Speaker of the Arab Parliament, Salem al-Diqbassi, issued a statement saying that the continued attacks “in the presence of the Arab monitors has roused the anger of the Arab people and negates the purpose of sending a fact-finding mission. This is giving the Syrian regime an Arab cover for continuing its inhuman actions under the eyes and ears of the Arab League.” The parliament is an 88-person committee comprised of delegates from the member states. It has no binding powers and is separate from the Arab League. It does make recommendations to the League.

The al-Assad regime had signed an agreement with the Arab League to withdraw troops and tanks from the cities, end the armed repression of the protests, allow humanitarian aid and foreign journalists, allow Arab League monitors and in return, the Arab League would lift the sanctions. Now, the Arab League is justified in moving into the next phase of planned sanctions which could shut down the Syrian economy practically overnight.

Bashar al-Assad believes that he can survive this just as his father survived the 1983 uprising. But this isn’t the same situation. There is no Muslim Brotherhood inciting rebellion, and the rest of the Arab world isn’t going to ignore what he is doing. He cannot control the flow of information into or out of his country. At the moment, he has support from the cities of Damascus and Aleppo, but if the Arab League imposes the next round of economic sanctions, those cities will begin to suffer, and no amount of propaganda from state television will override the messages being received via the internet and social networking.

If Bashar al-Assad isn’t as insane as Moammar Qaddafi, then he’s vying for the prize as stupidest dictator in modern history.