On the brink

The eight-month long lethal crackdown by the Syrian government against an opposition uprising has begun to spiral toward civil war, leading to a historic raft of punitive measures by Arab nations and increased calls for a humanitarian intervention by the opposition and France.

A United Nations commission of inquiry has accused President Bashar al Assad's regime of committing crimes against humanity, saying in a report based on evidence presented by 223 victims that "orders to shoot and otherwise mistreat civilians originated from policies and directives issued at the highest levels of the armed forces and government."

The UN estimates that 4,000 civilians have been killed since the opposition uprising began in March. The human rights organization Amnesty International has called for an investigation of the Assad regime by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

International isolation

The Arab and Islamic worlds, meanwhile, have roundly condemned the lethal crackdown by the Assad regime, taking unprecedented measures to isolate the Syrian government. The Arab League suspended the membership of Syria, one of the institution's founders, and imposed sanctions after Assad's government failed to fully implement a plan that called for the withdrawal of military forces from civilian areas, the release political detainees and the initiation of talks with the political opposition.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the world's largest Islamic body, called on Assad to "immediately stop using excessive force against citizens and to respect human rights." And Turkey, once a close Assad ally, has frozen assets and banned transactions with Syria's central bank "until a legitimate government which is at peace with its people is in charge," according to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Although international diplomatic pressure has rapidly escalated over the past weeks, the violent crackdown continues as the humanitarian situation deteriorates. Increasingly, members of Syria's conscript army have begun to defect and join an organization called the Free Syrian Army, which has launched hit and run attacks against loyalist security forces.

"They (the opposition) are peaceful demonstrators so far, but they will not be able to tolerate more humiliation," Syrian rights activist Mousab Azzawi told Deutsche Welle.

"They are all tempted by the Syrian Free Army to hold arms…if you want a clear answer in one sentence, yes, the country is on the brink of civil war."

Humanitarian situation

Thousands of Syrians have fled the violence for camps in neighboring Lebanon and Turkey. UN human rights chief Valerie Amos said that approximately three million of Syria's 20 million people have been affected by Assad's crackdown on protesters. Amos said the Red Crescent has requested international help to feed 1.5 million Syrians.

Azzawi told Deutsche Welle that the Syrian government has launched a campaign of collective punishment in which it cuts clean water, gas and diesel to cities known for opposition activism such as Hama, Homs and Idlib. He said security forces then arrest activists and burn their homes.

"They don't have food, they don't have access to any kind of medicine," Azzawi said. "All the pharmacies, when there is an operation, are shut down by the order of the security forces."

Sectarian nightmares

As the humanitarian situation deteriorates, there are reports of sectarian violence within Syria, a majority Sunni Muslim country composed of a mosaic of minority groups including Alawites, Christians and Druze. Syrian President Assad's family is Alawite, a sect of Shiite Islam.

Radwan Ziadeh, founder of the Damascus Center for Human Rights, told Deutsche Welle that the Assad regime is arming the Alawites in a bid to instigate sectarian bloodshed in order to secure its hold on power, which could lead to full scale civil war.

President Assad is holding "the Alawite minority as hostages for the regime," according to activist Azzawi. He said that the regime has killed minority Christians and blamed it on Islamists in the hope of scaring them into supporting the government.

Azzawi said that the sectarian dimensions of the violence could ignite a broader war in the Middle East, as ancient tribal loyalties cross the relatively young and arbitrary borders of Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria. He believes that the international community should intervene now to prevent the violence in Syria from dragging the region into chaos.

"It's a cascade, they have to step in to stop it now," Azzawi said. "Otherwise, it would be disastrous and they will pay in the future more than they will pay now to get the situation back to normal because the civil war will not be restricted to the boundaries of Syria."

Calls for intervention

The head of the opposition Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun, has called for an international intervention to protect civilians while the French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, has raised the prospect of humanitarian corridors to bring emergency aid to the Syrian people.

Ziadeh, a visiting scholar with the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University, said that the UN Security Council (UNSC) should pass a resolution to impose a no-fly zone in the air and buffer zone on the ground along the Turkish border. This would create a secure area where army defectors could flee and then stage their own fight for the liberation of Syria.

International intervention, however, faces the conspicuous opposition of China and Russia, both veto-wielding members of the Security Council. And intervention from the outside "could well be a catastrophic escalation…that would both distract from the protest movement's goals and diminish its chances of success," according to the International Crisis Group.

Ziadeh said the Syrians are upset with the international community for not taking more forceful action as they are killed day after day.

"The Assad regime rejected all the proposals, even the Arab initiative," Ziadeh said. This is why there are no options for Syrians right now other than to use force to defend themselves and to get their freedom and dignity from the Assad regime."

Author: Spencer Kimball
Editor: Michael Knigge