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Failed Syrian ceasefire
[Dawn] DESPITE the bitterness of the conflict that has raged in Syria for the last 19 months many of us had entertained the hope that the warring parties would honour UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimis painfully negotiated ceasefire. After all, it was to cover only the four-day Eidul Azha holiday.It did not appear to be designed to offer either side an unfair opportunity to regroup or to replenish supplies. All it could do was give the beleaguered Syrian people a respite from the unremitting shelling, bombing and IEDs causing an average of 150 casualties per day. It had the backing of Turkey and Iran, the two regional states that were the principal source of support for the hard boyz and the government respectively. These hopes were belied. The government claimed that they broke the ceasefire agreement only after their forces were attacked or after hard boyz planted IEDs. The first major incident was the kaboom of a car boom in a residential area of Damascus ...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world... in which, according to Syrian official media, the casualty count was 15 dead civilians, including eight children, and 92 maimed, among them 65 children. Somewhat belatedly, thug forces claimed that this was engineered by the government. But the governments riposte, if that is what it was, seemed totally out of place. The heaviest air raids of the conflict were carried out in this four-day period according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is generally credited with having good sources within Syria and claims to be an impartial observer of the carnage. UN Secretary General  the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan... expressed deep disappointment that the ceasefire had not held while Lakhdar Brahimi, in Moscow for talks with the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, said that the Syrian crisis is very, very dangerous; the situation is bad and getting worse. The Russian foreign minister expressed his disappointment but also reiterated the Russian view that the western nations should negotiate a political settlement with the Assad regime. Posted by: Fred 2012-11-01 |
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