...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
monitors could hardly have confronted more tragic evidence of the bloodshed convulsing Syria than the corpse of a five-year-old boy laid out on a rug in a mosque in the city of Homs.
"His name is Ahmed Mohammed al-Rai," a man tells the two monitors. "Look at this. This happened despite the presence of the vaporous Arab League."
A mourner then pulls back the white shroud to show a bloodied bandage and a bullet hole in the boy's back. The scene was captured on an activist's mobile phone, posted on Youtube.
The deployment of dozens of Arab League peace monitors to Syria was the first international intervention on the ground in nine months of ferociously repressed protests against
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Supressor of the Damascenes...
's government.
But if it initially raised hopes among the opposition, the prospects of them bringing an immediate end to the violence were soon shown to be dim.
Three days into the mission, a harassed-looking monitor told a restless crowd in a mosque in the Damascus
...The
City of Jasminis the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
suburb of Douma: "Our goal is to observe...it is not to remove the president, our aim to is return Syria to peace and security."
Footage of the incident was broadcast by al-Jazeera.
The crackdown by government forces appears to have gone on unabated since the first monitor teams arrived in Syria, with about 139 anti-government protesters killed across the country, by a Rooters count.
Syrian protesters, opposition leaders and foreign commentators are now questioning the worth of the monitors' mission, some suggesting it will merely provide a cover for further repression. The appointment of a general from Sudan, a country with a dire human rights
One man's rights are another man's existential threat.
record, to lead it has also cast doubt on its integrity.
What it can realistically do to force the Assad government to ease the crackdown and negotiate with the opposition -- and what it can do if he refuses -- is unclear.
A blow was dealt to the peace mission on Sunday, when an Arab League advisory panel said it should give up in light of the unrelenting bloodshed.
"This is giving the Syrian regime an Arab cover for continuing its inhumane actions under the eyes and ears of the Arab League," chairman Ali al-Salem al-Dekbas said in Cairo.