Pursued by violence, pawns in Syrian conflict await an endgame | Jonathan Steele (The Guardian)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/20/pawns-syrian-conflict-await-endgame
Criticism of FSA tactics is building, dialogue seems unlikely and many feel the country’s future will be decided by outsiders. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis grows ever worse Source: The Guardian
Passionnant article de Jonathan Steele: Pursued by violence, pawns in Syrian conflict await an endgame
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/20/pawns-syrian-conflict-await-endgame
Discussion among Damascenes no longer centres on whether to support change or stick with the status quo for fear that the alternative to Bashar al-Assad’s regime will be worse. The focus is on priorities. Which objective is more urgent: to stop the killing or to topple a regime that has shown greater resilience than many predicted?
The argument that the opposition should negotiate with the regime about reform was never popular, given the regime’s rejection of compromise and its record of detaining critics. Dialogue now seems an even more remote option.
Conversation centres on the tactics of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), or at least of those bands of young men who fight the government under its banner without co-ordination from any centre. Are they right to come into city districts and attack police and army buildings, knowing that retaliation will be massive, bloody and brutal? The army is to blame for destroying people’s homes, but had the FSA not provoked it the homes might still be there and people might be alive.