Syria is a conflict in which the West has NOT intervened. It's done what opponents of liberal interventionism say should be done - it's stayed out of the conflict and let the course of events happen as they happen.
I'm not saying that the case for intervening was overwhelming at the beginning of the uprising against President Assad's Baath regime, but there
was a case and it was briefly debated on here. There's arguably less of case now since the Free Syrian Army has perpetrated its own atrocities in what's become a full-scale civil and international war (with Iran and Hezbollah fighting to uphold the Baathists and the Russians continuing to supply Assad with weapons and spare parts).
What's undeniable however is that non-intervention has not resulted in a more peaceful settling of scores. The rate of killing in Syria is much, much higher than it was in Libya and it's even higher than it was in Iraq at the height of the sectarian war in 2006. At least 93,000 people have died in the conflict so far (each single death is recorded and corroborated). As the UN says the real number might be 130,000. And there is, as yet, no sight of an ending.
I remember Christopher Hitchens saying (in 2001 I think) that there would never be a peaceful alternative to the West toppling Saddam Hussein's Baathi regime. He argued that the murderous regime could not last forever and that if it was left to collapse from within there would be a massive blood-letting. First because the Baathis wouldn't go peacefully. Second because of the intense and repressed resentments generated by years of totalitarian rule from Baghdad.
We now know full well that there was a massive blood-letting anyway - and that American troops, at least until the surge, lost control of the country to the disbanded Baathi soldiers and private sectarian armies. But we also now know that Hitchens was right about the alternative.
The Syrian Baathi regime was a bunch of cuddles compared with Saddam's sister regime in Iraq. Both were species of Fascism, but Saddam's was far more cruel, far more expansionist and far more murderous. Yet look at how the 'soft' version of Baathism has reacted to those Syrians who've challenged its rule. Chemical weapons, mass murder of children, carpet bombing. In return there are parts of the country which are now overrun by those resisting the occupation, sorry, by sectarian fanatics who've latched on to a liberation movement and bled it dry. Towns and cities have been flattened. Millions displaced. Refugees are pouring into neighbouring countries. And there is NO responsible authority in Syria that is trying to stem the flow. It's possible, too, that we've seen nothing yet.
Syria death toll at least 93,000, says UNhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22886730At least 93,000 people have been killed in Syria since the start of the conflict, according to latest United Nations figures.
This represents a rise of more than 30,000 since the UN last issued figures covering the period to November 2012.
At least 5,000 people have been dying in Syria every month since last July, the UN's human rights body says.
But it says these statistics are an underestimate as it believes many deaths have not been reported.
Over 80% of those killed were men, but the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says it has also documented the deaths of more than 1,700 children under the age of 10.
There were "cases of individual children being tortured and executed, and entire families, including babies, being massacred - which, along with this devastatingly high death toll, is a terrible reminder of just how vicious this conflict has become," said OHCHR head Navi Pillay.
The revised toll came the day after a separate global UN report called the number of deaths among Syrian children "unbearable".
The study said government forces and rebels were using boys and girls as "suicide bombers or human shields".
Children in Syria were suffering "maybe the heaviest toll" of anywhere in the world, said UN special representative Leila Zerrougui, who presented the findings .
"They are killed, they are maimed, they are recruited, they are detained, they are tortured", she told journalists in New York.
The report accused Syrian troops of torturing children suspected of having links to rebel groups.
But it said armed opposition groups, including the Free Syrian Army, were also using children, both in combat and in support roles such as transporting supplies and loading cartridges.
Jim Muir
BBC News, BeirutThe latest figures from the UN show clearly that the Syrian conflict is by far the bloodiest and most enduring of all the Arab uprisings. It's the only one that's mutated into a full-scale, heavily militarised civil war.
The casualty figures have risen dramatically, especially since the two biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, became caught up in the violence last July.
Since then, the number of people killed has averaged more than 5,000 every month. Even at the height of the sectarian bloodletting in Iraq in 2006, the monthly death count only twice went over 3,000.With no end in sight for what the UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called the "drastically deteriorating pattern", the UN is braced not only for worsening casualty figures, but also for vast numbers of refugees joining those who have already flooded across the borders into neighbouring countries.
