Assuming responsibility

W

hen the Syrian regime showed heavy-handedness in suppressing the nascent Syrian uprising five years ago, the Arab League immediately suspended its membership in the pan-Arab organisation and most Arab states severed diplomatic relations with it. 

Since then, Russia used even harsher methods of war to silence the Syrian opposition, killing, in the process, thousands of civilians on a daily basis, yet the Arab countries never dared break relations with it, although it still remains an open option to them.

Now the Syrian conflict has reached a deadlock after the collapse of the US-Russian brokered ceasefire on September 11.

The two superpowers are not even on talking terms; US Secretary of State John Kerry threatened to stop Moscow’s engagement in Syria as long as the Russian killing machine continues in full force.

Meanwhile, the Syrian people are paying the price and dying by the hundreds on an almost daily basis without any side as much as lifting a finger.

Russia’s anger and disappointment with the US over the recent developments in Syria is taking a toll only on the innocent people of Syria and Moscow does not seem to care.

Russia’s heavy-handedness needs to be deterred, but the Arab countries are not prepared to cut diplomatic relations with Russia.

So what could be next?

At the rate things are happening in Syria, very soon the country will be totally destroyed and few people left alive.

Human life does not seem to figure at all in either Russian or US diplomatic equations.

People are expendable as long as Moscow and Washington want to settle scores.

Of course, the UN and its Security Council are impotent as usual in settling conflicts. 

Not even His Holiness the Pope was able to persuade the international community to put an end to the carnage and destruction in Syria.

Soon Syria will enter the seventh year of conflict, a war that has lasted longer than the two great wars. 

At the end of the day, it is the Arab nation that should end the conflict.

The Arab states have the tools and the money to do that, but will they awaken to this responsibility?