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A Perspective on Syria: Three Pictures About the Massacre in Qubair

A Perspective on Syria: Three Pictures About the Massacre in QubairA Perspective on Syria: Three Pictures About the Massacre in QubairA Perspective on Syria: Three Pictures About the Massacre in Qubair

Just yesterday at least another 80 people were massacred in the Syrian village of Qubair by Assad regime-supported militia.  Women and babies were executed at a low angle, crouching; another turn at Houla. Upon threat of even more brutality the bodies of the victims were buried before U.N and other international outfits could lay witness to the day’s horror.

And what is the international response to all that? Well, ostensibly, a lot of diplomacy. Though when it comes to action, no country with near-monopoly firepower has any appetite for any muscular intervention against the Assad regime. Indeed, as Kofi Annan, the diplomat attending to this crisis–badly, at that– said today standing pat next to Hilary Clinton, his 6-point peace plan is not being implemented.  Or it’s just not plain working. (Is not the plan too feeble now to be implemented?)

Now, as a matter of realpolitik, no bargain between the Assad regime and the international community will move without Russia’s  say-so. Are we to await the Kremlin’s move to entice the Assad regime to step away from power? Is it not too late for that? And what of Russia’s credibility on human rights?

 

Author

Faheem Haider

Faheem Haider is a political analyst, writer and artist. He holds advanced research degrees in political economy, political theory and the political economy of development from the London School of Economics and Political Science and New York University. He also studied political psychology at Columbia University. During long stints away from his beloved Washington Square Park, he studied peace and conflict resolution and French history and European politics at the American University in Washington DC and the University of Paris, respectively.

Faheem has research expertise in democratic theory and the political economy of democracy in South Asia. In whatever time he has to spare, Faheem paints, writes, and edits his own blog on the photographic image and its relationship to the political narrative of fascist, liberal and progressivist art.

That work and associated writing can be found at the following link: http://blackandwhiteandthings.wordpress.com