Operation Ostrava: Month 15, Week 3, Day 6.

For reasons that are not yet clear on Friday (25/5/12) in the afternoon Syrian government forces shelled the town of al-Houla where Saudi Irregular Army (SIA) fighters were believed to be hiding following the fall of Homs. Once the shelling had stopped non-uniformed and unidentified armed men suddenly appeared on the streets in the evening. They proceeded to go from house to house seemingly randomly rounding up men, women and children who they then either shot or stabbed to death. According to the United Nations Support Mission In Syria (UNSMIS) observers who visited the scene the attack left 92 people dead made up of 60 adults and 32 children under the age of 10.

As it has done with most rational people this massacre has provoked outrage across the international community. The Syrian government immediately opened an investigation into this and two similar but smaller massacres that occurred recently in SIA strongholds in Taldo and al-Shumariyeh. The United States has said that those responsible should be identified and brought to justice while imply that the Syrian government was responsible. Britain is pushing for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in order to use the massacre to; "galvanise the international community in it's efforts [to overthrow the Syrian government]." France is convening a meeting of the stalled Syria Contact Group and has summed up the general mood perfectly by saying that something has to be done.

I couldn't agree with that sentiment more and right now I think that something should involve tracking down exactly who is responsible and doing them great harm. The only problem is that because no-one will trust the Syrian investigation the only independent group available to carry out an investigation are the UNSMIS observers. These are military specialists sent in to monitor a ceasefire. Therefore while they are experts in telling if something was artillery, mortar or grenade fire or how long it should take to move a group of soldiers between two fixed points they have neither the experience or equipment needed to forensically examine a crime scene in order to identify the perpetrators. For that task the only solution I can think of is for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to send in a team of investigators specifically to investigate the events at al-Houla.

The problem is that once the ICC have assembled and mobilised a team they will need either permission from the Syrian government or a UNSC mandate before they can start work. This will take at least a week by which time al-Houla will have been thoroughly sanitised meaning that the results of the ICC investigation will at best be inconclusive. At worst the ICC investigation will find evidence that the SIA were responsible for the massacre. In light of the Charles Taylor verdict this obligates the ICC to issue arrest warrants for the Heads Of Government/State (HOGS) of members of the Syria Contact Group including people like the Queen of England, the King of Saudi Arabia, the US President Barack Obama and the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. These people and their allies are hugely influential within the ICC and simply won't stand for it issuing arrest warrants against them. Therefore the resulting confrontation will likely cause the ICC to break apart setting the course of human civilisation back at least a hundred years.

A much better international response to the al-Houla massacre then would be for the UNSC to revoke resolution 2042(2012) which it had no authority to pass in the first place and replace it with a resolution calling on all nations to stop the supply of weapons and equipment to the SIA and help equip the Syrian government to bring the insurgency to an end while minimising civilian casualties.


Edited at around 21:20 on 27/5/12 to add: Wow BBCNews are properly in fantasy land tonight.

The UNSC is currently in a closed emergency session convened by Russia to discuss the al-Houla massacre. In their main bulletin tonight the BBC have reported that in that meeting the head of the UNSMIS observer team blamed the Syrian government entirely for the massacre. Now obviously I haven't seen the report that the head of UNSMIS gave to the closed session but I did see the interview he gave moments before hand. In that interview he stated that a small number (around 20) of mainly young men of combat age were killed by indirect (artillery) fire which was the responsibility of the Syrian government but a much larger number (the 92) were killed by small arms fire and stab wounds caused by persons unknown in a seperate incident.

Now I know that the BBC's editorial standards have gone off the edge of a cliff recently but I don't think I've ever seen a news report that is that far detached from reality in my life.