Calamity

It is as if there is a fire in the neighborhood — and everybody tries to look the other way.

Mass murder happens in Syria each day. Peaceful towns are assaulted by tanks. Children are tortured to death. Helicopters machinegun citizens sleeping in their homes, raining indiscriminate fire on the unarmed. Wounded activists are hunted down and brutally executed.

Even livestock is not spared. In a northern Syrian town abandoned by terrified residents, Bashir Assad’s soldiers let out their rage on cattle. Perfectly healthy cows were gunned down in what appears to be a scorched earth policy waged by the Damascus regime against its own people.

The reality on the ground in Syria baffles the imagination. Corpses of protesters gunned down by the army are seized in order to prevent funerals that invariably metamorphose into angry demonstrations. The funerals that do happen, and that do invariably metamorphose into demonstrations, are mowed down with automatic rifle fire.

Thousands of horrified Syrians crossed borders into Lebanon and Turkey. Tens of thousands more are expected to cross in the coming weeks, stretching out the capacities of these two countries to deal with a humanitarian calamity.

A UN resolution condemning the carnage in Syria was blocked by Russia and China. Whatever sanctions have been imposed on the Assad regime were done so unilaterally by countries outraged by the horror a tyrannical state unleashed on its own people.

Yet, despite all the blood and the numbing casualty toll, the courage of ordinary Syrians remains undiminished.

Day after day, week after week, for months now, they boldly step out to the streets to demand an end to the tyrannical regime that ruled the country for decades. They do so even as they expect to be mowed down by gunfire, picked off by snipers or dragged to torture chambers by the secret police.

The Assad regime does what even the insane Gadhafi regime in Tripoli did not even attempt to do: bar all journalists from entering Syria and documenting the events. This regime thinks that by barring the entry of journalists, they could blind the world to their atrocities. The Syrian people themselves, however, have boldly documented the brutality and released most disturbing images to the rest of humanity using social media. Here citizen journalism takes on a more courageous tack.

Unfortunately, the democratic rising in Syria happens at a moment of democratic fatigue.

Outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was unusually blunt in his farewell speech before the NATO. He took the alliance to task for failing to muster the resources to effectively carry out the UN mandate calling for action to protect Libyans from Gadhafi’s rampaging armed units. Only half of the programmed air sorties have been performed, underscoring the limited military capacity of the European powers.

Early on, the US signaled its European allies that they will have to do more of the heavy lifting in dealing with Gadhafi’s substantial military apparatus. After participating in the first wave of air strikes, US planes withdrew to their bases and allowed French and British air forces to contribute more to the job.

The Europeans, however, are divided on playing the role assigned by the UN resolution the democracies sought. Germany decided she will not participate in the Libyan theater. Britain, after committing forces to Iraq and then Afghanistan, did not seem to have enough to spare in the effort to debilitate Gadhafi’s repressive apparatus.

Last week, Gadhafi’s forces resumed intense bombardment of the heroic city of Misrata. For days, as many more civilians were killed in indiscriminate bombardment, NATO helicopters were nowhere to be seen.

The US, meanwhile, was more focused on unfolding events in Yemen. The Americans are concerned the significant Al Qaeda network in that country could take advantage of the political turmoil enveloping the poorest Arab country.

The Arab League, which at least made some unconvincing noises when Gadhafi began attacking his own people, remained strangely silent on events unfolding in Syria. Tyrannical governments in countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are fearful the democratic contagion could spread in their own societies.

The democratic union, if there is such a thing, is overstretched.

The Europeans and the North Americans are increasingly reluctant to get militarily involved in every instance when a callous government begins attacking its own people. The cost of doing so is unbearable in these tight economic times. The domestic political support for doing so is often unavailable.

Some diplomats, testing the waters, have floated the idea that Turkey perhaps should play the principal role in resolving the unfolding calamity in Syria. The Turks, already burdened with the influx of terrified refugees streaming across the borders, show little enthusiasm for playing more than a humanitarian role.

Practical political realities all around appear to doom the Syrian people.

 They are fighting for virtues that many living in open societies might take for granted: individual dignity, the accountability of government to its people and the recognition of certain fundamental rights as inalienable. In Syria, as in Libya and Tunisia and Bahrain and many other places, these are virtues to be won with a substantial investment in heroism.

Syria, of course, is rather off our foreign policy radar. Few Filipinos work there. The country has no oil. Besides, we are busy dealing with China’s incursions into our territory.

A small word of comfort or a slight gesture of encouragement from our end will be appreciated by a brutalized people for whom the so-called “Arab Spring” is quickly turning into a torrid summer of repression.