In Syria, world inaction fuels armed revolt || Washington Post
Growing indications that a deeply divided international community is either unable or unwilling to intervene to halt the violence in Syria are fueling an armed rebellion that risks plunging the country, and perhaps the region, into a wider war.
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Evidence has mounted for months that the once-peaceful Syrian opposition has been resorting to arms, but the fading hope of outside help is hardening the conviction that only violence will dislodge Assad, activists say.
“Until now there is not civil war, but if the international community continues like this, just watching and doing nothing, there will be,” said Omar Shakir, an activist in the Bab Amr neighborhood of Homs, which has emerged as the epicenter of the armed rebellion.
An Arab League monitoring mission has been unable to stop the killing, the Syrian opposition’s mostly exiled political leadership has proved too divided to present a coherent alternative to the Assad government, and the daily death toll tallied by both sides shows the steadily escalating bloodshed.
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“This is not going to stop. It’s becoming an armed rebellion, it’s going to be chaos, and I don’t know why the world doesn’t understand that,” said Rami Jarrah, a Syrian activist living in Cairo who was forced to flee Damascus in October after the security forces learned his identity.
Jarrah and other observers say they fear the inaction will not only encourage opponents of the government to fight but also encourage a drift toward extreme ideologies.
“People are getting more angry now as they realize there won’t be any help,” he said. “It’s building up hatred to the West, and it’s becoming extremism. It’s very dangerous now.”
Protesters have clamored for a NATO no-fly zone similar to the one that helped bring about the fall of Moammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya, but as they come to realize that Western intervention in Syria is unlikely, Islamist groups are winning support, said Wissam Tarif, a human rights campaigner with the activist group Avaaz.
“The only people who are organized and credible are the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis,” he said. “The dangerous thing is almost no one believes in peaceful struggle anymore. They want weapons.”
