The Scene and Setting: a battle-scarred wasteland of ruin and desolation, located to the east/north-east of Palestine...where Syrian Government forces, backed by the Russian military machine, fight it out with rebel forces and Sissii sympathizers in mainly urban enclaves throughout the land. In an odd cat-and-mouse juxtaposition with American forces supporting anti-Government Kurdish 'rebels' in the north.
The Diagnosis: Help for innocent civilians needed on every hand, especially for the establishment of 'safe corridors' out of danger into less threatened areas or out of Syria altogether as outcasts/refugees.
The Prognosis: Not too good.
Reason: The above military situation, topped off by a 'too little, too late' response by the United Nations, which has effectively been found to be 'missing in inaction'. As per usual.
No, you vehemently protest, the U.N. has indeed been involved, and on an ongoing basis, and for some considerable time, continually negotiating truces between the various warring parties. Yes, that's quite indisputable. It has indeed. But, really, where has it gotten things?
Only nowhere fast. It's been completely ineffective, ever lacking the military means and 'suasion' necessary to achieve its noble as, well-intentioned ends. True, its ongoing efforts to secure safe corridors for civilian passage out of conflict zones are providing a temporary breather or several to many Syrian civilians caught up unwittingly in the conflict...that is, until the next military assault and onslaught by Bashir al-Assad's forces with their Russian confederates...who, without batting an eye, readily regroup during said peace pauses and then swiftly move in once more like all-consuming locusts to devour yet another swathe of Syrian opponents cum neighbouring innocents.
No, on this one I'm entirely in agreement with New Zealand's former Prime Minister, Helen Clark, who recently remarked on how shameful the U.N. response to the entire saga has been. And how effectively impotent it and its new Secretary-General, the former Portuguese Prime Minister, has been in the apparently intractable conflict. And surely she should know. Yes, perhaps she's still resentful at having been pipped at the post (evidently by a country mile) by the new United Nations head, for that job, that's probably a given. Yet as #3 at the U.N. for the three years preceding her recent bid, heading the United Nations Food and Aid Programme, she's probably just as piqued knowing that she herself knew precisely the problem and what to do about it.
Supposedly. One can only assume that that was in the back of Ms Clark's methodical, detail-oriented and solution-driven mind. But even if she'd been U.N. head herself, how the heck can one get what has effectively been a sabreless tiger to exert any real coercion, moral or otherwise, over those (such as Assad and his Russian allies - let alone Sissii International) who have no inclination whatsoever to desist from their butchery and bloodshed. Little hope - in reality.
But dreams are ever free, and after all, without any such hope, we're ultimately all doomed!
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