It’s time to stop the war crimes in Syria

Television news footage showing dozens of dead and wounded people, victims of an air raid last week on a United Nations aid convoy in Aleppo, Syria, attested to the international community’s abject failure in its efforts to curb senseless attacks against civilians in a senseless war. The victims were scattered around the floor and outside of a makeshift medical facility as volunteers and relatives searched for cleared spaces to lay them for treatment or identification.

With the civilian death toll continuing to rise, an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council was held on Sunday to discuss ways to halt the madness. In place of humanitarian solutions, however, key member-states appeared more interested in protecting their political positions. It would have been wonderful if the machinery of war could at least be slowed enough to find even a temporary measure to halt the bombardment of a historic city, Syria’s pre-war commercial centre. Aleppo, though, is now a murderous strategic hub, through which weapons and supplies are funnelled from Turkey, 50 kilometres away.

Initial evidence suggests Syrian and Russian jet fighters carried out the air raid last week, part of an all-out assault to take Aleppo back from anti-government rebel forces. By then it had become clear that a just-signed ceasefire agreement brokered by the United States and Russia was not going to hold. That truce was meant to facilitate aid access to besieged areas. Moscow is backing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and Washington the insurgents trying to oust him, but both sides hold in contempt the Muslim jihadists in the fighters’ midst.

“It is difficult to deny that Russia is partnering with the Syrian regime to carry out war crimes,” declared Matthew Rycroft, Britain’s point man at the United Nations. He said Russian military technology has created “a new hell” for Syria. Russia and Syria for their part accuse the United States, in its support for the anti-regime rebels, of backing terrorism.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that the use of advanced weaponry against civilians could indeed constitute war crimes. The conflict is a “nightmare”, he said, with hundreds of thousands of people killed and nearly half a million displaced.

Because of the complexity of the conflict, no one actually expected the latest ceasefire to last. But, at the same time, no one expected that one of the belligerents might attack an aid convoy, killing many of the very people trying to help the citizenry. US Secretary of State John Kerry said the air raid had raised “profound doubt whether Russia and the Assad regime can or will live up to” any ceasefire obligations. His Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, perhaps in a bid to save face, called for an independent investigation into the attack.

The military violence against civilians must stop. The United Nations and the countries involved should move beyond the shouted allegations and fortify their words with legal action. There has been endless talk of war crimes and “red lines” crossed, none of which has helped in stemming the deliberate attacks on civilians or even the use of chemical weapons. Unless stern action is taken in an international court of law, all such accusations are meaningless.

The world community must find a way to restore credibility to the peace process. As Kerry suggested, a sound place to start would be for all the combatants to ground their fighter aircraft so that the situation in the conflict area can stabilise and humanitarian assistance can be rendered. Maybe, as the smoke clears, a more lasting solution will become visible.