Editorial: End of a mission Sunday, 29 January 2012 04:13

With the Arab League’s decision to suspend its monitoring mission in Syria, the crisis in the country and the Arab and global reaction to it have entered a new phase.

“Given the critical deterioration of the situation in Syria and the continued use of violence ... it has been decided to immediately stop the work of the Arab League’s mission to Syria pending pretension of the issue to the league’s council,” the League’s secretary-general said in a statement yesterday. The statement didn’t come as a surprise because the mission had run into a controversy and its efficacy was questioned by the Syrian opposition as well as some Arab countries and the international community. The reason was that the mission failed in its most important objective: put an end to the repression of Syrians by the Bashar Al Assad’s forces. The uptick in the violence, which has killed at least 80 people across the country, even as the mission was doing its work infuriated the Arab leaders, and a pullout was the only option available to them though there was no unanimity on the assessment of the work done by the monitors. Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia pulled out of the mission Tuesday, asking the UN Security Council to intervene.

The pullout decision will now set the stage for a UN intervention in Syria, in a form that will be decided after consultations between the Arab League and the UN Security Council members who have differing opinions on the issue. By refusing to cooperate with the monitors and ignoring their pleas for withdrawing troops from the streets, the Assad regime has committed a serious mistake. If it was able to treat the monitors with a degree of contempt and ignore their threats, it will not be able to do the same when the UN intervenes.

The rising bloodshed and the halt to the Arab mission now adds a sense of urgency to new attempts by Arab and Western countries to find a resolution to the ten months of uprising that has killed around 5,400 people. Arab states which had pinned their hopes on the monitors will now channelize their energies to speed up a UN intervention. Western states, which had watched from the sidelines until now expecting the Arab League to tackle the issue on its own, will now step in and enjoy the broad support of the international community for their plan of action.

The Syrian regime is fully aware of the dangers involved in the Arab League pullout. The government yesterday said the suspension of the monitoring mission was an attempt to influence the UN Security Council and increase the pressure for foreign intervention. It’s true. And the regime should have known.