Syria Arab League

They're finally there: the 150 observers of the Arab League have arrived in Syria to make sure that human rights are no longer being spurned and that the opposition is no longer being tortured and murdered by the regime's security forces. One hundred and fifty observers - initial plans numbered them at 500 - have arrived in a country which is half the size of Germany, and where the situation is close to civil war on almost half the territory.

This mission was a difficult one from the start, and it's not getting any easier with the regime's security forces' ongoing activities of subtle undermining. The Assad regime has withdrawn its tanks from Homs, the protest stronghold - for now. But they're bound to have been put on standby somewhere close by, to be deployed against the opposition activists again as soon as the small group of observers have left.

It comes as no surprise that the observers will not have access to military facilities. That's why the political prisoners, whose release the observers are to oversee, have most likely been transferred there. A number of examples of similar cases of chicanery by the Syrian regime were reported just hours after the mission officially began. Road signs are said to have been exchanged on purpose to make it more difficult for the monitors to gain access to other protest strongholds.

Hopes for the mission to achieve a major breakthrough hadn't exactly been high even before it started - in part because the mission is led by the Sudanese General Mohammed Mustafa al-Dabi, who didn't exactly stand up for human rights when he was on a mission in Darfur.

Among the 150 observers, who are scheduled to be in Syria until the end of January, there are a number of representatives from neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan - and these countries haven't even begun implementing the sanctions which the Arab League had earlier imposed on Syria. Even with this weak arrangement, Assad only very reluctantly agreed to let the observer mission into the country in the first place. It was only when Russia threatened to sign a resolution in the UN Security Council, which would have entailed further international involvement in the conflict, that Assad was finally forced to give in.

The latest reports of further deaths even this week suggest that he is not going to stop his violent attacks against opposition members. Assad is playing for time. Eventually the mission's success will not depend on the Arab League's observers anyway, but on whether or not the opposition members manage to continue stepping up pressure from within.

They have to convince the minorities in the country that toppling Assad wouldn't necessarily lead to an Islamistic dictatorship run by Sunnis. Which is what many people in Syria fear just as much as they fear a continuation of Assad's reign of terror.

Author: Daniel Scheschkewitz / nh
Editor: Rob Mudge