Arab League Mission in Syria Ends as Crackdown Continues
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KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images(DAMASCUS, Syria) — The Arab League monitoring mission in Syria ended Thursday with little to show for its effort.
Observers were supposed to have checked if President Bashar al-Assad was fulfilling a promise to remove government forces and heavy artillery from cities where pro-democracy dissidents have come under fire for the past 10 months.
The United Nations puts the death toll since the crackdown began last March at over 5,500, with al-Assad claiming that 2,000 members of government forces being killed.
During the time the Arab League monitors went from city to city, a human rights group estimates that nearly 750 people were killed as soldiers reportedly held their fire whenever observers showed up in a city and then resumed shooting after they left.
The Arab League will decide on Sunday whether to continue the mission, although critics said it was time to turn the matter over to the United Nations Security Council, which al-Assad is firmly against.
Even before the mission began, critics said it was too small and too limited to observe the full impact of the deadly crackdown. Furthermore, many of the observers were from Arab countries that also greatly restrict human rights.
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