The horrible images coming out of Khan Sheikhun in Syria’s northern province of Idlib are both shocking and mind-numbing. The pictures of lifeless little ones in the arms of their parents and relatives are heart-breaking.
No words can describe this and other horrors that have been visited upon the innocent people of Syria by an inhuman and murderous regime.
This is not the first time the Bashar Assad regime has used chemical weapons against its own people. Nor most likely is it the last. The first time these weapons of mass destruction were used was in August 2013 in Ghouta.
The Assad regime was not held accountable for that, despite tough talk from the then-US President Barack Obama.
In contrast this time, the world seems united in its condemnation of the regime’s barbarous and abominable act. Nonetheless, there is one country that continues to stand by a dictator whose appetite for blood-letting and killing does not seem to have been slaked even now.
Russia maintains the attack came from opposition fighters. There is, however, clear evidence to the contrary. The attack was, according to the evidence, the result of an aerial bombing and only the regime has aircraft. The opposition has none.
It defies logic and good sense as to why Russia would stand on the wrong side of history. How many more Syrians need to die for the calculations in Moscow to change? More than 400,000 have died in the war and more than 5 million have been uprooted from their land and scattered to countries far and near.
The chemical attack is — as US President Donald Trump rightly said — an affront to humanity.
There has been far too much dilly-dallying at the UN. For much too long, the fate of Syrians has been held hostage to the deadly game of Russian roulette. The business of the veto must stop. And with it, the dance of death in Syria can also be stopped.
Russia must, for the sake of humanity, join the world in stopping the devil in Damascus from raining more death and destruction upon innocent people.
