The Bloodshed In Syria Is Just Beginning

Why The Killing In Syria Is Just the Beginning -- Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy

The international community’s failure on Syria limits its power to act against the even bigger bloodletting that’s likely to happen down the road.

Earlier this month, the United Nations announced its assessment that 59,648 people have died in Syria's two-year-old civil war. That headline figure is grim, but U.N. human rights commissioner Navi Pillay made a point of noting that the real number is almost certainly higher. The overwhelming majority of those people were civilians. Far too many of them were children.

That should have been a call to action. It wasn't. The government's attacks against civilians continue unabated. U.N. Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has accomplished next to nothing. The daily death tolls continue to spiral. Unless the international community does something, the total is going to be far higher.

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My Comment: Civil wars throughout history have always had the tendency to start small ..... and then accelerate within a year or two into casualty rates that are truly horrific. Regular readers of this blog know that I have been saying the same thing since the summer of 2012 on the Syrian civil war .... that the real bloodshed has yet to come. Now .... at the end of January 2013 .... and after almost two years of civil war .... the killing fields are in full operation. Do not surprise to see casualty rates go through the roof starting this spring .... and when this civil war is finally over .... 200,000+ dead, 500,000+ wounded, and 3-4 million refugees.