Syria: A moral duty to intervene

Since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011 President Bashar al-Assad's autocratic regime has killed over 20,000 people.

Protests first erupted in the southern city of Daraa after Syrian security services arrested and tortured a group of youths. Their crime: spray painting anti-regime slogans on a school wall calling for Assad to step down. Since then the county has descended into a civil war in which up to 25,000 people have died.

How did Syria get here? Assad himself came to power in the year 2000 on the death of his father, Hafiz al-Assad. The regime he inherited, however, has a much longer history. Syria's Ba'ath Party, sister organisation to Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party in Iraq, arose out of the mid-twentieth century movement to unite the Arab people under a single pan-Arabian state. Following the failure of that movement, epitomised by the catastrophic 1948 Arab-Israeli  War, it degenerated into a vehicle of repression through which the minority Alawite clan, of which Assad's family is a part, could dominate the majority Sunni population in Syria. 

It sought to rely on the fears of Shias, Christians and other minorities as to what the Sunni majority would do if they seized power. Those fears, however legitimate, are now far outweighed by the threat Assad poses to the Syrian people as a whole.  At first greeted as a less autocratic, modernising face to the regime, his murderous actions over the past year have put to death any notion that this could be the case. When a regime resorts to the systematic slaughter of its own people it can in no way claim to represent their best hopes of safety. Sunni majority rule has to be worth a try.

The UK is the World's sixth largest economy and has a permanent spot on the UN Security Council. The World has treated us well. Despite being a nation of just 60 million we still hold a disproportionate share of the World's wealth and exert a degree of power far above what a small rainy island in the north of Europe could expect. As such we have a duty to act as responsible actors on the World stage.

A worrying complacency appears to have taken hold amongst the British people. People seem to think that since this conflict is thousands of miles away it doesn't matter. It does. A blood-thirsty tyrant is waging war against his own people. As fellow human beings we must do what we can to help. In 1940 the Blitz rained destruction down upon the British Isles and a Nazi invasion seemed imminent. We asked the World for help and it obliged. The World is now asking us to return the favour.

Britain has to show willing to help overthrow this barbaric regime. Seemingly intractable Russian opposition should not detract from efforts to obtain a UN Security Council resolution authorising international intervention to protect the Syrian people. At the very least we must continue to push for stronger action by the Arab League and regional powers to provide a united front against the Assad regime. 

Assad's regime is a foul stain on this Earth representing everything that is wrong with humanity. If we can play the smallest part in its eradication, we have a duty to do so.