The latest horror to emerge from Syria is a video of a man being buried alive by security forces. The United Nations diplomatic initiative to end the conflict, like the Arab League mission before it, has every chance of being buried alive as well. The Assad regime has no interest in peace. It is intent upon crushing a massive revolt against its corrupt and brutal rule. Since the start of the 14-month uprising, Damascus has been prepared to say whatever the outside world wants to hear, while persisting in doing precisely what it wants. It has made promise after promise. Prisoners would be released. International aid organizations would be permitted to bring medical and food aid wherever it was needed. Journalists would be allowed unfettered access to the country. A ceasefire would be honored. Troops would withdraw to barracks. None of this has really happened. Every new promise has been broken. Every assurance given to international negotiators, the latest being the UN's former secretary-general Kofi Annan, has proved utterly worthless. The UN monitors, like the Arab League observers before them, are already floundering. Even when their number is raised to the planned 300, there will simply not be enough of them to see that the ceasefire is being implemented by both sides. Unfortunately therefore, from the get-go, their light blue helmets, bobbing amidst crowds of anguished and frustrated demonstrators, are marking out a trail of failure for the diplomatic efforts finally mounted by the rest of the world, through the UN. By the time that the last of the 300 observers arrives in around a month's time, it has to be almost certain that the UN mission will already have dissolved into farce, as the Assad regime continues its ruthless repression under the very noses of the observers. France is already starting to talk in terms of some sort of military intervention as an ultimate solution. However, her fellow NATO allies, not least the United States, just seven months away from the presidential election, have no appetite for another Libya. Moreover the challenge posed by Syria is infinitely more complex than the ouster of an unhinged and bloody dictator like Muammar Gaddafi. Outside armed intervention, from any source, remains an extremely dangerous choice. There is, however, one option that still remains that could bring about a rapid end to the slaughter and the almost certain departure of the morally bankrupt Assad regime. If Russia abandons Damascus, cuts off the flow of weaponry and ammunition and refuses to continue to shield the Syrian government in the UN, the game will be up. Assad and his cronies could slip away to exile, the bloody assassins who have so willingly done his killing for him, could scamper off to whatever bolt holes they can find and all of them could hope that the wheels of international justice will not one day roll over them. Without Moscow's support, the alternative to exile for Bashar Al-Assad is clear. His gunmen will be overwhelmed and somewhere in Syria, there is the equivalent of the drainage tunnel from which Muammar Gaddafi was dragged and killed. __
