Daily Star Editorial

Arab ministers made their way to Damascus Wednesday for “frank and cordial” discussions with Syrian President Bashar Assad. It only took seven months, 3,000 deaths and countless inhumane incarcerations to get them there.
Even by the Arab League’s resoundingly low standards, it has dragged its heels on Syria. Whereas the organization was relatively spritely on okaying international intervention in Libya, the brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protesters across Syria apparently hasn’t proved worthy of its attention.

Even as another score of protesters were killed in clashes with Syrian security forces, Arab delegates shot the breeze with a leader who has continued to breach every possible moral boundary. The fruit of their labors? Another round of talks, slated for the end of the month.

It is a curious by-product of Arab League meetings that talk begets talk. Action, it seems, is subsumed by bluster and bombast. As has been pointed out by the Syrian opposition, even from the time it took the organization to agree on a meeting in Syria to it actually making it there, almost 200 people have been killed in Syria.

In the interest of balance, it should be pointed out that these deaths have come from both sides, as security forces deserters have begun to attack state apparatuses. In the interest of perspective, the crackdown presided over by Assad has been sustained and brutal.

With the international community increasingly at odds over what precisely to do with Syria – giants such as Russia and China for the moment being against U.N. action and the U.S. and other Western states exerting pressure through targeted sanctions, the effects of which are beginning to strain the economy – it is now more vital than ever that the administration in Damascus knows it does not lack for regional opponents.

What those potential regional opponents are instead doing is giving it time to continue its crackdown.
Even the hope voiced by Arab League Secretary-General Nabil al-Araby that Assad will end the violence and begin dialogue leading to reform seems forlorn. It has been rejected by the opposition, so with whom such dialogue is supposed to take place remains unclear.

The fact that Damascus allowed Wednesday’s talks either shows Assad and his underlings have finally learned that bowing to the calls for dialogue and reform might offer a glimpse of ending the chaos, or that the administration is once again seeking to buy time. Judging its track record, the probability lies with the latter.

It is to be hoped that the Arab League can positively alter Syria’s course and save it from the oblivion of potential civil war. Given its previous lack of accomplishment, there is no reason to expect that it will.