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The Syrian official opposition is calling for suspension of the International Anti-ISIS Coalition airstrikes after one of them killed at least 56 civilians on Tuesday, northeast of Aleppo. Meanwhile, the US is hosting an International Coalition meeting to press allies to do more in the fight against ISIS in the Middle East.

Tuesday’s strike happened near the ISIS controlled town of Manbij. The civilian death toll of the airstrikes in the region is now over 125, according to most sources. Al-Jazeera reported as many as 200 casualties, including many children.

The Syrian Coalition, the official opposition of the Al-Assad regime, sent an urgent letter to the ministers of foreign affairs of the international coalition demanding immediate suspension of the airstrikes until an investigation of this “horrific massacre” is completed. It said:

“We believe that such incidents indicate a major loophole in the current operational rules followed by the international coalition in conducting strikes in populated areas. It is essential that such investigation not only result in revised rules of procedure for future operations, but also inform accountability for those responsible for such major violations.”

The National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposing Forces, by its full name, was formed expressly to oppose dictator Bachar Al-Assad and is officially supported by the international community. Their principal mission is to become a transitional government in charge of restoring democracy and peace. They are currently based in Istanbul, trying to organize for the election which is supposed to take place in November.

Amnesty International (AI) sided with them and accused the International Anti-ISIS Coalition of failing to take the necessary steps to avoid civilian casualties.

“There must be a prompt, independent and transparent investigation to determine what happened, who was responsible, and how to avoid further needless loss of civilian life. Anyone responsible for violations of international humanitarian law must be brought to justice and victims and their families should receive full reparation,” urged Magdalena Mughrabi, interim Deputy Director of AI’s Middle East and North Africa Program.

AI found that the true death toll of the strikes was difficult to document. They were able to confirm 60 civilian casualties in the last couple of days and about a hundred since the Coalition’s operation in Manbij began on March 31st.

The United-States officially announced the launching of an investigation on the last airstrike in Manbij. However, the International Coalition has ignored the majority of cases when civilian deaths have been reliably demonstrated to this day, says Amnesty International.

US Seeks Additional Support for Military and Political Action

Meanwhile, they are pressing their allies to increase their involvement in the international anti-ISIS coalition. US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter gathered 30 of his counterparts, including Canadian Minister of Defence Hajrit S. Sajjan, for a two day-long conference on a Maryland military base.

The International coalition, led by the US, was formed two years ago with the express goal of coordinating military intervention against terrorist groups ISIS and Al-Nosra, in Iraq and Syria. The fourth meeting of the coalition started on Wednesday. Ministers are expected to plan further military and political intervention against the Islamic State in the Middle East.

Sajjan just announced that Canada will send 40 to 60 of its army’s medical personnel in an effort to retake the Iraqi region of Mosul, currently controlled by local militias. Canada had previously announced that the operation to take back the Iraqi region of Fallujah from militias last month would be its last combat mission.

Canadian Minister of Foreign affairs Stéphane Dion is expected to join the Maryland talks today. He was in Washington this week, like many other ministers of Foreign affairs. Together, they promised over two billion dollars of humanitarian aid to Iraq. This is an additional commitment for Canada, who had promised 1.6 billions over three years back in February.

If there was any talk of the civilian casualties during the meeting, it has not reached the media. At the time this article was written, the Syrian Coalition was reportedly holding an urgent meeting “to discuss the situation in Manbij and to consider appropriate action to address such a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.”

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We’re in the thick of it, there’s nothing else to say. All the international credibility gained out of Canada’s decision not to intervene in the Second Gulf War under Jean Chrétien’s leadership was lost in the blink of an eye, when Harper announced Friday that Canada would be sending its troops into combat (airstrikes specifically, no ground troops at this time). The thing is, Canada’s “official” intervention is only two days old, but it is already gearing up to be a disaster of gigantic proportions, and ultimately an utter failure that will only delay, but not prevent, the coming of another ISIS.

Canada might have given its green light for a full scale intervention only two days ago, but the coalition of the willing — which ironically includes Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two of the patrons of the radical interpretation of Islam promoted by ISIS — has been on the ground for around a month now. What are the conclusions that can be drawn? After one month, what is the future for this war? What new day is dawning on the horizon?

Well, to say the least, it’s a very dark one. The black clouds that arose from the ruins of the Kurdish bastion of resilience, Kobane, gave us, spectators, a little glimpse into the future of this mission.

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The women of Kobane have armed themselves to fight against ISIS.

As thousands of Kurdish fighters held back the reoccurring, never-ending assaults of ISIS against the town, Turkish tanks stood still — not much of a surprise —and Western jets flew on by. The battle of Kobane is a central one for the survival of the Kurdish struggle within northern Syria. Unfortunately the lightly armed Kurds are fighting against the much stronger ISIS forces, ironically, using American artillery and weapons to besiege the town.

The hypocrisy of the Western forces and of their Turkish allies is obvious. They most certainly see this so-called humanitarian intervention, first and foremost, as a means towards an end: the eradication of the PKK and any viable Kurdish autonomous authority in the region.

In one of my articles concerning the conflict I wrote extensively about the “revival” of the Kurdish struggle for self-determination and their project of asymmetric federalism. There, I referred to their struggle and to this project as an alternative form of governance for the peoples of the region and a strong vaccination against the rise of organizations such as ISIS. Three weeks down the path of war, and it seems like Kobane will fall within a matter of days, or even hours, even though this humanitarian intervention was supposed to prevent such a tragedy from happening.

One month into this humanitarian intervention, and the American State Department has already announced that it was anything but humanitarian anymore. The White House announced today that civilian protection policy does not apply to the airstrikes in Syria. Apparently, protecting civilians in areas under rebel control from the wrath and vengeance of Syrian government forces is not part of the plan either. Within the past month much of the ground that was lost during the past three years by Assad has been regained. The bloodthirsty and mad dictator, whom the interventional community vigorously condemned for the usage of chemical weapons against his own people, is on cloud nine.

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Can you believe it? The Americans are actually winning Assad’s war for him. Instead of mobilizing and building strong alliances with the secular and progressive sections of the Free Syrian Army, we actually bombed them last week. So much for wining “hearts and minds!” We’re actually losing them, as the ISIS ranks are filled with thousands, if not tens of thousands of young disenchanted Westerners, who turned to radicalism after years of discrimination and racism, and after years of seeing on the TV their Muslim sisters and brothers suffer excruciating pain in Iraq, Palestine or at the hands of any other Western backed dictatorial regimes.

Radicalism’s fuel is war, and unfortunately, through this war, we have swelled the reserves of hatred, of anger, of despair and of pain, everything ISIS was born out of, to last for a generation or two. If you believed the magical fairytale that whatever is happening was a humanitarian intervention, that we, the West, the ardent defenders of human rights, were on a courageous crusade against evil, that just like communism and fascism, this totalitarian evil of radical Islamism had to be quelled, you were wrong. Don’t be fooled. We are reviving ISIS. We created the conditions for it. We are reenacting them as we speak and what will come out of this third intervention in the Middle East might be more horrendous than anything our imaginations can grasp.

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The hunt for evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria is a red herring and shouldn’t be the focus of the international community’s (minus Assad’s apologists in Moscow and Tehran) efforts to stop the Assad regime’s relentless campaign of bloodshed against its own people.

Irrespective of the good intentions of UN Secretary general Ban Ki Moon, President Obama and French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius, the search for proof of a likely use of sarin, nerve, or other deadly gases on a huge number of innocent civilians (between 136 to 1300) outside of the Syrian capital Damascus in a town called Ghouta, will be near impossible under the circumstances. Besides, it wouldn’t make the case against the President of Syria, Bashar (“the butcher) El Assad, and his cronies any more credible. In the minds of many international criminal law experts, that case is already open and shut.

Setting aside the question of whether Assad has violated the universal taboo among states with respect to using chemical weapons against his foes (a category that apparently includes women and children!!!!), there is already sufficient proof based of eyewitness accounts of survivors of his atrocities and enough documentation of his crimes collected by impartial international observers, since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011, to indict Assad and his generals for their part in the brutality. And yes I am aware of crimes being committed by rebels forces in Syria. They too will have to be held to account for their crimes, at the end of the day.

With the chances of some sort of robust humanitarian intervention, along the lines of what NATO did to fellow glorified thug Colonel Muammer Gadhaffi, looking increasingly slim, and seemingly every military analyst in the world insisting that there are no good options in Syria, it might be time to explore alternatives to the use of force. Moving the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet into range for possible air strikes against the Syrian military, may have some deterrent value.

While I realize that an International Criminal Court investigation and possible future prosecution of war criminals in Syria will be at best a moral victory, at worst an empty threat and futile attempt to bring an end to daily murders, tortures and disappearances, there is something to be said for what the head of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay is suggesting about referring the case to the ICC for them to take all necessary legal measures against the Assad regime.

This will, of course, never give the murderers who rule Syria sleepless nights, but it just might shame those who, like Russia, continue to defend their legitimacy, into abandoning their allies in Syria or at least keeping their mouths shut when the matter next comes before the UN Security Council for discussion.