DAY 500 - JULY 28, 2012

 

The UN declares the Syrian conflict "a full-scale civil war" and suspends its monitoring mission because of attacks against its general inspectors. The decision by the United Nations coupled with increased instability in the region, goads Russia to station two warships near its base in Tartous, Syria. Additionally, Russian and China, for a third time, veto a UN resolution plan. Syria's ambassadors to Iraq and Cyprus both defect and the New York Times reports that Assad has moved a stockpile of chemical weapons, of which he has one of the largest in the world, out of storage. There is a fear within the international community that the Syrian government may use the weapons in an act of desperation.


You spend much of your time crying, imagining that your children are dead. You think about Aasfa and the younger fighter from Aleppo that were killed over nothing. You are deeply affected by this. As a result you try starving yourself to death. You stop eating all together for two weeks but you can't go through with it. There is still enough optimism in your heart to hang on to life. Recently, loud noises in the Tadmor and Palmyra area have been keeping you awake. A new inmate named Fatma, whose husband is a scientist working for the rebels, tells you that Assad keeps a lot of his biological warfare agents buried deep underground in Palmyra and the sounds we are hearing are from chemical weapons being unearthed and transported. She tells you that there might even be some buried underneath this cell right now. Either way, she says that Assad is not beyond using Sarin gas. He has already slaughtered civilians she says, chemical weapons can do that tooonly faster.  

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