Is Syria in a civil war?
On Thursday, Navi Pillay, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, said that the nation's political unrest has indeed approached the level of a civil war. Pillay said her assessment stems in part from recognition that elements of the opposition to the Bashar al-Assad regime are increasingly calling for armed resistance. She added that UN estimates of the conflict's death toll--4,000 killed in the past nine months--are likely understated.
"I have said that as soon as there were more and more defectors threatening to take up arms--I said this in August before the Security Council --there was going to be a civil war," Pillay told a news conference in Geneva Thursday, according to a Reuters report. "At the moment, that's how I am characterizing this."
However, it appears that Pillay's is not yet the official UN line. Shortly after she delivered her remarks, her spokesman walked back the characterization, asserting that Syria is, rather, on the "cusp" of civil war, and "heading" in that direction.
"It is definitely heading that way, with more and more reports of armed resistance to the government forces," Pillay's spokesman Rupert Colville told Reuters. "It is on the cusp, but in these circumstances it is hard to say definitively at what point it becomes civil war."
So what prompted the walk-back? And what determines whether the Syrian bloodshed constitutes a civil war?
State Department urges Syria opposition to remain peaceful
The State Department has likewise shied away from Pillay's characterization, noting that the United States has called on both the Syrian regime and the pro-democracy protesters alike to refrain from violence.
"Obviously, we have been very clear in saying that we believe that . . . the opposition needs to remain peaceful," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told journalists at the press conference Thursday.Read More ?
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