Syria anniversary: the psychopaths are unstoppable

 

The Telegraph

Three years after it began, the civil war has become a nightmare of barbarity and carnage, reports Richard Spencer in an impassioned dispatch from the province of Aleppo

After three years of war in Syria, one of the things we have learnt is that al-Qaeda’s followers don’t really want to live in the seventh century. Their favoured social medium is Twitter, and they often use the modern vernacular when they tweet. 

Here is what one jihadist wrote recently as a caption to a photograph of some blindfolded captives: “Got these criminals today. Insha’Allah will be killed tomorrow. Cant wait for that feeling when U just killed some1.” 

It really is that psychopathic. Last week, Save the Children released a fund-raising video for Syria which “went viral”, showing a nine-year-old at a birthday party followed by a flash of images in which her everyday life was shredded by bombs, exile, and refugee camps. It brought tears to the eyes and in a moment of self-importance, I observed that the campaign was OK so long as people realised the reality was much, much worse. 

The videos you have not seen show little girls like the one in the picture torn literally in two by the regime’s aerial bombardments, their entrails hanging out; or lying piled in the corner of a shattered building, throats sliced by one of the shabiha, or militia, who wreak their terror on the fringes of military assaults; or bloated and yellow as their gassed corpses await burial. 

You do not see the full horror of this war, I can assure you. Our editors could show you the reality, more than ever before, such is the technology available to them, but they preserve a conventional sense of decency. 

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