The conflict in Syria seems to have become a permanent fixture in our news items. It has been ongoing for a number of months now and given the regular news about the conflict, there is a tendency to ignore what is happening there.

Instead, we should look at it more attentively for more than one reason. Its importance does not rest only on the fact that it could have important repercussions in the region but also on how the international media is dealing with it.

The conflict in Syria has now been going on for the last 18 months, confounding the expectations of so many observers who expected the regime to collapse well before the end of 2011. There are now clear indications that the conflict will ramble on for several more months given that things have become entrenched in a situation where both the external allies of government and those backing the rebels cannot allow their chosen side to fail.

Up to the middle of this year, the rebel forces slowly gained strength and the regime responded by using ever stronger force. President Assad was also aided by the opposition’s disunity and fragmentation. This acted as a brake on the rebel forces resulting in a long and bloody conflict. The toil of the conflict is already a heavy one. Some figures point towards 20,000 dead. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) more than 200,000 Syrians have poured into neighbouring countries during the conflict. These developments have raised the prospects of some form of formal intervention in Syria by external forces. Last week, following some devastating aerial and artillery assault on the eastern outskirts of Damascus, French president François Hollande declared that he and his international partners were closer than ever before to a formal intervention in Syria.

The question of a formal intervention in Syria gives rise to very pertinent moral questions. Even on its own, to debate the morality of military intervention in a country presents serious faults and difficulties. Such difficulties increase in a situation, like the present one, where there is an almost total acceptance even by those opposing the current regime that the majority of people in Syria are not in favour of overthrowing the current regime. There was and still is a strong feeling among some of Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities that a post-Assad order might be much worse. This sentiment was exacerbated by fear that Syria is becoming a magnet for dedicated young Jihadi paramilitaries who had begun to see Syria as a new front in a long war.

The Washington Post reported “that the American policy on Syria seems paralysed by the understandable fear of getting into another war like those in Afghanistan or Iraq. But no one, least of all the Syrian people, wants to see an American invasion and occupation of Syria”. On the other hand, there is a section of the international media which is pushing for intervention. The killing of more than 100 innocent people, including 50 children in Houla shocked the world. The media is using such images to wage a campaign against President Assad. Predictably, the regime is denying responsibility and is blaming those who have taken up arms.

Those who argue against intervention are not doing this only on the basis of pacifism and reasoned dialogue but are also raising the possibility that military intervention will give rise to an ugly spectre. There is an acceptance that once troops are sent to right “terrible wrongs” in some part of the world then the temptation of using force to reshape large parts of the world to one’s liking might become irresistible.

Way back in 1740, David Hume wrote that when “our nation is at war with any other, we detest them under the character of cruel, perfidious, unjust and violent...but always esteem ourselves and allies equitable, moderate, and merciful”. Prolific writer and journalist Chris Hedges captured this sense of myth-making by saying that “We see defeats as signposts on the road to ultimate victory. We demonise the enemy so that our opponent is no longer human. We view ourselves, our people, as the embodiment of absolute goodness. Our enemies invert our view of the world to justify their own.”This approach makes sense as it makes things understandable, a sort of black and white tableau. This sort of thinking suspends though, especially self-critical thought.

One other thought, this way of dividing and grouping people into good and evil, between those capable and those less capable, between us and them is not limited only to international conflicts. It is also very much a trait that unfortunately characterises the thinking of many local opinion-makers and to some extent certain policy-makers. It is perpetuated because it justifies political discrimination and keeps power firmly in the hands of the few.