Syriana

This morning, I read this report in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/world/middleeast/grisly-killings-in-syrian-towns-dim-hopes-for-peace-talks.html?smid=pl-share

An Atrocity in Syria, With No Victim Too Small

A massacre that revealed new depths of depravity and routine video footage showing lurid violence have made the prospect of stitching the country back together appear increasingly difficult.

I could hardly bear it. Excellent reporting, by the way, but hard to read, let alone to view the pictures. How can people be so cruel, so inhuman, so abject? I kept thinking of all those kind people I met in Syria, some three years ago. Only three years. I keep wondering how they are, don't dare to contact them, for fear of putting them into (more) danger - especially as some of them are Christians. We didn't visit the province of Tartus, but we were relatively close - and of course, we did spend some time in Aleppo.

Reports like this make me despair of mankind - make me despair altogether: will there ever be a way out for Syria? For the Middle-East? Will this country - once the cradle of our civilisation - ever arise from  its ashes?