Violence Continues in Syria - NYTimes.com The Arab League is failing the Syrian people. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria grudgingly signed the league's peace plan last month, but his brutal 10-month crackdown against mostly peaceful protesters shows no signs of letting up. To have any chance of stopping the bloodshed, the league - backed by the international community - needs to get tougher with the butcher in Damascus. We always suspected that the manipulative Mr. Assad would pay only lip service to the plan. He promised to end the violence, withdraw troops from residential areas and talk to the opposition. He also agreed to allow the league to monitor progress. But Syrian activists say that in the two weeks since 100 or so monitors arrived, at least 400 more civilians have been killed, in addition to the 5,000 dead already counted by the United Nations. Independent accounts are hard to come by because Syria also reneged on its promise to allow greater news media access. Still, the reports are credible enough to unnerve many Arabs; last week, the Arab Parliament, which advises the league, questioned whether the monitoring mission should be abandoned since Mr. Assad seemed clearly to be using it as cover for further repression. Yet the Arab League's official response has been pathetically weak. Meeting in Cairo on Sunday, Prime Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani of Qatar, the chairman of the league's committee on Syria, and other officials did little more than plead with Mr. Assad to end the bloodshed and let the monitors operate freely. This won't work. The only meaningful course is for the Arab League to enforce the economic sanctions it approved in November. These include a freeze on Syrian government assets in Arab countries and a ban on transactions with Syria's central bank. In addition, Arab League members should insist that the United Nations Security Council - stymied for months by Mr. Assad's enablers, Russia and China - condemn his behavior and impose tough sanctions of its own that would also bring pressure to bear on his allies. And they should lean on Turkey, which promised sanctions against Damascus, to follow through. League officials have agreed to continue the monitoring mission (at least until they reassess again later this month) and boost its size. In theory, these are good ideas. But they assume that Mr. Assad is not playing for time and playing the Arab League for a fool as he clearly is. People across the Arab world are horrified by the bloody events in Syria and fears of broader war. Their leaders and the major powers must do all they can to peacefully stop the violence.