The two-year-old conflict in Syria rages on with the embattled dictatorship of Bashar Assad and his Baath Party withstanding the attacks of a motley group of fighters. Dictatorships — whether unelected, elected or inherited — are of course unacceptable in this day and age when the palpable consent of a sovereign people is paramount for the governance of independent countries. However, no regime change instigated from abroad can replace a genuine movement for change by the people, of the people and for the people.
Applicable international law, even in the implementation of the controversial “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, is very clear on this — only the Security Council can take action in the name of maintaining international peace and security. The tenth anniversary of the infamously illegal invasion of Iraq for the purpose of regime change and on the false pretext of eradicating weapons of mass destruction was recently observed by massive bombings and blood-letting in Iraq with a weak government presiding over a faction-ridden country coping with unbridled violence. Is that the future that awaits Syria?
The Syria imbroglio differs from the Iraqi one in a number of ways. It emerged at the time of the Arab Spring when Tunisia first and then Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya and other Arab countries saw the people rise spontaneously against dictatorial regimes with whom the West and the rest of the world had been content to have normal, and even cozy, relations.
The West supported these popular uprisings selectively. Tunisia’s revolt was autonomous and did not need foreign assistance to succeed. In the case of Libya, Qaddafi’s resistance was soon swept away when the Western powers in the Security Council exploited voting abstentions by Russia and China to empower NATO to enter the battle. Libya, post Qaddafi today, remains divided by factions and is dangerously unstable.
The Arab world was divided in supporting the Syrian regime, which comes from the 12 percent Alawite sect of the Shiites in Syria where the Sunnis and Kurds demand power sharing as in Iraq. The Arab League suspended the Syrian regime and later gave the Syrian National Coalition that seat in its body.
Syria is the linchpin of the Middle East and its complex religious and ethnic mix can affect the whole region if it unravels. In the past the connection between Lebanon and Syria was well established but today the links between Syria and the Middle East region are far wider and deeper. The explicit support for the Syrian regime by the Hezbollah is sufficient to ensure Israeli and Western opposition to continue and reports of Israeli missile attacks on Syria are no surprise. The Syrian regime has suffered a number of defections at senior military, official and diplomatic levels. At the international level Russia remains the main supporter and arms supplier of the Assad regime. After the bitter lesson of the Libyan episode, Russia and China have vetoed any move by the West to obtain Security Council approval for action on Syria. The humanitarian cost of the war has been enormous. The heads of humanitarian agencies in the UN system took the unusual step of coming out with a joint statement urging a political solution saying “Enough, enough…. We, leaders of UN agencies charged with dealing with the human costs of this tragedy, appeal to political leaders involved to meet their responsibility to the people of Syria and to the future of the region.”
The death toll of more than 70,000 is tragic. The displacement of refugees (over 1.3 million to date) has created problems for neighboring countries especially in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. The Palestinian refugees within Syria have also to face acute distress. The UN’s efforts have been unproductive — but not for want of trying. First, Kofi Annan was appointed special envoy but gave up in the face of the intransigence of the parties. Lakhdar Brahimi succeeded him and talked of finding chinks in the blank wall that faced him. He is still trying to get the parties to the negotiating table but the lack of unity among the rebel forces and the perception that negotiating with Assad, instead of insisting on his resignation, will perpetuate the ruling regime, stand in the way.
The latest controversy surrounds the alleged use of chemical weapons in particular the nerve gas sarin. The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) of 1993 bans chemical weapons universally but Syria is among a very few states, including Egypt and Israel, not party to the CWC. President Obama, desperately fighting against the pro-Israeli and other war-mongering groups in the US, said that the Assad regime would be crossing a “red line” if it used chemical weapons against its own people. This signaled to all that, if that “red line” was crossed, the US would shift from the sidelines of this conflict providing intelligence and used light weapons to actually putting boots on the ground.
Such a step would be a giant flip backwards for Obama who came into power to extricate his economically troubled country from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq into which the preceding Bush administration had led the USA with disastrous consequences. The opinion polls in the US are against another war. Obama has now been forced to qualify his earlier statement by seeking answers to the questions as to when and how the chemical weapons were used and by whom. He is unlikely to get clear-cut, unambiguous answers especially since the UN mandated team of experts has not been permitted to enter Syria. The Russian offer to send their own experts is likely to be rebuffed by the Western powers who doubt the credibility of Russian experts.
As the controversy rages the people of Syria are being killed and wounded and the cities including Damascus — the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world — are being destroyed and with it a priceless heritage of humankind. The contending parties have to first agree to a cease-fire with a UN peacekeeping force to supervise it. The next step is to negotiate in order to form a coalition government that can bring a stable peace and genuine democracy to Syria with the Baath Party included with or without Assad.
Indeed it is rumored in Washington that Obama favors the pragmatic Gen. Salim Idriss, the commander of the rebels’ Supreme Military Council in a Russian brokered deal to end the war. Pending a peaceful solution US supplies of arms to the rebels and Russia’s supplies of arms to the Assad regime would be a regression to the proxy wars of the Cold War era while Syria bleeds. And in the midst of all this where is the role of once influential Non Aligned Movement (NAM)?
