A trickle of good news amid mayhem in Syria
Eighty years ago, good people merely watched, for years, as the Third Reich killed countless innocents throughout Europe. The League of Nations did little while millions were gassed, cremated, shot bombed or buried alive in their homes by Nazi and Fascist forces. Only after the Axis powers had gone beyond killing civilians to attacking key strategic targets in Western countries did the world move in concerted fashion to stop the carnage. While the intervention finally put an end to the war, it was too late for those who had perished prior.
After the end of the war, people thought: “Never again!” The newly refurbished world system, under the United Nations, was supposed to prevent a recurrence of the nightmare.
Unfortunately, mass killings continued in every decade since then. The UN was often helpless to stop them, other times it unwittingly aided and abetted the aggressors.
Twenty years ago, Bosnians were systematically annihilated by their Serb neighbors. Despite feeble efforts to save them, the carnage continued for three years, under the watchful eyes of the United Nations. It was not until the Serbs went too far by exterminating around 8,000 civilians in a single incident in the town of Srebrenica, in the summer of 1995, that the world moved, slowly, to put a stop to the carnage.
So it seems now in Syria. Civilians are massacred by the thousands, while the UN, EU and other powers are splitting hairs about what steps to take to stop the killings.
In March 2011, the Syrian people rose en masse to demand their freedom, after fifty years of the autocratic rule of the Baath Party, forty of which under the Assad family. The Baath was established in the 1940s, inspired by and modeled after European fascist parties. Its rule was further corrupted by the feudal, family and sectarian-based politics of the Assad family. The result was a mafia-like enterprise, characterized by corruption, assassinations, mass killings, and corruption. State institutions were turned into tools for the perpetuation of the family’s control over all aspects of Syrian life.
Over the past thirty months, and true to its checkered pedigrees, the Syrian regime unleashed the full force of its killing machine against its own people. According to the latest UN body count, over 100,000 Syrians have been killed in the conflict. Two million Syrians are now refugees outside their country, while another five million are internally displaced and hunted daily by the regime forces.
Despite this bleak picture, there was a trickle of good news this past week. Although encouraging, they are not enough to stop the regime’s war of annihilation against its opponents.
First, the Syrian opposition has been able to stand its own, for the time being, and make limited advances on the military side of the conflict, in Homs, Aleppo and Daraa.
Second, the United States Congress waived its objections to arming the opposition. Back in June, the White House announced that it would offer military aid to the opposition after two years of hesitation. However, some Republicans and Democrats members on the House and Senate intelligence committees expressed worries that the arms could end up in the hands of extremist groups such as Al-Nusra Front.
The administration was able to convince the Senate Intelligence Committee to tentatively agree to the administration’s plans to send arms. The timeline is not clear, but optimistic observers expect deliveries to start in August.
Second, The European Union finally agreed this week to list the military wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Very few people knew that the party had a military wing separate from its political wing or that it made a difference. But splitting hairs has been a European tradition and the Syrian opposition can only hope that the new EU move would disrupt some of the funding that Hezbollah has been getting through European channels.
In addition, the EU had already lifted the ban on arming the rebels, but very little has changed as a result. France and the UK, which had earlier expressed support for arming the rebels, have now switched to nervousness and trepidations about the prospect.
Amid all of this, the United Nations has repeatedly failed the Syrian people. The Security Council has failed to shoulder its responsibilities under the Charter. It is true that Russian vetoes have prevented it from adopting meaningful resolutions, but lack of leadership on part of the other 14 UNSC members has made it easy for the Russians to get away with their vetoes.
The UN bureaucracy has sheltered behind the Russian veto to justify inaction. Its special envoy has so far failed to get the parties to the negotiating table. The Syrian opposition believes that he is effectively siding with the regime. They point out to how he was quick this week to criticize the US government for its decision to lift the ban on arming the rebels, but had not voiced equal concern to the steady stream of Iranian and Russian deliveries of heavy weapons to the regime, nor to the involvement of Hezbollah, on the side of the regime.
While some put faith in the proposed Geneva-2 Conference, there is little hope that anything positive can come out unless the opposition is able to stand its ground and defend itself, to convince the regime to compromise. For that to happen, Friend of Syria should double their efforts to provide the opposition with the wherewithal to do that.
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