Arming rebels won’t resolve Syrian crisis

President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the violence, but his rivals are no saints

Another Friday, another massacre, another round of international condemnation, and another hundred dead.

That essentially is the sum of much of what happened in Syria this past weekend, and indeed over many such weekends in the last 15 months. On Friday, more than a 100 people were killed as the central Syrian town of Houla and its surrounding villages in Homs Province came under fire. An attack on a regime checkpoint was followed by relentless shelling and firing until armed militants rode into the town early evening and summarily executed residents, most of whom were Sunni Muslims and defectors from the Syrian Army. The dead included a disturbingly high number of children and women.

In the aftermath of Friday’s horrific killing, several Western nations expelled Syrian diplomats from their capitals even as Mr Kofi Annan, the UN-appointed peace envoy, travelled back and forth from Damascus to assess the situation in Houla and may be, just may be, convince President Bashar al-Assad to give up his violent ways. Ultimately, Mr Annan ended his efforts in the case with the unremarkable observation that, after a year of conflict, Syria was at “tipping point”, and then appealed to Mr Assad for “bold steps, now — not tomorrow, but now”. This is hardly the kind of rhetoric that can be expected to bring about a change of heart in Mr Assad. Then, what can bring about that change of heart?

Peaceful negotiation with the stakeholders is perhaps the easiest answer available, but these recent months have shown that at the end of the talk is, well, just that — talk. One diplomatic initiative after the other has failed in Syria, including Mr Annan’s peace plan. The UN may continue to add more peaceniks to the Syrian Team but the fact remains that it will take more than one miracle to change anything at all.

If the manner in which Mr Assad first accepted Mr Annan’s six-point ceasefire plan and then systematically trampled upon its every term and condition is anything to go by, it is time we stop pretending that diplomacy is the way out. Sure, it was an effort worth making — diplomacy has succeeded in the past, most recently in 2008 when Mr Annan himself resolved through peaceful negotiations a violent electoral dispute between warring parties in Kenya — but the time for talking while Mr Assad continues killing is now perhaps over.

Or, is it? When is it ever the right time to invoke the Responsibility to Protect? How do you decide that now, and not three weeks or six months later, is the time to militarily intervene in the affairs of another nation even at the cost of endangering the other’s sovereignty? How do you ensure that your actions today will not be used to justify the illegitimate plans of tomorrow? Finally, then, when do you know that the time has come wherein the risk of inaction will be greater than the risk of action? The July 1995 massacre at Srebrenica was the catalyst that finally compelled Nato to take action and launch a bombing campaign. Will the horror of Houla provoke a similar international effort in Syria? It seems unlikely. So, will be powers-to-be wait till it is too late to make a difference like they did in Sudan or Rwanda?

There are no easy yes-or-no answers here, not with the failure of a similar mission in Libya still looming large. Nato’s carpet bombing campaign of Libya in the summer of 2011, in a supposed bid to assist that country’s rebel groups against Col Muammar Gaddafi, may have helped end the Libyan leader’s tyrannical regime but it has not brought either peace or democracy to the North African nation which now teeters on the brink of anarchy.

As of now, it seems like there are no best — no, not even good — options on the table. Diplomacy has failed and military intervention with a UN mandate is not possible. But then, so is allowing the carnage to continue, and arming the rebels should never have been on the table in the first place. The world must decide which option, of the few that exists, will lead to the least possible damage. Worryingly though, it seems like a covert decision has been made in favour of one of the most damaging options ever — arming the rebels.

Last week, the Associated Press reported that US officials have confirmed that they are seriously looking into the possibility of “vetting” members of the Free Syrian Army, the umbrella group of Syrian rebel fighters that include some military defectors, to decide if they may be “suitable recipients of munitions to fight the Assad Government”. The US already provides non-lethal aid, such as communication devices and medicines, to the Syrian rebels — a move that already makes Washington, DC vulnerable to the same charges of forcing a regime change that it faced during the Libyan campaign. Now, it seems like it is only a step away from actively arming the rebels.

This is hugely problematic but only made worse by reports that some other countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and a few Gulf nations may have already begun the process of arming the rebels.

Indeed, there has been a slew of credible reports that private businessmen in Turkey are smuggling weapons into Syria. Weapons are also being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border, the Washington Post reported. Syrian rebels have been quoted in the international media as saying that the shortage in weapons is no longer as acute as before, possibly because of the millions of dollars in funding from Arabia. They also claim to have contacted weapons dealers in Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia and Azerbaijan, although it remains unclear if they have received any positive responses.

If anything, these reports give credence to the Assad Government’s claims that foreign hands are behind the uprising and that there is a concerted effort by the West to bring about a regime change. It also lays the ground for a wide-ranging ethical debate on the issue. However, what is of far greater concern at the moment is the eventual fall out of the arming of the Syrian rebels.

Kalashshinov and AK-47s in the homes of average Syrians, children playing with automatic pistols, bullet marks on every wall of every building… the world has seen it before. Do we really need another Afghanistan in Syria?

(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on May 31, 2012.)

Troubled peace in Gilgit-Baltistan

To control the Northern Areas that it has illegally occupied, Islamabad has crippled it with sectarianism

Khan Muhammed was gathering firewood in the forest overlooking a deserted stretch of the Karakoram Highway when, on that cold February morning, he witnessed something that would forever be etched in his memory. About a dozen men, dressed in military fatigues and armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, intercepted a passenger bus that we now know was ferrying passengers between Rawalpindi and Gilgit city. As the vehicle screeched to a halt, the men boarded the bus. They demanded that the passengers show their identity cards, and eventually hauled out 16 men from the bus. These men were then lined up by the roadside and shot dead in cold blood. All of the murdered passengers were Shia Muslims.


The incident happened near a small town in the remote Kohistan district of the northern Pakistani Province of Khyber-Pakhtunwa that borders the Gilgit-Baltistan area in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, and sparked the worst kind of sectarian violence the region has seen in decades. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Section 144 was imposed in the area while the police maintained a close watch. An uneasy calm prevailed, but not for long.


After the February incident, transporters introduced a new Shia-only service which, of course, led the Sunnis also to create their own community-specific bus route. On Sunday, April 1, however, police announced the annulment of the new route permits. In response, the Shias went on strike the next day, blocking roads and setting up barricades. Tensions were running high and soon the uneasy peace of the previous weeks was shattered as clashes erupted between  Shias and Sunnis.


In the next 24 hours, all hell broke loose. Early Tuesday morning, a group of Shias on motorcycles threw a hand-grenade at a Sunni rally that killed five and injured many more. Gun shots were fired and street-fighting continued through the day killing six more people. The police were largely overwhelmed and more often concerned with protecting members of their own sect rather than bringing the situation under control. Any semblance of a Government was entirely absent. Fear and panic spread like wildfire even as areas around Gilgit city came under attack.


As news of the grenade attack reached the Sunni-majority town of Chilas, vengeful residents there ran amok. They burnt buses, fired at Shias and took over 250 members of the rival community hostage. They were released later but on that day, another 10 people died in Chilas. Close by, in Nagar town, there were unverified reports of at least 20 more hostages being taken.

At some point during the day, curfew was announced but it was only after the sun had set and the Army had been called in that it was actually imposed. As the people retreated into their homes, unsure of what the next day had in store for them, Gilgit, once a picturesque city known for its breath-taking scenic beauty, now wore the look of a garrison town. Over the next few weeks, men in all sorts of uniforms patrolled the city; markets, schools and offices remained shut; cell phone services were jammed and suspected miscreants were taken into custody. Gilgit remained on the edge.


It wasn’t until another 25 days later that the curfew was removed on April 29. Almost three weeks later, today, the Army has returned to its barracks, the cell phones are working again and the people are going about their business — on the face of it, a sense of normalcy has been restored. But scratch the surface and the unhealed wounds stare right back at you. Look closely and you will see the decades-old scars of sectarian violence that mark the psyche of every man, woman and child in Gilgit-Baltistan.


And yet, it was not always like this. For centuries, different religious communities lived in peacefully in this region. Inter-faith marriages were common and members from one community often took part in the events and rituals of other communities.

The situation changed after Partition in 1947 when the region’s exact status came under a cloud. A political vacuum settled in. Consequently, where politicians feared to tread, mullahs quickly filled in their shoes. In the absence of any significant institution of authority, it was the mullahs, defined by their religious identity and driven by the sole aim of promoting their sect, who took charge. This was particularly convenient for Islamabad.


Having illegally occupied the Gilgit-Baltistan area, Islamabad would forever be anxious of its legitimacy in that region. To make matters worse, Gilgit-Baltistan was almost entirely Shia-dominated, in contrary to the rest of Sunni-majority Pakistan. Hence, in the minds of lawmakers in Islamabad, there was always the fear of a nationalist insurrection in Gilgit-Baltistan or of losing the strategically located region to India in the larger battle for Kashmir.


Still, the Pakistani state maintained a more or less secular position in Gilgit-Baltistan up until the 1970s, which is when Islamabad launched an active campaign to establish authoritarian control over the region as well as tilt its problematic Shia-majority demography towards a more ‘favourable’ Sunni-majority. The first step in that direction was taken by then Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who abrogated the State Subject Rule — the law that protected the original demography of a region — and then, encouraged Sunnis from the rest of Pakistan to settle in the area. He also abolished the independent princely kingdoms of the region and set up one large administrative unit called the Northern Areas.


Then, the Army and the intelligence agencies were sent in to play mischief. In the years after that, mullahs were reportedly paid by agents of the state to introduce the poison of sectarianism — and they sure did inject it deep into the region’s bloodstream.


Over the next few years, the seeds of sectarian polarisation were sown across the region but it was only under General Zia ul-Haq who took over from Bhutto in a bloodless coup in 1977 that the situation progressively worsened on a path of no return. Not only did Gen Zia introduce religious schools with the sole mandate of raising a generation of extremist Sunni Muslims, he also encouraged cadres of the radical Sunni Sipaha-e-Sahaba to take their nefarious activities to the Northern Areas.

Consequently, in 1988, the first instance of an armed conflict was reported from the region. The immediate incident that sparked the riots was really a non-issue: The Shias had sighted their moon after Id-ul-Fitr and were already celebrating, but the Sunnis, who were yet to receive the green signal from their leaders, were still fasting. Clashes broke out and before long, there was a large-scale riot of the kind that would lead to years of mistrust and animosity between the two communities. As a result, even as the 80s drew to close, the venom of sectarianism spilled into the 90s that was marked by more violence and more bloodshed, and even more name-calling by the mullahs.


The situation did not change much until after 2005 when the two communities signed a peace agreement promising to stop issuing fatwas against each other, to protect minorities in their areas and to promote peace and harmony. That, along with the 2009 Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self Governance Order which allowed the people much needed political representation, helped bring down temperatures by a few degrees.


But decades of mistrust and suspicion cannot be undone in a few years, as the the recent riots prove. However, that should not be an excuse to give up on peace. The Masjid Board that has been set up in the aftermath of the April riots to bring both communities on board, for instance, is a step in the right direction. The Gilgit-Baltistan Government’s decision to set up a judicial commission to investigate the events should also help the healing process. But much of this will come to naught if Islamabad does not end its radicalisation campaign in the region to gain political points.


(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on May 17, 2012.)