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.)
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