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.)

Not just another brick in the wall

At its fourth summit, BRICS presented an alternative to the Western narrative of international affairs. It was more representative of the developing world's concerns, and was needed not only to counter the West, but also to give a voice to the rest who are usually excluded

As the fourth annual BRICS summit concluded in New Delhi last week, one of the most significant questions that emerged was: Will it shift the global power centre from the West to within itself? In response, however, much of the same observations made in the past years about this odd five-country grouping, that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, were repeated. Yes, the group presents an emerging global force; no, the members are too disparate to make an impact; yes, they will work together to further their economic interests; no, they will be held back by their competing, even conflicting, interests. The fact remains that even four years after BRIC came into existence — the ‘S’ for South Africa was added a year later in 2010 — the world still seems to be largely undecided about how the group will shape up.


As of now, the developed world is unsure if the group will eventually morph into an alternative power structure that could potentially challenge its own authority (that, many believe, is already on the wane) in the international arena. That explains the West’s lukewarm response to the New Delhi summit. The developing world, on the other hand, remains sceptical about the group’s effectiveness; many are convinced that BRICS will devolve into a SAARC-like regional organisation with limited influence rather than become the EU-like power bloc it imagines itself to become.


It is still too early to either hail BRICS as the ‘next big thing’ in international politics or write it off as, well, just another brick in the wall. Still, there is a general agreement that, for the most part, BRICS has been making the right kind of noises. The group’s focus on greater economic cooperation and improved trade relations within the bloc, for instance, is bang on target.


As emerging global powerhouses (even though South Africa is still only a regional player at best and Russia’s growth rate is no longer as promising as it was when Goldman Sachs included that country into the group) these countries together account for 40 per cent of the global GDP and have been credited for 50 per cent of the world’s economic growth in the past decade. As they strive to find their niche in the global arena, it is imperative that they strengthen their economic relations. Towards that end, BRICS’ decision to settle trade transactions within the group in local currencies is also a game changer. Already, stock exchanges in BRICS countries have begun cross-listing their equity benchmark index derivatives since March 30. Not only does this encourage trading within the group, it also significantly protects the countries from financial pressures originating in the West.


Furthermore, the plan to set up a BRICS development bank is a step in the right direction. If well executed, such an institution will have the potential to challenge the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — two multilateral financial institutions that not only dominate global finance but also serve as monetary levers to further Western interests.


But, if BRICS hit the mark with intra-group economic cooperation, it failed to stand up the challenge when it came to demanding reforms within the global financial architecture. For instance, even though, the Delhi Declaration calls upon the IMF and the World Bank to choose their heads on the basis of merit, it steers clear of endorsing the ‘developing world candidate’ — Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala — for the post of president of the World Bank. This is most disappointing.


A reputed economist, Ms Okonjo-Iweala, has extensive experience in development economics and boasts of a stellar record for the years that she served the World Bank as its managing director. In any other situation, she would have gotten the job of president hands down. But, given the skewed structuring of the World Bank, it is the candidate endorsed by the US — Mr Jim Yong Kim, a Korean-American global health expert — who will probably take over from outgoing president Robert Zoellick. By shying away from putting its full weight behind Ms Okonjo-Iweala, BRICS has lost a golden opportunity to show to the world the kind of power it can collectively wield.


But then again, if BRICS has faltered in its response to the World Bank situation, it has gained brownie points for taking a unified stand on the Syrian crisis and the Iranian dispute. By insisting on a Syria-led democratic transition process in that country, BRICS has made clear that it does not favour a Western military intervention of the kind that was carried out in Libya. In the case of Iran, it has warned against escalating tensions and underlined Tehran’s right to pursue a peaceful nuclear programme. Overall, BRICS has successfully presented an alternative to the Western narrative of international affairs that no doubt is much more representative of the concerns of the developing world. This was much needed — not really to counter the West but to give voice to the rest.


In many ways then, the BRICS summit presented a two step forward-one step backward kind of situation, particularly with regard to the group’s equation with the West. This equation must also be balanced against the bilateral relations of each of the member nations with the West. Will India upset the US to stand by, let’s say, Brazil? We don’t know that yet.


But as we look for answers, it would perhaps be best to discard the unipolar lens through which we still tend to view world politics for that lens will soon be obsolete as the world inches towards a multi-polar global order. The 21st century is no longer the American century in the manner in which its predecessor was. At the same time, it will not even be the Chinese century or the Indian century or even the Asian century, as many predict it to be. It will however be a more global century where smaller power centres will emerge all over the world, and it is within this new multi-polar world order that BRICS will truly come into its own.


(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on April 06, 2012.)