The vacuum of international action in Syria is a serious mistake. It is frightening to see the apparent widespread disinterest in the collapse of one of the largest Arab states, as its centuries of civilisation and culture collapse into rubble and millions of its people flee for their lives.
The whole region has a genuine strategic interest is stopping warring militias and religious extremists take over in Syria. The country is an integral part of the Arab world and needs to be helped back to stability and then nursed back to prosperity. It is difficult to define what needs to happen after so much failure, but sitting back and letting warlords set the agenda is certainly not going to lead anywhere. A new effort has to be taken to set out coordinated regional and international action.
The first problem is that the hard work going on in Geneva is too remote from reality. It is hard to believe in any commitment from either the opposition or the government when they talk of a framework for an interim government that may never happen. The unfortunate Lakhdar Brahimi is trying to bring two sides together that have no reason to trust each other, and the negotiations ignore the religious extremists linked to Al Qaida who are taking over more and more of the country.
And direct intervention through armed support for the ineffectual Free Syrian Army is not an immediate option. Some of its units are fighting heroically against the government forces, but its central command is poorly organised and lost the confidence of the US and other backers when it failed to defend its arms supplies against the religious militias.
And recent history is not a guide to success. The first failure was not to intervene three years ago when the peaceful protests were being crushed by force. The second mistake was the lack of will to back the secular and more inclusive opposition forces more vigorously. And the most recent failure was for the US and the UK to refuse a limited military intervention after the Syrian government used gas on its own people.
The right to unilaterally intervene in a sovereign state’s internal affairs has been legally denied to foreign armies for decades. But in 2005, the United Nations adopted a new primary duty of “the responsibility to protect” populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.
This new authority may legitimise a future intervention, but as the United Nations has become increasingly ignored, the legal niceties of intervention have also fallen away. Great powers intervene when they see a chance to grab some advantage, or a quick option with a relatively easy in-and-out.
Carrots and sticks
These is little clarity about Syria, but it is essential to strengthen the secular and more inclusive forces, even if it’s too much to hope for liberal forces. The Americans and the Friends of Syria need to be more forceful in setting out both carrots and sticks which should be clear to the combatants.
First, there should be a much tougher sanctions regime on the Syrian government. The regime is able to freely obtain both arms and money, which are its lifeline. The Americans cannot walk away and leave managing Bashar Al Assad to the Russians and the Iranians. The Russians have their own cynical game at play as they seek to find a new role in the Middle East and that is nothing to do with American aims.
Second, actions against the regime should include imposing a no-fly zone on government military aircraft. If Al Assad was unable to use helicopters to strafe his people, and aircraft to bomb them, his hopes for victory would be greatly reduced.
Third, in the light of such a no-fly zone and a sense of the noose tightening on the regime, it would be useful to start a line of communication to the Syrian generals to tell them that if they dumped their leader and his more ghastly henchmen, it would be possible to start constructive and inclusive talks.
Fourth, the Geneva process needs to continue, because it is helping define what will happen in the remote future. The gap that needs to be bridged is how to manage the immediate future, and it may be that Geneva is where a ceasefire on the ground can be negotiated. Fifth, the international community should continue to work with the opposition groups who want a secular and inclusive Syria. Ignoring them is totally counter-productive in the long term, even if their confusion is frustrating in the short term. They need to be part of the solution, even if they are not able to force such a conclusion on their own.
And lastly, there needs to be a concerted effort to stop arms and people getting to the Al Qaida groups. Sanctions cannot just apply against the government forces but should also cover the shadowy groups in the east with their close links to militias in Iraq.
