Syria in danger of becoming Somalia or Afghanistan: Siddiqui
Syria proves that the president of the United States remains the most powerful person on Earth. Despite relentless domestic and international pressure to do something, Barack Obama has refused to budge in his resolve not to get overtly involved. Absent America, there can be no humanitarian military intervention like the U.S.-led ones in 1995 and 1999 against Yugoslavia to save the Bosnians and Kosovars. Syrians will continue to be slaughtered by Bashar Assad.
About 80,000 have already been killed, another 160,000 have disappeared (presumed dead or rotting in his jails), and 5.8 million have been displaced (4.25 million internally and 1.6 million in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt).
There is little or no prospect of the UN or anyone else invoking the Canadian doctrine of Responsibility to Protect. There are only desperate appeals for funds to manage the escalating humanitarian crisis.
The reasons for inaction are well-known.
After Iraq and Afghanistan, America is war-weary — and broke. Obama is especially reluctant, for strategic reasons, to land American bombs and troops in another Muslim nation. But many among the 62 per cent of Americans opposing involvement in Syria have a more visceral sentiment: “Let the bastards kill each other.”
Russia and China won’t permit France and Britain another Security Council mandate à la Libya, saying that was misused — stretched from saving Libyans from imminent slaughter by Moammar Gadhafi to toppling him. And Moscow has found in Syria a perfect place to rediscover its Cold War prowess.
The interventionist camp is led by those who believe that unless America periodically flexes its military muscles, it looks impotent. Pro-Israeli forces think Syria is a good place to teach its patron Iran a hard lesson. Yet others — among them, Stephen Harper — don’t want to arm a Syrian opposition that includes “Islamists,” “extremists” and “radicals,” terms of indeterminate meaning.
The one concern missing from all these considerations is the unending massacre of Syrians and the “unravelling of Syria as a civilization,” as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday.
It turns out that even Obama’s “red line” on Syrian chemical and biological weapons is flexible. After reports of Assad’s use of sarin and chlorine gas, Obama made clear he had only been referring to a “systematic” use of such weapons. Spraying on civilians here and there doesn’t count. Washington would worry only if the weapons were in danger of falling in the wrong hands. (That presumably won’t happen as long as Assad is in charge.)
Only Israel has adhered to its red lines. It has bombed Syria thrice, to stop the flow of arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Perversely, all the reasons cited for not intervening militarily have come true because of not intervening militarily.
Besides causing mass casualties and a refugee exodus, the prolonged war spilled over into Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. It strengthened Iran and Hezbollah. In Syria, it turned the non-violent pro-democracy movement into an armed struggle, flooding the country with weapons. It triggered sectarianism, initiated by Assad who relied on his Alawite community as well as the Shiites against the majority Sunnis, ethnic cleansing them to create a corridor from Damascus to Homs and the coastal mountain heartland of the Alawites to Latakia on the Mediterranean.
The war enticed foreign jihadists, including those linked to Al Qaeda (from Iraq, Yemen, etc.). It splintered the opposition into dozens of militias, who are now fighting each other for turf and revenue streams — toll booths, oil wells, arms trafficking, etc.
The opposition is in total disarray, leading to the postponement of a planned peace conference in Geneva this month. Even America’s allies — in Europe and the Middle East — are badly divided on what to do.
All this has happened while Obama dithered or pursued a confused policy. He funneled $650 million in non-lethal aid to the rebels but let Qatar and Saudi Arabia supply them arms (and now presumably would let Britain and France do so, following the EU’s recent decision to lift its arms embargo).
Last year, Obama lost a chance for America to sit down with Russia and the others because he insisted on a precondition: Assad had to go. Now he seems to have abandoned that idea, agreeing to the meeting in Geneva.
Had he moved with resolve two years ago with, say, a no-fly zone or threatened to bomb Assad’s palace and those of his cronies, along with key military installations (as suggested in this space), Syria would not have reached this stage where it’s in danger of turning into a Somalia.
That scary prospect is perhaps what has motivated Obama to seek Russian help. Even that may have come too late.
Haroon Siddiqui is the Star’s editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca
Source: Thestar