Syria: our collective impotence?
The massacre in Houla more grimly and acutely describes the extent of international impotence in the face of atrocities committed in what is Syria’s bloody civil war. “What if”, is never a very clever question in diplomacy. But what if there had been no Iraq War; what if Nato had not translated its ambition to protect civilians in Benghazi into determination to pursue regime change and the eventual end of Gaddafi?
Last night New York witnessed the most cohesive and shocked United Nations response since the war in Syria began over a year ago. But where does it go? The option of military intervention has been so polluted by failures in Afghanistan and Iraq that the appetite for more is stone-dry. The UN was careful to try to limit the international action in Libya to concentrate on the protection of civilians. We know from Human Rights Watch that some sixty or more Libyan civilians were killed in Nato action. Collateral damage in such an engagement is inevitable. But the heavy bombardment of the areas in and around Tripoli in a bid to dislodge the Gaddafi regime has according to Nato diplomats to whom I have spoken ‘queered the pitch’ in Syria for any form of military intervention.
Yet the deaths of perhaps 50 children in the assault on Houla would, under normal circumstances call forth a physical international response. Few think there will now be any. Worse, President Assad himself knows it.
There is, in addition the continuing question about who is involved on the rebel side beyond the disparate band of rebels themselves. A well-connected Saudi businessman told me last week that it is an open secret in the Kingdom that both Saudi and Qatar are present in arms, cash and some personnel.
Add to all this the proximity of Syria to Lebanon and Israel. Add too Iran’s involvement with the Damascus regime and we have an infernal combination of danger in which the international community has somehow rendered itself powerless to do more that watch and shout. And how many babies, young children and women, will that save?
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There are 18 comments on this post
We have become increasingly,warlike to those regimes where we do not fear the consequences, and yet where our intervention has created more tension,more danger and the possibility of an increase in terrorist actions over which we have none or little control.Egypt and Libya more than likely turning to anti West Muslim control.Iraq in a state of turmoil.No proper solution in Afghanistan , but more than likely a return to civil war when we leave.Al Qaida training grounds shifted to Somalia and Yemen.Did we even succeed in Yugoslavia,where the country would have broken up anyway.Did we stop massacres?No but we bought military men to trial for alleged war crimes.Were those crimes any worse than those ordered by Bush and Blair,attacking a perceived enemy yet at the same time by their actions and orders murdering civilians.The intruder at Leverson was quite right, but for the wrong reasons.Blair should be answering a charge of war crimes.
As to Syria,it is a potential Civil War over which we have no right to intervene.TV has shown armed militia and no self respecting government can allow that on its streets.
No right to intervene??? What is the purpose of the UN if not to safeguard the lives of innocent people? It might as well not exist! You can’t just stand by and do nothing.
Just look at that little girls face and tell her she has no protection rights….
I am flabbergasted by Adrian clarke’s assertion that we have “no right to intervene”. Human beings are being slaughtered in the most brutal fashion. In time this period in history will become yet another shameful reminder of the utter depravity with which some regimes rule over their people and the sickening apathy shown towards it by the rest of the world. No right to intervene? We should all be utterly, utterly ashamed.
I take it, Stuart, that you are not one of the servicemen who would have to risk their lives? Or one of their parents?
And if the ‘west’ intervenes what happens next? Is there a viable group in Syria to unify the country. You can’t keep peace until their is peace. Does the west stay forever and become the common enemy
John Stuart Mill rightly said that ‘the struggle for democracy is a domestic one’ and Jefferson that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants
UNGA Resolution 2625 states:
No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements are in violation of international law.
Let’s not be naive here; the west IS intervening. You wouldn’t know it from watching C4News, but those kind Turks have stepped in to fan the flames of civil war by allowing commandos from French intelligence and the British MI6 to setup military bases in Hatay in southern Turkey to train the Free Syrian Army in urban guerilla warfare techniques which include bombing heavily built up areas and random sniper fire to cause terror amongst the population.
British MI6 operatives and UKSF (SAS/SBS) personnel have reportedly been training the rebels in urban warfare as well as supplying them with arms and equipment. US CIA operatives and Special Forces are believed to be providing communications assistance.
Knowing the history of CIA death squads will aid your understanding.
If all this is because of one man, how easy is it to take him out? One drone?
Y.S. you may have a point there but like you, Assad has not been convicted of anything in a court. Maybe you should ask yourself ‘How easy would it be to take me out?’
A surprising blog from Mr. Snow, I would not have considered him to be an interventionist.
However, while I do not agree with the first comment about no right to intervene, I do point out that the Hama massacre of thirty years ago may have cost 20,000 Syrian civilians lives and the international outcry died down after a while.
And the fact that 50 children died seems to be raising this disturbing media spectre again of young persons lives having a premium over the rest of us, 108 people died in Houla in total and as many as 13,000 have died in the uprising so far. It is awful children are targeted but all human life deserves equal protection and dignity. I do support strong military intervention and am not queasy about the risks if it can save a million people from death, and it could get that bad if one was to scale up the carnage of the Lebanese civil war and apply it to Syria. Two wars were fought over the murder of 3000 people in 2001 and at least the Afghan war was justified.
Maybe 33,000 people have been killed by the Al Assad clan so far since ’82, no intervention will happen even if they kill another 100,000, women, children and men too. Syrian lives mean less I think?
Our inability to intervene in Syria is less to do with the ‘failures’ in Iraq and Afghanistan that our very real military impotence. With the Army’s armoured forces dwindling away, the RAF reduced to a shadow of its former self and the Royal Navy’s blue-water power projection capability having ceased to exist for all practical purposes, the main reason we can’t fight the Russian-armed Assad regime is that, quite simply, we would lose.
there are severaal things here.Margaret,i agree about the little girl though she is probably in London.
As a country we can not unilaterally interfere in Syria ,without UN approval and backing.The security council can not get a unanimous agreement to intervene.The situation as Jon rightly says is perilous with the surrounding countries.Its nothing to do with apathy when Russia and China would block any attempt to intervene.
Though undoubtably there is a brutal put down of rebels opposed to the regime,we know that the rebels are armed.In the London riots,had the rioters been armed what would the security forces have done, how would they react against a coup?
I do not believe all i see on the news,but even if true,it would be interesting to read what action you believe we should take,Stuart
The chances of us intervening militarily in Syria are zero. The one thing the wars of the last 20 years have taught Governments is that large scale military intervention in a divided & large country doesn’t work. There is as good a moral case for intervening in Syria as there was in Afghanistan & Iraq – but there’s an equally good reason for intervening in Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, & arguably Western China & Tibet, etc…What these wars have shown is that whatever immediate benefit intervention causes, the medium to longer terms effects are that more people get killed. The UN is a creature of consensus & the Chinese & Russians won’t sanction intervention in countries like Syria. So what can the economically bankrupt & militarily overstretched West do? Intervene without a UN mandate? Use a drone to kill Assad (without any certainty you can actually hit the right person & may kill a lot of innocent ones)? I don’t like this any more than any other right-thinking person, but our right to intervene can’t just rest on our moral sentiments (on that basis you can’t argue with the interventions in Iraq & Afghanistan), but on international law.
For civilized nations, strategic interests are paramount before intervening to oust dictators. Protecting civilians and human rights appears to be just a veil, on their hot pursuit to gain strategic gains in respective regions..
This is so troubling. It seems so wrong not to intervene. On the other hand, on that premise, it would have been wrong not to intervene in Iraq, where the genocide and murder by a dictator was perhaps less obvious but still happening, an example being that if anyone disagreed with Saddam Hussein, whole extended families were slaughtered and I expect that included children.
If the West protects humanity with military intervention because it feels that is right, then it risks being seen as warmongers or global police, but to me it feels so wrong to stand by and allow such atrocities to happen, if we have the power to try and stop them happening.
But if leaders choose to intervene using military means, will they be called war criminals by all and sundry in years to come?
We need to sort out our feelings about military intervention. And we need to do it quickly because what is happening in Syria right now is devastating.
The idea that there should be an intervention (presumably military) ignores the reality of rights, international law and practicality. Rights rely on duties from rules: these are socially constructed. A Syrian cannot have rights which place a duty on (for example) a German citizen or the German State. The idea of a social contract (that the state has a duty of care to its citizens in return for sovereignty) not only means that a Syrian citizen cannot claim a duty from another state, but means that no state should risk its blood and treasure unless for ‘the national interest’. How could the state risk the lives of British servicemen to intervene in Syria? It is easy to call for intervention when its not you or your family that would be going to war.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights is a universal declaration; it has nothing to do with universal rights. It is simply a blue print for best practice whose intention is to avoid revolution maintain the stability of the international, explicitly placing states at its heart recognising the primacy of sovereignty and self determination (as in Chapter I of the UN Charter). The UN is a voluntary body that of itself has no legitimacy, authority or power to enforce any rules which (Fatima) exists to maintain stability in the international system; it is the result of the experience of two world wars and large reflects balance of power politics, along with US dominance.
States intervene when there is a national interest, which may be the stability of the international system. But sovereignty and self determination are rights in ‘international law’, and at the moment we have no indication that Syria has lost its sovereignty. Regardless of how morally repugnant we judge its tactics, we have no indication that Assad’s regime has lost sovereignty; that the rebels are capable of sovereignty or even that they represent anything other than a sectarian minority. The geo-political context in risks dragging Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel into the conflict and spreading contagion to Lebanon and Iraq. In military terms the geography in not benign and the heavily armed Syrian Army means it would take a massive war (on a far greater scale than Iraq).
Unfortunately the lesson may be that Hobbes was right; a sovereign, no matter if absolute or unjust, is better than the anarchy of war of all against all.
So many words for ‘do unto others as you would to yourself.’ Law and ethics are 2 different disciplines. If we are talking intervention , then the covert or less direct intervention as Mike points out should be examined.
Since Hobbes was around communications and waring methods have changed.Syrias’ problems put a different slant on women and children first.
Kofi Anand has realised that diplomacy isn’t working and wants an alternative plan. Russia needs to show that morality is more important than money and despite the billions which have been banked in Russia must openly show that bribary is not in the equation in saving all these lives.
Time to make a decision Hilary.. time to make a decision UN.. stop the slaughter of children.. Libya’s problems may have been different than Syrias , but all those children breathe the same air, eat and drink and love are grateful for life.
If you would discover that the any of those who so brutally slaughtered the children in Houla the way they did were to flee Syria to a safe haven in your neighbourhood, How do you feel? Do you have children?