The following is an adaptation of a presentation I gave on April 12, 2014 at the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies conference:
Since last writing on this topic in February, the news emanating from
the Syrian refugee crisis has only gotten worse. There are now close to 2.7 million
refugees who have fled the Syrian conflict, the majority of whom have settled
in Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. There are almost 14 million people who
are in need of aid in the region as a result of the conflict, and funds from
the international community have hardly been forthcoming: the UNHCR’s appeal
for 4.2 billion dollars is only 14% funded, while UNICEF’s 222 million dollar
appeal is less than 12% funded. Without these desperately needed resources, UN
agencies as well as over one hundred other humanitarian agencies can do little
to mitigate the devastating effects of the Syrian conflict on the region.
The effects of the crisis on Syria’s neighbors are becoming more
acute, and more violent. In Lebanon, clashes not only in the north of the country
but also in Beirut have led to scores of casualties and deaths. A Syrian
refugee mother recently set herself on fire in front of a UN building in
Tripoli because she was unable to feed her four children on the small amount that
aid agencies and the government are currently struggling to provide. Lebanon
also passed the “devastating milestone” of one million Syrian refugees this
month, and refugees now make up a quarter of the population, the largest per
capita concentration of refugees in the world.
On December 18, 2011, Iraqis watched in mixed fear and
jubilation as the last US tanks rolled across the border into Kuwait, marking
an official end to the American-led invasion in 2003. Two years later in 2013,
those fears seem to have borne out while jubilation is in short supply:
civilian deaths are reaching levels not seen since the Iraqi civil war of
2007-2009, and massive attacks have become a regular facet of everyday life. In
September alone, there were nearly 1,000 deaths, 800 of which were civilians. Even this was shy of
the 2013 high of 1,057 deaths in July. Sectarian, regional, and tribal divides
have widened, not subsided, and the Maliki government itself is a hotbed of
corruption, poor governance, and has lost the public’s faith as a democratic
institution. The current path of Iraq indicates at best a pattern of cyclical
violence, and at worst a nearly unstoppable march back to civil war.
Qasim Ahmad Tahan carries the body of his 5-year-old son Walid.
Courtesy AP.
Yet chances are, you haven’t seen Iraq in the headlines in a
while. Violent acts have become so frequent that they hardly make it on Twitter
reports. On Monday alone, 15 car bombs went off in Baghdad, which, as the BBC’s
Michael Knights points out, “would have been an unprecedented event...[i]n any
other country.” In Iraq, it was the 38th attack of this kind in the
last 12 months. Given that the current security crisis began but did not end
with the US occupation of 2003-2011, American policymakers should be scrambling
to figure out a way to aid the Maliki government in combatting the violence.
With a civil war next door in Syria and unrest in Egypt, instability is
spreading like disease throughout the region in the wake of the Arab
Awakening’s derailing by autocrats. Combined with US war weariness with Iraq
itself, it appears that the US can or will do little to stem the tide of what
is becoming a river of blood.
The world breathed a collective sigh of relief after President Obama's speech last night, a speech in which Obama indicated that a vote from Congress on military force in Syria would be put on hold while we once again revisited the idea of diplomacy. In fact, it's safe to say President Obama himself was breathing a sigh of relief, having averted what would have been a dramatic failure when Congress undoubtedly voted against authorizing military force. Instead, the world's attention has been turned towards Russia, who days ago unveiled their proposal for seizure of Syrian chemical weapons by the international community in place of any military action. True, this alternative satisfies the international community's need to stand up against chemical weapons and show that there are repercussions to their use, and also avoids dragging any other country's army into the conflict - nobody will argue that these are the main stipulations for any proposal put on the negotiating table. However, the proposal is nothing more than a vapid, empty attempt by Russia and Syria to delay any international reaction of substance. President Obama may have successfully avoided an embarrassing defeat by Congress of his authority to use military force, but the time for that will ultimately come when the veil has been lifted and Russia's proposal is seen for what it really is.
Over
the last week, The Global Atlas’s metaphorical lights have been off as the
three lead contributors were either out of town, dealing with Allston
Christmas, and starting the new school year and the flood of students and work
that comes with it. In that week, Pres. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry
have raised the decibel level on the rhetoric surrounding the Syria crisis.
Both have confirmed their belief that a chemical attack took place in late
August, possibly followed by another; both have pointed the finger at Syrian
President Bashar al-Asad; and both have hinted that military strikes will begin
soon, but only with congressional approval. The likelihood of a strike increased
this morning with the State Dept. ordering all of its non-emergency personnel
out of Beirut, and issuing travel warnings for Turkey and Lebanon.
I’ve
been pretty vocal in my criticism of the handling of the Syrian crisis, and I’m
not about to change now: bombing Asad’s forces would be a huge mistake. It
could have the allegedly unintended effect of toppling Asad; it could also very
well prevent the use of chemical weapons by either side or others in the
future, which of course is a desirable outcome. Yet its other effects would be
so negative and detrimental to finding a sustainable peace in Syria that they
would vastly outweigh any positives that could result from such a strike. As I
have written
before, the time for a military intervention has long passed, and toppling Asad
without a negotiated settlement in place leaves us with unsavory choices for
his replacement.
The videos are heart-wrenching
to watch: a young boy, screaming and crying with other children in the street
while bodies lie around them. A young man convulses uncontrollably, while
others are sprawled in the halls of what appears to be an overwhelmed medical
clinic; some still shake and show signs of life, others are clearly dead. In
what has become a hallmark of videos of massacres in Syria, makeshift morgues
lined with scores of corpses leave no doubt that a massive attack has taken
place. The surviving victims display many of the hallmark symptoms of sarin gas
exposure: convulsions, foaming at the mouth, and dilated pupils, and the scale
of the casualties only add weight to this conjecture.
Videos
of the attack today in the Ghouta region east of Damascus killing hundreds of
civilians will test the United States’ ability to stay out of the two-year-old
civil war in Syria. Opposition leaders have already pointed their fingers at
beleaguered president and war criminal Bashar al-Asad. US Pres. Barack Obama
has previously listed chemical attacks as a “red line” that, if crossed, would
automatically trigger American intervention. Yet despite confirming that it had
“conclusive evidence”of such an attack in June, the government has yet to
deliver the promised military aid to rebel groups. The amount of footage from
today’s alleged attack makes it difficult to dispute that something horrific
has taken place in Ghouta, yet there is little reason to believe a Western
response will go much further than rhetoric and promises of aid.
The
Asad regime denies that such an attack took place – and if it did, the
government insists that it was at the hands of the opposition. There is, for
once, good reason to be suspicious of the attack: it took place just a few miles
from where the United Nations chemical weapons inspection team is staying in
Damascus, after having arrived in Syria on Sunday. It seems counterintuitive
that Asad would order an attack on a location that can be so easily and
immediately accessed by UN inspectors, especially so soon after their arrival. The
Asad regime has also been winning important battles using conventional methods,
and there seems to be no good strategic reason that it would shift tactics now.
In the chemical weapons attacks earlier this summer, evidence pointed not only
to the regime’s use of sarin, but also to likely rebel use against government
forces. Both groups claim the other is trying to frame them, and both may be
right. If this is the case in Ghouta, then rebel groups murdered hundreds of
their own supporters in order to gain Western support in the seemingly
never-ending war against Asad, an unthinkable action.
A man lays an infant to rest among scores of victims. Courtesy AP.
Then
again, the Asad regime could be growing increasingly confident that even if the
UN team confirms the use of sarin, Western governments will still stay out of
the Syrian civil war. Asad is many things, but an idiot isn’t one of them; he
can sense as well as anyone else American and European reluctance to get
involved in what would be a messy intervention, at a cost of billions of
dollars to their already unbalanced budgets, not to mention on the side of
rebels who may or may not end up supporting Western interests if they were to
gain power. After all, the “conclusive evidence” of the sarin attacks earlier
this summer cited by the American government has failed to provoke even the
delivery of military aid, let alone boots on the ground.
The
UN teams must answer questions of who is culpable for the attacks swiftly if
there is to be hope of outside intervention. The conflict has already caused
human suffering at a pace and scale that is unprecedented in regional history:
over 100,000 have died in the civil war, and more than half of Syria’s
population has been displaced both internally and abroad. The addition of
chemical weapons will devastate an already shattered country, and lessen the
likelihood of a peaceful transition when the dust clears. In the worst case
scenario, chemical weapons alongside conventional warfare will render the
country Syria a barren failed state, with stronghold controlled by warlords
where massacres and human rights violations regularly take place. In the best,
a timely intervention by outside forces to establish No-Fly Zones and safe
havens for civilians while assisting the rebels to win militarily or force the
regime to the negotiating table would at least leave Syria intact as a country.
At this point in the conflict, that’s the best we can hope for, and that is
nearly as depressing as the West’s lack of intervention for the last two years.
In the 19 months since the Obama Administration effectively
removed the last of the U.S. troops in Iraq, the embattled state has seen
slight progress – something virtually unparalleled since Saddam Hussein was
taken out of power in 2003. Due to enormous, and previously unforeseen deposits
of oil underneath Kurdish territory in the north and northeast regions of the
country, Iraqi Kurds have had more leverage in dealing and negotiating with
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite government – in fact, this past June
marked the first time al-Maliki had visited Iraqi Kurdistan in over two years.
On the other hand, sectarian violence, especially between the Sunnis and the
Shiites, has remained incredibly high. For his part, al-Maliki has “encouraged
talks”, but with a promise to continue military assaults against Sunnis he
perceives as threatening, these talks are likely not to happen anytime soon.
However, there certainly remains an air of increasing stability in the country –
an air that has not existed in quite some time.
Evidence has been amassing in recent days to support the notion that the Syrian government is using chemical weapons in the ongoing civil war ravaging the country. The use of chemical weapons has continuously been referred to as Obama's "red line;" therefore, the implications of this are quite serious. However, despite the White House having said since the beginning of the conflict that they would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons and would see it as grounds for more substantial intervention, nothing seems to be happening. Without a clear consensus coming from lawmakers and the White House, continued floundering by the U.S. on this issue will have significant repercussions for the Syrian opposition. In a moment vaguely reminiscent of Rwanda in 1994, President Obama's legacy may be galvanized by his wavering on what is one of the gravest issues he has faced as president thus far.
As tracked through a series of articles in The Global Atlas (here, here and here), we've been follwoing the situation in Syria closely. In what began as a botched uprising followed by renewed protests after the incarceration and torture of Syrian teenagers for anti-government graffiti, the Syrian uprising quickly devolved into a civil war that has not only produced a massive humanitarian disaster within and outside of its borders but has tested the organization and cohesiveness of the broad Syrian opposition. Converging now is a spectrum of developments that's shaping the reality on the ground and raising renewed fears that the Syrian opposition's decentralization and lack of transitional authority on the ground--let alone the lack of consensus on the future shape and ideology of a Syrian state--pose serious problems for any post-conflict settlement. Emerging from the chaos is an increasingly worrisome mélange of powerful militant factions all vying for power and control as largely a biproduct of Syrian National Council's (SNC), and later the National Coalition's failure to effectively lead the rebels as opposed to merely represent them.
Members of the Syrian National Coalition. December 2012. Photo via Ya Libnan.
On Saturday, and after three days of detention by factional elements of the Syrian opposition called the Martyrs of Yarmouk, twenty-one UN peacekeepers were released into Jordan just six miles from their captivity in Jamla. UN Secretary General and other officials have demanded the release of the filipino peacekeepers, who serve in the broader UN Disengagement and Observer Force (UNDOF). UNDOF serves as the peacekeeping mission to monitor a demilitarized zone along the Golan Heights, which Israel acquired from Syria following the 1967 war. While the militants claim that the peacekeepers were "guests" and that they were just escorting the blue helmets to safety from an area under attack from government forces, the Martyrs of Yarmouk and their seemingly random capture and transport of UN peacekeepers have raised serious concerns about the radical elements within the Syrian opposition and whether or not they can be reigned in by the opposition.
Chief of Staff greets the 21 peacekeepers in Amman after
safely crossing the Jordan border. Jordan Pix via Getty Images.
The effects of the crisis on Syria’s neighbors are becoming more
acute, and more violent. In Lebanon, clashes not only in the north of the country
but also in Beirut have led to scores of casualties and deaths. A Syrian
refugee mother recently set herself on fire in front of a UN building in
Tripoli because she was unable to feed her four children on the small amount that
aid agencies and the government are currently struggling to provide. Lebanon
also passed the “devastating milestone” of one million Syrian refugees this
month, and refugees now make up a quarter of the population, the largest per
capita concentration of refugees in the world.
