Members of the Free Syrian Army get ready to leave to an undisclosed location in the outskirts of Qusayr, 15 kms from Homs. Photograph: Getty Images.
Much more can be done short of an Iraq-style invasion.
All too often, international events bear out the adage that "history teaches us that history teaches us nothing". Lessons from the shameful response of the international community to other crises must inform our policy on Syria.
First, we must not describe events as a "civil war", thereby creating an image in western minds that the combatants are morally or militarily equivalent when this is a cynical perversion of reality. One is the army of a dictatorship attacking civilians; the other are freedom fighters defending a popular uprising of democrats. In the 1990s the "civil war" descriptor was used by John Major, Douglas Hurd and their foreign counterparts, to justify inaction in the face of overwhelming Serb aggression. Tragic consequences followed.
Second, we must not accept that providing solely humanitarian aid satisfies our responsibility to protect civilians in Syria from war crimes. We must not copy the model used in Bosnia of sending in UN-helmeted western troops to protect humanitarian aid convoys, merely to feed today those who will be murdered by a powerful aggressor tomorrow. The so-called "safe havens" of Bosnia seared an image of the wilful impotence of the international community onto the minds of countless dictators, no doubt including Assad and Saddam Hussein. Now is the time for moral potency in bringing to life the growing norm in international relations that, under certain circumstances, we have a "responsibility to protect" when illegitimate governments murder or persecute their own people.
Third, we should recall that much more can be done short of an Iraq-style invasion. We should learn the lessons of the work of Ann Clwyd MP and others who set up the organisation INDICT in 1996 to seek the indictment of Saddam's regime for war crimes. Suffice to say Western governments did not take up this option. The UN Human Rights Council should be encouraged to act on the recent findings of the UN-appointed Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
Fourth, we must remember the crowing of those opposed to the international liberation of Iraq in 2003 who said at the time: "why invade now for WMDs or oil...why didn't we invade when Saddam was massacring the Kurds and Shias in the 1980s." Western powers did, eventually and under public pressure, do the right thing by the Iraqi Kurds and instituted a no-fly zone and a safe haven which allowed the Kurds to return from the mountains and start building what has become the safest and most prosperous part of Iraq so far. We are now witnessing events akin to those dreadful crimes of the 1980s against humanity and failure to act will reap a terrible future harvest, not least for the people of Syria but for the Middle East and the wider world.
Finally, the Arab Spring has shown that the universal human urge to live in freedom can topple governments unwilling to reform. History will remember those who upheld and protected the rights of people whose desire was not death and destruction, but the dignity of living in freedom. The lessons of history teach us that we must not allow those who disparage and fear such universal forces to be the arbiter of human progress in Syria or elsewhere.
John Slinger is chair of Pragmatic Radicalism and blogs at Slingerblog. He was formerly researcher to Ann Clwyd MP (accompanying her to Baghdad in 2005 & 2006 when she was the Prime Minister's Special Envoy to Iraq on Human Rights).
Right, so some of the same Sunni radicals who were Islamo-fascists in Iraq are now 'freedom fighters' in Syria. Bit of deja vu there from Afghanistan in the 80s and today.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure some of the Syrian opposition are democrats - others are Sunni radicals who would be killing Alawite Shia civilians the way Assad's forces are currently killing Sunni civilians if they were given the upper hand.
Also are you calling for intervention in Bahrain, Egypt or Yemen where the forces of dictatorships are killing and torturing unarmed civilians? Are you even calling for an end to US and British arms sales to these regimes, which, apart from a few cosmetic refusals of export licences at the height of the media coverage, have never ended.
You miss out a massive amount on Iraq - including the fact that, if you read Amnesty International's annual reports for Iraq for the last couple of years, all the same torture methods used under Saddam are continuing under the police and paramilitary police commandos (rape, beatings, breaking bones, electric shocks, pulling out nails etc).
The Police Commandos are one of the many US or Coalition trained units involved in 'El Salvador Option' native death squads during the occupation and at present (e.g trained by Major James Steele who also trained the military death squads in El Salvador in the 80s - see the New York Times magazine article 'Way of the Commandoes'). The Guardian reported recently that the police commandos are also torturing people simply to extort money from their families. Many of the officers in these units also served under Saddam (e.g google the Times article 'West turns a blind eye as Saddam's torturers put back to work')
When Iraqis protested against the new government during the Arab Spring its forces shot them dead too.
That's no change from what Coalition forces did in many cases when they were there - e.g aid workers like Jo Wilding's reports from Fallujah in April 2004 that US snipers were targeting civilians in and outside their houses, ambulances, the wounded and paramedics; plus the systematic torture by breaking bones, beatings, etc reported by US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan like Captain Ian Fishback.
In Libya there are militias fighting one another across the country and rounding up black Libyans, black migrants, women, children and people they suspect of being Gaddafi supporters (some of whom actually fought against him) and jailing, torturing or killing them.
So where is the example of a country where the US and its allies intervened and less civilians were tortured or murdered or killed as a result?
There hasn't been one, because when they intervene neither the motives nor the methods nor their proxies have ever been humanitarian.
I would love to believe that the US and its allies would come in and only target the guilty, bringing democracy and ending torture. In fact they don't. They do the same as Russia's and China's governments - try to get their own clients installed and kick out other peoples' client governments and governments that won't take orders from any major power, using exactly the same methods the Russians use - torture, arming dictatorships, targeting civilians.
Right, so some of the same Sunni radicals who were Islamo-fascists in Iraq are now 'freedom fighters' in Syria. Bit of deja vu there from Afghanistan in the 80s and today.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure some of the Syrian opposition are democrats - others are Sunni radicals who would be killing Alawite Shia civilians the way Assad's forces are currently killing Sunni civilians if they were given the upper hand.
Also are you calling for intervention in Bahrain, Egypt or Yemen where the forces of dictatorships are killing and torturing unarmed civilians? Are you even calling for an end to US and British arms sales to these regimes, which, apart from a few cosmetic refusals of export licences at the height of the media coverage, have never ended.
You miss out a massive amount on Iraq - including the fact that, if you read Amnesty International's annual reports for Iraq for the last couple of years, all the same torture methods used under Saddam are continuing under the police and paramilitary police commandos (rape, beatings, breaking bones, electric shocks, pulling out nails etc).
The Police Commandos are one of the many US or Coalition trained units involved in 'El Salvador Option' native death squads during the occupation and at present (e.g trained by Major James Steele who also trained the military death squads in El Salvador in the 80s - see the New York Times magazine article 'Way of the Commandoes'). The Guardian reported recently that the police commandos are also torturing people simply to extort money from their families. Many of the officers in these units also served under Saddam (e.g google the Times article 'West turns a blind eye as Saddam's torturers put back to work')
When Iraqis protested against the new government during the Arab Spring its forces shot them dead too.
That's no change from what Coalition forces did in many cases when they were there - e.g aid workers like Jo Wilding's reports from Fallujah in April 2004 that US snipers were targeting civilians in and outside their houses, ambulances, the wounded and paramedics; plus the systematic torture by breaking bones, beatings, etc reported by US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan like Captain Ian Fishback.
In Libya there are militias fighting one another across the country and rounding up black Libyans, black migrants, women, children and people they suspect of being Gaddafi supporters (some of whom actually fought against him) and jailing, torturing or killing them.
So where is the example of a country where the US and its allies intervened and less civilians were tortured or murdered or killed as a result?
There hasn't been one, because when they intervene neither the motives nor the methods nor their proxies have ever been humanitarian.
I would love to believe that the US and its allies would come in and only target the guilty, bringing democracy and ending torture. In fact they don't. They do the same as Russia's and China's governments - try to get their own clients installed and kick out other peoples' client governments and governments that won't take orders from any major power, using exactly the same methods the Russians use - torture, arming dictatorships, targeting civilians.
So what do you think about those lessons of recent history? Learned anything from them? The trouble with saying we should "learn the lessons of history" is that you've picked a few bits of it that suit your case and ignored all the rest that don't.
ReplyDeletep.s respect for approving a comment disagreeing your post.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I read this the other week in the New Statesman and I've been wrestling with it since then. You raise good points and make a principled argument but I think there is a danger that you have overlooked recent history.
ReplyDeleteThe first point I have been struggling with is the civil war statement. I take your argument about Bosnia, but just because sides are ill-matched does not mean a civil war is not taking place. The Free Syrian Army are a challenge to the power of the state and my understanding is they want to replace the ruling regime. How is this not a civil war?
On the work of INDICT I think one of the things that has changed in the last decade has been the rise of the International Criminal Court and the development of mechanisms to achieve what you describe here. If my memory is correct the ICC did move against Gaddafi and it doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that there will soon be a similar indictment of Assad.
The interventionist argument/liberal internationalism is currently in a bind for a couple of reasons.
The first is Iraq. While I clearly have sympathy with your arguments about "responsibility to protect" you do need to acknowledge the balancing requirement of the "responsibility to rebuild." Much as we would like to we cannot wish away the aftermath of regime change in Iraq and the fact that a bad intervention can be as bad, if not worse, than no intervention. While regime change has been beneficial for Iraqi Kurdistan the need to create a security solution post-2006 has ultimately created the conditions for a new dictatorship within non-Kurdish Iraq. So we do need to learn the lessons of history but we cannot cherry pick those lessons. Iraq demonstrated that good intentions can have terrible outcomes.
Intervention in Syria faces the obstacles of following Iraq. The arguments for intervention in Iraq were discredited and intervention was shown to be difficult, if not impossible. Where the anti-intervention left saw an imperialist crusade the reality was more akin to a negotiation. A negotiation where the influence of the external actors depends on how long they are prepared to stay and how much they are prepared to spend. If, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, they can remain in place for a decade and more and be able to offer incentives like membership of the EU they may be successful. If, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, their stay is shortened their influence on the political settlement after withdrawal is lessened.
For intervention to enact "responsibility to protect" in Syria to be credible and carry the possibility of success you need that "responsibility to rebuild." Without it, even as a supporter of R2P, you have to ask yourself whether we are making a bad situation better or worse.
The second problem is linked to the first. It is about political leadership and finance. In short, no leader in the west is willing to rerun the Iraq project in Syria. Certainly not Obama. Without American support it is difficult to see a successful military operation. A targeted bombing campaign, like Libya, runs the risk of removing a regime and leaving a vacuum in a state that has greater regional significant than the deserts of North Africa. And even if there is a desire to do something the limits of finance post-2008 would cause most to stop and pause.
So while I share your desire that something must be done, I am unclear as to what this something should be.
Sorry I haven't responded to these comments. Been busy. Best wishes, John
Delete