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A member of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) looks through his binoculars as he takes position with comrades in Idlib in northwestern Syria on Feb. 22. Two foreign journalists were killed as Syrian forces pounded the rebel city of Homs, activists said, while calls mounted for a truce to allow in humanitarian aid. (Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)
Seldom has the dividing line between the forces of moderation and the forces of extremism been so clear in the Middle East. The extremist anti-West, Iran-led Shi’ite Crescent, consisting of Iraq (largely operating at Iran’s behest), Syria, and Lebanon, heavily subsidized by Tehran with political capital and financial resources for the past three decades, is now under serious threat of collapse thanks to the crack in its most critical link: Syria’s Assad regime.
On the other hand, the human tragedy in Syria has created a rare common interest between the old and the new Arab regimes, Turkey, the United States, and the EU for the potential emergence of a representative government in Damascus.
Nonetheless, while Iran, Russia, and China are doing their utmost to prevent the fall of Assad, the international and regional forces of moderation have yet to rise up to the challenge. Unless this loose alliance of moderate forces closes ranks and embarks on a decisive effort to break the Shi’ite Crescent, the Syrian people will be left alone to face a continuing massacre and will miss a historic opportunity to join a new, peaceful and potentially more democratically oriented Middle East. Turkey especially stands to affect and gain from a more vigorous involvement of the forces of moderation.
Resolutions
On Feb. 16, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted overwhelmingly for a resolution backing the Arab League’s (AL) plan calling for Bashar Assad to step down and strongly condemned the widespread and systematic human rights violations by his forces, further demanding that the government immediately cease all acts of violence.
Although the UNGA resolution is not binding, it offers powerful moral support to the Syrian opposition, especially after the Russian-Chinese veto earlier this month of a United Nation Security Council (UNSC) resolution to the same effect. Equally, the UNGA resolution strongly fortifies the moral standing that enables the AL, Turkey, and the West to venture beyond their current tentative positions, given the apparent failure of all other initiatives thus far.
The AL initiative, calling for a transfer of power to Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Shara’a, the formation of a unity government, and the referral of this initiative to the UNSC to assist in its implementation, has been dysfunctional from the beginning. A power transfer to the Syrian vice president, even if the initiative had passed in the UNSC, would deliver zero change in Syria given that al-Shara’a himself has been a prominent member of Syria’s ruling apparatus for almost 30 years.
Syria has turned into the battleground between the forces of moderation and the forces of extremism in the Middle East.
A similar vice president scenario proposed by the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council, managed (though by no means perfectly) to defuse an explosion in Yemen. But whereas the removal of Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh has persuaded the Yemeni public, the problem in Syria is not with Bashar Assad per se but with the entire government apparatus within which he is encased. That is why the AL needs to avoid symbolic actions and face the reality on the ground, however bitter and unsettling it may be.
Exercise in Futility
The other AL initiative calling for the UNSC to create a joint U.N.-Arab peacekeeping force for Syria, even in the unlikely event that it passes in the U.N. veto-controlled body, amounts to nothing more than another exercise in futility.
For starters, there is no peace to keep in Syria. Suffice it to recall the failures of U.N. peacekeepers in Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Congo, to point to the U.N.’s inability to fill such a role in the absence of both peace and cooperation between the conflicting parties on the ground.
Sending a U.N. peacekeeping mission to Syria at this time would only help the Assad regime stay in power even longer. Also, such a U.N. mission would most likely meet the same fate as the recently withdrawn AL observers whose activities were controlled by the Syrian authorities and ended up playing into the hands of the regime. The observers basically stood idle while the massacres continued before the AL decided to suspend their mission.
The U.N. peacekeeping force would have to be under the control of the UNSC rather than under that of the Syrian government mandated by the UNSC to move freely throughout Syria and report with no restrictions on the unfolding events. But then again the Syrian government is not likely to allow such a force to enter Syria, which could only further embolden the resistance to Assad’s rule while restricting the government’s retaliations.
Finally, the reforms introduced by the Assad government such as holding a referendum on a new constitution as well as parliamentary elections, are merely a ploy aimed at buying more time. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that these bogus reforms have been supported by Russia and more recently by China.
Being introduced by the very government whose removal the Syrian people demands, these reforms will not be accepted by the Syrian people who have sacrificed so much only to settle for the scraps exacted under duress from a government, which has lost its bearings and credibility. Assad and his cohorts refused to make a solid commitment, they were engaged in protracted negotiations to dilute any meaningful reforms, and subsequently, were involved in systematic prevarication—all the while persisting in violent crackdowns. Syria’s problem lies not in the wording of its laws, but in the very regime that drafts and implements these laws.
Continued on next page: Opportunity …
