Foreign Policy In Focus

What was that Turkish F-4 Phantom II up to when the Syrians shot it down?

Ankara said the plane strayed into Syrian airspace, but quickly left and was over international waters when it was attacked, a simple case of carelessness on the part of the Turkish pilot that Syrian paranoia turned deadly.

But the Phantom—eyewitnesses told Turkish television that there were two aircraft, but there is no official confirmation of that observation—was hardly on a Sunday outing. According to the Financial Times, Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, told the newspaper “the jet was on a test and training mission focused on Turkey’s radar defense, rather than Syria.”

Translation: the F-4 was “lighting up” a radar net. It is a common—if dangerous and illegal—tactic that allows one to probe an opponent’s radar system. Most combat radar is kept in a passive mode to prevent a potential enemy from mapping out weaknesses or blind spots that can be useful in the advent of an attack. The probes also give you valuable information on how to neutralize anti-aircraft guns and ground to air missiles.

“Lighting up” radar was what the US Navy EP-3E Aries II was doing near China’s Hainan Island when it collided with a Chinese interceptor in 2001. Nations normally take a very dim view of warplanes entering their air space, particularly if there is tension between the countries involved.

As a warplane, the F-4 is a pretty ancient. It was introduced back in 1960, and became the mainstay of the U.S. air war in Southeast Asia. In its day it was a highly capable aircraft, able to hold its own against interceptors like the MIG-21 in a dogfight, and could also carry heavy bomb payloads. It was also cheap and relatively trouble free, unlike the current crop of US high performance aircraft.

It is doubtful that Syria identified exactly what the Turkish plane was, just that an unidentified warplane, flying low—generally the altitude one takes when trying to avoid radar—was in Syrian airspace. Paranoia? In 2007 Israeli warplanes—US-made F-16s, not Phantoms—slipped through Syria’s radar net and bombed a suspected nuclear reactor.

Even if Syria identified the plane as a Phantom, they could have taken it for an Israeli craft. Israel was the number-one foreign user of F-4s, although they retired them in 2004. Indeed, the Turkish Phantom might even have begun life as an Israeli warplane.

If the Syrians are on hair-trigger alert, one can hardly blame them. The US, the European Union (EU), and NATO openly admit they are gunning to bring down the Assad regime. Turkey is actively aiding the Free Syrian Army to organize cross-border raids into Syria, and it is helping Saudi Arabia and Qatar supply arms and ammunition to the rebels.

For Turkey to send a warplane into Syrian airspace—or even near the Syrian border—on a radar-mapping expedition at this moment was either remarkably provocative or stone stupid. The explanation could be more sinister, however.

NATO has established a command and control center in Iskenderun, Turkey, near the Syrian border, that is training and organizing the Free Syrian Army. It surely has a sophisticated setup for tapping into Syrian electronic transmissions and, of course, radar networks. If NATO eventually decides to directly intervene in Syria, the alliance will need those electronic maps. NATO aircraft easily overwhelmed Libya’s anti-aircraft systems, but Syria’s are considerably more sophisticated and dangerous. 

There are a number of things about the incident that have yet to be explained. Turkey says the F-4 was 13 nautical miles from Syria when it was attacked—which would put it in international waters—but it crashed in Syrian waters. Damascus claims the plane came down less than a mile from the Syrian coast.

Turkey says one of its search planes was shot at as well—the Syrians deny this—and has called for a meeting of its NATO allies. So far, Ankara is only talking about invoking Article Four of the NATO treaty, not Article Five. Four allows for “consultations”; Five would open up the possibility of an armed response.

A thorough investigation of the incident seems in order, although Turkey’s Davutoglu says, “No matter how the downed Turkish jet saga unfolds…we will always stand by the Syrian people until the advent of a democratic regime there.” In short, regardless of what happened, Turkey will continue to pursue regime change in Damascus.

The Assad regime’s heavy-handed approach to its opponents played a major role in sparking the current uprising, but the default position of regime change by the EU and NATO has turned this into a fight to the death. Assad is broadly unpopular, but not universally so, and the support of the regime is not limited to his own Islamic sect, the Alawites, or other minorities, like the Christians.

Nor is all of the opposition a paragon of democratic freethinking. The heavy role played by Saudi Arabia and Qatar in supplying arms and money to the rebels, means the deeply conservative Salafist sect of Islam has a major presence in the resistance. This is exactly how the Afghan mujahedeen mutated into the Taliban and al-Qaeda.  

The demand for regime change by the US, the EU, and NATO torpedoed the United Nations effort for a diplomatic solution. The Assad regime had no stake in a peaceful resolution, since it would mean its ouster in any case. And the opposition knew it need not respect a ceasefire, since everyone who supports them supports regime change.

It was into this situation that Turkey flew an F-4 Phantom through Syrian airspace. Exactly what did Ankara think Syria would do? On the other hand, maybe it knew exactly what Syria would do.

For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.

Cross-posted from the Arabist.

The April 12 truce between the Syrian military and the armed opposition groups under the Free Syrian Army umbrella is fragmenting as reports continue to come out of Syria showing that violence is continuing while the UN is preparing a ceasefire monitoring mission. Syrian blogger Maysaloon, on the catch–22s for the Syrian Army and the armed resistance:

The Syrian Foreign Ministry has announced that the regime will not withdraw its armed forces from Syrian cities until it has a written guarantee from the opposition to abide by a ceasefire. To add insult to injury the statement asks that the guarantee also provide for the handing in of weapons by the different groups and also to allow for the “state” to reassert its control over all parts of the country. Apparently the Ministry wished to “clarify” the Annan proposal; in effect what the regime is demanding is a surrender document from the opposition.

What is most absurd is that Syria does not have one opposition, but many oppositions. It also does not have one Free Syrian Army, but many different groups fighting loosely under that label. So getting them to agree and provide one document -- even if we assume they were going to accept this demand -- is nearly impossible. And that, of course, is the whole point of the regime’s demands.

Saudi and American hawks continue to call for the arming of Syrian opposition group. On the other side of the coin, “liberal interventionists,” now including French president Nicholas Sarkozy, are urging, with hints of support from Turkey, that Western countries should establish “humanitarian corridors” for the tens of thousands of refugees who have been making for Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

Even Kofi Annan, according to Al Arabiya, knew going in that Syria was violating the letter of the agreement by not withdrawing its heavy weapons -- i.e., the hardware of the Republican Guards and 4th Armored Division (both units are commanded by Maher al-Assad, Basher’s younger brother) -- from the cities and reducing the number of army checkpoints in neighborhoods. Annan reportedly hopes that the ceasefire will enable him to build pressure on Assad through Russia, China and Iran to withdraw his troops.

The Stimson Center’s Mona Yacoubian thinks this is unlikely, and Jadaliyya’s Bassam Haddad also is not optimistic the ceasefire will hold:

Even if the uprisings are led by … millions of simply perfect [M]arxist feminist anti-imperialist Syrians that are even more radical than the anti-imperialists who also criticize the opposition¹, the regime will not tolerate it. It will not tolerate even so much as serious discursive criticism if it emanates from Syria. It’s not a puzzle.

Haddad has here, and elsewhere, discussed the “zero-sum relationship between itself and society since the late 1960s and early 1970s” that he feels defines the regime’s worldview, much like commentaries from Nir Rosen and Patrick Seale. For a timeline of how the Baathists, Assads and Alawites clawed their way to the top in the former French protectorate after WWII, Slate Magazine outlines the main events, from the first CIA intervention in Damascene politics to the “Corrective Revolution” and the 1982 siege of Hama that firmly set the Assads and their so-far mostly loyal (and mostly Alawite) secret police chiefs, militia commanders and officer corps on top of Syrian society.

Looking ahead to a possible political solution that removes the Assads (and, by extension, the present national security leadership, which has the real power), that zero-sum relationship represents a near-insurmountable problem for the opposition. Not just because the opposition is still not a unified front -- there is both nonviolent and violent resistance going on, and the “Friends of Syria” group’s preferred interlocutor, the Syrian National Council, is not recognized as the sole representative of the Syrian people -- but because it has to convince the Alawites that there’s still a place for them in Syria. Asli U. Bali and Aziz F. Rana offered this suggestion, which mirrors, among other conflict resolution proposals, how the Romanian Army decided to halt its crackdowns and backed a “reformist” faction in the country’s communist party:

Ultimately, the best way to reduce violence is to pursue negotiations for a political transition that would include rather than explicitly threaten the Assad government. Given the mortal fears of communities on each side of the conflict, the first goal has to be making clear that all groups have a future in a new Syria. … Some will argue that we shouldn’t engage with the Syrian government or its backers. But further isolation tells the Assad government and its social constituencies that their only options are victory through mass violence or annihilation.

The Romanian analogy -- one I invoke, not the authors -- is a loose one at best because the death toll in Syria is much higher than it was in Romania in 1989, and the fighting has been going on for much longer. Moreover, while Romania had minority divisions which played out during the “brief” revolution there, Syria’s ethnic divisions are far more acute in light of the Alawites’ monopolizing power for so long, the 1976–1982 “counterinsurgency” campaign against the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood and the “Kurdish Question" that also affects Turkey and Iraq (the SNC, for its part, is increasing its overtures to Kurdish groups in the country). Novelist Robin Yassin-Kassab explains how the regime will continue trying to use sectarianism to justify itself (h/t Maysaloon):

… the French were successful in building [a colonial] army of minorities. The troupes speciales were recruited disproportionately from hitherto oppressed rural minority groups. This was the basis of the national army which first took over the country (with CIA help) in 1946, and which has ruled for most of the time since.

The ugly history has to be understood now most urgently because the regime has instrumentalised sect so savagely since the uprising began. It has done so through its propaganda and, more dangerously, by arming Alawi thugs and sending them to kill and rape in Sunni neighbourhoods. The ruling gang’s objective is to encourage Sunni hatred of Alawis so as to scare Alawis into loyalty to their ‘Alawi’ president. It doesn’t need to be said that the Alawi community as a whole is, or will be, the prime victim of this policy.

Additionally, in Romania the U.S. and NATO had no part play and the USSR refused to step in on behalf of the dictator: Syrian demonstrators and regime loyalists have been overburdened with Turkish, Iranian, Saudi, American, Russian and Lebanese proxy aspirations since before the (nonviolent) protests started in 2011. That such an analogy is not really applicable here illustrates just how far any peace plan has to go, UN mission or not.

¹A not-so-subtle dig at those Western intellectuals judged by some Syrian activists to be apologists for Assad.

Cross-posted from the United to End Genocide Blog.

UN-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan for Syria has not failed. No, Syrian troops and heavy weapons have not been withdrawn from cities as called for, but as of April 12 in Syria, there have been no reports of significant government attacks. For at least the time being, a ceasefire seems to be in place. Of course, President Assad in a letter said he reserved the right to respond to “terrorist” attacks and large protests expected tomorrow will put him to the test. In all likelihood, the plan as set out by Annan will not be realized, but any failure will not be his, but that of Assad.

For all the criticism of Annan and his plan in recent days, his efforts have made unified action by the international community, led by the UN Security Council, more likely. No longer can Russia and China, the countries that have blocked past efforts at strong resolutions and action, hide behind the argument that strong diplomatic efforts have not been exhausted. The next step should be what Bruce Jones of the Brookings Institution calls “diplomatic overtime”. UN monitors should be rushed in as soon as possible. Perhaps the plan can be salvaged or the halt in killing be extended.

If as has happened in the past, the Assad regime fails to live up to its promises the next step should be a strong, unanimous UN Security Council resolution that clearly condemns Assad, implements an arms embargo, refers the leaders of the Syrian regime to the International Criminal Court and sets a clear deadline before, as they say in UN-speak, “all necessary measures” are taken to protect civilians in Syria. This is the spirit of the Responsibility to Protect — a graduated escalation of options before force may be used as a last resort.

Now is not the time for force. The likelihood of even more bloodshed and deaths of civilians is too great, the disunity of the opposition groups too strong and the will of the international community too weak. It is not possible to establish “safe zones” without boots on the ground, air strikes and a willingness or at least preparedness to escalate. But the time for such intervention may be nearing and the will of the international community to carry it out is growing with each olive branch that Assad chooses to crush, not to mention each civilian life that is taken (over 1,000 Syrians have been reportedly killed since Assad said he accepted Annan’s peace plan).

The international community should continue to support Annan’s plan and use the next days to pursue “diplomatic overtime” but it should also prepare for the next steps that may need to be taken. If an intervention is to take place to protect civilians it should be multilateral (see Bruce Jones’ suggestion for a stabilization force in Foreign Policy) and come with the endorsement of the UN Security Council. That will be largely up to Russia and China. However, the lead of regional powers can make a difference. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are already arming the opposition. Turkey has warned that further attacks across its border (two people were killed in a Turkish refugee camp when Syrian forces opened fire across the Turkish border) could lead it to invoke NATO help protect its borders.

For now Annan’s plan is the least worst option in a sea of bad to horrible ones. It may very well fail to be implemented as designed but it has already succeeded in pausing the most intense period of fighting since the crackdown began 13 months ago. Moving forward, Annan’s plan will not be a failure if this latest legitimate effort at peace unifies the UN Security Council for real pressure on Syria, mobilizes regional support for further action and demonstrates to the world that this is not about an interventionist western policy but about a regime thumbing its nose at the world, even as civilians continue to die in large numbers.

Daniel P. Sullivan is the Director of Policy and Government Relations for United to End Genocide. 

Cross-posted from the United to End Genocide Blog.

The shocking stories of state-sponsored torture and murder coming out of Syria make it easy to feel helpless, but there are opportunities to take action.

The United Nations estimates that at least 7,500 Syrians have died at the hands of their government’s military. As the death toll mounts, people and governments around the world are looking for levers to escalate the pressure on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

One such lever is the economic one: where does the regime get its money, who is bankrolling it, and how can we cut off the flow of funds?

Investors, consumers, workers, and governments have a moral responsibility to avoid complicity in Syrian atrocities. We also have a strategic opportunity to identify those sectors, such as weapons, from which the Assad regime derives its power—and disrupt business as usual.

And when economic sanctions are in place—as they have been against Syria for several decades—that legal obligation reinforces the moral and strategic rationales for action.

Rosoboronexport is hardly a household name. But the Russian state-owned weapons dealer highlights a dangerous disconnect between U.S. foreign and economic policy—in which our government’s purchasing power is undermining efforts to prevent mass atrocities in Syria.

United to End Genocide and our allies at Human Rights First have learned that Rosoboronexport—which earlier this year signed a deal to sell combat jets to the Syrian government—also has contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense worth nearly $1 billion.

Take action: tell Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to cut ties immediately with the Russian firm.

The U.S. should not be doing business with Rosoboronexport. Breaking these ties would send a strong message to the corporation, and to all other corporations, that the U.S. is serious about cutting off the flow of weapons and cash to murderous regimes. It will let Assad know that his days of murdering his own people are numbered.

Kathy Mulvey is the director of the Conflict Risk Network at United to End Genocide.

AlJazeera has been running a series of articles by Nir Rosen reporting from Syria. At great risk, he's covering, for instance, the armed clashes between Syrian army defectors and state security forces. In his two latest pieces, he writes about the sect to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs, the Alawites, which composes 10 percent of Syria's population. From the first:

While Alawites identify as Muslims they have historically been rejected by mainstream Islam. To be accepted as leader, [Bashar's father Hafez al-] Assad had to persuade Sunnis and Alawites alike that Alawites were, in fact, mainstream Muslims.

Consequently

The regime denied any public space for Alawites to practice their religion. They did not recognise any Alawite council that could provide religious rulings [which] could have been a tool to clarify the Alawite religion to other sects and religions and to reduce suspicions over what many Syrians perceive as a mysterious faith.

… Alawites struck a bargain; they lost their independence and had to accept the myth that they were "good Muslims" so as to win Sunni acceptance. … Assadism then filled the gap left by the negation of traditional Alawite identity. … Denied the right to mobilise as Alawites, they look to the ruling family for leadership. But the regime does not act to further Alawite interests, it acts primarily to further its own interests.

It's bitterly ironic that not only were Alawites and all of Syria saddled with a tyrant like Hafez, but that his ascension to power further marginalized his own people. Nor will it necessarily be better for the Alawites if his son, Bashar, is deposed. Rosen again.

The opposition has failed to articulate a vision for what will happen to the tens of thousands of Alawites in the security forces and the state. The demise of the regime will directly affect nearly every Alawite family.