Foreign Policy In Focus

Cross-posted from the United to End Genocide Blog.

It’s time for an intervention. The brutal massacre of over 100 people, mostly women and children, in Houla, Syria last week shook the world’s conscience. Despite more than a year of atrocities, the murder of civilians in Houla has spurred the largest global outcry to date and rare unified condemnation by the United Nations Security Council. It also brought increased calls for military intervention with U.S. General Martin Dempsey warning that he had contingency plans ready and that atrocities like those in Houla made military intervention, although a last resort, all the more likely.

But the massacre in Houla should also raise the specter of another kind of intervention. The international community should have a diplomatic “intervention” with Syria’s strongest remaining ally, Russia. In the chorus of condemnation that resounded after the massacre, Russia’s voice stood out for its glaring ambiguity. Even as it joined others in condemning what happened in Houla, Russia provided Syria with political cover and quashed any hope for meaningful action.

Russia remains Syria’s main arms supplier with deliveries continuing as early as last week. It has also blocked all attempts at the United Nations (UN) Security Council to apply consequences like sanctions to Syria. Even after the Houla massacre, Russia questioned the UN monitor’s conclusions that the Assad regime was responsible, criticizing other countries for expelling Syrian diplomats, and making it clear that it would not consider further action.

The Obama administration has begun to pressure Russia, but has not done enough. The U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, who is leading the charge, stated yesterday that if Russia did not join in UN Security Council action that a worst case scenario of regional escalation was likely to unfold. Today, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was pressing her case with Russia and, when asked about military intervention, responded, “every day that goes by makes the argument for it stronger”. Yet, the tough talk is undermined by the reality that the United States itself continues to do business with the very same Russian state-owned arms company that is arming the Syrian regime.

The United States should also work with Syria’s regional neighbors. Last November, the Arab League kicked Syria out. Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have criticized Russia for blocking earlier resolutions, saying that the action was effectively giving Syria “a license to kill”. These countries need to make clear to Russia that supporting Syria is not in its regional interest. They may also be able to provide some incentives to counter Russia’s worries over lost business and influence with the fall of Syria.

Russia is not alone in its support of the Syrian regime. Iran continues to pump money and weapons into Syria and mistakenly admitted last week that it was sending its own troops in. Venezuela delivered a ship full of diesel fuel last week, undermining efforts toward building effective pressure. And China has joined Russia in blocking action in the Security Council. But, Russia has been by far the strongest voice in protecting the Syrian regime from international pressure.

The fact is that Russia continues to arm a regime that has killed more than 12,000 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The discovery yesterday of 13 bodies with their hands bound and gunshot wounds to the head, coupled with reports of the further shelling of Houla demonstrates that atrocities are set to continue. As they do, military options may very well become necessary as a last resort. However, first there should be an intervention with Russia.

An opportunity to engage Russia emerges tomorrow when Russian President Vladamir Putin begins a trip to France and Germany. It should be made clear to Russia that, if it truly wants to avoid any military intervention, now is the time to pull out all the diplomatic and economic stops. Russia must stop arming the Assad regime and be clear in its condemnation of the brutality occurring in places like Houla.

Condemnation without consequence is hollow. The current trajectory of atrocities and escalating regional sectarian war is in no one’s interest, not even Russia’s.

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

Cross-posted from the Arabist.

“Atamanschina” is a Russian word that translates to “time of the atamans.” It refers to the period of the Russian Civil War when anti-Bolshevik Cossack bands — led by their “atamans” — dominated large swaths of Siberia with Japanese backing. These bands’ “anti—Bolshevik” campaigns were characterized mainly by pogroms against local populations and systematic extortion of refugees.

While Syria’s opposition — in larger part due to international (in)action — faces these pitfalls at present, it is Damascus’s forces that bear the greatest resemblance to these long-dead atamans. Despite the under-strength, under-armed and sometimes brutal actions of the anti-Assad armed opposition, the Assad regime already has its own Cossack hosts, in the form of its shabiha paramilitaries, and its most trusted atamans are the Syrian President’s relatives.

The dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh notes that this relationship is termed “al-salbata” in Syrian Arabic, and “is a uniquely Syrian term for the way in which state authority is exercised in Assad’s Syria: It is an amalgamation of salab (looting or plundering), labat (the act of knocking someone down) and tasallut (the unfettered exercise of power).” Alongside it is the phrase “al-taballi … roughly equivalent to ‘informing,’” which “means falsely accusing a person of doing something for which they will pay a heavy price.” Such statements often mean a one-way trip to the torture chambers run by a counter-intelligence-obsessed regime. The Syrian national security establishment is led by minority officers, and have long been dependent on brute force and extortion to maintain order. Their strongest supporters are those who’ve most benefitted from official largesse — from institutionalized discrimination and extraction, that is — and they must hope that those who haven’t benefitted remain cowed and distrustful of an armed opposition with Islamist and (other) foreign influences. It is, increasingly, a losing bet.

So far, it has worked within Syria. The Syrian Army, despite its setbacks and fear of defeat, continues to hold or contest the main population centers. Defections are reportedly limited, and the regime’s forces are (usually) better-armed and possess numerical superiority over their opponents. And the Ba’athist repressive machine still operates on a national scale. The fact that Syria has not collapsed entirely, according to Peter Harling and Sarah Birke, is because overall, the opposition’s “efforts are what have kept society together, despite a growing and worrying pattern of confessional, criminal and revenge-inspired violence” — that is, most activists’ refusal to play ataman themselves along the lines Yassin al-Haj Saleh has documented.

And most importantly, no single unified force exists domestically to organize resistance to Assad. Some of the severely divided opposition groups that exist, inside or outside of Syria, armed and not, have so far failed to secure support for direct foreign military intervention as occurred in Libya last year despite their lobbying for it.

Unlike Assad, who aside from Iranian largesse (and Russo-Chinese diplomacy) depends mainly on foreign inaction to stay in power, the armed opposition grows desperate for direct foreign assistance from NATO and the GCC. In the West, for some observers it is only a matter of time until the Iranian elephant in the CENTCOM situation room is cited to massively increase assistance to anti-regime militias, with all parties seeking out their favored agents of influence. Tokyo threw money, advisors and arms at its favored Siberian proxies — so too will the US and Saudi Arabia.

A political solution cannot occur without a military one, but a military solution alone — one that does nothing to address the constant disruptions of ordinary life, at the very least — does not guarantee stability or security, even in the short term.

While armed Sunni companies kitted out with the latest MILAN anti-tank missiles and liaising with officers from, hypothetically, SOCOM or the Saudi National Guard, may be able to fight better against Assad, the temptation for such groups to increasingly rely on their foreign support to supplant the state’s forces as the powers-that-be will be great. People could be effectively trading one national dictatorship for local ones when such armed bands roll into town.

However, for many Syrians this is a purely academic consideration. Support for the armed opposition, or direct intervention from, say, the Turkish Army, would be more than acceptable. It could mean an end to the shelling, torture and sniping carried out by Assad’s forces in their towns. It could mean the possibility of averting another Houla massacre — the recent murder of almost 100 Syrian civilians, reportedly by Alawite shabiha, in villages near Homs — that are regularly occurring throughout the country. Worrying over the SNC and Muslim Brotherhood’s bickering, Kurdish separatism and the machinations of Iraqi opportunists in Al Anbar, comes far behind the urgency of not being shot at while crossing the street, or finding ways to get local life return to some semblance of normalcy: food deliveries, electricity access, restoration of sanitation services.

But if NATO and the GCC members really did desire to give Syrians the space in which to advance their own self-determination, their civilian leaders would have prioritized far sooner offering international aid to the Syrian populace where and when they can. Factionalism within the Syrian political opposition is exacerbated by wartime exigencies — opposition councils in Syrian cities must manage much with very little while groping towards a cohesive national resistance. With clearer non-military logistical and diplomatic support, presented as fait accomplis to Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Yang Jiechi — Assad’s two greatest international assets right now — as the last stop before providing military support to anti-regime militias, the “Friends of Syria” would had a stronger hand to push the Assad regime’s supporters to choose among desertion, defection or defiance. Now, the US is trying to push a “Yemeni” outcome as the UN Supervision Mission looks even more irrelevant. It could be possible to avert “ten years” of festering civil war by pushing that choice. By making it so that it is not only a choice between a President Bashar al Assad or a General Mustafa al-Sheikh. But as the Dubai School of Government’s Fadi Salem noted, “‘The world’ does not exist. Individual powers have conflicting interests on Syria. The humanitarian lens doesn’t apply.”

The Independent’s Musa Okwonga likewise noted this weekend, despite “widespread knowledge of atrocities,” “vested interests keep the slaughter going.” That is the primary risk of escalating Syria’s proxy battles along existing ethno-sectarian fault lines. And should foreign support dry up and the anti-regime militias lose support among Syrians, then initiative may return to the Assads. When you eliminate all the alternatives, you are left with only one victorious force. In Russia, that was the Bolsheviks. And it was the Bolsheviks who, in the years after the victory over the atamans, unleashed industrial-scale pogroms and extortions that far dwarfed the puppet atamans’ own depredations. That is the price of arming the opposition — and then casting them aside once they’ve served the purpose their armorers had in mind: foils to Tehran, Salafist agents of influence, “humanitarian” success story — all of which fall well short of the stated goal of effecting a political transition in Syria. The final stretch of the 20th century has seen so many stillborn policies birthed from such interventions in Bosnia, in Afghanistan, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Iraq, in Somalia. Conflicts left to fester when attention moved on, or when the world grew tired of dashed expectations for “peace.” Syria would not be an exception, so once again, it is necessary for commentators to ask proponents of these policies where the “responsibility to protect” begins and ends. As Jillian C. York has noted, many of those in the Syrian Army are hardly serving there by choice or out of any sense of loyalty to the regime — any political solution must bear this in mind.

While foreign military intervention remains an extremely destabilizing choice, yet more and more Syrians may be willing to accept it, to accept anything that ends with Assad’s departure from Syria, one way or another. As a result, there are fewer and fewer avenues leading away from an incipient “Atamanischina,” actions that avert “Lebanonization”. But looking down what avenues are left, how much of a price can Syrians be expected to pay waiting for the “right” policy to appear on the horizon, and how long can all this go on as those “vested interests” move to arm their favored parties in order to secure “influence” in the country?

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.

Excerpted from Foreign Policy in Focus Special Project Right Web.

With the Syrian cease-fire hanging on by a thread, many observers are speculating whether the lull in violence will empower the anti-regime forces in Syria. To be sure, many of the individuals who have taken up arms against Bashar Al-Assad’s ossified and reprehensible government have risked their lives for the noblest of ideals. But such ideals are not necessarily shared by the entire opposition, as the case of Mohamed Alloush demonstrates. Alloush, a pro-democracy activist who participated in the mass uprising that gripped Syria last year, has fled to Lebanon, driven away not only by the violence of the regime, but by pressure from opposition forces.

“In September last year I had been arrested again by the regime for organizing protests,” Mr. Alloush said in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor. “After they released me, I ran into a group of men I knew as members of the Free Syrian Army. I walked up to them and screamed: 'You guys have stolen our revolution! You are just as bad as the shabiha,'” the pro-regime militia in Syria.

The uprising in Syria has been an inspiring demonstration of the desire for freedom, justice, and human dignity, as well as a heartbreaking reminder that such aspirations are often not achieved. 

To read this article in its entirety, visit Right Web.

Samer Araabi is a contributor to Right Web and Foreign Policy in Focus.

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.