Syria needs joint Arab action to end war
By Khaled Diab
It is up to the Arab world to stop the bloodshed in Syria – unlikely as this may sound, and despite Arab League failure so far.
Thursday 19 September 2013
Like back in 1958, Syria is again the volatile battlefield of a medley of rival local, regional and international actors. But unlike then, Syria has not managed this time to edge back from the brink. Instead, it has become embroiled in a bloody and devastating civil war – not to mention a proxy war – that shows no sign of letting up.
When the tyrant insisted on making peaceful change impossible, he ended up making violent change inevitable. What had started as a non-violent social uprising against Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship quickly escalated as bloody repression led disgusted army officers to defect and take up arms against the state's increasingly violent repression.
Divisions within the Arab world over Syria are rife, as they are among the major international players, between hawks and doves, ideologues and pragmatists, humanitarians and power brokers. Bizarre allegiances have formed and shifted. Currently backing the Syrian government are Russia, Iran, China and Hizbullah, with the opposition supported by the US, the UK, France and wealthy Gulf monarchies, namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Turkey has gone from being an ally of Damascus (early in the conflict) to headquartering the Free Syrian Army.
Meanwhile, Egypt is shifting towards a more pro-Assad position, on the back of the threat of US air strikes against a fellow Arab state, a public sense of grievance against Washington for its perceived backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and anti-Islamist sentiment which has turned many Egyptians against everything toppled President Mohamed Morsi stood for.
As each state and non-state player competes to advance or safeguard its own “vital interests”, few of the active players seem to have an interest in the well-being of Syrians and Syria. And it is the conflict mongers who are enjoying the upper hand, with arms flooding into Syria, escalating the fighting further.
At the United Nations, it looks like a sequel of the Cold War is at play, with the United States trying to preserve its dwindling hegemony in the Middle East, and Russia struggling to claw back some of its lost influence. Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama both seem to be suffering from chronic irony deficiency, the symptoms of which are a severely inhibited ability to see the plain hypocrisy of their rhetoric and the destructiveness of their positions.
The UN should have been the right address for defusing this conflict from its earliest days, but such is the nature of this world body that when it is most needed, it is usually at its most impotent. This has to do with its faulty architecture, which concentrates real power, including the dreaded veto, in the hands of just five countries.
Even today, it is not too late for the United Nations to redeem itself. The permanent members of the Security Council can decide to set aside their narrow self-interests and, for a change, agree to pursue the greater good of humanity by deploying tens of thousands of blue helmets with a robust mandate to end the violence. But given the ongoing deadlock, despite the relative breakthrough on chemical weapons, this seems highly improbable.
But with the international community fixated on chemical weapons but in paralysis over action to stop the plentiful non-chemical killings, it must be time now for the region to pull up its bootstraps and pitch in to sort out this mess, depressingly unlikely as it may seem – and that means action by the Arab League.
Like with many other crises before, the Arab League's efforts, genuine as they were at some points, have amounted to nothing. Even the Arab League's daring act of suspending Syria and imposing sanctions on the Damascus regime did little to intimidate Assad, underscoring just how little leverage Arab countries seem to exercise over each other.
Like the Arab Peace Initiative for Israel and Palestine, the Arab League peace plan for Syria lies on the shelf collecting dust following the withdrawal of its monitors from Syria in January 2012 owing to “a harsh new government crackdown”, in the words of Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi.
These failures do not encourage optimism, especially in light of how divided the League is over the way forward and how some of its members in the Gulf are actively sending arms and funds to the rebels.
However, the situation has changed dramatically. Although the civil war in Syria is far away for members of the UN Security Council and so does not immediately challenge their security, the Arab League cannot afford to be so complacent, especially given the danger that the conflict can spill over into the wider region in an unpredictable and unexpected ways.
The Assad regime, now that it has turned much of the country into rubble and displaced millions, may be suffering from war fatigue, and could be looking round for an exit strategy. The rebels are at a military disadvantage and are in deadlock in their efforts to dislodge the regime militarily, and so may also be looking for a return to more peaceful means. This may make Arab mediation efforts more fruitful this time around.
Moreover, Arab League efforts are likely to be seen as more legitimate by the regime and the main rebel factions, not to mention the wider Arab world. In fact, the eventual prospect of returning Syria, where the ideology of pan-Arabism was born, to the Arab fold, could be used as a carrot to draw Damascus towards a negotiated solution.
So what can the Arab League do? The top priority upon which everyone should be able to agree – even those helping to bankroll the conflict – is that the violence needs to stop, both for humanitarian reasons and for pragmatic self-interest.
Taking a leaf out of the African Union's Peace and Security Council and its peacekeeping efforts across the continent, the Arab League can work towards negotiating a ceasefire and deploying peacekeepers from Arab countries that do not have a direct stake in the conflict. In fact, the Arab League needs to forge its own mutual security mechanism, in light of the growing likelihood of armed conflict within and between states in the region, while success could help pave the way to more enduring regional integration once this specific volatile period has passed.
Once the guns fall silent, Arab League mediators can help hammer out an interim agreement for the peaceful transition of power.
Although this seems like an unlikely scenario, especially in light of the Arab League's reputation as an ineffectual talking shop, largely due to the absence of mechanisms to enforce its resolutions, there are precedents. Arab mediation efforts successfully stopped Black September in Jordan from turning into a full-blown civil war and, eventually and after too much bloodshed, helped end the Lebanese civil war.
Today, the stakes are arguably far higher, as Syria is a more pivotal state in a region which is already far more volatile, making it in every Arab state's interest to take action. Whether they will step up is a very open question. For example, the Gulf states, who wrongly think they are far away and who have for decades seen Syria's secular pan-Arabism as a threat, are trying to use their petrodollars to hold back the ‘Arab Spring' revolutions or to give them a conservative, Islamic hew, may feel less inclined to join efforts to end the conflict.
But ultimately, when fellow Arabs are being slaughtered and their country turned to dust, allied Arab action is the human and humane action to take.
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Follow Khaled Diab on Twitter.
This is the extended version of an article which first appeared in Haaretz on 16 September 2013.
More debate here https://www.facebook.com/haaretzcom/posts/10151910927271341
Yes, it’s definitely not black and white. And this is what I’ve constantly been trying to communicate, as in this piece about the sectarian myth. https://chronikler.com/middle-east/politics/syria-sunni-shia/
I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s not black and white as these situations are normally depicted in the media – ie good vs evil. Assad is not the only evil in Syria, there are many now. It’s a power play driven by greed, not by a desire for freedom or democracy to flourish. The result is that the average Syrian regardless of ethnic or religious background suffers greatly and no one knows where, when or how this will end.
Ilona, they don’t need to. Their own self-interest should prod them into action.
Steph, I’m quite surprised by your reaction. My very first sentence is: “Syria is again the volatile battlefield of a medley of rival local, regional and international actors.” I spend the first paras of the article dissecting the geopolitics of the conflict, and criticise harshly the hypocrisy of the US, Russia and the Gulf states. So, I’m baffled as to how exactly I’m depicting “only the Western narrative”. But just because outside powers are now trying to take advantage of the mayhem that does not exonerate Bashar al-Assad of the heinous crimes he’s committed. In fact, had he bowed to the inevitable and stepped down like Mubarak and Ben Ali, he may have spared his country this disaster. But instead he chose the Gaddafi route of: “If I go down, I’m taking the whole country down with me. “As for support, no dictatorship which manages to stay in power for so long (two generations in Syria) can do so without some support (look at the nostalgia for Mubarak today in Egypt), but that does not make their rule any more legitimate. And as for your simplistic depiction of the opposition, that is dangerous. Yes, there are Jihadist groups who have committed vile atrocities but they are a minority of the fighters. Besides, no one would’ve taken up arms against the regime (and the foreign fighters would not have been able to enter) had Bashar not crushed the peaceful uprising mercilessly and shed so much innocent blood in the first place. If Assad really cared about his country and not just his on precious arse, he would’ve not chosen the path of war. Yes, the Western narrative is bullshit, but so is Assad’s bankrutp baathist narrative of resisting imperialism. Baathism may have ended European imperialism but the Assad model of it replaced it with a domestic, homegrown occupation.
Reading this I am quite surprised at how only the Western narrative is portrayed of people fighting for freedom and democracy and a country destroyed solely by its dictator… Most members if the Arab League are not only funding the rebels but also pouring in jihadist foreign fighters who (along with regime forces) have laid waste to much of Syria! Do you really think that these despicable Gulf monarchy dictatorships are funding rebels and pouring in Jihadists to help Syrians establish a democracy? Please! This is a disgusting war based on regional power and alliances and ultimately money gas and oil. Syria and the Levant countries are sitting in a massive pile of gas that will destroy Qatar’s wealth and while Assad is allied with Iran and Russia the west and gulf want him out.. Obviously Assad has strong support and power base in Syria as he is still around and fighting after 2 years despite all odds. The western narrative if freedom and democracy is bullshit – do we need any more examples than Iraq and Libya?
Ditto the UN with its endless waffle and marches of the egos.
They don’t care about each other, really…