Syria: Police? Superpower? Bulldog? The UK must redefine its international role

Image credits: FreedomHouse

Despite the atrocities witnessed in Syria, Sophie Trotman debates the UK’s role on the international stage and its involvement in Syria.

The newsreader warns you that ‘you may find the following images disturbing’ but you look anyway. Rows of bodies, splattered with blood, grieving mothers clutching at the air and a final shot of a dead child, cradled like a broken puppet in the arms of an inconsolable parent. You’ve seen it before, on the news, in the paper, but each time the same potent cocktail of outrage, disgust and hideous pity is overwhelming.

This is the Syrian Crisis. A bloody civil war located in the heart of the Levant, between President Bashar al-Assad’s Ba’Ath government and several other forces (including the Free Syrian Army) seeking to oust the regime.

It’s important to stress that this conflict is not new; the Syrian Uprising has its roots in the wider Arab Spring and has been ongoing for over two and a half years. And like most other of the Arab Spring uprisings, media coverage began to wane as the public lost interest.

Yet this week, Syria has been at the forefront of the news once again, with two of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, the UK and US issuing increasingly bellicose rhetoric regarding the issue.

So what has changed to precipitate this international response?

On August 21, at least 355 people were reported to have died in a suspected chemical attack in the Ghouta area, close to the Syrian capital, Damascus. This alleged use of chemical weapons, purportedly by the Assad government, appears to have weighted national stances regarding the crisis and provoked threatening rhetoric from key statesmen such as Foreign Secretary William Hague who on Wednesday said, “…we can’t allow the idea… that chemical weapons can be used with impunity”.

Whilst many are in no doubt as to the perpetrators of this blow against human rights (with US Vice-President Joe Biden describing al-Assad’s usage of chemical weapons as “undeniable”) the lack of definitive proof has been pointed out by the Russians. Yet despite this lack of absolute certainty, the incontrovertible evidence that thousands of Syrians continue to suffer agonizing deaths remains sufficient impetus for talks of military action.

So it may come as a surprise that I am arguing against intervention.

The crux of the argument for no intervention is built around the three issues; the misplaced paternalism of the West and our own democratic considerations and most importantly, the hypocrisy and weakness of the most likely form of attack, a missile strike.

According to Hague, diplomatic pressure on Syria has failed. The UN death toll estimate of 100,000 dead condones his words. Diplomacy has indeed failed in solving the conflict of the civil war. Yet it seems naive to expect UN mediated peace talks to have any effect; against the bloody realities of civil unrest and repression, the words of the international community must serve as little more than superfluous soundbites.

Furthermore how is a civil war ‘solved’? Our hopeful cultural relativism suggests democracy – the pinnacle of liberal achievement born from the Western Enlightenment. But the US’s and the UK’s blithe paternalism has already misfired; the portentous example of Iraq demonstrates how cack-handedly our ‘gift’ of democracy has been fostered upon a Middle Eastern nation, precariously cemented by millions of pounds and the blood of thousands. So what then? The stabilizing of the oppressive Assad regime? Or the supporting of a divided and dangerous secular rebel army? Both solutions are unpalatable and neither would not ease the suffering of the Syrian people.

The nature of a civil war is that it is internal. We must not foist our Western values upon a divided nation that is at war with itself. Post Cold War the US’s

role as ‘policemen of the world’ is inappropriate and outdated – proved by the mistakes of Iraq and (to a lesser extent) Afghanistan.

This paternalism and expectation for the US and UK to take action (especially following their threatening rhetoric) has been manifested in the most likely form of intervention; a missile strike, a comparatively low cost, low risk form of action.  Done remotely, a missile strike would essentially let the US and UK off the hook; they would have ‘done something’, limiting the damage to their reputation on the world stage following the excessive bellicose rhetoric issued by both nations.

Essentially the US and the UK have verbally committed themselves to some kind of action, and despite Cameron’s humiliating defeat in Parliament, President Obama and France’s Hollande still appear to be willing to use a strike.

It is imperative that this form of action is avoided. Firstly, if chemical weapons storage were targeted, it may not be that they are wholly eliminated or even made safe, and instead could release some chemicals; an ironically macabre gesture. According to Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, “If you drop a conventional munition on a storage facility containing unknown chemical agents… some [of those agents] will be spread… a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease”. Nor would the strike be Obama’s intended “shot across the bows”. The consequences of the strike would be very limited and a feeble demonstration of tepid Western intervention, if you like ‘US JUSTICE LITE’. It’s already apparent that the deaths of the Syrian people do not perturb Assad, and it would be the ‘liberators’ of the West who are instead adding more Syrians to the 100,000+ death toll.

And to the civil war? It will not make any difference to the outcome.

This results in a more worrying conclusion.  Despite the US’s position as policeman of the world waning, it remains influential and is still turned to in a crisis. To send a missile strike thinly preserves this illusion of US-meted justice. Therefore a missile strike would be the height of immorality, an ineffectual move done not simply for the sake of ‘doing something’ but more worryingly, to save face on the international stage.

The legality of action is another factor against intervention. The UN’s own divisions would weaken any possible action, and have wider negative repercussions for international relations. Russia and China, also permanent members of the UN Security Council, have stressed the importance of UN procedure and remain opposed to intervention, with Russia stating that any military action without a mandate from the Security Council as a “grave violation of international law”. To intervene in Syria would further inflame our antagonistic relationship, a secondary concern, yet senseless in an air strike primarily engineered to maintain the US and UK’s political standing in the world.

Furthermore the UN inspectors, present in the country until Saturday morning, are not there to allocate blame. The results of their report must be heeded; the Ba’Ath government has not yet been found unequivocally guilty of using chemical weapons.

Image credits: FreedomHouse

At home, the lingering spectre of Iraq has left the British people wary of armed intervention, especially in the political and religious hotbed that is the Middle East. Reports in the media reflect this; according to a survey by YouGov for the Sun, the public was against air missile strikes by a ratio of 2:1. This has been compounded by the recent vote in Parliament, if anything a success for UK democracy, as conceded by the PM, “It’s clear to me that the British parliament and the British people do not wish to see military action… I will act accordingly.”

The images, reports and video footage of the many many victims of the Syrian Crisis have provoked an intense moral outrage. It is understandable, even commendable for key figures in US, UK and French politics to attempt to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people. To do something. To help. But this is an emotional response, and the outrages committed cannot and do not legitimize a military response, no matter how well intentioned. Our ‘good intentions’ in Iraq, in Afghanistan, have continued to haunt Britain, as demonstrated by the defeated Commons Bill on Thursday. The US and to a lesser extent the UK’s role as policeman of the world is paternalistic, outdated and [at the time of writing – without the approval of the UN] illegal. To preserve a facade of US judicial dominance via a punitive missile strike is a shockingly weak move that serves only to maintain the crumbling reputation of the US as a liberating power, Bush’s “beacon of democracy”. The Syrian people cannot be used as a human collateral, a human capital with which the West uses to bargain with the al-Assad regime.

In the face of this complicated and morally repulsive civil war, the US, UK and France must accept that intervention is, at best a quack’s panacea to a problem we cannot solve, and at worst, a display of Western ‘justice’ which will only compound the critical humanitarian crisis taking place in Syria.

Sophie Trotman

Syria: doing nothing is a mistake

Crowds in Syria
Image credits: FreedomHouse

From on the ground in Amman, Jordan, Gareth Browne explains why he is pro-intervention in Syria.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

With a track record in the Middle East such as that of the United States, the United Kingdom and the West in general, it is not beyond the realm of comprehension that governments have to give serious thought to intervening in Syria. Not least of the considerations are public opinion and concerns about the possibility of provoking a return attack.

However Syria is not Iraq. Nor is it Afghanistan and I wish that our governments will not allow the risk of bad public relations to stop them from intervening and doing as our morality compels us. To act so late is regrettable, but to not act at all is indefensible.

For the past few years, a massacre has been allowed to take place. The Syrian regime has murdered and displaced hundreds of thousands of innocent people and my nation has shamefully stood back and watched. We are so paralyzed by the fear of failure and the hard lessons learnt in Iraq and Afghanistan that we believe if we do nothing then we can do no wrong. This is a fallacy; a sickening policy of isolationism which allows innocent Syrians, many of whom share our values, to be slaughtered like animals. How can we justify our position on the UN Security Council or indeed being a free and progressive nation if we do not defend the innocent against such malice?

There are those who will make the excuse that we will be supporting terrorists and Al-Qaeda, which is a lazy and ill-conceived assumption. No one denies that there are distasteful elements involved in fighting the regime but to suggest that the opposition in its entirety is made up of these zealots is wrong. There are many groups fighting for a democratic and secular Syria and we have no reason to believe that they are cooperating with Islamist militants; in fact, several top commanders of the Free Syria Army have publicly come out against groups like Jabhat Al-Nusra.

These groups exist both alone and as part of the Syrian National Council but they do not get the attention or publicity they deserve. The  tragic irony of the situation, for those that subscribe to this idea, is that the longer the international community does nothing and allows the situation to deteriorate the only groups gaining strength are the Assad regime and those groups who are backed by Al-Qaeda. In some parts of the country, for example Idlib and Aleppo, an absence of governmental control has allowed very organised and opportunistic Al-Qaeda groups to step in. They provide medicine, food and weapons, all of which are required whilst the assistance of the West remains non-existent. The longer the status quo continues, the more opportunities like this spring up for Al-Qaeda, and the more the UK and other Western nations should be concerned.

This oft-discussed “red line” regarding the use of chemical weapons was never necessary for action in Syria. Indeed, what sort of message does it send out if we only feel compelled to act after chemical weapons are used – that regimes are free to massacre their own citizens provided that they only use conventional weapons? Britain must lead the international community decisively, not to spread democracy or police the world, not to combat Iran and curb their potential usage of these weapons but to stop a massacre, and to prevent the implosion of a beautiful nation by bringing to a halt the ethnic cleansing taking place against the Kurds. We must fight the evil wherever it may be, whether within the regime or the opposition groups.

Gareth Browne

Mali: six weeks on

Six weeks after the intervention of European troops, Harry Parkhouse dissects the conflict in Mali.

I am writing this exactly six weeks after François Hollande agreed, at the request of the Malian government, to provide military assistance to the struggling Malian forces combatting what can only be described as a horde of serious, fanatical Islamist belligerents. At such a time the inevitable questions regarding the supposed legitimacy of Western involvement tend to rear their quivering heads. Moreover, fears of prolonged occupation, that have been conjured and propagated by the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, emerge in tangent. Paranoia aside, it is prudent to be frank when looking at the success and moral justification of French and, recently British, forces fighting amongst the chaos.

French armoured fighting vehicles leave the airbase at Gao in northern Mali last week. Picture credits: jeromestarkey

The adversaries cannot be said to be an organised monolithic group; there are various competing Islamist and nationalist factions all seeking to impose their own, often-brutal ideology onto the Malian people. The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, or simply the ‘MNLA’, a nationalist separatist group fighting for the implementation of an independent secular state for the nomadic peoples known as the Taureg, cannot now be said to be the main threat to the region – in the last week they have actually started fighting against other Islamist factions in cooperation with the French. This appellation should be given to Ansar Dine, the predominant Islamist sect that since last June has not only gained more and more territory from the government as well as from the MNLA, but also done it a way that epitomises both wanton cruelty and hysterical absurdity. The smashing of TV sets that were displaying ‘un-Islamic’ images (video games, for example) or the desecration of mausoleums in Timbuktu serve as exemplars of the latter – things that can be begrudgingly put to one side in times of war as ascriptions of a frantic religious neurosis. The former examples, however, demand our international attention and rectification. From the blocking of aid trucks to Timbuktu due to the presence of female aid workers, to the public floggings, amputations, executions and stoning across various towns in Northern Mali. Such wartime atrocities, whilst obviously reprehensible, still for some does not justify intervention as hey, all fair’s in love and war?

There is a banal point here, however. These crimes against humanity are self-evidently not simply wartime tragedies or realpolitik tactics of warfare, but the end in itself for the extremist Islamic movement in northern Mali. In other words, to use such an obvious metaphor, they are just warming up. Aggressive implementation of Sharia law, which can only further worsen the already destitute position of the people of Mali, has long been an open goal for the coalition of the “Defenders of Faith” as they call themselves. This would not only significantly vitiate the lives of many men and many more women in Mali, but it also would demonstrate to extremist Islamic militias across the north of the African continent that successful Islamic revolution is a possibility due to the inefficiency of under-funded and under-trained African militaries and the supposed moral apathy of the West to intervene in such affairs. Hollande grasped this simple point, and as such the will to act on the moral calling that necessitates French intervention. I am glad that now, the UK has also sent servicemen and servicewomen to help combat the threat of state-sponsored theocratic immorality and subjugation in Mali.

The crowd welcomes ‘the saviour’, Francois Hollande. Picture credits: salymfayad

As is stands, with the ever-increasing frequency of Islamist retreat across the north and the genesis of successful discourse and cooperation with the MNLA, progress is being made in Mali. This would have not been made a reality without the French and British intervention that was mandated by both Mali and the international community. Lengthy occupation will not be a risk either – the Malian forces, as well as the infrastructure of the Malian government are being re-strengthened day by day through military and political assistance from the international community. Rash and unsubstantiated claims of Western imperialism or oil hoarding have been clearly shown to have no relevance in Mali. Instead the proprietors of suggested falsities are demonstrating effective military engagement with minimal casualties against adversaries who, if given the key to Bamako, would be in a position to effectively promulgate the caliphate of immorality across northern Africa. These points justify why this conflict is one of central importance, not just for western security, but more importantly for ensuring the freedom of the people of Mali and other North African nations from rampant oppression.

Alethea Osborne: the situation in Mali explained

Our latest columnist, Alethea Osborne, offers a comprehensive breakdown of the situation in Mali.

Soldiers from Mali’s French-trained Rapid Intervention Regiment (RIR). Picture: jeromestarkey

The recent Algerian hostage crisis has swung a country that was previously relatively unknown, Mali, into global view. Many people would have been unaware of its existence, let alone its political situation, before the French intervention in the country in order to tackle the Islamic military presence there. It is vital, therefore, to clear up a few misconceptions about the situation which are often left unclear through press coverage.

The presence of more extreme Islamists in the north is to a certain extent the result of Gaddafi’s demise in Libya. The Tuareg are an ethnic group and historically Mali’s strongest opposition. During the reign of Gaddafi many were recruited to join the Libyan army and so gained military training and arms. Since the Arab Spring and Gaddafi’s downfall they have returned to their homes in northern Mali and quickly joined or created Islamist or Nationalist groups, providing them with key arms and military experience. However, the speed at which rebellions broke out after Gaddafi’s death indicate that there was a strong framework already in place before their return.

It is clearly easier when referring to the rebel groups in the North to simply refer to them as ‘terrorists’ or ‘Islamists’, however it is vital to understand that there is not simply one united group. In fact, there are at least four major groups in the region, ranging from the MNLA, who are more nationalist than Islamist and have offered to work with Western forces, to Mokhtar Belmohktar’s Al-Qaida-influenced The Signatories in Blood, who take credit for the recent Algerian hostage crisis. The very concept of Al-Qaida’s influence is one that needs to be explained, while the AQIM (Al-Qaida in the Maghreb) may have certain tactics similar to those of Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida, they are far more like a franchise which is run separately and with individual, mainly far more regional and economic-based, objectives. Yet, the idea of links to Al-Qaida works more easily within Western media and governments’ rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’. It also justifies the French military presence in the country, despite the clear evidence that Western intervention in the last decade has more often than not helped boost support for jihadist groups and created a clearer Western enemy for often originally more regionally-focused groups.

“No to military intervention in Mali” Picture: the global movement

The French were invited by the Malian government to help stabilise the situation and support the Malian army in trying to suppress the uprising in the North. It is important to point out though that the Malian government itself is very unstable, with two changes of rule in the last nine months, including a military coup. This has resulted in no clear representative leader and large political divisions in the country. So the French, while asked to come, received this invitation from an unelected leaderless government. It also suggests that there was no other plan put in place except the hope of Western intervention; blatantly untrue, as there was one proposed by the West African regional bloc Ecowas and approved by the United Nations Security Council. It included providing 3,000 West African troops to support the Malian army, but placed a large weight on the importance of negotiation and the potential harmful effects of military intervention.

It is completely comprehensible that it is often easier to simplify situations in order to explain them, but it is important to understand the basic facts concerning the key players in a conflict before they get too diluted in political rhetoric.