US
weighs options as Syrian violence
rises By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON - Following a failed bid to
pass a United Nations Security Council resolution
calling for regime change in Syria, Washington is
considering other means to influence events on the
ground, as the country slips ever closer toward
civil war.
As the Syrian uprising nears
the one-year mark, increasing violence at the
hands of the Syrian regime has led to greater
calls for international intervention to stop the
bloodshed and force President Bashar al-Assad from
power.
Though originally evincing a strong
anti-interventionist platform, the Syrian National
Council, the purported leaders of the Syrian
uprising, have gradually shifted to a position
that calls for direct international intervention
as the only means to stop the country from sliding
into civil war. The UN currently estimates the death
toll over the past year of unrest at more
than 5,000.
A recent statement from the
Security Council called on "everyone around the
world to speak up and do something to stop the
bloodshed of innocent Syrians", while condemning
Russia's unwillingness to terminate its robust
military relationship with the Syrian regime.
Setbacks at the UN Attempts to
coordinate international action were dealt a
significant blow on Sunday when Russia and China
vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on
Assad to cede power to the vice president as part
of process leading to a government of national
unity.
The Russian and Chinese ambassadors
justified their vetoes as a defense of state
sovereignty, eliciting pointed responses from
their US and French counterparts.
United
States ambassador Susan Rice stated - and tweeted
- that she was "Disgusted that Russia and China
prevented the #UN Security Council from fulfilling
its sole purpose."
Following the vote, the
council issued a statement calling for
"empathizers around the world to take all
political, economic and diplomatic measures with
countries that have hampered the issuance of the
UNSC resolution" including "direct economic
boycott, terminating cooperative trade agreements,
and re-evaluating relationships".
Washington has also been weighing a number
of other punitive, symbolic and humanitarian
actions.
On Monday, the State Department
announced that it would be closing the US Embassy
in Damascus, sending its entire staff back to the
US.
A press statement cited the recent
violence in Damascus which "has raised serious
concerns that our embassy is not sufficiently
protected from armed attack", while assuring that
"ambassador [Robert] Ford has left Damascus but he
remains the United States ambassador to Syria and
its people".
There has also been some
discussion on the humanitarian responsibilities of
the US government, and a recent briefing hosted by
congresswoman Sue Myrick aimed to address the ways
in which the government could alleviate the
worsening humanitarian crisis in Syrian refugee
communities bordering the country, as well as in
Syria itself.
Heavy sanctions, a decline
in diplomatic and economic relations and the
Syrian government's own budget reprioritization
have caused basic food prices to skyrocket in
Syria, and several regions report acute shortages
of food, medicine and electricity.
The
refugee camps operating predominantly in Turkey do
not appear to be faring much better, and scattered
reports detail similar shortages of basic
necessities, all amid poor weather conditions.
Arming the rebels Meanwhile,
the failure at the Security Council has increased
calls in Washington for independent action on
Syria to influence the course of events on the
ground.
Shortly after the Security Council
vote, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called
for a coalition of "friends of a democratic Syria"
to coordinate efforts to remove Assad from power.
"We will work with the friends of a
democratic Syria around the world to support the
opposition's peaceful political plans for change,"
Clinton said, raising the possibility that Western
powers may sponsor arms and training for rebel
groups in a manner reminiscent of the Contact
Group on Libya, which helped fund and arm the
Libyan Transitional Council last year.
Though there appears to be little appetite
for direct military involvement as of yet, many
voices within the government, such as Senator
Joseph Lieberman, have openly called for the
provision of weapons, intelligence and other
military aid to Syrian rebels, particular to the
armed army defectors known as the Free Syrian
Army.
A number of observers have been
troubled by the ever-increasing militarization of
the conflict, and many see the involvement of
Western military aid as a worrying development
that may distort the nature of the uprising.
Bassam Haddad, director of the Middle East
Studies program at George Mason University and
co-founder of the popular website Jadaliyya,
recently wrote an article decrying the ways that
foreign intervention may undermine the goals of
the initial uprising, prompting a heated exchange
between proponents and opponents of foreign
intervention.
In a recent interview with
al-Jazeera English, Haddad warned that the Syrian
uprising had been gradually transformed "from a
legitimate domestic fight against dictatorship to
something far more cynical". Haddad and others
have accused the US of supporting the Syrian
uprising to suit its own regional interests, while
ignoring or undermining similar uprisings in
Bahrain, Yemen and elsewhere.
Bashar
Jaafari, Syria's ambassador to the UN, capitalized
on this contradiction during his remarks on
Saturday, asking Rice why she failed to feel
equally "disgusted" with the numerous US vetoes
protecting Israeli military operations in Gaza,
Lebanon and against the Palestinian people in
general.
Washington's dealings with the
Syrian regime are also complicated by a darker
ongoing relationship between the two governments.
In an apparent warning to those in the
West advocating the overthrow of the regime, Syria
reportedly released Abu Musad al-Suri, the alleged
mastermind behind the July 7, 2005, London
bombings, from the prison in which he was held
under the Central Intelligence Agency's
extraordinary rendition program.
The
release is believed to be an implicit statement on
the consequences of abandoning the Syrian regime
and a reminder of the ties enjoyed by the US and
Syrian governments in the George W Bush
administration's "war on terror".
Given
the recent escalation of violence by both the
regime and its foes, as well as the Syrian
regime's willingness to use all available options
to stay in power, many take these developments to
suggest that further international intervention
will only stoke the embers of civil war.
"The veto will diminish the relevance of
the United Nations and increase the odds that
Syria will descend even further into a civil war
fueled by a flood of weapons and aid to all
parties," wrote Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert
at George Washington University, on his
foreignpolicy.com blog after the Security Council
vote
"The UN's failure won't end regional
and international efforts to deal with the
escalating brutality, but it will now force those
efforts into other, less effective and less
legitimate channels. The already slim prospects
for a 'soft landing' in Syria, with a political
transition deal ending the violence, are now
closer to complete collapse."
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