Chaos in Syria overshadows rebels'
hopes By Victor Kotsev
"The sounds of war are clear throughout
the city," an activist from Damascus told the
Associated Press on Monday. "They are bouncing off
the buildings."
This description captures
both the horror and the hope - as far as the
rebels are concerned - embedded in the highly
symbolic violence that has engulfed the Syrian
capital since Sunday, complete with the sustained
use of tanks, artillery, barricades and
rocket-propelled grenades. The partial collapse of
the Syrian regime even at its core was lauded by
opposition activists as a turning point in the
conflict, and another wave of high-profile
defections in the last days bolsters this
impression.
Particularly noteworthy is the
defection of the major general who
was in the past
responsible for the Syrian chemical weapons, Adnan
Salo. It sheds new light, for example, on last
week's reports that the regime had relocated some
of its poison gas stockpiles, and suggests that
the move was motivated by fear that the security
of the weapons of mass destruction had been
compromised.
On Sunday, moreover, the
International Committee of the Red Cross announced
that it officially considers the conflict a civil
war. "We are now talking about a non-international
armed conflict in the country," its spokesman
said. The announcement was widely interpreted to
mean, among other things, that international
humanitarian law now applies in Syria. It was
hailed by the opposition as both a shortcut to
bringing war criminals to justice and a tool to
put pressure on regime officials to defect or face
persecution.
In practice, however, these
developments, and also the high-level diplomatic
haggling which surrounds them, are highly
ambiguous, while the enthusiasm of the rebels
covers an exceptionally grim and deadly reality.
Given the chaos in Syria and the great difficulty
in verifying much of the information coming out of
there, reports can be manipulated in both subtle
and not so subtle ways. Take, for example, the
battles in Damascus. Despite the bravado of the
opposition, a rebel told Reuters on Monday that
his comrades would have left the city much earlier
if they had not been encircled by the government
forces: "They want to leave. If they were able to
leave they would have left ... The whole area is
surrounded." [1]
Reports of a large-scale
civilian massacre near the city of Hama last
Thursday, which initially exploded in the
international media and elicited calls for action
at the United Nations Security Council, also
turned out problematic as more information started
to come to light.
"New details emerging
Saturday about what local Syrian activists called
a massacre of civilians near the central city of
Hama indicated that it was more likely an uneven
clash between the heavily armed Syrian military
and local fighters bearing light weapons," the New
York Times wrote on Saturday. As of Monday, the
unanswered questions had not cleared, and Russia
blocked a Security Council statement condemning
the killings.
Likewise, speculation about
the Syrian chemical weapons remains unresolved.
Some claim that last week's reported transfer was
aimed against the rebels, others that they
threaten Syria's neighbors, and still others that
the Syrian army simply intended to secure them.
Given the fluidity of the situation, no scenario
is out of question in the future, but for now the
noise seems exaggerated. Such claims, moreover,
can serve major propaganda purposes, as the
overthrow of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein, initially billed as an operation against
weapons of mass destruction, demonstrated.
Furthermore, it is hard to gauge the
precise significance of the defections. While some
fairly high-ranking figures have left in the last
days, there is no shortage of generals in Syria.
For now, the departures do not seem to spell the
end of the regime, although they show a clear
trend of deterioration in its standing.
Even the Red Cross statement is not as
singlehandedly supportive of the rebels as many
observers have interpreted it to be. As Mary Ellen
O'Connell, a prominent legal scholar and a
professor of law and international dispute
resolution at the University of Notre Dame, told
Asia Times Online in an email, "[The ICRC
statement] means that the Assad regime is facing
an organized armed opposition engaging in military
force, and it has the legal right to respond in
kind. The Syrian military will have more authority
to kill persons based on their being part of the
armed opposition than when Assad was restricted to
using force under peacetime rules."
She
added,
Before the situation escalated to
armed conflict, Assad faced serious charges for
violations of human rights. Now he may also face
charges for violating international humanitarian
law, but those are potentially less serious than
charges of crimes against humanity ...
Outside military intervention on the
side of the opposition, even now, would only be
lawful with Security Council authorization ...
The Assad regime, by contrast, as the government
in control, may legally request assistance
unless the Security Council prohibits it by
imposing, for example, an arms
embargo.
An arms embargo at the
Security Council, however, does not appear to be
forthcoming. On Monday, Russia continued to oppose
any harsh condemnation of the Syrian regime, as
well as any text with references to Chapter VII of
the UN charter (which can authorize foreign
military intervention). The Russian foreign
minister, Sergei Lavrov, even accused his Western
counterparts of "elements of blackmail" when they
reportedly threatened to block his plan to extend
the mandate of the UN observer mission in the
country, set to expire on Friday.
The
observers have mostly been confined to their
hotels in the last weeks, and Western diplomats
complain that Russia's proposal, which is
ostensibly aimed at facilitating further peace
talks, lacks any effective means of putting
pressure on the two sides. Russia, backed by its
ally China, counters that the more aggressive
Western drafts aim to replicate the Libyan
intervention in Syria.
More cynical
observers speculate that Russia is bargaining for
a high price in order to abandon its long-standing
ally in the Middle East, likely involving American
concessions on the issue of the European missile
defense shield. Indeed, as the situation of the
Syrian regime deteriorates, it is plausible that
its allies, including Russia, China, and Iran, are
doing their own contingency planning.
For
now, however, the Syrian army is still mostly
intact. Moreover, given the ambivalence both of
reports from the ground and in the evaluations of
the major international organizations, the Syrian
regime does not yet seem on the verge of collapse,
and its foreign backers have not run out of
bargaining space.
The chaos, meanwhile,
only grows, and its foremost victim is the
civilian population in Syria. Over 17,000 have
died in the conflict so far, the latest data
shows; the number of victims in the past few days
is unknown.
Hopes of ending the civil war
are slim. Peter Wallensteen, a leading peace
researcher at the University of Uppsala and the
director of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program,
told Asia Times Online that an arms embargo
enforced by regional countries, broadly similar to
the ones imposed on Liberia and the Ivory Coast in
the past, might help, but he emphasized that an
immediate and coordinated response by the
international community was crucial. "It's
increasingly an internationalized civil war," he
said, "and as we know from previous history, the
more internationalized, the longer the conflict
will be. So there is an interest in finding a way
out, and quickly. Otherwise this will turn into
another Afghanistan."
(Asked to clarify
the distinction between his definition of the
conflict and that of the ICRC, he responded: "We
agree that there is a civil war, but now so many
weapons are coming from the outside, that there is
actually an internationalized civil war.")
For now, however, the international
community appears to be almost as far from a
genuine constructive compromise as are the
different sides on the ground. Amid an escalating
foreign-backed civil war in Syria, more tragedy
looms.
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