Barbarians arrive as UN judges
Syria By Vijay Prashad
"How would you cry when the spears of
the enemies are broken on your waist? And your
body is the battleground between your big murderer
and your small murderer, where could you send the
call?" - Mahmoud Darwish, "Fi Intizar
al-barabira [Waiting for the Barbarians],"
Al-Karmel, 1987
On September 24, as
the UN General Assembly waited to inaugurate its
annual session, Lakhdar Brahimi went before the UN
Security Council. As the UN-Arab League envoy to
Syria after the failed mission of former UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan, Brahimi has a very
stiff task. The "civil war" in Syria has consumed
20,000 lives, with 235,000 Syrians removed to
Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey and an additional
1.2 million Syrians
displaced inside the
country.
Brahimi told the Security Council
that the 18-month conflict has broken Syria. The
government of Bashar al-Assad, Brahimi says,
believes that it can return to the "old Syria," to
the period before the outbreak of violence. It has
resorted to aerial bombardment and to "medieval"
tortures to execute its U-turn. On the other side,
an increasingly frustrated and fragmented rebel
force sees no solution but the departure of Assad.
Brahimi, who was the UN envoy to Afghanistan and
Iraq, and who had helped broker the Lebanese
peace, seems more aged by this encounter than any
of his previous assignments.
In Amman,
Jordan, en route between his visit to Damascus and
his meetings in Cairo with the Arab League head
and the Syria Contact Group, Brahimi told
al-Jazeera's Jane Arraf, "I have the support of
every member of the Security Council separately.
It would be good to have it collectively. I think
it will happen. ... I am nothing if I am not their
man so if they want me to be their man they will
have to support me clearly and openly."
The waters in the council are muddy. The
P5 (Permanent Five: China, France, Russia, United
Kingdom, and the United States) are deeply
divided. Rattled by the UN Security Council
Resolution 1973 on Libya (which authorized armed
action by "member states"), China and Russia are
resolved to prevent any resolution that does not
explicitly avoid Chapter 7 of the Charter, which
sanctions armed force. They have used their veto
power three times to block a Chapter 7 resolution.
Through this year, NATO Secretary General
Anders Fogh Rasmussen has dismissed any military
intervention in Syria. In Baku 10 days ago, he
once more reiterated this understanding, "The
situation in Libya and Syria are fundamentally
different. For military operation in Libya, NATO
had the mandate of the UN Security Council. In
Syria, a political solution is the best option."
The United States is not eager for another
military adventure, particularly after the Libyan
intervention seems to have produced results that
are not as clearly beneficial for US interests.
Deadlock in the Council suits the US as much as
the Chinese and Russians - no one is interested in
any UN action, or in any armed intervention by
NATO.
Rebels of the Free Syrian Army
complain that they are not getting the kind of
arms they require. Colonel Ahmed Wahab, speaking
near Atma (near the Turkish-Syrian border), said,
"If foreign countries don't give us [anti-aircraft
and anti-tank missiles], we will still win. It
will take longer, that's all. We control most of
the country. In most regions, the soldiers are
prisoners of their barracks. They go out very
little and we can move freely everywhere, except
Damascus."
Many of these fighters are
defectors from the military; others are ordinary
people who have left their ordinary lives to eject
what they see as authoritarian rule. There are, of
course, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and
certainly there are foreign fighters. But these
latter do not define the rebellion, nor do they
dictate it (as the Iraqi journalist Ghaith
Abdul-Ahad showed from Aleppo).
They do
not have sufficient arms to overthrow the Assad
regime by force in the short term, and neither has
their will broken for them to scatter before
Assad's aircraft and tanks. This standoff is
precisely the situation where the UN must play a
role.
One diplomat who was in the Security
Council meeting said that Assad "knows that
something must change". But Brahimi is not
optimistic. A diplomat close to the Brahimi team
told me that the envoy is skeptical about the
prospects. The West, he feels, has been playing up
its antipathy to Assad and its support of the
rebels. The French ambassador to Syria, Eric
Chevalier, recently said that France was going to
expand military aid to the opposition from
non-lethal to lethal weaponry.
The French
Foreign Ministry has also made it clear that
Tehran should have no role in negotiations around
Syria (including the Syria Contact Group) until
Iran "clarified" its nuclear program and ceased
human rights violations. Such a standard makes
Brahimi's job very difficult. The West's rhetoric,
the diplomat told me, narrows the avenue to a
settlement and ensures that the bloodletting
continues unabated.
The same UN diplomat
noted that US power has been gravely weakened. The
Iraqi government outfoxed the Obama administration
and forced the exit of the US troops in 2011 (a
story told in Michael Gordon and Lt General
Bernard Trainor's The Endgame: the Inside Story
of the Struggle for Iraq, 2012). In
Afghanistan, the US had now withdrawn its 33,000
"surge troops" without any tangible change in the
landscape (the Taliban's bon mot, "The Americans
have all the watches, but we have all the time,"
becomes relevant once more). Damaged by the loss
of its Egyptian ally and chastised by a lack of
easy options regarding Iran, the US appears
wounded.
The demonstrations around West
Asia and North Africa that broke out in light of
an absurd video illuminated the depth of anger at
US exertions in the region. There is no
expectation that the US will want to act in Syria,
when it is trying its best to hold back an Israeli
attack on Iran.
Yet, the US Ambassador to
the UN Susan Rice continues to make bellicose
statements about Syria. These are simply hot air
blown into a cauldron already beyond boiling
point. It does not help Brahimi to have Rice make
these statements, nor the French Foreign Ministry
set out preconditions for Iranian participation in
negotiations around Syria.
Brahimi, I am
told, has invested considerable hope in the Syria
Contact Group meeting. Egypt's President Mohammed
Morsi has countered the French with his view that
Iran is a "major player in the region that could
have an active and supportive role in solving the
Syria problem." In this same interview on Egyptian
television before leaving for New York, Morsi
noted, "I don't see the presence of Iran in [the
Syria Contact Group] as a problem. We do not have
a significant problem with Iran. It is normal like
with the rest of the world's states."
Morsi's Contact Group includes one state
with close ties to Assad's government (Iran) and
three that are openly against Assad (Egypt, Saudi
Arabia and Turkey). Iran tried to include Iraq and
Venezuela to the Contact Group to balance the deck
(see The
Mystery of the Syria Contact Group, Asia Times
Online September 22), but this was rejected by
Egypt. Despite Saudi Arabia's no-show at the Cairo
Foreign Ministers meeting of the Contact Group
last week, Iran remains clear that there can be no
regional solution without the Kingdom.
In
an interview with David Ignatius of the Washington
Post, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in
the context of a solution for Syria, "In my list
of possible avenues to pursue, Saudi Arabia does
occupy a place. And I believe it would be great,
it would be truly productive, if they also
participate." Iran's eagerness to work with Saudi
Arabia is a silver lining for Brahimi. It
indicates some movement toward serious regional
pressure on Assad to move to a transition.
On September 4, Indian Ambassador to the
UN Hardeep Puri articulated the global South's
view on the Syrian crisis. In an intervention in
the General Assembly, Ambassador Puri argued,
"There is an urgent need for the international
community to close its ranks and send a united
message to the Syrian parties urging them to
recommit themselves to resolving the crisis
peacefully through a Syrian-led inclusive
political process that can meet the legitimate
aspirations of all Syrian citizens."
The
key phrase here is "Syrian-led inclusive political
process," which indicates that the UN, and outside
interests, must be subordinated to the will of the
Syrian people - endgames dreamed up in Washington
or Riyadh, Ankara or Tehran should be shelved. All
these forces need to unite behind Brahimi so that
he can bring the Syrian parties together and forge
a political process that will be acceptable to all
sides.
The first move will be to create
the unity that Brahimi requires, which is
precisely what he is not able to get. Posturing on
the floor of the General Assembly will not provide
the kind of confidence needed by all sides for the
Brahimi mission. The "old Syria" is gone, and so
is the dream of the imminent collapse of the Assad
regime. Brahimi is seeking other roads.
The pity of the UN General Assembly
meeting is that all ears will turn to the speeches
from US President Obama and the response from the
Russian President Vladimir Putin, from the old
Cold War adversaries who still see West Asia as
their playground. Far more important voices are
trying to be heard, but they are powerless in the
UN Security Council. They have no genuine ability
to strengthen the UN envoy in Syria, because of
which the status quo will persist.
Vijay Prashad's latest book is
Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press),
whose Turkish edition, Arap Bahari, Libya Kisi is
available from Yordam Kitap
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