Is the United Nations trying to transform the popular uprising in Syria into a game played by diplomats? As the big powers haggle in New York over the shape of an “observer mission,” the question is no longer hypothetical.
In Washington this week, Obama administration officials tried to dodge the question by claiming that the UN “peace mission,” headed by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was “making substantive progress.”
Suddenly, the goal of freeing the people of Syria from six decades of tyranny has vanished. Now the top priority is the formation of the “observer mission” to supposedly monitor a nonexistent cease-fire.
To “observe” in a country where people are in revolt in hundreds of towns and villages, the mission would start with just 30 members, eventually reaching a maximum of 250.
On the first day of the UN-brokered cease-fire, Assad’s forces killed 40 to 50 demonstrators, close to the daily average for the past year. Government troops remained present everywhere — with a few token withdrawals staged to provide TV footage for those in the outside world who wish to be deceived.
Assad’s snipers, the notorious shabbiha (“armed thugs”), were also actively pursuing their campaign of random killing, designed to terrorize demonstrators.
Annan insists that “both sides” must respect his cease-fire. But the fire that has killed almost 10,000 Syrians always came from the regime’s side. The unarmed demonstrators never had a chance of firing back. The Free Syrian Army, composed of deserters from regime forces, desperately tried to put up a fight but could not for want of weapons, air cover and safe havens.
A majority in the Arab league and some Europeans, especially France and Britain, wanted to provide all that — but had to hang back because of strong opposition from Washington.
“Obama vetoed the arming of the Free Syrian Army,” a senior Arab official claims. He adds that Arabs had been prepared to arm the FSA without US funding. All they wanted was “political and diplomatic support” from Washington, with its “great symbolic importance.”
American moral support was especially needed to persuade Turkey and Jordan to open humanitarian corridors and set up safe havens for Syrian refugees.
Washington officials claim that they have brought Russia “on board.” But Russia was always on board as long as there was no question of ditching the despot Bashar al-Assad.
The Annan mission is a success for Assad and his patrons in Tehran. First, they transformed a political fight into a humanitarian issue. Next, with Russian collusion, they established moral equivalence between the despot and his victims. “Both sides have the right to express their views,” Annan keeps repeating, in what sounds like the notorious dictum about “five minutes for Jews, five minutes for Hitler.”
Annan’s mission looks like a repeat of the bad movie he starred in with regard to Iraq in 2003, when he tried to “bring both sides together” with a trip to Baghdad. At that time, the “both sides” were Saddam Hussein and the UN Security Council. Annan’s magic formula? A plan to send a team of “black-tie observers” to conduct a polite inspection of Iraqi presidential palaces.
Despite Washington’s moral cowardice and Moscow’s shameless cynicism, the Syrian revolution is unlikely to fade away behind the diplomatic fog. Nor is the massive shipment of weapons and money from Iran likely to save this moribund despotism.
A majority of Syrians want a change of regime, not changes within the regime as envisaged by the Annan mission. Syrians want an end to the 48-year-old state of emergency that has denied their most elementary rights.
They want an end to the killing of demonstrators in the streets and the torture and murder of prisoners. They want “disappearances” halted and all political prisoners released. Finally, Syrians want a transitional government to prepare the way for free elections and the creation of a people-based system and the rule of law.
Despite efforts to suffocate it under the weight of big-power chicanery, the Syrian revolution is alive. Yesterday, it manifested its resilience once again with anti-Assad marches in dozens of localities across the country. Some towns and villages joined the uprising for the first time, among them Deir al-Zour, on the Iraqi border, and two of the country’s remotest towns, Tadmur and Raqqa.