Category Archives: Middle East

Government, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

Calming the violence in Syria…

Intro: The Geneva talks may help to calm the bloodshed in Syria, but there are other practical measures that can be taken

The Syrian peace talks which began this week in Switzerland began dramatically. The original invitation for Iran to join the talks was quickly reversed and the first significant and genuine attempt by the US and Russia to bring an end to the civil war that is tearing the country apart was made. If these efforts cannot be sustained, and many suspect they can’t, it will still be important for definitive steps to be taken into de-escalating the conflict. Such terrible losses and suffering on the Syrian people should not be understated.

The fact that the meeting in Geneva did take place really does matter. For the first time since the conflict began, the government and a faction of the opposition were brought together. This can only be an advance on what has happened between the two sides that have been driven by a need to kill each other. What is more, the energy which Washington and Moscow put into staging the talks is the clearest sign yet of a genuine desire to bring the conflict to an end. When the US and Europe saw such a meeting as a precursor to the inevitable demise of Bashar al-Assad some 18 months ago, the same supposition was not necessarily true. The military balance of power on the ground was such that government forces were never likely to suffer total defeat without a full-scale foreign intervention. That option disappeared when the US and Britain abandoned plans for a military strike last September, after a chemical gas attack was used on civilians in Damascus. Since then, a recipe for continuing the war has been the uncompromising demands for Assad’s surrender.

Practical measures could be taken to calm the violence. Local ceasefires do already exist and could be expanded, with UN observers monitoring on the ground ready and able to mediate on the need for a longer-term solution. Without that, hatred and distrust between the two sides will ensure that ceasefires have a short life-span. UN observers are also needed to help coordinate relief convoys to rebel-held enclaves, where people are starving and in dire need of humanitarian assistance and aid. The same applies to prisoner swaps.

Given that the Iranian and Saudi governments are crucial players on opposing sides of the conflict, it is unfortunate that Iran has been absent from this week’s talks. To have one and not the other present has undermined the credibility of the negotiations. The open willingness of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to see an end to the fighting without victory for the rebels – of whom they are the main financial and military supporters – must be tested.

A reduction in violence might also be achieved by pressuring Turkey to clamp down on jihadi fighters crossing its 500-mile-long border with Syria. Turkey denies any acquiescence, but all the evidence suggests that it has backed rebels of every persuasion.

The gravest challenge in setting up the Geneva conference has underlined just how difficult it will be in the future to get a multitude of players with differing interests, inside and outside of Syria, to agree to anything. But a negotiated peace is the only option in bringing to an end the slaughter in a conflict that is now almost into its fourth year. However far away a solution may seem to be all parties concerned have a duty in bringing the bloodshed and suffering in Syria to an end.

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Foreign Affairs, Government, Lebanon, Middle East, Politics, Syria

The assassination of Mohamad Chatah: Lebanon’s moderate voice has been silenced…

QUAGMIRE OF SYRIA

Mohamad Chatah, the former Finance Minister in the Lebanese government of Saad Hariri, was assassinated yesterday in a huge car bomb blast in Beirut. Lebanon has lost a courageous intellectual and a fervent interlocutor for moderation who has regularly spelled out the extreme peril his nation faces as the civil war in Syria continues to polarise the Lebanese people.

Mr Chatah was a prominent blogger and user of social networking sites. Just hours before his death, he used Twitter to express his grave premonition that Lebanon was heading back towards the abyss. He tweeted: ‘Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security and foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 years.’

As a leading Sunni, Mr Chatah had followed the hard anti-Assad line being pursued by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It should not have been difficult, even if not agreeing with everything he positioned himself on, to recognise that he saw clearly the dire peril his nation was facing. Mr Chatah’s analysis was that the war in Syria, which has already claimed 120,000 lives, has gone on too long for the regime of Bashar al-Assad to be restored to its previous dominant position. Because of this, the preferred outcome for both Iran and Hezbollah, he said, was for the war to continue indefinitely.

Mr Chatah’s vision was of clarity and pragmatism. He also saw for Lebanon the implications of how great a disaster such a stalemate would be for his country, suggesting it could not hope to avoid being dragged in. As a consequence, he believed, along with other patriots, was that Lebanon would suffer another bout of destructive civil war, similar to the one that lasted from 1975 to 1990. His violent assassination is undoubtedly another fatal step in that direction.

Following months of frustration and numerous setbacks, a peace conference on Syria is set to open in the Swiss town of Montreux next month. Hopes for success at the talks may be slim as the intensification of the war continues. Whilst both sides are seeking to maximise their positions in advance of the summit, the outside world must owe it to Mr Chatah and his beleaguered people to do far more in bringing Syria’s civil war to an end.

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Government, Middle East, Syria, United Nations

The suffering in Syria continues unabated…

SYRIA

Amidst the raging chaos and devastation of civil war in Syria, the people of Syria are enduring some of the worst winter weather experienced in the Middle East for many years.

The full-scale of this developing disaster is hard to comprehend. The misery of conflict, now almost into its fourth year, coupled with the added problem of the despair of cold and hunger, is truly amounting to a catastrophe of biblical proportions. In the land of the Old Testament, seven million people have now fled their homes, and more than two million have left the country having been displaced through the ravages of war. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees are crossing the border each day into neighbouring Lebanon in pursuit of safe haven and shelter.

Relief agencies operating within the country are reporting that vast swathes of people are starving and in desperate need of help. The difficult weather is making it hard of getting vital food, medical and aid supplies to the besieged areas. The compounding effects of war and the climate are severely hampering the logistics involved of delivering emergency supplies to many people now in desperate humanitarian need.

This week, the United Nations launched its biggest ever appeal for foreign aid, requesting nearly £4 billion from the international community to help the humanitarian effort, both in Syria and in neighbouring countries struggling to deal with the crisis and mass movement of people. Syrian refugees now make up 25 per cent of the population in Lebanon alone.

Since the ill-fated and doomed Western flirtation with military intervention over the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in Aleppo, there has been a tendency to think that nothing else can be done. Further confusion has occurred because the West has suspended logistical help to the rebels to stop equipment and supplies falling into the hands of Islamist groups linked to Al-Qaeda. As difficult as it is, though, it must be possible to help the Syrian people in some way without interceding in the conflict itself – the choice cannot simply be between bombs or bread.

Lady Amos, the UN emergency relief coordinator, has said that the Syrian people feel they have been totally abandoned. With governments in a seemingly precarious position and unable to agree a relief strategy, there is no-doubt that citizens of the Western world would want to see their governments acting by relieving the hardships being endured by so many. The UK has been generous and at the forefront of providing humanitarian assistance, both through privately pledged donations and state funding. But in alleviating genuine suffering other countries need to show a higher level of altruism and spirit of giving. What, for example, of Syria’s oil-rich fellow Arabs? Apart from Kuwait, no Arabian state has given anything like the amount they could afford.

Within Syria itself, greater international pressure should be exerted on Bashar al-Assad to allow humanitarian corridors to be established that would allow access to the hardest-hit areas. Alarmingly, a recent UN resolution to this effect was recently opposed by Russia. If Vladimir Putin’s resolutely dogged approach in support of the Assad regime does not change tack by bringing his influence to bear on Damascus, then he must stand accused of letting the regime use the starvation of innocent civilians as a weapon of war.

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