This past weekend, the Arab League decided—effective Wednesday—to suspend Syria’s membership in the body, sanctioning President Bashar Assad’s regime for failing to comply with a November 2 pact to withdraw its military forces from Syrian cities, release political prisoners and grant media access to the country.
Amidst increasing international pressure to end his brutal eigth-month crackdown on protests—which the UN estimates has left more than 3,500 people dead—Assad nonetheless remains defiant. Today, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem insisted that Syria “is not Libya”, warning that the Arab League’s decision was “a dangerous step.”
As Arab countries and Western governments contemplate the “next step,” a strong voice is emerging within the Syrian opposition calling for a Libya-style intervention. However, despite clear signs that Assad will not comply with external demands, this scenario is unlikely. Given the circumstances, and unless new decisive measures are taken, Assad’s murderous campaign appears destined to continue.
ARAB LEAGUE TURNS ON SYRIA
Rick Moran
FrontPage, November 14, 2011
Tens of thousands of pro-regime demonstrators flooded the main square in Damascus on Saturday to protest the decision by the Arab League to suspend Syria’s membership in that body. During the staged demonstrations, several Arab embassies were attacked and vandalized while the Turkish government sent planes to evacuate non-essential personnel when their consulates were also besieged by protesters.…
Syria threatened to “punish” the League for the membership suspension, but offered an olive branch by asking for an emergency meeting with member states and agreeing that foreign observers could monitor compliance with the peace deal that was agreed to earlier this month. That deal stipulated that Syria would withdraw its armed forces from the cities, release political prisoners, and meet with opposition leaders. The League also called for a meeting of all Syrian opposition leaders…at the Arab League headquarters [in Cairo] to agree to “a unified vision for the transitional period,” said Sheikh Hamad, who is also foreign minister of Qatar and currently holds the organization’s rotating chairmanship.
The mention of a “transitional period” in Syria would strongly suggest that unless Assad agrees to reforms, further action would be forthcoming from the League, including the possibility that the organization would ask the UN to intervene. “If the violence and killing doesn’t stop, the secretary-general will call on international organizations dealing with human rights, including the United Nations,” said Hamad.
In addition to the suspension, the League also requested that member states recall their ambassadors and suggested that further sanctions would be imposed unless the Syrian government met the terms of the peace deal.
With Syria’s non-compliance, the League voted only for the third time in its history to suspend a member state. Egypt’s 10 year suspension for signing the peace treaty with Israel and Libya’s sanctioning for murdering its own citizens are the only other incidences of similar League action.
Meanwhile, human rights monitors in London report that 14 more civilians were killed by government forces on Sunday in a clear indication that Assad has no intention of abiding by the terms of the peace deal. Over 100 civilians have died since Assad agreed to the Arab League terms. The crackdown continues despite protests that are still growing, and deserters from the army that are beginning to make their presence felt as an opposition force.…
It is widely believed that Assad has called for the emergency Arab summit to stall for time—a luxury he no longer has. The only three member states to vote against Syria’s suspension were Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon.… But what must worry Assad the most is the loss of his good friend and ally, Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey. Turkey has been slow off the mark in punishing Assad for the brutal crackdown but Erdogan has finally come to the conclusion that Assad has to go.… [As] the Wall Street Journal reports, even though Erdogan has been cautious in moving toward full opposition to the Assad regime, Turkey now sees Assad as an impediment to its hegemonistic designs in the Middle East.…
Three quarters of the Syrian population is Sunni Muslim and it is thought that even a pluralistic, secular government as a successor to Assad would pull back from aligning itself too closely with Shia Iran. The chances of that kind of government emerging from post-Assad Syria are exceedingly slim, however. Nowhere else in the Arab world has the “Arab Spring” led to any government except an Islamist one. And just recently, the Syrian opposition hosted Muslim Brotherhood cleric Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi in Qatar. Allowing the resurrection of the Muslim Brotherhood—nearly destroyed by Assad’s father Hafez in a series of brutal massacres during the 1980s—is a dangerous sign for the mostly idealistic secularists on the Syrian National Council.
But even with the opposition making tentative strides in planning for a post-Assad Syria, civilians are still targets for Assad’s security forces—including the dreaded Shabiha militia. The black clad thugs are often in the front ranks of assaults by the army on protestors, firing into crowds, beating the wounded, and shooting soldiers who refuse orders to slaughter unarmed demonstrators. They also conduct brutal house-to-house searches in suspected disloyal neighborhoods, arresting men and boys indiscriminately while helping themselves to household goods. The Shabiha also search local hospitals and drag wounded protesters to secret detention centers—even if their wounds are too severe to allow them to be moved.…
Can Assad afford to halt his crackdown even if it means more sanctions and possible UN intervention? Even if he personally desired to stop the killing, the regime’s elite, made up almost entirely of members of Islam’s Alawite sect, would almost certainly launch a rebellion of their own. The vast majority of wealth and power is currently held by the Alawites—who comprise just 7% of the population—and they would almost certainly lose their privileges if Assad were to give in and allow a multi-party democratic state.
So for the foreseeable future, Assad has little choice but to continue on the course he has chosen. No matter how isolated he and his country become, the killing will go on until a greater power than the dictator currently wields either forces reforms or, more likely, forces him out.
SYRIA REBUKE ROILS MIDEAST
Nour Malas & Matt Bradley
Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2011
A rare Arab consensus to possibly suspend Syria’s membership from the Arab League within days hardened the battle lines inside the country, with the conflict poised to escalate as Damascus’s isolation grows.
A sharp backlash in Syria on Saturday night and Sunday from thousands of government supporters and ordinary citizens who marched in support of the regime showed how the Arab strategy could still fail to break a stalemate between protesters and the government—or even strengthen support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—in Syria’s eight-month-long crisis.
Government loyalists attacked Saudi, French, and Turkish missions across Syria in disapproval of those countries’ support for the Arab League move, as Syria’s government through state media called for an urgent Arab summit “to tackle the Syrian crisis and look into its negative repercussions on the Arab situation.”
Turkey, a long-time Assad ally, summoned the Syrian charge d’affaires to the foreign ministry in Ankara to protest the attacks. Its Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan edged closer to “soon” announcing the country’s delayed promise to levy sanctions against Syria, said a senior Turkish official, though Turkish officials played down the likely scope of any new sanctions.
Turkey also sent a plane to evacuate the families of diplomats in Syria, issued a travel advisory against visiting the country and demanded guarantees from Damascus for the safety of its diplomats. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called leaders of the Syrian opposition to meet him in Ankara for talks Sunday evening.
France on Sunday also summoned the Syrian ambassador in response to the attacks on its Syrian mission.
Unlike when the 22-member league voted in February to allow foreign intervention in Libya, Saturday’s decision puts the once-moribund organization in direct confrontation with a regime that plays a crucial role in the relationships among Arab states. The league’s delicate gambit is a test over whether its Arab members can apply the new moral imperatives of the “Arab Spring” uprisings to regional diplomacy.…
Arab officials said the league’s decision wasn’t an idle warning; the bloc will suspend Syria and apply political and economic sanctions if the killings continued, officials said. One official said the group hoped the “Arab cover” for any wider sanctions would help gain United Nations backing for an Arab League peace roadmap for Syria—similar to how the U.N. backed a Gulf Arab plan to try to ease out Yemen’s president. “The point is to show we’re serious, and that we’re not going to wait around anymore,” said one Arab official.
But such newfound resolve on the part of Arab officials is likely to run afoul to the old-fashioned norms that still determine the Middle East’s diplomatic contours.
While Saturday’s surprise vote means that Arab states can now count on more international support for harsher economic sanctions against Syria, the country’s political clout means that Arab states are unlikely to ever see the kind of direct military engagement that ultimately upended former Libyan dictator Moammar Qadhafi, analysts say.…
As if to confirm that the Arab League vote had changed little on the ground, activist network the Local Coordination Committees said 23 people were killed on Sunday by Syrian forces.
“In Libya you could have a plan and you could have a plan B and you could have some vision of a worst-case scenario,” said Gamal Abdel Gawad, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo. “But in Syria, you don’t know what could happen. That is why we see a lot of reluctance.”
The unexpected vote on Saturday saw 18 Arab countries decide to suspend Syria’s membership from the 22-member body starting Wednesday, until Damascus pulled through with an earlier commitment to withdraw military from cities, release prisoners and allow in Arab League monitors and the media by then. An Arab official said member states had reverted to their trade and finance ministers to study sanctions options that would pressure the regime without hurting ordinary Syrians, though no such plans were ready yet.…
Inside Syria, the immediate polarization of opinion—already divided deeply between supporters of Mr. Assad banking on his rule for stability, and protesters calling for his downfall—was stark. People marching in protests held signs thanking the Arab League, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar—the two Gulf states seen as crucial to pushing through the punitive measures.
Syria’s government slammed the Arab body as being submissive to “U.S. and Western agendas” and said millions marched in the country’s biggest cities “to stress that Syria has carried the torch of culture and Arabism and it will always remain steadfast.”
The U.S. and its European allies welcomed the move to heighten Syria’s regional isolation.…
WHAT SYRIA POLICY?
Lee Smith
Weekly Standard, November 7, 2011
The threat against the life of the American ambassador to Syria comes during a bad streak for the Obama administration. First was the Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States and bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies, while incurring perhaps hundreds of American casualties. Next was the White House’s failure to secure an agreement to keep U.S. troops in Iraq, which will empower Iran and its Iraqi allies at the expense of American interests.
Middle Easterners who count on American leadership can be forgiven for misreading signs of American weakness. Some in the Syrian opposition believed that, now with Qaddafi out of the way, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had come into the Obama administration’s crosshairs. Senator John McCain suggested the same during a recent trip to Jordan. However, as the White House made clear last week, this was not the case.
The misunderstanding seems to have started when Robert Ford, the ambassador to Syria, was brought back to Washington. Given the domestic political fight over appointing an ambassador to Syria, administration spokesmen struggled for the right language to explain what had happened: Ford was not withdrawn, they said, but “recalled” for consultations. Because the White House recalled the ambassador to Libya before the onset of the NATO action that eventually led to Qaddafi’s death, parts of the Syrian opposition were eager to see the same pattern developing.
That’s where the similarity ends, however. The reason Ford came home was that the Syrian regime had made credible threats against his life. Perhaps Assad saw his own fate prefigured in the photos of Qaddafi’s last hours, and went on offense against Washington by letting on that he was going to kill the president’s personal representative. The administration says it is planning to send Ford back soon, with the understanding that the Syrian regime, rather than kill Ford, will abide by international law and ensure his safety.
Surely even the Obama administration must know that this is ludicrous. In 2005 the Bush administration withdrew its ambassador to Syria after it judged that Damascus was behind the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. We held off returning an envoy while the Syrians and their allies plotted the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. In Lebanon, Syrian allies made an attempt on the life of former U.S. ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, now head of the State Department’s Near East Affairs bureau.
When it came to power, the Obama White House defended its determination to return an ambassador to Syria with the diplomatic cliche that “you don’t just speak to your friends.” Lost on the president was the fact that it is not possible to speak rationally to those whose policies are predicated on murder. Syria, the administration seems to have forgotten, is a state sponsor of terror. It is accustomed to operating in this particular pit of hell; it thrives here, where Washington can only flounder. Indeed, the White House doesn’t even have the luxury of taking the moral high ground by expelling Syria’s ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha. Damascus recalled him last week, even as he is under federal investigation for threatening Syrian dissidents in the United States.
Without Ford in Damascus, the administration seemingly has no Syria policy, except to trot out the same formulations it mouthed before the president said Assad has to step down. At least we’ve finally taken “engagement” off the table. Of course, for all practical purposes, the regime in Damascus is already contained. In which case, a cynic might argue, why should the administration commit itself to a more active role in bringing about an end to Assad?
It’s true that Assad has yet to play all his cards. One of them is Syria’s customary gambit of stirring up trouble in Lebanon. Military incursions across the Lebanese border to chase opposition members may be a foretaste of much worse trouble to come. Many in Beirut believe that the fighting in Syria will spill into Lebanon.
In the meantime, Damascus’s ally Hezbollah feels cornered. Last week the Party of God’s general secretary Hassan Nasrallah made a televised speech defending the Syrian regime. Assad’s war has not only enraged the region’s Sunni population, but also alienated much of his and Nasrallah’s customary support. As it turns out, slaughtering Syrian civilians who are demonstrating peacefully is a wedge issue. Even fans of the resistance, especially on the left, have identified the discrepancy between advocating on behalf of Palestinian rights and a regime that kills its own people protesting for their rights.
Nasrallah and Assad are finding themselves increasingly isolated. Indeed, something is amiss with the Iranian-backed militia when Nasrallah admonishes the Saudis not to believe the American story about the plot against Riyadh’s ambassador to Washington, and calls the Saudis “brothers.”
So, with Iran’s two key allies boxed in, why should the White House intervene? Perhaps the administration has reverted to a brand of realist foreign policy that would see American interests advanced in conflict consuming and containing both sides. What worked for Iran and Iraq in the ‘80s might now be applicable to Syria’s nascent civil war.
The problem with this line of thinking is not just moral. It’s not just that both Iraq and Iran came out of their near-decade-long conflict wounded and more dangerous than before. It’s that the White House is not playing the regional board at all. It was good to hammer away at al Qaeda by killing Bin Laden, Rahman, and Awlaki and finally get Qaddafi. But these moves have been made in the absence of a larger strategy. Consider how Iran looks at the region: Even as it may be on the verge of losing its only Arab ally in Syria, the American withdrawal from Iraq has given Tehran a fresh horse to ride against the United States.
The rest of the Middle East understands that there are two magnetic poles shaping the region. The Saudi plot and the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq may have compelled the Obama administration to recognize that Tehran is one of those two poles. They are slower to realize that America is the other.
IRAN: SYRIA’S BIG BROTHER
Mark D. Wallace
National Review, November 8, 2011
When it comes to harsh words and denunciations from the West, Iran and Syria run neck and neck. Yet when it comes to taking meaningful action, the international community regrettably hesitates to do for Iran what it has done for Iran’s junior partner.
In recent months, EU member states and the Obama administration have not only been vocal in denouncing Syria’s brutal treatment of protesters, but have also backed up their words with serious penalties. Specifically, the European Union sanctioned Syria’s Central Bank on October 13, after deciding on September 2 to ban EU member states from importing Syrian oil. The embargo was particularly consequential, given that oil has been a major source of revenue for the Syrian regime, and 95 percent of its customers were EU members.
What is puzzling is that both the Obama administration and the EU have been disinclined to impose the same penalties on Iran, even after the October 11 revelation of the regime’s plot to commit terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. While punishing Syria is wholly justifiable, the same can’t be said of EU member states’ silence toward Syria’s big brother (exemplified by their resistance to banning oil imports from Iran), or the Obama administration’s reluctance to sanction Iran’s Central Bank. The truth is that Iran’s rulers are by all accounts just as brutal as Syria’s, and just as deserving of similar sanctions.…
Iran is an even bigger threat to the U.S. and the world than Syria. The regime is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, is allied with al-Qaeda, and is responsible for the deaths of American and NATO troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. As mentioned, Iran has now been revealed to have plotted terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, and of course it continues to pursue nuclear weapons in defiance of international law.
It is time for the Obama administration, the EU, and the rest of the free world to confront this grave threat before it is too late.… Specifically, sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank—which have the support of 92 U.S. senators but have reportedly been tabled by the Obama administration—would sever Iran from the international banking system and thus hinder its ability to trade. The administration needs to take this action, and must also make clear that any further acts of war by Iran will be met with a swift military response.…
(Mark D. Wallace, president of United Against Nuclear Iran,
served in the George W. Bush administration as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.)
