Perspectives on Syria

I should really stop visiting the comments sections of major news organisation’s websites, particularly where currently pertaining to Syria. There is a reason that I have an almost negligible respect for the anti-interventionist brigade, which happens to be in the majority, and it can pretty much all be seen under every article on the Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Huffington Post… you name it. A deluge of utter morons has descended onto these forums to fill them with the most rank and misinformed perspectives on this issue. Conspiracy theorists, racists and the plain old idiotic who haven’t tried for a second to filter through the storm of information flowing out of the embattled nation seem to be forming this bulk of public opinion.

Here’s a selection of the standard offerings that have recently caused my blood to boil.

1. “This conflict was engineered by the USA in some sort of regional power play that would benefit Israel.”

This suggestion hardly even warrants attention, as the organic nature of the Arab Spring demonstrably fed into Syria, prompting localized protests against Assad’s regime that were brutally suppressed by Syrian security forces. Assad was already playing the “terrorists” card at this nascent stage of the civil war, causing a backlash of more protests that were also violently suppressed. Large elements of the Syrian army, not to mention the Syrian people, clearly took issue with this murderous tendency of Assad’s, causing desertion and defection to a newly established opposition front. Instead of negotiating, Assad escalated the conflict into a fully fledged civil war.

This all at the same time as US and Israeli relations being as tetchy as ever, and each country having plenty to concern themselves with. Months after the Syrian conflict began, both powers were quite content to ignore what was happening in Syria as Israel once again staged a short war in the Gaza Strip and the USA were deeply involved in Egypt, Libya and ever-so-slightly in trying to unsuccessfully mediate Israeli aggression in Gaza.

Narratively, practically, logically, empirically the first point is total bunk. It likely arises from the fact that the Golan Heights have been of significant strategic important to Israel since they took control of the region following the Six Years War, a conflict that was prompted by repeated antagonisms by Egypt, Jordan and Syria against Israel. Syria used the Golan Heights, which were supposedly demilitarized, to artillery bombard Israeli settlements.

In addition to this, Hamas and Hezbollah have both received extensive support from the Assad government over the course of their lifespans in order to engage in proxy conflict with Israel, a point of no small consternation to successive Israeli governments. There is clearly little love lost between these two nations, and the Syrian conflict is ripe for conspiracy theorists.

2. “The opposition are terrorists and have perpetrated the majority of the crimes in this conflict. Assad is the noble bastion of secular hope for a country that will otherwise be overrun by jihadists.”

This one is particularly offensive. At this deep and intractable stage of the war, there are indeed terrorist elements operating in Syria, but they are still only a small minority of the fighting element, unless of course you count the entire Assad regime. The Al Nusra front are estimated to have less than 10,000 fighters and are the only group with a known affiliation to Al Qaeda. Other groups with Islamist agendas such as the Syrian Islamic Front and Syrian Islamic Liberation Front promote varying degrees of adherence to Sharia principles and yet are still outnumbered by the ostensibly secular Free Syrian Army, by far the largest opposition element in Syria.

The Free Syrian Army was the earliest manifestation of an organised opposition force, back in the days when this conflict was generously still being called an internal security crisis. They formed off the back of Assad’s repeated employment of despotic measures to suppress calls for more democratic controls in a country that has been led by an Assad since 1971. The FSA has largely been comprised of the Syrian people who put down their trades and businesses and were forced to pick up guns because of Assad’s irreconcilable actions. Their numbers and efficacy were swelled by numerous defections from Assad’s own forces.

Assad and his state media machine have been persistently plugging the myth that all the while he has been fighting unlawful dissidents who threaten the regional stability brought by his regime. Many Western observers probably wrote the entire opposition off as a barbaric entity after a certain YouTube video showed one freak incident involving a rebel fighter cutting flesh from a dead Syrian soldier and having a nibble. Atrocious, yes, but wildly misrepresentative. There are actually other more substantive examples of non-individual controversies being attributable to the opposition forces, such as the use of suicide bombings.

But broad culpability for this war in general, and for the greatest share of specific actions that should chill a person to their core, are the responsibility of Bashar al Assad. As mentioned, he kicked the conflict off by using heavy military apparatus in an indiscriminate fashion against his own people, and perpetuated it likewise. The recent evidence of his use of chemical weapons is almost a moot point.

If the international community had taken decisive action at an earlier stage, we might not now be talking about how difficult intervention is because of the convolution caused by the presence of the the Al Nusra Front. I still don’t believe the existing terrorist element is actually significant enough to erode the secular emphasis of the Syrian nation.

Trying to de-legitimise the entire opposition based on the presence of these minority elements is either painfully misinformed or wilfully disgusting.

3. “Intervention is stupid. What, you want to stop Syrians dying by killing more Syrians? Warmonger.”

Shut the f@ck up. The reductive simplicity of this statement might make me want to cause you bodily harm. As if “intervention”, a term with a large variety of potential characteristics, implicitly means the West will indiscriminately carpet-bomb Damascus or that we’ll be dumping troops into another desert to slowly perish in a protracted occupation. People have been so quick to write off the effectiveness of any form of military intervention however, that I’m almost tempted to want precisely that so these types can see exactly how effective a well-executed intervention against a fatigued security force in a morale crisis can be.

Analysts and defectors have been quite clear that an array of military targets are available for Western forces to strike, which would have a devastating impact on Assad’s regime were he to lose them.

Accusations of warmongering could not be more ill-conceived. This conflict has been raging for about two and half years and the international community has more or less sat on its hands, being definitively too pathetic to act. It’s an utter tragedy that it’s taken over 100,000 dead and the blatant use of internationally outlawed chemical weapons to stop the world from dragging its feet over Syria.

As it is, the temperament of intervention is currently that the USA have given Assad a one week ultimatum to yield his chemical weapon stocks or face punitive strikes, an ultimatum actually backed by Putin who seems finally unable to ignore his nuisance regional ally. Yeh, that’s really champing at the bit for some death and mayhem.

4. “But if we do anything at all we’ll upset the delicate regional balance and makes things worse!”

This is the closest thing yet to a respectable anti-interventionist position, as indeed there is a fairly complex network of groups and interests at this point. However, as mentioned the FSA remains the key opposition unit in a country that has largely enjoyed secularism in its recent history, and the notion of an Islamist takeover strikes me as slightly exaggerated.

The main issue I take with this is that it is the same logic that has been applied by other nations from the start. After Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the immediate aftermath of Libya, there has been huge hesitance to do anything about Syria and look where we are now.

So… ok. Let’s keep doing nothing and hope for the best? Yeh. It’ll work itself out. Because the conflict isn’t at all only getting worse under the current conditions.

This one is called a difficult decision, and I put my stock in action at this point. Two and half years of frustration and upset caused by the endless newsreel out of Syria is about as much as I can take. Thus god forbid I was actually a Syrian right now.

Russia, China and Iran, by the way, are about as likely to involve themselves in a war as Ed Miliband is likely to ever possess a shred of moral scruples, or testicles for that matter.

5. “Iraq here we go again!”

No, and I’m not even sure where to start with this one. I’ll keep it simple. For reasons you should be able to research yourself, Iraq and Syria are completely different and must be judged by their own set of facts. Beyond this, the entire suggested character of Western involvement in Syria is SO different to Iraq that even the French are getting involved this time.

Yes, Hollande has shown a bit more international clout over Libya and Mali than his predecessors, but then add Merkel to the coalition, and Putin marginally stepping away from his unconditioned support of Assad, and you should be wondering less as to why I was so mean about Ed Miliband earlier.

6. “Intervention is really only about making Obama and Cameron feel good about themselves. Politicians like to massage their own egos with this sort of pointless action”

Again, hideously reductive. You know how racists often say, “I’m not a racist, but…”? The people who use this argument are almost exclusively saying, “We all care deeply for the Syrian people and want their suffering to stop, but… 6.”

Frankly, given how clear this matter is to me, and despite being in the clear minority, I’m starting to suspect that people pulling these daft arguments out are genuinely apathetic to this prolonged conflict, the many tens of thousands of dead, the millions displaced and a country laid to ruin.

Intervention is about stopping this conflict, and it has been demonstrated that intervention could be effective. If you think otherwise, you’re a cynic or worse.

7. “It’s not our problem, let the Syrians sort it out themselves.”

Well, as heartless as this perspective is, at least it’s honest. I would remind these people to think about their own words the next time they peacefully protest in this country about anything, or better yet, when they go to peacefully vote out this government, or the next, or many to come. Syria might not strictly speaking be our problem but it’s mighty hypocritical not to take into account the joys of living in a country like England.

Let’s just hope we never need any help should our government ever crack down on us Assad style, eh?

I’ve temporarily exhausted myself. But like the thronging crowds at a Victorian grotesquerie who can’t help but look in horror at the Elephant Man, I’ll likely return to these threads to encounter more of the best evidence I’ve seen to date that people can well and truly be utterly deluded.

Again the Eve of Conflict

It’s looking more than likely that the USA, UK and France will once again be shipping out forces to fight a battle far removed from home. The Assad regime of Syria seems to have finally pushed too hard, with the chemical gassing of a Damascus neighbourhood resulting in dozens of deaths and hundreds of other casualties. Not the first hint of this civil war crossing into more vicious territory, and it was already more than vicious enough. As governments and militaries are this very moment drawing up plans, prompted further by the Arab League’s recognition of Assad’s clear and unacceptable crimes, the British public are already beginning to react.

The tone does not seem overly favourable to the idea of intervention. A quick flick through the comments section of any media site will prove this. Whether it’s outrage over another Middle Eastern intervention before we’ve even brushed off the sand from the last three, the fact that living standards don’t seem to be faltering enough for the government to drop probably millions of pounds worth of munitions in the coming weeks or more overt brands of cynicism (oil, power conspiracies, interests etc.), you could even say there’s a fair dose of pre-emptive anger. Whether you’re Obama, Cameron, Hollande or associated foreign secretary, you can guarantee this action isn’t being taken lightly.

How could it be? It’s been over two years since Assad’s forces started shooting his own people for peacefully protesting for more democratic controls, sparking the backlash against his government that quickly devolved into a civil war, no matter how cautious global commentators were in labelling it so. Throughout this time over 100,000 people have died in Syria, despite the repeated and impotent protestations of the international community. When the red line was drawn a few months ago over the use of chemical weapons, we even had to considerably thicken that line to the tune of blatant and callous use before we would act.

I’m no hawk. Not that you need to be to view things like the mismanagement of Afghanistan, the outright disaster of Iraq and the as yet unresolved troubles of Libya as stark indictments of Western government attitudes towards intervention and more importantly, reconstruction. But it still sickens to me read comments that are simply heartless to the plight of the Syrian people, and I hope beyond hope that this now almost unavoidable intervention will somehow get it right. I can’t even suggest what the character of that would realistically look like, given that this conflict is now beyond protracted and deeply convoluted.

Here’s what I’d say to the average dick who thinks the Syrians should just sort their own mess out. They were trying to and more or less just received indiscriminate gunfire for their troubles. Would you riot and rebel if the Cameron government let blood on the Mall like this because we wanted to have more freedoms? Too f@*king right you would, and you’d be crying across the Channel and the Atlantic for help all the while. This isn’t even the most pertinent point though. For nine out of ten Syrians, this was never their fight to lose and regardless their country is now largely reduced to rubble and graveyards because of a sick, megalomaniacal despot in Assad.

I don’t much care if the Syrian opposition has added their own share of controversy to this mess, as it seems as perfectly clear who landed the first and most overtly unjust blow, as who is responsible for continuing and escalating the conflict. There is no such thing as rulers. Leaders like Obama, Cameron and Hollande are all on borrowed time, graciously lent to them by democratic peoples. The moment Syria didn’t want the Assad regime was the moment he should have gone, not that they ever had a tenable mechanism with which to remove him. He never had any legitimacy to lead his people in the first place, inheriting all that he had from his father.

Not our problem? That’s a perspective for spineless hypocrites in my opinion. Like any instance where the world has twiddled its thumbs while thousands upon thousands of innocent people have perished in a war completely beyond their control, Syria deserves help. Whether you like it not or it’s around the corner, just maybe remember your objections the next time you go to peacefully vote out Cameron because you didn’t like him. I support the intent. Just pray it isn’t another failure.

Freedland on Ed

I’m pleased to say another contributor to the world of information has been filtered out for my entirely less qualified attention. Jonathan Freedland is to be the third writer under the microscope, although only after some deliberation, as Caitlin Moran was making a strong case for inclusion in this journalistic canon just the other day, with a piece ranging from the role of art in society to the effects of modern pornography on young sexual expectations.

Freedland edged the focus of this article by a nose however, given the combined events of today’s Prime Minister’s Questions and an article in the Huffington Post looking at Ed Miliband’s new Reaganesque angle of attack. The lead question from the opposition leader echoed that of the Republican icon in his day, “are you better off now than you were four years ago?”. These things are pertinent to Freedland’s recent article, asking what kind of leader will Miliband be.

A brief introduction though. Freedland is a regular contributor to the Guardian, like Jenkins, and also the New York Times, but with a more political focus and journalistic style. A bit less inclined to offer personal thoughts on a given issue than that other monolith of opinion, he is more likely to drive the cognitive gears by framing a discussion. Jenkins generally achieves this with a stronger position put forward for dissection and potential objection.

As to the aforementioned discussion of Miliband’s character of leadership, he actually puts things in more specific terms. “Will Ed Miliband be an Obama or Hollande?”, he asks. The question boils down to the potential manner in which Ed may one day ascend to power; with dynamic, inspiring visions of change, or quietly and inevitably on the back of repetitive Tory failings and subsequent dissatisfaction? I think today’s PMQ’s was a further hint of which.

From my perspective, Miliband has thus far been firmly camped out in the Hollande corner, and not to repeat the statements of several previous articles I shall only here label him the… endless font of condemnation not cut with a shred of evident constructive thinking. This from the alleged ideas man of the Labour Party. Perhaps as Freedland indicates, it has simply been far too difficult to resist the regular temptations of steady government incompetence.

Despite Miliband’s efforts in the Commons today, challenging Cameron on that issue of the voter’s changing fortunes, the Prime Minister had just enough politically viable defence at hand to resist. But his closing remarks to his assailant were something of a PMQ’s knockout, as he told the House of Miliband’s “major speech on the economy”. A speech, he gleefully added, which contains no new policy initiatives. Queue the Tory benches going ballistic.

This somewhat laughable omission would be damaging enough to the idea that the Labour Party are offering a reasonable alternative, but the matter is compounded by the manner in which the man was on the assault today. It was over two years ago that the media had put the notion that Ed could be Ed to the sword, his early tenure being veritably riddled with satire. It was, in all serious terms, quite hard to take him seriously.

Last year it seems that various oscillations of personal image management finally stabilised to some degree, as with the “One Nation” party conference speech he attempted statesmanship. Aside from famously pinching the central theme of that speech from famed Conservative Disraeli, it was only otherwise notable for painfully lacking in policy and detail. Worse however, it was the beginning of his steady evolution into a 19^th Century style of barracker in the Commons.

But “One Nation” hasn’t made much of an appearance since early after the conference, and with his recent channeling of energy into the Reagan Question, it seems he is transforming yet again. Sadly for the state of healthy opposition, it is a transformation of image only and from Ed to Benjamin to Ronald the only consistent thing about Miliband and company is a lack of substance from the Labour front bench.

Freedland is right to indicate that Miliband’s tone of leadership will be more important come election time, and with a sustained healthy lead over the Tories in the polls, thanks to their masochistic tendencies, it can even be said he has no immediate reason to fill that void of usefulness. One can only hope that there is at least a semblance of a plan being squirreled away somewhere though, as an economically rudderless Labour government is a scary prospect.

I could easily be sold on a truly progressive and realistic agenda set out by Labour, admittedly due heavily to present disenfranchisement with the government, but that is not looking likely to appear from this set-up. Frankly the idea of Miliband conjuring a fervour comparable to Obama is a fantasy, with or without policy. But as Hollande aptly proved, and as the Tories are currently adding truth to the fact, all it takes is a really, really unpopular incumbent.

Earlier on in this government I had privately written off Miliband as a caretaker leader, possibly not even set to face a single general election. But Freedland’s article has reminded me of that slightly grim fact. In my defence, back then I could never have anticipated the scope of Tory blundering that led to his ascendancy. Prime Minister Miliband? Too much of a mouthful for me, but I’m not actually partisan… I just want someone to offer something truly appealing.

The Malian Conflict

Ah world. Coming on two years of the Syrian conflict where the West has seen fit to hide behind the bloodied garb of many a dramatically out-gunned baker-turned-freedom fighter, we see a variety of nations, primarily the French, whetting their blades on the desert stones of Mali. Or in the case of France, unleashing murderous hellfire from the skies on droves of unwitting and largely indoctrinated soldiers of misfortune.

I don’t think for a second that more than a small proportion of either Ansar Dine or the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa are clerical madmen, bent on a totalitarian future of oppressive sharia law. Most are likely woefully ill-educated young men emanating from the inhospitable parts of their world where nothing better was ever offered to them other than the corrupt promises of a few manipulators.

So stifle that triumphant cry when you read about the next few scores of rebels being incinerated in half a blink of the eye. It’s ultimately just as tragic as the horrors unleashed upon the people of northern Mali under the influence of sharia law in this past year, the circumstances leading to which were equally tragic. This whole thing simply has tragedy written all over it.

Wresting free of nearly a hundred years of French colonialism in 1960, Mali has endured as unsteady a time as most formally colonial African countries. Coups, corruption and the search for a nation state identity, despite the nation state being a wholly unnatural and imposed system in Africa, prevent the kind of polite stability we rather easily criticise them for not possessing. Indeed, how very dare they force us to suppress our own guilt reflex for not fixing the deep problems we laid down.

The present conflict is entirely rooted in Western imposition upon the continent. Ever wondered how a vast and vastly ethnically diverse land ended up having so many neat and geometric borders? That would be the result of so many politicians and cartographers, wanting a pretty picture and clear lines for the new imperial order, paying not a jot of attention to the specific matters of tribal distribution, conflicting cultures and historic regions.

Thus the nomadic Tuareg people end up being the dispossessed and unwelcome feature of these new states where once they mastered there own lives in the huge expanses of the Sahara. And it so happens that a major area of their inhabitance was the historical territory of Azawad, now perhaps more commonly known as more than half of the modern Malian state. There have been multiple rebellions in the past century for a degree of autonomy for these distinct peoples.

The current uprising is the result of the existing domestic sentiment for independence, combined with the fallout of the end of the Gadaffi regime, from which Tuareg fighters returned with arms to their home regions. Certainly by October 2011, these elements had combined to form the secular National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad and by March 2012 had made significant gains across northern Mali.

Exactly at what point Ansar Dine splintered from the NMLA, or became an entity in its own right, is unclear. But also in March 2012 they were making separate claims of territorial expansion in the name of imposing sharia law, and were soon joined in this mission by the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA). By April these Islamist factions, initially with the NMLA, had driven government forces from northern Mali but shortly after were in open conflict against the NMLA as well. The secular independence movement has taken a back foot.

Enter the French. At this point, it is probably a good thing that they have intervened, as the Islamist factions were becoming rampant and their system of rule could best be described as barbaric. The lurching UN-backed intervention could have come to fruition too late, but let’s not hail the French as selfless defenders of Malian peace and prosperity against some monolithic cloud of tyranny. They carry a responsibility to act and have enough interests in their former colony worth protecting.

Hollande does deserve a mention. Disdain for his economic policies aside, he has been curiously willing to get stuck into the variety of spats that have developed around Africa and the Mediterranean since coming to power. Perhaps after Sarkozy was so quick to jump on the arguably successful Libyan intervention, he doesn’t want to appear hesitant. France under Hollande was one of the first nations to recognise the formal opposition in Syria and we have also seen some dramatic activity by French forces in Somalia.

Swings and roundabouts. But after a decade of highly unsuccessful American bravado it is more than peculiar to see a far smaller European nation unilaterally flaunting its stuff. I suspect that, under Obama, America has been considerably less willing to stick its neck out and the door has been opened for others to be “heroic”. Or rather, others must now deal with the type of mess these smaller nations have typically gone pleading to America to deal with.

Bon chance.