What Syria needs now
Story highlights
- David Miliband: ISIS advances are significant propaganda victories
- Diplomatic cooperation on Syria on the U.N. Security Council is minimal, he says
David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, is former secretary of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs for the United Kingdom. The views expressed are his own.
(CNN)Almost
a year on from their dramatic seizure of Mosul, Iraq's second city, the
militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria continue to expand the
frontiers of their stronghold in the Middle East.
The
fall this month of Ramadi -- the last remaining government-held city in
Iraq's largest province -- and the taking, 400 miles west, of Syria's
Roman-era town of Palmyra, constitute not just important strategic gains
for the group, but significant propaganda victories. Televised images
of Palmyra's ancient ruins now abound, their fate seemingly hanging in
the balance.
The rapid rise of ISIS has
thus captured the world's attention, and we've seen a coalition of
Western and Arab states make common cause with Iran to try to forcibly
halt the jihadists' advance. But such cooperation has not extended to
securing an end to the war in Syria, where four years of conflict and
chaos have cost more than 220,000 lives
(though some estimates suggest the toll is far higher), left every
second Syrian in need of aid and allowed ISIS to grow from an Iraqi al
Qaeda franchise into a veritable transborder operation.
Remarkably,
despite all this, diplomatic energies aimed at securing an end to the
war -- and minimizing the impact of the fighting on civilians -- have
ebbed to their lowest levels so far.
True,
early Arab League proposals, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's
six-point plan, and the January 2014 Geneva II conference yielded
minimal results, But there was at least a sense of commitment and grim
determination back then.
Now, despite
this week's news that the United Kingdom and Russia are to resume
discussions on the crisis, political inertia is so pervasive that U.N.
Syria Envoy Staffan de Mistura's focus is simply on maintaining open
channels of communication through "consultations" -- in essence, talks about talks.
Similarly,
diplomatic cooperation on Syria in the U.N. Security Council is
minimal, including in the area of securing compliance with the council's
own humanitarian resolutions.
Neither
its members, nor states with sway in Syria, have applied appropriate
pressure on the warring parties to halt the deliberate targeting of
civilians and civilian infrastructure, the indiscriminate bombardment of
densely populated areas or the continuing disruption -- by means
ranging from bureaucracy to besiegement -- of nearly five million
people's access to aid. My own organization saw seven of our
beneficiaries killed in a bombing raid on Idlib last week.
Syrian
civilians' misery is also being compounded by a further, depressing
trend: the increasing mismatch between their needs and the help the
international community is providing.
One million people inside Syria required humanitarian assistance in 2011. That number now stands at 12.2 million,
well over half of whom are internally displaced. Their needs -- food,
water, shelter, health care, sanitation -- have increased at more than
six times the rate of funding provided since the beginning of the
conflict. Last year's U.N. appeal to meet basic needs inside Syria was
only 48% supported, down from 68% in 2013.
The
discrepancy between needs and assistance is also growing amongst the
four million people who have fled Syria. In exile for years now, their
economic and personal assets long depleted, these refugees urgently
require food, water, fuel, clothing and education.
At the same time, the countries sheltering them are buckling under the pressure of such a massive population influx.
Turkey,
the biggest refugee-hosting country in the world, put the cost last
fall of hosting Syrian refugees at $4.5 billion. Lebanon, where Syrians
now constitute somewhere between a quarter and a third of the
population, will need investment of up to $2.5 billion just to restore
its basic infrastructure to precrisis levels, according to a 2013 report from the World Bank.
Jordan, one of the most water-starved nations on the planet, hosts
nearly 630,000 registered refugees -- proportionally equivalent to the
United States absorbing the population of the United Kingdom. It puts
the cost of hosting Syrians in 2014 at $871 million.
In
Iraqi Kurdistan, meanwhile, 250,000 Syrian refugees shelter alongside
the well over one million Iraqis who have sought protection in the
region since January last year. The Kurdish authorities simply cannot
meet the spiraling demand for jobs and basic services in the territory,
where the poverty rate has more than doubled over the past 17 months.
Yet
despite such immense need, the U.N.'s Syrian refugee appeal for 2014
was just 64% funded, down from 73% in 2013, and global pledges to
resettle the most vulnerable Syrian refugees in countries outside the
region have failed to even approach a level appropriate to the scale of
this crisis.
Such is the pressure upon
their public services, economies, resources and social fabrics that
Syria's neighbors are now taking steps to restrict the flow of refugees
into their territory; only the most vulnerable can enter at present, and
there are reports of refugees being forcibly repatriated to Syria.
So,
how should the international community respond? Even within the limits
of a humanitarian perspective, there are clear, urgent priorities.
First,
the U.N. Security Council and states with influence over Syria's
warring parties should take immediate steps to hold accountable all
those who fail to honor their obligations under international
humanitarian law. Pressure must be brought to bear upon all parties that
restrict or undermine full, safe and unfettered humanitarian access to
those in need.
Second, and with this
appalling interference with access in mind, the Security Council's
permanent members, as well as key regional players such as Turkey, Iran,
Saudi Arabia and Qatar, should each appoint senior diplomats or
politicians as humanitarian envoys, resourcing and supporting them to
focus attention on the human consequences of the Syrian conflict. They
should also document and challenge restrictions on access, mediate and
monitor ceasefires, support the efforts of the U.N. emergency relief
coordinator and work through the detail of the relevant Security Council
resolutions with all stakeholders -- the warring parties, their
backers, the United Nations and NGOs.
Finally, the United Nations' 2015 appeal for Syria and the region must be funded.
Lebanon,
Jordan, Turkey and Iraq should receive the direct financial assistance
and long-term development investment they require to repair their
shaking infrastructure, reboot their public services and start creating
jobs for Syrians and the communities who host them. Support for these
countries is an essential counterpart to the vital call on them to keep
their borders open to those fleeing Syria.
None
of these measures is a substitute for the political and diplomatic
drive and imagination needed to bring this conflict -- or series of
conflicts -- to a close. The spillover of Syria's war into Iraq means
that the options available to those in the international community keen
to secure regional and global stability are far more limited than they
were in 2011. As this crisis becomes more and more complex, those
options are set to become even narrower, their consequences increasingly
unpredictable.
But this is all the
more reason for a renewed push to end the violence. Next month marks
three years since the Geneva Communiqué, a now dormant road map for
Syria's political transition, was signed in Switzerland. Let that
anniversary -- as well as events in Ramadi and Palmyra -- focus minds.
end quote from:
| CNN | - |
David
Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, is
former secretary of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs for the
United Kingdom.
comment:
The U.S. and Great Britain tend to look for ways to solve problems. However, I would say both Syria and Yemen are problems no one is going to solve anytime soon.
With barrel bombs from Assad's government from helicopters down into apartment complexes to Neutron bombs going off in Yemen, both are indications that all this is going to get much much worse before it gets better. And even getting better might be a very relativistic term at this point as well.
For example, is Somalia in better shape than it was in the 1990s? Likewise one might ask: "Is LIbya better off without Qaddhafi? Maybe Not.
Will Syria be better off without Assad and with all the Alawites massacred when he goes? Maybe not!
Especially if ISIS fills the vacuum along with Al Qaeda when Assad goes.
So,"what does Syria need now?" is a very problematic question in itself. Because if you are Putin you might say one thing, if you are Iran you might say another, if you are Assad you might say another, and if you are the U.S., Europe, or Great Britain it is going to be quite another thing that is said entirely.
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