While
Europe is transfixed by the UK referendum, the crisis that has arguably
done the most damage to the continent continues unabated: the war in Syria. Right on Europe's doorstep, Syria still burns. It is high time to acknowledge that the peace ...
The continent’s destiny is entwined with that of its Arab neighbour, and
US-Russian efforts to secure a lasting peace have failed
‘We have slowly become numb to the suffering of Syrians’. The aftermath
of a Russian airstrike on the al-Kalasa neighbourhood of Aleppo,
February 2016.
Photograph: Thaer Mohammed/AFP/Getty Images
While
Europe is transfixed by the UK referendum, the crisis that has arguably
done the most damage to the continent continues unabated: the war in
Syria. Right on Europe’s doorstep, Syria still burns. It is high time to
acknowledge that the peace efforts of the US and Russia
have failed dismally. Whether there is any chance of this changing
after a new US president takes office in early 2017 is anyone’s guess.
But that’s precisely the question Europeans need to start preparing for.
And the time to do so is now.
If anyone thought Syria had gone away, look again. Massive airstrikes
carried out by Russia and Syrian government forces, some using barrel
bombs, have picked up again over the besieged city of Aleppo. More
hospitals have been destroyed and children killed: there are pictures of
this online but they’re not receiving much attention. Let’s face it: we
have slowly become numb to the suffering of Syrians.
But we ignore Syria at our peril. Future Arab and Muslim generations,
if not today’s, will ask Europeans why they did not do more to help a
nation butchered by a dictator’s army and his allies. Europe’s destiny
is intertwined with events in its Arab neighbourhood in a way that the
US’s is not. For each Syrian refugee who made it to Europe
and was treated decently, how many rejected or stuck in the war zone
will nurture resentment towards those in the west who preferred to erect
barbed wire fences or wring their hands?
Preoccupied with terrorism and refugee quotas, we worry about the
spillover effects but have stopped thinking about root causes. These
causes are not in Raqqa, the capital of Islamic State’s self-styled
“caliphate”. They are in the presidential palace in Damascus.
Most people in Europe now view Syria as essentially an anti-terrorism
problem. Their governments encourage this because sending warplanes is
simpler than addressing the reality of a complex catastrophe – the worst
humanitarian disaster of our times. The fight against Isis has recently
progressed. In Syria and Iraq, the jihadi group has, to a degree, been
put on the defensive, and western-supported Kurdish and Arab forces seem
set to retake more pockets of territory. It’s only part of the picture, but it’s the one western politicians prefer to highlight.
The other part of the picture is what created the bulk of the refugee
movements to Europe from Syria in 2015: the civil war, which started in
2011 when president Bashar al-Assad ordered his security forces to open fire on peaceful demonstrators
who were calling for a democratic revolution as in Tunisia. Assad, who
has been helped all along by Russia and Iran, then released Islamist
militants from his prisons and made sure the world started to see Syria
in binary terms: him against Sunni jihadis.
Radicalisation has grown in the ranks of Syria’s armed opposition, a
phenomenon no doubt encouraged by some of its Gulf sponsors. But that
doesn’t mean the Syrian opposition should be dismissed. If it was no
more than a bunch of Islamist radicals, there would never have been
talks involving a UN-recognised, anti-Assad, Syrian “high negotiations committee”. Those talks went ahead, and Russia committed to them even after it launched its military intervention in September 2015. The talks were supposed to halt the civil war. They haven’t.
‘The Assad regime made sure only anti-lice shampoo, mosquito nets and
vaccines were allowed into the town of Darayya.’ Photograph: EPA
It wasn’t meant to be this way. Remember how, last December, the UN security council unanimously voted
for a resolution designed to end the civil war and provide Syria with a
new government? The accord was hailed as a major step towards peace.
“This council is sending a clear message to all concerned,” said John
Kerry, “that the time is now to stop the killing in Syria”. A 17-nation
International Syria Support Group was officially tasked with a process
leading to political change in Syria. It called for “credible, inclusive
and nonsectarian governance” within six months, and “free and fair
elections, pursuant to a new constitution” within 18 months.
Now all the UN seems able to do is wait for the Assad regime
to give clearance for aid deliveries to the very cities and areas that
its forces besiege. Earlier this month, in another humiliation of the
UN, the Assad regime made sure only anti-lice shampoo, mosquito nets and vaccines
were allowed into the town of Darayya, under siege since 2012. This
week some food did finally arrive – which made headlines as if it were a
major breakthrough. Yet 600,000 Syrians are still besieged.
Much has been said about the supposedly waning power of the US. And
it is hard to disagree that a solution in Syria can be found only if
there is a degree of cooperation from Russia. Despite its announcement in March
that it was pulling out, Russia has entrenched itself in the conflict,
capitalising on the certainty that the Obama administration wanted as
little involvement as possible.
By deploying planes and air-defence systems, Russia has created a
no-fly zone suited to its own interests and those of the Assad regime it
protects – not for the protection of civilians. Surely, after months of
diplomatic stalemate, it is obvious that the only thing Russia has
provided in Syria is more attacks on civilian populations – as in
Aleppo, where its airstrikes have been concentrated in recent weeks, not in the Isis strongholds in the east.
Europe’s power is, of course, dwarfed by US might. But it isn’t
nonexistent, if it could only get its act together. Europe has more at
stake in Syria
than the US does because of the ways its domestic politics and security
have been directly affected by the war. Getting to grips with this
reality must be a priority for Europeans before it’s too late. Russia is
Europe’s neighbour, and Europe should find the muscle to exert leverage
on Putin. He won’t bow to smiles, but he has a difficult economic
situation on his hands.
Maybe talk of new European sanctions, this time focused on Russia’s
attitude in Syria? There are no easy solutions. But as long as the US
and Russia are alone at the negotiating table, European interests will
suffer. Not to mention those of Syrian civilians.
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