The recent escalation of the fratricidal conflict in Syria has heightened security concerns in an already highly polarised and volatile region with the potential of a region-wide conflagration staring in the face of the international community with its far reaching consequences. Matters came to assume a more dangerous dimension in the more than two and a half years Syrian conflict when it was alleged that chemical weapons have been used by the Syrian military against the opposition forces in the outskirts of a Damascus suburb killing over one thousand people. While we do not wish to take sides in the conflict and genuinely wish to see a speedy resolution and an end to this internecine, fratricidal bloodbath, our objective in this article is to look at the issues involved and proffer our suggestions in the interest of peace in Syria and in the wider Middle East region.
The recent escalation of the fratricidal conflict in Syria has heightened security concerns in an already highly polarised and volatile region with the potential of a region-wide conflagration staring in the face of the international community with its far reaching consequences. Matters came to assume a more dangerous dimension in the more than two and a half years Syrian conflict when it was alleged that chemical weapons have been used by the Syrian military against the opposition forces in the outskirts of a Damascus suburb killing over one thousand people. While we do not wish to take sides in the conflict and genuinely wish to see a speedy resolution and an end to this internecine, fratricidal bloodbath, our objective in this article is to look at the issues involved and proffer our suggestions in the interest of peace in Syria and in the wider Middle East region.
It was against the backdrop of the foregoing that the United States, Britain, France, Turkey and some Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc. have been calling for military intervention against Syria for the alleged use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people in the suburb of Damascus so far described as “opposition held areas”. The perplexing thing about this allegation was that while the UN investigating mission had not even stepped their foot into Syria, it was being vociferously argued by the US and some of her allies that the Syrian military was responsible for this dastardly and sinister atrocity perpetrated against civilians in Syria. We find this approach of blaming one side to the conflict for the atrocious use of these banned weapons even before the UN investigating mission had completed their assignment ‘spurious’ and ‘discombobulating’. We do not understand how and why the officials of the US government were saying that the mission of the UN inspectors was not to determine who used chemical weapons in Syria but whether such weapons were actually used thereby blaming the Syrian government for the alleged chemical weapons use in that conflict.
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The US President, Barak Obama, who in recent months has started to exhibit incoherence and equivocation in his foreign policy was almost on the brink of launching a ‘punitive and deterrent attack’ against Syria, when he suddenly changed gear and decided to seek congressional authorization before embarking on his military intervention in Syria. This must have been informed by the unexpected and disgraceful defeat suffered by his counterpart, David Cameron in the United Kingdom whose parliament strongly opposed the use of British military against Syria without clear and sufficient proof/or evidence that chemical weapons were used in Syria and that it was used by the Syrian military. The British parliament would have recalled the tendentious and specious misinformation furnished to them a few years ago against the erstwhile President Saddam Hussein’s Iraq which led to the invasion of that country.
The rest of the story is well known to observers of international affairs when the so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were no-where to be found in Iraq. This writer, then a columnist with the Bahama Journal, a leading newspaper in the Bahamas, recalls interviewing the then British Ambassador to the Bahamas during that crisis and how he provided this writer with what he referred to as ‘the dossier against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq’. The writer also recalls that he (i.e. the writer) doubted the veracity of that dossier against Iraq. As a member of the international peace movement and a freelance columnist in the Bahamas, this writer went to the Iraqi Embassy in Havana, Cuba where he strongly advised the Iraqi government through their diplomatic missions in Havana, Cuba to allow the inspectors to complete their work and not to give the so-called international community a pretext to attack Iraq which we feared will lead to many casualties in the event of war. Although our efforts to avert that avoidable war ended in fiasco, we were pleased to do our best in the interest of world peace and the need to avoid civilian casualties as inevitable consequences of war.
Recently, the potential for escalation of the conflict seemed to be looming over the horizon in Syria and plausibly in the wider Middle East region. Thanks to the robust and pragmatic proposal by Russia, which requires the removal and placing of Syria’s chemical weapons under international control and which has been broadly welcomed by the international community, which we believe will avert military intervention if pursued and implemented with good faith by all the parties involved.
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Prior to this latest proposal, US President Barak Obama was seeking the US Congressional approval before embarking on his intended ‘punitive’ and ‘deterrent’ military strikes on Syria. President Obama was overtly led to this route apparently owing to the fact that some few weeks ago, some members of the US Congress sent letters to him insinuating that under the US Constitution he is required to obtain congressional approval before beginning a military attack on Syria. The letter drafted by Congressman Scott Rigel had 140 signatures, 119 Republicans and 21 Democrats. We gathered that Congress-woman Barbara Lee also circulated a letter that had 53 signatories that called on the US president to seek congressional approval. President Obama was seeking such congressional approval before military intervention in Syria when the Russian President, Vladmir Putin, changed the entire dynamics of the issue by his ingenuous proposal to give responsibility of Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons to international control. This Russian proposal is also viewed by many as ‘saving President Obama from what no doubt would have been humiliation’ in the event of obvious failure by the US Congress to accede to his request to use the US military against Syria.
The Rigel letter ominously warned President Barak Obama that engaging in military action “would violate the Separation of Powers Clause that is ‘well entrenched’ in the Constitution.” The letter also noted that the justification for war in Libya also violated the Constitution. The Lee letter warned that “we all swore to uphold and defend” the Constitution; and that we should not engage in an “unwise war – especially without adhering to our own Constitutional requirements.” In their concluding paragraph they warn “Before weighing the use of military force, Congress must fully debate and consider the facts and every alternative . . .”.
President Obama, who in recent times seems to be losing his ‘once, well-noted acute sense of coherence and articulation’, knows full well the limits of his powers. In fact, if there is an impeachment proceeding against him, his own words will be quoted. We vividly recall that when he was running for president, the then senator Barak Obama told the Boston Globe that: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Suffice it to say that today the US is not under actual or imminent threat from Syria.
Vice President Biden, in the same vein, in a 2007 campaign event in Iowa, even went further not only stating clearly that the president does not have unilateral power to conduct military attacks, but actually threatening impeachment of erstwhile President George Bush Jnr. if he did so. How times have suddenly changed.
The anti-war segment in the US has been calling on President Obama to exercise restraint and enhanced circumspection in dealing with the Syrian conflict in view of the volatile nature of the conflict and in the light of the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq where the US policy has not really achieved the desirable success.
It is indeed heart gladdening that the Russians have now come to the rescue of the US president from what would have been his Waterloo by coming up with this new proposal. The entire region would have slithered into an all-out war if the US had attacked Syria the way the right wing war mongers wanted President Barak Obama to act. The President who is presently not enjoying good will and popular support among some segment of the American people for whatever reasons would have blundered into the hands of his adversaries and faced possible impeachment proceedings against him.
The impeachment argument can be casuistically made that if President Obama had launched an attack without prior explicit authorization by Congress, he would have committed an offense worthy of impeachment. If impeachment proceedings are held all of the doubts about the war will come out. People in the military have protected themselves by telling President Obama that they have serious doubts about a military attack. They have warned President Obama about potential blowback and that misusing the military to send a message with no clear strategy has the potential of drawing the US into a cauldron of cataclysmic vortex of a vexing and enervating war when they are already burdened by a complicated withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some have used words like “potentially devastating consequences” and an “uncontrollable regional conflagration”. Reportedly, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, has warned in great detail about the risks and pitfalls of US military intervention in Syria, warning “deeper involvement is hard to avoid”.
If the war goes wrong, and wars almost always go wrong, President Obama will see the memoranda of various members of the military who warned him. In this day and age, war or use of force is no longer the veritable means of resolving conflicts and whenever any crisis arises, all options and alternatives must be vigorously and conscientiously explored and pursued before the thought of war is entertained. The era of state braggadocio in international affairs has hopefully become anachronistic and fallen into desuetude.
Again, military intervention in Syria is ominously fraught with unimaginable dangerous consequences. One might at this juncture ask the question, what could have gone wrong in the circumstances, if not for the Russian initiative? Syria is a complex case in the region. It has the Hezbollah and Iran and it is a client state. It is also seen by many in the Arab world and the Middle East as the bulwark against ‘zionist’ Israel and the “only country that has stood and remains standing against the ‘zionist’ enemy”. Syria has the ability to defend itself and attack US military vessels and even allies in the region. Iran and Russia have already indicated they will be drawn into the conflict. Threats of retaliation were already being made and troop movements were occurring. Russia was moving two additional naval ships, a missile cruiser and a large anti-submarine vessel, into the Mediterranean to strengthen its presence in case of a US attack when they offered the new proposal which, hopefully, has introduced a new momentum of the likely possibility to avoid escalation of the conflict in Syria.
Russia and Saudi Arabia have truculently recriminated and exchanged threats over Syria. Russia is threatening an attack on Saudi Arabia if the US attacks Syria with President Putin ordering a “massive military strike” against Saudi Arabia in the event that the West attacks Syria. Saudi Arabia is threatening Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia at the up-coming Winter Olympics in Russia. Iran, Syria and Lebanon-based Shiite militant group, Hezbollah have vehemently threatened to retaliate against Israel and other US allies in the Middle East in the event of a US attack on Syria. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, told the Tasnim news website, that an attack on Syria “means the immediate destruction of Israel”.
President Barak Obama could have been starting a much larger war than he realizes and doing so without UN approval would render him more vulnerable to his enemies in the US and possibly open a tinder box in the Middle East region if not for this auspicious Russian proposal.
On another note, nobody knows with sufficient certainty which party in the conflict actually used the alleged chemical weapons in Syria. It is not impossible that the Syrian opposition could have contrived and fabricated this chemical weapons attack to draw the international community into the conflict which they believe will alter the course of the war in their favour. Factually speaking, there are a lot of gaps in the so-called intelligence community report on the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria, including who ordered the use of chemical weapons and where those chemical weapons are now. An objective observer of international affairs might be legitimately concerned with the apposite question: why would the Syrian government use chemical weapons against the opposition forces when the war is going in their favour?
Why would the Syrian government at this time risk the ire and inevitable reaction of the international community? President Obama and his allies have provided no evidence to support their claim that the chemical weapons came from President Bashar Al Assad. In addition, people who turn off the corporate media and think about the situation realize that the claim that President Bashar Al Assad used chemical weapons makes no sense from President Assad’s point of view. The Syrian government has vociferously denied any use of such chemical weapons. As previously adumbrated, President Bashar Al Assad has been defeating the Opposition forces and so why would he take an action that would give the US an excuse to enter the war against him?
Some analysts are of the opinion that the United States is acting based on Israeli intelligence that supposedly intercepted communications in Syria. But we have also heard of German Intelligence intercepts in which some Syrian commanders were alleged to have sought authorization to use chemical weapons and such authorization was denied by President Bashar Al Assad and the Syrian High Command. It should be noted that Israel is not a party to the Syrian conflict and Israel and Syria are bitter rivals and implacable foes and as such the supposedly intercepted communications on Syria by Israel can hardly command objectivity and reliability to say the least! Israel has every reason to blame President Assad’s regime for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. How then can we trust a government that has its own conflicts with Syria over the Golan Heights and a government that has wanted President Assad replaced for a long time? Given that Israel has its own agenda, one may objectively ask the question whether in the circumstances Israel should be trusted here? What is the Obama administration doing to investigate the reports in some quarters that, in fact, it was Saudi Arabia that provided the chemical weapons which were used to the Syrian opposition forces?
Thankfully, all these questions and concerns are seemingly no longer relevant now. Not only has Britain backed out but Egypt has said the Suez Canal can’t be used, and Jordan has said their land can’t be used. Algeria and Iraq are not supporting intervention in the context. What we need now is to ensure that the framework for the Russian proposal is clearly and succinctly worked out with pellucid clarity and detailed conciseness to avoid any equivocation and obfuscation in its implementation and above all, good faith on the part of all the parties involved in the conflict. We urge the authorities in Damascus to make full and frank disclosure of all their stockpiles and allow unhindered, expeditious destruction and stringent verification of their chemical weapons stockpiles so that the US will not have any pretext to seek to trigger Article 42 of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which provides that “Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations”. Above all, we urge the international community to proceed with expedition and promptitude towards revitalizing the Geneva 11 negotiation so as to bring a speedy end to the conflict in Syria. All efforts should be made to ameliorate the plight of the Syrian people and to bring the war to an end. This is where the international community can assert itself fully within the framework of international legitimacy.
Clement Chigbo was former UK country manager African Views Organisation (AVO) and presently serves as legal adviser, Global, African Views Organisation. E-mail: [email protected].
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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