UK Syria vote: Who MPs should (and should not) be listening to

[Originally published by Now Lebanon on 2/12/2015]

British MPs should consult Syrians, not dubious Western ideologues, on whether or not to bomb ISIS in their country.

In Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday, set in February 2003, the neurosurgeon Henry Perowne is discussing the day’s big event — the million-strong march in Hyde Park against the coming invasion of Iraq — with his “newly adult” daughter, who’s just returned, flushed with righteous vivacity, from the jubilant scene.

The liberal Henry doesn’t, in fact, support the war, but when his daughter asks, slightly too judgmentally, why he hadn’t joined the enlightened masses on the streets, a friendly argument breaks out that then turns into a less-friendly argument, eventually leading Henry to realize what it is that makes him uneasy about the demonstrators:

“Let me ask you a question. Why is it among those two million idealists today I didn’t see one banner, one fist or voice raised against Saddam?”

“He’s loathsome,” she says. “It’s a given.”

“No it’s not. It’s a forgotten. Why else are you all singing and dancing in the park?”

This has always struck me as an insight of the highest moral clarity, and it bears revisiting as the British parliament meets today to vote on extending Royal Air Force strikes against ISIS in Iraq (already approved by parliament last year) to include ISIS targets in neighboring Syria as well. Today, as in 2003, any serious consideration of whether or not to intervene must begin with the acknowledgment that both options are terrible. MPs voting against the motion put forth by David Cameron’s cabinet must understand that they are doing a favor to the rapists of children, the tyrannisers of Arab and Muslim civilians generally, and the butchers of British tourists, French concert-goers, and Egyptian Christians, just as MPs voting for the motion must concede that opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn is probably right to say “we are going to kill [innocent] people in their homes by our bombs.”

Both options entail further horror and misery for civilians. There will be blood on British MPs’ hands whether they vote for or against. Neither course should be taken, then, without the requisite degrees of discomfort and remorse — there can be no singing and dancing in the park. The people who must be morally distrusted right away, in other words, are those for whom the decision comes easily.

These include, on the (purported) left, the anti-war absolutists, who care not the slightest for the welfare of Syrian civilians, or even for their opinions. Perhaps best represented in Britain by the questionably-named Stop the War Coalition, they made this clear last month when they prevented Syrian activists from speaking at a panel discussion on intervention in Syria, heckling and then calling the police on a small group who turned up hoping to have a say on the fate of their own country. To call these groups ‘anti-war’ is in fact much too kind, for they have no problem with war in Syria per se as long as it can be used against Downing Street. They are the sort who would have told you (as indeed they might still) that the most dangerous man in Europe in 1939 was Winston Churchill.

A closely related faction are those who actively support war in Syria — who expend column inches and public speaking hours defending and advocating it — when it’s carried out by regimes Britain opposes. Of these there could be no better example than Patrick Cockburn, the journalist Corbyn invited to give Labour MPs a final pep talk before parliament opened this morning. When 10 weeks ago Russia began its own intervention in Syria — which has since killed a number of rebels and a higher number of civilians, but conspicuously few ISIS fighters — Cockburn penned an op-ed titled ‘Why We Should Welcome Russia’s Entry Into Syrian War.’ Moscow’s air strikes on rebel positions and residential homes “could have a positive impact,” Cockburn explained, even helping in “de-escalating the war.” Needless to say the prospect of Britain following Russia’s lead, however, is another matter entirely.

“Based on wishful thinking and poor information,” Cockburn said in his briefing Wednesday, Britain is stumbling into the unknown “without a realistic policy to win” against ISIS. What might a realistic policy involve? “If ISIS is really going to be destroyed, it is difficult to see how the US and UK can avoid having some degree of co-operation with the Syrian army,” Cockburn wrote two weeks ago. He further applauded the “clear-sighted” remarks by former British Army head Gen. David Richards that Assad and even “Hezbollah and their Iranian backers” should be welcomed into the Coalition’s fold. In this, the ostensibly left-wing Cockburn is on common ground with such right-wingers as UKIP leader Nigel Farage and the Conservative chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, MP Crispin Blunt, both of whom have opposed fighting ISIS without an accompanying entente cordiale with Damascus.

If these are some of the voices MPs would do well to ignore when voting Wednesday, where might they turn instead for valuable insight? A sensible starting place would surely be those Syrian civilians who stand to be most directly affected by the dispatch of Tornado GR4s to the skies above the caliphate.

‘Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently’ (RBSS) is a group of extraordinary media activists working surreptitiously from inside ISIS’s Syrian capital to bring the reality of life under the jihadists to an outside world that would otherwise have no information beyond the meticulously-doctored propaganda released by the caliph’s media team themselves. Living under perennial threat of discovery and death (two of their colleagues in south Turkey were tracked down and beheaded by an ISIS agent in October), RBSS have the most to gain from an effective intervention against ISIS and, equally, the most to lose from a botched one. One of their members, going by the pseudonym Tim Ramadan, told me Wednesday he was prepared to take a bet on the former outcome.

“We’re for any decision to eradicate Daesh [ISIS] and Assad, and to protect civilians,” said Ramadan. “We have trust in the British government, from its stance alongside the Syrian revolution, that it will place the protection of civilians among its priorities.”

When I replied that others, such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’ Rami Abdulrahman, object to strikes on the grounds that ISIS operates among the civilian population, making the killing of innocents inevitable, Ramadan disagreed.

“There are Daesh camps and warehouses and convoys that move in broad daylight, far from civilians. For example, France carried out almost 30 strikes in a single night that didn’t hit any civilian; all of them focused on Daesh targets. Britain, too, has the capability to do that.”

Which is not to say Ramadan’s opinion is universally shared. Other Syrian democracy activists on the ground, such as the Aleppo-based Zaina Erhaim, have come out against British strikes. The Syria Campaign, a group that works tirelessly to remind the world that Assad remains by a considerable margin the greatest killer of civilians in Syria, argues that “Bombing ISIS is not the answer” — a view shared by some leading Syrian analysts, including Hassan Hassan.

None of these people are pacifists or Corbynistas. What they typically object to is not the principle of intervention, but rather the prospect of a strategically stunted intervention that fails to account for Assad’s role in getting ISIS to where it is today.

“If I went to the UK parliament to make a speech, the first thing I would say is ask them to remove the cause, which is Assad, not the symptom which is ISIS,” an exiled Raqqa resident told the Guardian last week. “Hundreds of thousands of people died in the last few years, and no one came to bomb Damascus.”

That, of course, was in small part because of a British parliament decision against punishing Assad for murdering over 1,000 men, women and children with weapons of mass destruction (which, incidentally, he has “continued to use” as a matter of “routine,” according to delegates at this week’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons annual meeting). Today MPs face another decision, and if the one they make turns out in the course of time to be the wrong one, they will at least be able to say they took it in good conscience if they listen — rather than close their ears — to the voices of what ought to be their Syrian allies.

How Europe emboldened Obama on Syria

[Originally posted at NOW]

UK and France played significant role in persuading Obama to act on alleged chemical weapons attack, say analysts

The six days that have passed since an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian regime reportedly killed over 1,000 in the suburbs of Damascus have seen an unprecedented shift in the US government’s approach to the country’s devastating conflict. Having said as recently as Friday that he sought to avoid “being drawn into” any kind of military intervention in Syria, US President Barack Obama evidently underwent a significant change of heart over the weekend, with his Secretary of State John Kerry vowing in a strongly-worded statement Monday that there would be “accountability” for the “moral obscenity” he said was “undeniably” carried out by the Syrian regime in the East Ghouta neighborhood last Wednesday. On Tuesday, Western envoys reportedly told opposition leaders to expect a series of missile strikes on Syrian targets “within days.”

In concert with this reorientation has been a sustained and forceful advocacy campaign by European nations, particularly Britain and France. Just one day after reports of the chemical weapons attack emerged from Damascus, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius urged the use of “force” in response. On Monday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague declared that military action could and should be taken with or without UN Security Council approval, while Fabius said, “The only option that I do not envisage is to do nothing.” As though to underscore its message, Britain readied its naval vessels in the Mediterranean for a series of cruise missile strikes, and deployed fighter jets and transport planes to its sovereign base in Cyprus.

This encouragement from Europe has been a significant factor in convincing Obama that a military response to the alleged chemical attack is the appropriate course of action, according to analysts.

“It’s been the case that Britain and France have been out in front [of the US] for some time on the Syria intervention question,” said Dr. Alan Mendoza, founder and executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank whose affiliates include members of UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s cabinet.

“Even before the latest developments, there were calls, particularly from France but also from David Cameron who has, I think, faced significant opposition from his backbenchers on the subject but has still maintained that he would like to do more for the Syrian people,” said Mendoza.

“[Britain and France] have been more forward-leaning [than the US,] not only now but in terms of different trade and assist programs that have been underway, in terms of engagement with the [Syrian] opposition, supporting different humanitarian aid efforts and development programs, a lot of the smaller things that you don’t hear about but have been really crucial in terms of international community outreach,” added Elizabeth O’Bagy, senior research analyst at the Institute for the Study of War and political director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force.

In terms of what motivates the Europeans to favor a more hardline approach to the Syrian regime, Mendoza argues it is chiefly attributable to the politicians’ personal convictions, particularly in the case of Cameron, whose interventionist stance is opposed not only by rivals in the Labour party but also a sizeable contingent within his own Conservative party.

“I think it’s a personal principle. The PM looks at this in a slightly different way to backbenchers who are looking at their own domestic constituents’ concerns. He’s looking at the international picture, at what’s happening in Syria, the broader strategic problems, the humanitarian nightmare. And he’s taken a principled stance, as well as, by the way, the strategically sensible stance that Britain needs to be involved.”

As for the French, domestic considerations may play a bigger role, says Mendoza. “Given the problems that [President Francois] Hollande faces at home, something like this would make it look a world leader and might assist in popularity in terms of restoring its political position. That said […] the French have always been out there on these issues. Remember the French together with the British led the Libya campaign as well.”

Indeed, even in Britain, Mendoza believes the British parliament might vote for a one-off, limited operation when it convenes on Thursday to debate the question.

“I think if chemical weapons use is proven, you will get a majority in the House of Commons who favor a response on that point. I’m not sure we’ll have a majority for a longer-term campaign.” In any case, the prime minister can legally make the decision to act without parliament’s approval, according to the BBC.

Finally, as much as these nations’ enthusiasm for action in Syria may have persuaded Obama, the president had sufficient reason of his own to act on Syria’s violation of what for over a year he had described as his “red line,” said analysts.

“To be frank I think it’s mostly because of what happened [in Damascus,] and the fact that this chemical weapon use, especially to this degree, has always been the ‘red line,’” said O’Bagy.

Mendoza agreed: “I think [Obama’s] been backed into a corner and if he wants to preserve any credibility internationally he has to make good on his own suggestion that there are ‘red lines’ that can’t be crossed.”