It is two years since the EU imposed an arms embargo and other sanctions
on Syria “to achieve a change of policy by the Syrian leadership without
further delay”. Since then, over 80,000 people have been killed, over a
million have sought refuge in neighbouring countries and over four
million are internally displaced. And in that time, the EU has issued well
over 100 statements and applied 21 further sets of sanctions, without any
visible impact. If the highest wisdom of a state is masterly inactivity, this is
the opposite: impotent hyperactivity.
Indeed, everyone’s policy towards Syria has failed:
the West has not succeeded in replacing the
Assad regime with a liberal, secular democracy;
Russian and Iranian support has not enabled
Assad to reassert control; Saudi Arabia and other
Gulf States have not managed to propel the
Sunni majority into power at the expense of the
Alawite minority. International leaders know that
they need to do something different: that is the
message of recent American and British attempts
to re-launch a peace process in partnership with
Russia. But there is not even the outline of an
international consensus on what to do.
This crisis is on Europe’s doorstep. The nearest EU
member-state, Cyprus, is 100 miles from the Syrian
coast. Europe should devise a more effective set
of policies and sell them energetically to the key
players inside and outside Syria. Clearly, Syria is
not Bosnia in 1994. But there are general lessons
to draw from the Balkans.
The first is that a framework has to be found
for reconciling the interests of the parties’
international patrons. In former Yugoslavia, the
establishment of the contact group of major
Western powers and Russia was a necessary
though not sufficient condition for progress.
Despite Moscow’s initial wariness, over time
a degree of confidence was established, so
that the Russians applied pressure in Belgrade.
Together with the changing military situation on
the ground, this cleared the way for the Dayton
peace process.
In the Syrian context, putting together a small and
effective contact group would be challenging:
some US officials say that it could be “politically
impossible” to involve Iran in peace talks. But
excluding Iran a priori would only encourage it to
play a spoiling role. A contact group would also
offer opportunities: for example, obliging the EU
and Turkey to unite around common objectivesand actions, which they have so far failed to do
despite their obviously shared interests in the
stability of the region.
The second lesson from the Balkans is that all
parties have to know that while they cannot
win an outright victory, they will not face
annihilation. Debate raged within and between
Western countries from 1992 onwards over
whether to support the forces of the Bosnian
government with arms, at a time when they
were taking a beating. It was Douglas Hurd,
then British Foreign Secretary, who notoriously
warned that lifting the arms embargo would only
create a “level killing field”.
The Americans nonetheless covertly supplied
weapons and training to the Bosniaks and
Croats and ultimately lifted the arms embargo
unilaterally in November 1994. That on its own did
not end the fighting; indeed, it took the Srebrenica
massacre in August 1995, and NATO airstrikes, UN
artillery bombardments and the defeat of Serb
forces in Croatia to bring about a ceasefire and
ultimately the Dayton agreement. International
military action proved to the Serbs that they could
not win, but also showed the Bosniaks that their
success depended on international support –
which could be withdrawn.
The same arguments are playing out in Syria.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle
said after an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in
March: “I don’t think the bloodshed in Syria
will decrease, should we engage in an arms
race.” But the bloodshed is not decreasing
anyway. There is a strong case for training and
equipping forces loyal to the Syrian National
Coalition – which, after all, the EU accepts as
“legitimate representatives of the aspirations
of the Syrian people” – to shake the confidence
of the regime. But there must also be a credible
threat from leading NATO and Middle Eastern
powers that they will launch military strikes
against Assad’s air and ground forces. Given
that Russia and China are unlikely to support
military action (even tacitly, as in Bosnia and
more recently Libya), there would have to be
a coalition willing to act without UN Security
Council authorisation, for example by seeking
UN General Assembly blessing through the
“Uniting for Peace” procedure (designed by the
US in 1950 to circumvent Soviet vetoes in the
Security Council).
The third lesson is that immediate regime
change should not be a precondition for starting
negotiations – a hard thing for the victims of
atrocities to accept. The Dayton process did
not unseat Slobodan Milosevic or indict him for war crimes. Of course, Milosevic did not rule
post-war Bosnia, but there are examples – the
Government of National Unity in Zimbabwe,
for instance – of an opposition movement
reluctantly accommodating the brutal leaders
of the ancien regime, in the interest of ending
violence. The Syrian National Coalition should
hear from its foreign supporters that it will not
achieve a knock-out military victory and that
it should focus on getting what it can at the
negotiating table, which may or may not include
Assad’s departure. The key objectives should
be an end to violence and a political construct
guaranteeing the rights of all communities in
Syria. Without that, conflict will start again.
“There must be a credible threat from leading
NATO and Middle Eastern powers that they will
launch military strikes.”
The fourth lesson is that the rest of the world
cannot walk away after a political settlement.
The Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia had
54,000 troops, including Russians. Together with
its successor, SFOR, it played a vital early role in
creating confidence and ensuring that the terms
of the peace agreements were respected.
Inevitably, any suggestion of ‘boots on the
ground’ in Syria will raise the spectres of
Afghanistan and Iraq. But Bosnia was different:
there was a prior political settlement from which
all the parties had gained something; and the
involvement of Russian forces gave the Serb side
some sense that IFOR was not a hostile army of
occupation. Whether the Russians would join
such an effort in Syria is a moot point; Putin’s
world-view is very different from Yeltsin’s.
But a purely Western force would have much
less chance of being seen as a disinterested
guarantor of peace.Even if these lessons are applicable to Syria,
none will be easy to implement. They involve
uncomfortable compromises, risky political
choices and negotiating with partners who
should be in prison. Plenty of experienced
diplomats who know the region well think that
nothing can be done to halt the catastrophe.
We cannot make Syria an earthly paradise. But
we have to try in every possible way to stop
it becoming still more of a hell on earth, lest
Europe be singed by the flames.
Ian Bond
Director of foreign policy, CER
sourche: http://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/pdf/2013/bulletin90_ib_article1-7420.pdf
on Syria “to achieve a change of policy by the Syrian leadership without
further delay”. Since then, over 80,000 people have been killed, over a
million have sought refuge in neighbouring countries and over four
million are internally displaced. And in that time, the EU has issued well
over 100 statements and applied 21 further sets of sanctions, without any
visible impact. If the highest wisdom of a state is masterly inactivity, this is
the opposite: impotent hyperactivity.
Indeed, everyone’s policy towards Syria has failed:
the West has not succeeded in replacing the
Assad regime with a liberal, secular democracy;
Russian and Iranian support has not enabled
Assad to reassert control; Saudi Arabia and other
Gulf States have not managed to propel the
Sunni majority into power at the expense of the
Alawite minority. International leaders know that
they need to do something different: that is the
message of recent American and British attempts
to re-launch a peace process in partnership with
Russia. But there is not even the outline of an
international consensus on what to do.
This crisis is on Europe’s doorstep. The nearest EU
member-state, Cyprus, is 100 miles from the Syrian
coast. Europe should devise a more effective set
of policies and sell them energetically to the key
players inside and outside Syria. Clearly, Syria is
not Bosnia in 1994. But there are general lessons
to draw from the Balkans.
The first is that a framework has to be found
for reconciling the interests of the parties’
international patrons. In former Yugoslavia, the
establishment of the contact group of major
Western powers and Russia was a necessary
though not sufficient condition for progress.
Despite Moscow’s initial wariness, over time
a degree of confidence was established, so
that the Russians applied pressure in Belgrade.
Together with the changing military situation on
the ground, this cleared the way for the Dayton
peace process.
In the Syrian context, putting together a small and
effective contact group would be challenging:
some US officials say that it could be “politically
impossible” to involve Iran in peace talks. But
excluding Iran a priori would only encourage it to
play a spoiling role. A contact group would also
offer opportunities: for example, obliging the EU
and Turkey to unite around common objectivesand actions, which they have so far failed to do
despite their obviously shared interests in the
stability of the region.
The second lesson from the Balkans is that all
parties have to know that while they cannot
win an outright victory, they will not face
annihilation. Debate raged within and between
Western countries from 1992 onwards over
whether to support the forces of the Bosnian
government with arms, at a time when they
were taking a beating. It was Douglas Hurd,
then British Foreign Secretary, who notoriously
warned that lifting the arms embargo would only
create a “level killing field”.
The Americans nonetheless covertly supplied
weapons and training to the Bosniaks and
Croats and ultimately lifted the arms embargo
unilaterally in November 1994. That on its own did
not end the fighting; indeed, it took the Srebrenica
massacre in August 1995, and NATO airstrikes, UN
artillery bombardments and the defeat of Serb
forces in Croatia to bring about a ceasefire and
ultimately the Dayton agreement. International
military action proved to the Serbs that they could
not win, but also showed the Bosniaks that their
success depended on international support –
which could be withdrawn.
The same arguments are playing out in Syria.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle
said after an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in
March: “I don’t think the bloodshed in Syria
will decrease, should we engage in an arms
race.” But the bloodshed is not decreasing
anyway. There is a strong case for training and
equipping forces loyal to the Syrian National
Coalition – which, after all, the EU accepts as
“legitimate representatives of the aspirations
of the Syrian people” – to shake the confidence
of the regime. But there must also be a credible
threat from leading NATO and Middle Eastern
powers that they will launch military strikes
against Assad’s air and ground forces. Given
that Russia and China are unlikely to support
military action (even tacitly, as in Bosnia and
more recently Libya), there would have to be
a coalition willing to act without UN Security
Council authorisation, for example by seeking
UN General Assembly blessing through the
“Uniting for Peace” procedure (designed by the
US in 1950 to circumvent Soviet vetoes in the
Security Council).
The third lesson is that immediate regime
change should not be a precondition for starting
negotiations – a hard thing for the victims of
atrocities to accept. The Dayton process did
not unseat Slobodan Milosevic or indict him for war crimes. Of course, Milosevic did not rule
post-war Bosnia, but there are examples – the
Government of National Unity in Zimbabwe,
for instance – of an opposition movement
reluctantly accommodating the brutal leaders
of the ancien regime, in the interest of ending
violence. The Syrian National Coalition should
hear from its foreign supporters that it will not
achieve a knock-out military victory and that
it should focus on getting what it can at the
negotiating table, which may or may not include
Assad’s departure. The key objectives should
be an end to violence and a political construct
guaranteeing the rights of all communities in
Syria. Without that, conflict will start again.
“There must be a credible threat from leading
NATO and Middle Eastern powers that they will
launch military strikes.”
The fourth lesson is that the rest of the world
cannot walk away after a political settlement.
The Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia had
54,000 troops, including Russians. Together with
its successor, SFOR, it played a vital early role in
creating confidence and ensuring that the terms
of the peace agreements were respected.
Inevitably, any suggestion of ‘boots on the
ground’ in Syria will raise the spectres of
Afghanistan and Iraq. But Bosnia was different:
there was a prior political settlement from which
all the parties had gained something; and the
involvement of Russian forces gave the Serb side
some sense that IFOR was not a hostile army of
occupation. Whether the Russians would join
such an effort in Syria is a moot point; Putin’s
world-view is very different from Yeltsin’s.
But a purely Western force would have much
less chance of being seen as a disinterested
guarantor of peace.Even if these lessons are applicable to Syria,
none will be easy to implement. They involve
uncomfortable compromises, risky political
choices and negotiating with partners who
should be in prison. Plenty of experienced
diplomats who know the region well think that
nothing can be done to halt the catastrophe.
We cannot make Syria an earthly paradise. But
we have to try in every possible way to stop
it becoming still more of a hell on earth, lest
Europe be singed by the flames.
Ian Bond
Director of foreign policy, CER
sourche: http://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/pdf/2013/bulletin90_ib_article1-7420.pdf
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