As Syria threatens to implode as a nation state racked by a two-year-old bloody civil war, the question for the West, including Australia newly seated in the United Nations Security Council, is what is to be done about a disaster-in-progress. No options are palatable, from sitting pat and allowing the carnage to continue, to a more muscular approach, involving overt assistance to rebel groups under the umbrella of the Syrian National Coalition to bring about a desirable end of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
Efforts to encourage a cessation of hostilities to enable a democratic transition have been resisted by Damascus, but these are desperate moments for the regime as rebels converge on the capital. Enormous pressure is being exerted on Syria’s ruler to give ground in what has turned into a fight for his very existence. His days in power are almost certainly numbered.
The question is, what happens next? Does Syria descend into even bloodier conflict between a Sunni majority and the minority Alawites and Kurds, all of whom are locked in a fratricidal struggle for a role in a post-Assad Syria. Does Syria come to resemble Lebanon in which sectarian groups control their own separate enclaves in uneasy coexistence? Or worse, are we headed for a situation like Somalia or Rwanda, in which total lawlessness prevails in a failed state? Does the West have any responsibility to protect innocent civilians who are being slaughtered in their thousands? Some 60,000 Syrians have died since the civil war began in March 2011, according to the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner. Options are limited in a deteriorating humanitarian environment in which Russia, China and Iran support, to an extent, the Assad regime. This may change as Mr Assad’s position becomes increasingly hopeless, but until that occurs a divided international community’s ability to use its leverage in Syria is constrained.
What is required is for Russia and China to acknowledge the futility of the present situation and lend their weight to international efforts to bring about an end to hostilities and the beginning of transitional process in which the legitimate claims of the various warring groups are acknowledged. Iran also needs to be persuaded it is not in its interests for its surrogates in Damascus to continue to preside over the destruction of a country with implications for a spillover of tensions into surrounding states. Unfortunately, given all that has taken place, it may well be too late to save Syria from itself.
The Australian Financial Review