BY_ RICHARD FALK
FROM_ ALJAZEERA
JUN 1 2012
Labelling
the Houla massacre as a 'tipping point' in the uprising is misleading and
creates false hope, writes author.
Istanbul, Turkey - The Houla Massacre of a week ago in several
small Muslim villages near the Syrian city of Homs underscores the tragic
circumstances of a civilian vulnerability to brutal violence of a criminal
government. Most of the 108 civilians who died in Houla were executed at close
range in cold blood, over 50 of whom were children under the age of 10. It is
no wonder that the Houla Massacre is being called ‘a tipping point’ in the
global response to Syrian violence that started over 15 months ago.
The chilling nature of this vicious attack upon the
most innocent among us, young children, seems like a point of no return. What
happened in Houla, although still contested, seems confirmed as the mainly the
work of the Shabiha, the notorious militia of
thugs employed by Damascus to deal cruelly with opposition forces and their
supposed supporters.
This massacre also represents a crude rebuff of UN
diplomacy, and the ceasefire its 280 unarmed observers were monitoring
since it was put into effect on April 12. In this regard the events in Houla
reinforced the impression that the Assad regime was increasingly relying on
tactics of depraved criminality and state terror to destroy the movement that
has been mounted against it. Such defiance also challenged the UN
and the international community to do more when confronted by such evil, or
face being further discredited as inept and irrelevant.
Tragedy or tipping point?
But is not the Syrian situation better understood as a
‘tragic predicament’ rather than presented as a tipping point that is
raising false expectation that external initiatives can somehow redeem the
situation? What kind of hitherto unimaginable action plan undertaken by the UN
or NATO could hope to stop the violence and change the governing structure of
Syria for the better?
There has long existed an international consensus that
the Syrian response to a popular uprising should be effectively repudiated, but
this awareness was coupled with a growing realisation that there were no good
options. Even those who supported the Annan Plan in the UN acknowledged
from its inception that it was a desperate last resort with almost no chance of
succeeding. Cynics claimed that it was accepted by Assad to gain time, and mute
outside pressures.
There was a widely shared sentiment at the UN that it
was unacceptable to stand back and watch further crimes against humanity take
place, something must be done, but what? Remembering the awful failure of the
world to stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 or the massacres in Srebrenica in
1995, there existed the feeling that the developments in Syria were building up
to a comparable humanitarian catastrophe, already more than 10,000 Syrians had
died, that must somehow be stopped.
A scarcity of viable solutions
Diplomacy had been arduously pursued since the outset,
originally by Turkey, then the Arab League, and finally
by Kofi Annan, the Envoy of the UN Secretary General, each phase with a seeming
receptivity in Damascus but clearly without noticeable effects on its violent
tactics.
The parties, including Bashar al-Assad sweet talked
international emissaries, announced their willingness to stop the killing and
other abuses, and even accepted monitoring arrangements, but then before the
negotiators had even left the country the two sides resumed their brutal combat
as if nothing had happened, and for this, the opposition led by the Syrian Free
Army deserves a share of the blame. In effect, diplomacy has been given
multiple chances, and continues to be put forward as the only way to make a
difference in the conflict, and yet it clearly lacks the capacity to stop the
bloodshed and suspend the political struggle for control of the Syrian state.
This naturally turns our attention to more coercive
options. Russia has been blamed for
preventing stronger action being endorsed by the UN Security Council. Indeed
Russia has used its veto to block such initiatives as the imposition of an arms
embargo or sanctions on Syria, and is under great pressure to join the current
buildup of support for the exertion of increased outside pressure. Amnesty
International, for instance, has issued an appeal to the Security Council to
call upon the International Criminal Court to issue indictments against the
Syrian leadership for their role in the commission of severe crimes against
humanity, culminating in the Houla Massacre.
Making matters worse
Military intervention has been strongly advocated
for several months by some irresponsibly belligerent political figures in the
United States, most notably by John McCain, but there seems little appetite for
such a military undertaking even at the Pentagon, and certainly not according
to the court of public opinion. Also Syria has no substantial coveted oil
reserves. The logistics and politics surrounding such a proposed intervention
in Syria make it an unrealistic option. There is not the political will to
mount the sort of major military operation on the ground that would combine
regime change with an enforced stability until normalcy could be established by
a new national leadership.
Unlike Libya where NATO’s reliance on air power turned
the tide decisively, if destructively, in favour of rebel forces, this scenario
is viewed as not workable in Syria where there continues to exist more public
support for the regime and more substantial military and paramilitary resources
at its disposal, especially if it continues to receive assistance from Iran.
All in all, the military option would likely make matters worse for the Syrian
people, increasing the magnitude of internal violence without having the effect
of bringing the conflict to a desirable end.
The dilemma exposes the weakness of empathetic
geopolitics in a world that continues to be dominated by territorially supreme
sovereign states. In the Syria situation this tragic reality is revealed in all
its horror. It is unacceptable in a media wired world where events are reported
visually almost as they are occurring, or immediately thereafter, there is no
way to avert the gaze of the outside world.
It is morally unacceptable to stand by, watch, and do
nothing. But the UN lacks the authority and capability to impose the collective
will of international society except when it can mobilise an effective geopolitical
consensus as it did in Libya (but by way of deceiving
Russia and China as to the scope of the response contemplated by the
authorization of force in March of 2011). For reasons explained above, plus the
lingering resentment due to the Libyan deception on the part of Russia and
China, there has not emerged a geopolitical consensus favouring military
intervention, and none is likely. Just as doing nothing is unacceptable,
mounting a military intervention is unrealistic, and hence, impossible.
Does a solution exist?
What is left to fill the gap between the unacceptable
and the unrealistic is diplomacy, which has proved to be futile to this point,
but hanging on to the slim possibility that it might yet somehow produce
positive results, is the only conceivable way forward with respect to the Syrian
situation. It is easy to deride Kofi Annan and the frustrations arising from
the repeated failures of Damascus to comply with the agreed framework, but it
remains impossible to find preferable alternatives.
If diplomacy is finally admitted to be a deadend as
seems so likely it raises serious questions as to whether in a globalising
world the absence of stronger global institutions of a democratic character is
not a fatal flaw. Moral awareness without the political capacity to act
responsively points up a desperate need for global reform, but the grossly
unequal distributions of power and wealth in the world makes such adjustments
impossible to make within the foreseeable future. And so the peoples of the
world go on living in this tragic space between the unacceptable and the
impossible. It will take a miracle to close this gap!
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor
Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting
Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University
of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications
spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume
International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).
He is currently serving his fourth year of a six
year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
The views expressed in this article are the
author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Reuters