CFR's Plan for Foreign Intervention in Syria. Arab-League Monitors Come Under-Fire Again. Assad Vows to Fight On.

What it Will Take to Intervene in Syria

[link to www.foreignaffairs.com]


Washington, though it has expressed reservations about intervention, is now considering how it might aid the opposition, by either sending medical assistance or helping to create a “safe zone” -- a martially cordoned-off area within the country to protect the civilian population close to the Syrian-Turkish border. In testimony before Congress last December, the State Department official Frederic Hof called Assad a “dead man walking,” implying that the United States is already envisioning a post-Assad Syria.

Such an intervention would need to begin with the establishment a 4.25-square-mile safe area around the northwestern city of Jisr al-Shughour, where a regime-perpetrated massacre took place last June and anti-Assad sentiment runs high. Due to the proximity of the city to Turkey, the geopolitical sensitivities of a Western nation invading a Muslim-majority country, and the fact that Turkey has already been hosting and facilitating the FSA, Ankara would be the strategic choice to provide the ground cover to fortify the safe area.

The most effective way of legally authorizing a safe area would be through a UN Security Council resolution. But Russia will not forfeit its alliance with Assad, making the Kremlin’s acquiescence at the Security Council unlikely.

The other available route, then, is the UN General Assembly’s “Uniting for Peace” resolution, which allows for “collective measures” and the “use of armed force” in foreign conflicts. Created in 1950 by the United States to circumvent repeated Soviet vetoes in the Security Council against a Western military response to the crisis in Korea, this seldom used resolution requires a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly. Amassing such overwhelming support for intervention would be difficult, but certainly not out of the question. Last November, the General Assembly did what the Security Council was unable to do and passed its own nonbinding resolution -- one co-sponsored by Arab and Muslim-majority nations -- condemning the Assad regime for violence. If the crisis in Syria continues or escalates, then there may indeed be a moral and political consensus to invoke “Uniting for Peace” in order to establish a safe area.

A safe area in a central region of resistance would provide shelter for internal refugees, who are now reported to number in the hundreds of thousands. It could also serve as a base for the rebels, now largely operating out of Turkey, as well as a communications hub for Free Syrian broadcasting to the rest of the country. The FSA and independent brigades have already established de facto checkpoints and buffer zones deep inside Syria, which have served as the life line to the protests in Homs and elsewhere. Given a fortified logistical headquarters and a steady supply of equipment and arms, the rebels would have their Benghazi in Syria, their base from which to battle Damascus more effectively.

Any intervention would need to establish a no-fly zone to protect Jisr al-Shughour. Syrian forces used helicopter gunships in their previous attack on the city, and the Assad regime has Soviet-designed surface-to-air missiles stationed up and down the western corridor of the country that are capable of downing fighter jets. Nevertheless, a Western military force would achieve air supremacy with relative ease. The United States’ Sixth Fleet could also easily establish a naval blockade; ancillary air support could come from the United Kingdom’s bases in Cyprus.

The Arab League observer mission has proved useless.

Thousands have been massacred; many thousands more have been tortured using methods as imaginative as they are sadistic. When a country of 23 million collapses into anarchy, how many people will have to be widowed, orphaned, or dispossessed before the definition of failed statehood has been met? The more time the world gives Assad, the more he makes a mockery of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, and the more people begging for Western assistance are simply wished the best of luck and left to their grim fate.

Last Edited by DoorBert on 01/10/2012 07:31 AM