It is a strange fact of the human experience that we order
tragedy by aggregate so as to dull the shock to our collective
conscience. Horrific killings are immortalized in names made
infamous — the Rwandas and Srebrenicas — remembered as much for
their casualty count, as for their circumstances.
In Syria, the
1982 massacre at Hama has haunted the 15-month uprising against
President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Tens of thousands lost
their lives when the Syrian army — under orders of the country’s
president, Hafez al-Assad, and the command of his younger brother,
Rifaat — exacted a scorched earth operation against the town in
order to quell a simmering uprising, led by the Muslim
Brotherhood.
Thirty years later, and the nation has suffered another defining
massacre. In the wake of the slaughter at Houla,
the international community has been reawakened to the regime’s
brutality. Bashar al-Assad — son and nephew of the architects of
Hama — is operating in the YouTube age of citizen journalism,
unshielded from the immediacy of modern information-sharing. His
atrocities have been televised, tweeted, and broadcast in real
time. Yet he also lacks the convenience of diversionary violence —
his father managed his massacres behind the veil of a vicious civil
war in Lebanon. The son enjoys no such distraction.
Instead, the Syrian premier has channeled his inner-ostrich and
elected to disavow or disagree with accusations against him. On
Tuesday, President Assad expelled diplomats from Turkey and 10
Western countries — including the U.S. and the U.K. — in response
to their respective decision to eject Syrian envoys after the Houla
massacre. Such is his sense of reciprocity.
Although smaller in scope than aforementioned mass-murders, the
108 people killed in Houla seem somehow more tangible. One must
assume that’s what happens when dozens of women and children are
slaughtered, execution-style, by shabiha militia retained
by the government to perform their duties absent any sense of moral
balance. The killings sickened the world — the discovery of mass
graves confirmed horror stories and convinced many that Assad is a
man who will not be convinced or cajoled to compromise. His death
toll now exceeds 10,000. Tens of thousands more have been subjected
to arbitrary arrest and torture. But cumulative counts don’t
stagger us like a climactic atrocity committed against women and
children — particularly when we can witness the violence, for
ourselves.
Houla represents a defining moment in the unrest that has rocked
Syria since March 2011. Just witness the fallout.
While Syrian officials (and Assad himself) have
blamed the killings on “foreign elements” and “terrorist
groups,” the United Nations Human Rights Council accused
“pro-regime elements,” in no uncertain terms. UN and Arab League
joint envoy Kofi Annan
described the slaughter as a “turning point” — a subtle, yet
significant statement from the draftsman of the utterly toothless
“peace-plan” that’s currently failing the Syrian people. France’s
newly elected President François Hollande
called for an armed, international intervention. Even China and
Russia — Syria’s stalwart allies on the UN Security Council —
expressed condemnation; naturally, without pointing any
fingers.
At this point, there will be no negotiations, no transitional
governments, and no reconciliation. The world will watch in muted
horror while Assad maintains half-hearted assertions of plausible
deniability about the atrocities his regime will continue to
commit.
So what is the appropriate response to a bloody stalemate
between an obdurate tyrant and an insurgency that won’t go away?
When it comes to atrocity-prevention policy, satisfactory answers
to complex questions are scarce. It is insufficient to offer empty
nods to “good governance,” “security sector reform” and the “rule
of law.” But the international order sits atop an architecture of
path-dependent, normative behavior. What does recent history tell
us?
Recall, not long ago, the Libyan adventure was hailed as a
success across academia and the media, precisely because it
proved less arduous than 1990s style humanitarian intervention.
Advocates of airpower hailed an age of low-cost military actions
fought in support of all-volunteer forces battling regime-sponsored
thugs. NATO’s support of Transitional National Council (TNC) forces
was said to mark the advent of an evolving international norm —
and one in stout cascade. Although the laws governing the use of
force at the UN are the same now as they were in 1991, whispers of
an international “responsibility to protect” (R2P) grew into a
chorus.
Loosely derived from the just war precept of jus ad
bellum, and its relevant attention to the protection of
innocent civilians, R2P has changed since it was first conceived as
a doctrine of international ethics — as witnessed in Libya, it may
now prompt a “justified” response to intrastate violence. As such,
R2P may be waged in violation of sovereign authority, for a “good
cause” and with “best intentions.” A horrific act of aggression
committed against (or within) a sovereign state, or race of people
who are unable to defend themselves against an inhuman adversary
offers sufficient cause to wage just war on behalf of the weak and
vulnerable.
So why not Syria? Why has an apparent success in Libya — as
defined by the protection of “civilians” in Benghazi, the ouster of
Gaddafi, and the evasion of an expensive quagmire — not
intensified our commitment to protect innocent noncombatants in
Homs and Houla?
Certainly, there are strategic concerns. The application of
no-fly zones, tactical air strikes, militarized safe areas, and the
arming of opposition forces often proves ineffective, unwieldy, and
incendiary. And, by all means, Russia is unlikely to forfeit her
warm water port in Tartous, and the lucrative arms deal that’s
helped keep the Assad regime in power. Plenty of
analysts and
observers have suggested as much.
But perhaps more importantly, the NATO campaign in Libya has
proven a victim of its own success.
We have learned that an international prevention framework to
avert atrocity does not necessarily sync with regime change in
problem states. NATO’s decision to interpret UNSC Resolution 1973
as free license to topple Gaddafi provoked a vocal response from
many UN member states. The emerging BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
China, South Africa) offered some of the most
vehement criticism of NATO’s sense of its “responsibility to
protect.” Considering two of these states hold permanent seats at
the UN Security Council, this dissent suggests future exercise of
R2P will prove more limited in scope. The conspicuous absence of
action in Syria provides a case in point.
This is what happens when “measures to protect civilians under
threat of attack” masquerade as regime change by means of
asymmetric airpower, in support of armed insurgency. Whatever
happened in Libya, it was not R2P. The protection of innocent
civilians and commitments to noncombatant immunity do not equate to
the support of armed rebels.
R2P is revolutionary precisely because it challenges
state-centric conceptions of the world. It emphasizes the
international community’s moral commitment to universal principles,
and it treats sovereignty as a right that is conditional upon
fulfillment of that responsibility — rather than a privilege of
statehood.
Now, the purpose of this essay is not to weigh the costs and
benefits of robust military statecraft, but to suggest that the
international community (those states that exist outside the treaty
obligations of NATO) will not warm to the notion of conditional
sovereignty.
This presumption applies most specifically to those states that
may suffer (or sponsor) widespread human rights violations, of
their own — say, in Tibet or Chechnya, to pull two examples from a
hat.
Something to consider as we reimagine what our responsibility to
protect entails, while counting casualties in Syria.
