Don't Despair on Annan's Syria Plan -- Yet

The Paris meeting Thursday of the international coalition supporting the ouster of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad sent a clear message to Russia, his chief defender in the United Nations Security Council: We're not wedded to Kofi Annan's peace mission, and if you can't put the leash on Syria's attack dogs, we are ready to up the ante.

The self-styled Friends of Syria acknowledged that the U.N.-Arab League special envoy's plan was "a last hope" for averting Syria's slide into conflagration. But they have read the Syrian government's failure to fulfill its commitments under Annan's six-point program, a week after it was supposed to be in effect, as a sign that the Baathist leadership remains convinced it can ride out the storm.

While it is important for both Washington and its anti-Assad allies to ready a contingency "Plan B" in case the peace effort does fail -- just having one in reserve can deter the Damascus authorities from aborting the peace initiative -- the "Friends" should not be in unseemly haste to bury it alive. This may prove a slow-motion peace-making process, but it remains the only alternative to a chaotic war.

Patience does not seem in vogue in Paris right now. "We cannot wait, time is short," French foreign minister Alain Juppé said yesterday, three days ahead of France's first-round presidential election. And the Annan mission? We "have to give it a chance for a few more days."

Then what? Juppé's politically imperiled president, Nicolas Sarkozy, demands "the creation of humanitarian corridors so an opposition can exist in Syria" -- a curiously Orwellian pairing of "humanitarian" and "opposition" that would necessitate an outside military intervention, which France is apparently incapable of undertaking.

Still, Juppé has emphasized France's recognition that Security Council authorization is required for any use of force from outside, which means getting Russian support. U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton similarly acknowledged that U.N. approval is necessary for her preliminary "Plan B" remedies of a global arms embargo on Syria, travel bans on its leaders, and financial sanctions -- which Russia would surely veto today but might accept, she thinks, if Damascus stonewalls the peace-making process.

One could bypass the Security Council by the incendiary step of directing arms shipments to the insurgents, as the Saudis and some hawkish U.S. senators continue to propose, and hope (a) that the recipients do not prove to be mujahedin extremists, and (b) that they win.

But, as analyst James Harkin warns,

... if the Saudis and the Qataris are allowed to funnel unlimited cash and weapons through the country's traditional smuggling routes, the likely result will be to empower a crooked new class of arms-dealing middle men and the kind of fringe Salafist groups that are quite happy to turn themselves and everyone else into martyrs for the cause.

Russia is, as Clinton tacitly admits, in the driver's seat on Syria. As one of Syria's last allies and arms suppliers, it uniquely has influence with the government, and it sees a soft landing from the Syria turbulence as crucial to its own aspirations to count for something in the Middle East. The Russians' inhibitions determined the parameters of the Annan mission, and they are deeply invested in its success.

With the ink barely dry on an initial agreement between the United Nations and the Damascus authorities on the deployment of the U.N. monitoring mission, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, meeting Friday with his Italian counterpart Giulio Terzi, signaled urgency to adopt, "as soon as possible, a second resolution that will approve a full-scale observer mission" of at least 300 military observers.

Intervention-minded Westerners and Arabs suspect the Russians see the monitors cynically as simply window-dressing to allow the government to play for time to try again to exterminate its opponents. This surely is wrong.

The Russians recognize that Assad's security forces have already tried extermination in the past few months, leaving the insurrection bloodied but unbowed. And perhaps they are not paranoid in perceiving that "some, including outside Syria," in Lavrov's words, "would like to spoil Annan's plan."

Italy's Terzi insists that Lavrov is "an effective partner in the search for a way to end violence and carry out checks on the ground that the ceasefire can hold." One sign is Russian backing for the U.N. monitors -- trained for the task, unlike December's Arab League monitors -- to provide the international community with professional assessments of compliance and violations.

The agreement that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Russians both want swiftly consecrated in a Security Council resolution requires the Syrian government to fulfill the Annan commitments and ensure the safety of all U.N. personnel, "unhindered access of U.N. personnel to any facility, location, individual or group considered of interest," and maintenance of security through regular law enforcement agencies and not the military. It would also bar the armed opposition from displaying weapons, setting up checkpoints, or conducting patrols.

Still up in the air is the U.N.'s insistence on its monitors' freedom to travel in their own aircraft. The United Nations is also seeking to wrap up an agreement for a major U.N.-led humanitarian aid operation (sans Sarkozy's military corridors) to address what even Damascus acknowledges are "serious humanitarian needs."

There are security risks, as Annan's deputy Jean-Marie Guéhenno advised the Security Council Thursday, in sending unarmed monitors into a combat zone. And there are political risks, as each side attempts to manipulate the monitoring mission to its advantage. (The Moroccan head of the advance unit of monitors was visibly uncomfortable Thursday when activists walked him through a chanting anti-Assad crowd in their tight embrace.)

But the layering in of international military monitors, including some from Russia and China, plus a large humanitarian relief operation, is the best hope for consolidating what over the past week has been a shaky ceasefire, providing insulation against Syria's reversion to the spiraling violence of late winter, and -- hardest of all -- prodding the deeply antagonistic Syrian parties to negotiate an open and inclusive political settlement.

 

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Comments

[Alaturka]

04:36 PM on 04/21/2012

The key is to find a way to have Russia stop writing blank checks to Assad regime. Now that is what I call real diplomacy. It is all about give and take, Russians have a price for sure and China would not stand alone in support of a widely unpopular leader. Otherwise brave people of Syria are on their own until the civil war escalates to a level of a direct threat to the security of their neighbors. Then one can expect to see outside military intevention, not before. In the absence of UN action, the next party responsible is the Arab League. They need to lead, though one can not expect much from this bunch.

[JerryLevy]

12:17 PM on 04/21/2012

The brutally corrupt and incompetent Kofi Annan has developed a "peace plan" that will serve to keep the dictator in power, real simple. Mr. "Oil for Food" who previously got a "promise" from the Syrian dictator in 2006 to end the smuggling of Iranian arms to South Lebanon (which was ignored by the dictator) is back on the world stage failing again.

[crankyCrackPot]

09:49 AM on 04/21/2012

To not yet despair on Annan's plan infers that there was ever hope with the "plan" to begin with.

Europe has no ability to project military power and the US isn't going in, no one is going to boots more American boots in another Muslim country during an election year.
Sadly, if the US doesn't act... The UN will pretend to and the Euros will cry and scream that "WE" can't allow this.
Who is this "WE"? As far as I know, since the creation of NATO my tax dollars have gone to protect Europe while Europe sends their kids to free universities living longer lives because they also have free healthcare.

Annan was rejected by the rebels before he entered Syria and Assad told him no to everything he said.
Assad still has about half his foreign reserves left, Annan's plan does nothing but provide a cloak of faux intervention.

Turkey is part of NATO and it's more of a when than an if the fighting spills across borders.
By treaty, we are obligated to defend Turkey...

Annan is the ultimate diplomat but some people can’t be negotiated with.
What concessions would you get out of Hitler... to only kill 1/2 the Jews if he could still kill all the Gypsies?

When the dog is foaming at the mouth, talk is done, the dog needs to be put down.
When it comes to the real world and wars like this, pacifists contribute nothing but fodder.

[JerryLevy]

12:20 PM on 04/21/2012

Annan---the "ultimate diplomat?" Tell that to the civilians of Iraq who lived under the despot who stole all the money for food aid with the help of Annan and his son.

[crankyCrackPot]

12:58 PM on 04/21/2012

All I meant by that is that he is a pacifist. He is the ultimate diplomat in that he thinks anybody can be negotiated with.

The idiot went into Syria, already rejected by the rebels who didn't want peace, they wanted peace without Assad. Annan gets rejected by Assad and then the UN adopts his "plan" which was rejected by everyone involved.

For a despot like Assad with his back against the wall, cease fire equates to rearm, resupply and reload.

Thank you for allowing me to clear that up.

[turpid]

05:49 AM on 04/21/2012

its a civil war and no one there want to stop the fire- Assad won't let parts of the country ruled by rebels and the rebels won't agree for the stay of Assad and the allwis in power.

at the moment they'r gonna fight for some time unless smart peoples in the west will decide to get in like a blind rhinos like in Lybia or Irak.

[wom122]

07:21 PM on 04/20/2012

The West is essentially asking Assad to respect a ceasefire already rejected by an opposition confident of an eventual Libya-style NATO intervention to topple the Syrian regime. How would the government of any sovereign nation respond to an insurgency armed and financed by foreign powers? Cooperation with international inspectors and monitors was tried in Iraq back in 2002-03 and the USA invaded anyway.

[JerryLevy]

12:22 PM on 04/21/2012

Your support of the Assad dictatorship is noted, but the insurgency was NOT financed by any foreign powers but is an indiginous uprising for freedom from this despot. But I guess your love of Assad comes not from his subjigation of his own people but from his emnity for the US.

[JamesM13276]

02:33 PM on 04/21/2012

Could you possibly also tell us what was so incredibly horrible under Assad that the insurgents felt it was justified to cause such devastation and loss of human life?

Perhaps you will also enlighten us as to what kind of freedom those people are fighting for -- perhaps a freedom to tell women how to dress or freedom to define the one true religion -- who could possibly oppose that!?

There is little evidence to say whether this uprising was incited from the outside, but the insurgents' leadership is hiding in Turkey and the newly unelected Libyan government already pledged money and possibly even training/fighter support.

[wom122]

05:44 PM on 04/21/2012

Very well is the New York Times credible enough to you?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/world/middleeast/us-and-other-countries-move-to-increase-assistance-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all