Foreign Intervention in Syria: What Will The West Do?

While the death toll in Syria has risen above 3,000 and as demonstrators have called for a no-fly zone, the US and its allies have remained wary of intervening as they have in Libya. Unlike the late Muammar el-Gaddafi, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has a number of powerful allies: Syria is the closest Arab ally to Iran and has ties to both Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement and the militant Palestinian Hamas, as well as to other groups. Earlier this month, a United Nations Security Council resolution to impose strict sanctions on Syria failed because of Russia’s and China’s vetoes.

In an interview on a Russian TV channel on Sunday, Assad indeed emphasized the “strong ties” between Syria and Russia in. China has been an ally of Syria, but China’s Middle Eastern envoy, Wu Sike, is urging Assad to “speed up” reform. Speaking in Cairo after a visit to Syria, Wu called on the Syrian government to make “palpable reform” and to “respect and respond to the aspirations and rightful demands of the Syrian people, adding that “the situation was dangerous and the bloodshed could not continue.”

In another sign of international efforts to address the crackdown in Syria, officials from the Arab League met with Syrian officials in Qatar on Sunday and made a “serious” proposal for Assad’s regime to end the killings and violence. Arab leaders, mindful of calls for more democratic reforms in their own countries, have been “aware of the potentially seismic geopolitical implications if Assad were to fall” and so have tempered their criticism of him.

Assad’s First Interview with Western Journalist Since Uprising Began

Sunday also saw Assad giving his first interview with a Western journalist since the uprising began in March, amid reports that 50 civilians and members of the security forces had been killed in the past 48 hours. In the Sunday Telegraph interview, Assad said that foreign intervention could turn Syria into “another Afghanistan” and noted that Western nations “are going to ratchet up the pressure, definitely.” Describing Syria as “different in every respect from Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen” and the “hub” of the region,” Assad said that “any problem in Syria will burn the whole region.” He recalled an armed uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood that his father had brutally repressed in the city of Hama in 1982 and added that “we are still fighting with them.”

Saying that “many mistakes” had been made in the early days of the uprising, Assad claimed that “only terrorists” are now being targeted and claimed that his government had not gone down the “road of stubborn government,” but had called for reforms six days after the protests began.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, the British journalist who interviewed Assad, Andrew Gilligan, noted that he was “reasonably relaxed, and quite personable” and “not the stereotypical Arab dictator.”

Assad has lifted Syria’s long-time emergency law and given citizenship to thousands of previously stateless Kurds. But opponents have decreed his reforms to be empty and hollow as civilians, including some 200 children, have continued to be arrested, tortured and killed. Assad is “inviting an intervention,” Louay Safi, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, said, emphasizing that “there’s only so much the world can bear in terms of force against unarmed civilians.” The protests are driven not by an Islamist agenda, but by a call for greater for freedoms and real democratic reforms.

Dozens Killed This Past Weekend

Many of those recently killed were residents of the city of Homs, which has been the center of protests for months. Activists reported that security forces shelled houses and used live bullets against protesters this weekend. The government said that 20 security forces had been killed in Homs and ten in northern Idlib province when their bus was ambushed. As Syria bars the foreign media from reporting from within its borders, it has been difficult to gain a precise sense of the situation, with reports coming from activists and residents often in contradiction to those issued via the state-owned media.

Source: https://www.care2.com/causes/foreign-intervention-in-syria-what-will-the-west-do.html