Last
week, the Syrian conflict entered a worrying new phase. Turkey engaged in
cross-border fire with Syrian forces in retaliation for what appeared to be
wayward Syrian army shells which killed five in the Turkish border town of
Akcakale. This means an actual NATO member, and the nation with the most
military clout in the region, is now being drawn into an increasingly messy
civil war in Syria.
The UN Security Council president, Gert Rosenthal,
‘condemned in the strongest terms’ Syria’s shelling of Akcakale, and the ruling
Assad regime in Syria has since apologised, stating it will not happen again.
Even the head of the military
council of the rebel forces in Syria, the Free Syrian
Army, has not tried to exploit the situation, merely claiming that the shelling
was likely a ‘grave mistake’. ‘It wasn’t intentional’, he was reported as
saying, ‘[the Assad regime] didn’t want this’.
Yet last Thursday, Turkey’s parliament authorised
further cross-border military action against Syria. Turkey has now exchanged
fire for five consecutive days. Many on the international stage were similarly
angry at the actions of Syrian forces. Rosenthal went as far as to demand, on
behalf of the UN Security Council, that the ‘Syrian government… fully
respect[s] the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbours’. This
was a claim echoed in a statement by US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.
Syria should indeed respect other countries’
sovereignty – and the death of a woman and her three children in Akcakale was
tragic. However, it’s a bit rich for the UN, and the US in particular, to
hector Syria about respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of
other countries. Leaving aside the West’s long history of disrespecting the
sovereignty of states, from Kosovo to Libya, it has been intervening in Syria
itself since the start of the current conflict.
This is evident even in the reactions to the shelling
of Akcakale from Western officials, who were keen to seize the opportunity to
heap pressure and moral condemnation upon the Assad regime. A US spokesperson
for the Pentagon declared: ‘This is yet another example of the depraved
behaviour of the Syrian regime, and why it must go.’ US National Security
Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said: ‘All responsible nations must make clear
that it is long past time for Assad to step aside, declare a ceasefire and
begin the long-overdue political transition process.’
But Western intervention in Syria has gone beyond
moral grandstanding and wars of words. Since the beginning of the conflict, the
West has burdened Syria with crippling economic sanctions, bringing its economy
to a near standstill. Despite no one really believing Syria is developing
nuclear weapons, bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
have been demanding access to Syria to nose around, alongside UN ‘monitors’ who
have been keeping an eye on Assad’s military operations. Western leaders have
also been threatening to take Assad to the International Criminal Court, and
have used the Arab League to monitor and impose sanctions on Syria.
Furthermore, there has been a concerted effort in the
West to create an official opposition – the Syrian National Council – out of
the rag-bag of disparate rebel groups in Syria, which include radical Islamist
factions. In August this year, CNN reported that US president Barack Obama had
signed a covert directive which authorised the US to give financial support –
alongside other forms of unspecified assistance – to the Free Syrian Army
(FSA), despite the US state’s admission that it knows little about the make-up
of the rebel groups. While not necessarily directly providing arms to the FSA,
the US is providing intelligence, and is ‘cooperating with countries that are
arming the rebels, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to help find groups worthy
of aid’. TheNew York Times has
reported that CIA officers based in southern Turkey are working with other
Assad-opposing countries in the region to provide rebels with ‘automatic
rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some anti-tank weapons’.
The level of hypocrisy from Western states is
striking. On the one hand, they are preaching that Syria must ‘fully respect’
the sovereignty of other countries. On the other, they are doing everything
possible, other than using military force, to undermine Syrian sovereignty and
bring about regime change.
Given that the UN Security Council, containing both
China and Russia, would be certain to veto any proposed UN intervention, there
is speculation that Western countries may use the putative threat Syria poses
to Turkey as a pretext for NATO intervention. Indeed, the Turkish prime
minister has threatened to use charter five of the NATO treaty – what’s dubbed
the ‘one-for-all and all-for-one’ article – which would mean NATO members would
be obliged to intervene in Syria on Turkey’s behalf.
Western powers may have little appetite to intervene
militarily in Syria, as they did in Libya last year. But recent developments in
Turkey show just how volatile the situation is and how rapidly the instability
in Syria could spread to a large section of the Middle East. Despite their
public disavowals, NATO countries could well find themselves on a slippery
slope towards ever-more direct intervention.
Western countries are quick to blame the embattled
Assad regime for the internationalisation of the conflict. Yet they are seemingly
oblivious to where the blame truly lies. What was a localised if brutal
conflict between the Assad regime and disparate rebel forces has been
intensified and internationalised by Western grandstanding, meddling and taking
sides. There’s no easy solution to the Syrian crisis. But one thing is for
sure: the increasing internationalisation of the conflict caused by Western
forces looks set to destabilise things further, making a bleak situation even
worse.
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