How the West Fueled the Ever-Growing Carnage in Syria

Would Americans even care if they knew?

AlterNet / By Nicolas J.S. Davies

Syrian soldiers, who have defected to join 
the Free Syrian Army, hold up their rifles 
as they secure a street in Saqba, in Damascus 
suburbs, in this January 27, 2012. 
Photo Credit: Freedom House/Flickr
April 9, 2013

The actions of the United States and its allies in Syria have only led to escalating violence and chaos.

On Tuesday March 27th 2013, Kofi Annan gave  a speech at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.  In his usual careful and diplomatic tone, Annan spoke firmly against Western calls for more direct military intervention in Syria.

"Further militarization of the conflict, I'm not sure that is the way to help the Syrian people," Annan said, "They are waiting for the killing to stop.  You find some people far away from Syria are the ones very keen for putting in weapons.  My own view is that as late as it is we have to find a way of pouring water on the fire rather than the other way around."

Like many who seek peace in Syria, Annan looks back on the " Action Group for Syria" agreement that he brokered in Geneva on June 30th 2012 as a foundation for peace that was promptly squandered by the United States and its allies.  In Geneva, all five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council signed on to a plan that would lead to free elections in Syria, with a transitional government of national unity including members of the existing government and the opposition.  The critical factor which made agreement possible was that the U.S. and its allies dropped their demand for the removal of President Assad as a precondition for the transition to begin.

As Annan wrote in a  Financial Times op-ed as he resigned his post as UN envoy a month later, "We left the meeting believing a Security Council resolution endorsing the group's decision was assured… Instead, there has been finger-pointing and name-calling in the Security Council."

A few days after the Geneva agreement,  Russia circulated a draft resolution in the Security Council as Annan expected.  But, instead of honoring the commitments they made in Geneva, the U.S., U.K. and France rejected it.   They drafted a rival resolution containing all the elements they had dropped in Geneva and which had previously prevented consensus:

automatic triggers for sanctions; no commitment to pressure rebel militias to comply; and the invocation of Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter as a pretext for future military action.

With the Security Council once again deadlocked, Saudi Arabia sponsored  a version of the West's resolution in the UN General Assembly, calling for Assad to step down and for sanctions if he did not.  The resolution seemed likely to fail, with Brazil, India, South Africa and much of the developing world lined up against it, but a watered down version was passed.

The CIA has since stepped up its support to the rebels, providing satellite intelligence on Syrian military deployments and managing  arms shipments from the Persian Gulf and Croatia via Turkey and Jordan.  Predictably, the bloodshed has only increased on both sides.

March was probably the deadliest month since the war began.  In his speech in Geneva, Kofi Annan called the current UN estimate of 70,000 Syrians killed "a gross under-estimation."
 

In the early days of the conflict, UN casualty figures reflected  unsubstantiated and probably exaggerated reports from the Syrian opposition and their allies in the Western media.  Since then, the UN has held down its estimates as the killing has escalated and the real slaughter has almost certainly now surpassed the rebel propaganda, with the rebels themselves committing their fair share of it.

Norwegian General Robert Mood echoed Kofi Annan's analysis in  a recent interview with the BBC World Service'sHardtalk program.  Mood led the 300-member military observer mission that went into Syria in April 2012 to monitor the ceasefire that was the first step in Annan's six-point peace plan...Read more>> Alternet