WORLD_ Syria's latest massacre leaves Annan's peace plan in tatters

Syria's latest massacre leaves Annan's peace plan in tatters

UN faces urgent task to prevent further bloodshed in Syria, while Russia and China remain opposed to external intervention

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Email Ian Black, Middle East editor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 June 2012 15.50 BST


The reported massacre in Hama has been condemned by world leaders. Link to this video : http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/jun/07/syria-massacre-cameron-clinton-video       




It is 10 days since Kofi Annan described the Houla massacre as a "tipping point" for Syria. Outrage apart, little has changed since 108 people, including 39 children, were slaughtered. Now another alleged mass killing has captured headlines across the world. Will it make any difference?

On the face of it, the circumstances of the apparent massacre at al-Qubair, a tiny village near Hama, look grimly familiar: tank or shellfire followed by an assault by the feared shabiha, paramilitary thugs drawn from the minority Alawite community of President Bashar al-Assad.

The regime blamed "armed terrorists" for killing nine people and accused "media backing Syria's bloodletting" of spreading lies. Opposition activists have listed 56 named victims and claim 78 died.

Whatever the truth of this incident, no one doubts that Syria's death toll is rising by the day. The total is 15,000 since the uprising began. Debates about whether the country is on the brink of or already in a state of sectarian civil war sound increasingly semantic.

It means that Annan, representing the UN and the Arab League, should find it easy to underline the urgency of his mission when he addresses the UN general assembly and security council.

But the audience that matters most is still bitterly divided. Russia and China, both veto-wielding permanent members of the council, have repeatedly made clear that they will not countenance any kind of outside intervention in Syria.

Not, it must be emphasised, that the west is raring to go either – despite repeated claims of warmongering. After Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and with a presidential election looming in the US and the EU in deep crisis, Nato forces are not going to be deploying to Syria any time soon, by land, sea or air. No-fly zones, humanitarian corridors or no-kill zones – strategies that have been mooted to help the opposition – would all require offensive action against Assad's armed forces.

External involvement is already a reality though: Arab support for the fighters of the Free Syrian Army appears to be growing, and there are signs that it is acquiring anti-tank missiles, with the US playing some kind of covert coordinating role. Jihadi-type groups are also in evidence, Syrian opposition sources report — though their role is deliberately exaggerated by the regime. Russia and Iran openly support Assad, providing not just loyal political cover but weapons, technology and advice.

Annan, seen as the consummate diplomat, knows that the six-point plan that bears his name is not working: there has been no ceasefire, no withdrawal of forces, no political dialogue, no mass release of prisoners. Assad certainly pays lip service to Annan's scheme.

The reality is that he is not implementing it, instead playing what the Lebanese analyst Nadim Shehadi scorns as "mind games" to manipulate and divide his opponents. UN monitors report on massacres but are unable to prevent them.

Intervention is urgent, Shehadi and others argue, to prevent Syria ending up as a failed state, like Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Otherwise, they say, 2012 will be a rerun of 1991 when Iraqi Kurds and Shia were urged by the US to rise against Baghdad, and then left to die in their thousands.

But the next step for Syria, western governments insist unanimously, must be to get more weight behind the current plan to force Assad into playing along.

The expectation is that Annan will call for the creation of a Syria "contact group" – a forum used in Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya – to achieve maximum international unity. One immediate problem is Iran, which the west says is part of the problem and cannot help with the solution. Turkey and Saudi Arabia would be welcome.

The key, though, is Russia. If the Syrian crisis can be resolved politically, it will involve negotiations on Assad's departure – a solution modelled on the way Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh was cajoled, with copper-bottomed guarantees, into surrendering power, albeit leaving much of the regime intact.

"Moscow has huge leverage," said one official. "It could tell Assad that his time is up." The diplomatic language is being polished and the briefing notes updated. "Taking forward the transitional process" isn't a guarantee that Syria's bloodshed will end any time soon. But it looks, for the moment at least, like being the world's best remedy for atrocity.




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