By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: January 14th, 2014
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*** Daniel Hannan is the author of 'How we Invented Freedom' (published in the US and Canada as 'Inventing Freedom: how the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World'). He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes the EU is making its peoples poorer, less democratic and less free.***
In the Nizip-2 camp on the Turkish border (photo by Andy Parsons)
One woman listened as pro-Assad militiamen tortured her husband to death in the mosque, having turned on the muezzin’s speakers so that the entire village should hear his screams. Another, from Aleppo, was told that, unless her husband gave himself up for arrest, she and her daughters would be raped. He came home, and was raped and shot in front of her.
The horrors of Syria are literally unthinkable. Try to hold in your mind a picture of what I have just written and you will soon find your thoughts swerving away. The same is true of the numbers involved. Two point three million people have fled the country, and a further 9.3 million have been internally displaced.
A year ago, most commentators were predicting the imminent fall of Assad and an end to the fighting. Almost no one thinks that way now. An entire generation of Syrian children is growing up in surrounding countries. It is no longer a question of providing them with food and blankets; they need schools, playgrounds, clinics.
I’ve spent the past four days in a camp on the Turkish border with a team of 50 Centre-Right parliamentarians from 12 countries, members of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists. We distributed toys and clothes and built a football pitch, which we finished in time to have an inaugural game (the Syrian exiles beat the European conservatives 5-4).
All the MPs heard stories like the ones I described – and, believe me, listening to them at first hand is not the same as reading them in a newspaper. Naturally enough, our reaction was that something must be done: something big enough and decisive enough to be adequate the tragedy.
That equation is understandable, but misplaced. Public policy should be proportionate to an achievable goal, not to how upset we feel. Every refugee we met wanted Western strikes against the Assad regime; it would have been bizarre if they hadn’t. But it doesn’t follow that Anglo-American military intervention in Syria would do more good than harm.
For what it’s worth, I’m not sure the same applies to neighbouring states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE. These countries received tens of billions of dollars worth of US military aid, and could deploy it proportionately – to enforce a no-fly zone, for example – without the negative repercussions that would follow from a Western intervention. That, though, is not in our gift.
Which is really my point: there are things beyond our control, problems without solutions.
While we were in the camp, we met political and military leaders from the Syrian opposition. They were immovable on one point: there could be no prospect of a settlement without the removal of Assad and his henchmen. They didn’t demand the dismantling of the entire state apparatus, they said: Ba’athists would have a place in the new dispensation. But those around the president would have to go.
I understand how they feel. They are living every day with stories like those we had heard from the refugees. How could they not want justice? How could they willingly sit down with the murderers?
From Assad’s perspective, though, their attitude removes any incentive to talk. Whatever promises are made now, exile would mean a lifetime of fighting attempts to try him at The Hague.
So the slaughter will carry on, Ypres-like, until one side or the other is militarily exhausted. All the while, Syria will spew entropy, spreading Shia-Sunni conflict across the region. Hundreds have been killed in Lebanese bombs as rival militias target each other’s mosques; the sectarian death toll in Iraq is higher than at any point since 2006.
We can succour the traumatised, the maimed and the exiled. We can fund the front-line states. We can nudge the factions closer. We – the UK and the West in general – are doing all these things. But it is not in our power to halt the abominations. Accepting that is perhaps the hardest thing of all.
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Read more: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100254306/no-reaction-is-proportionate-to-syrias-horrors-thoughts-from-a-refugee-camp/
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What do you think?
I understand how they feel. They are living every day with stories like those we had heard from the refugees. How could they not want justice? How could they willingly sit down with the murderers?
From Assad’s perspective, though, their attitude removes any incentive to talk. Whatever promises are made now, exile would mean a lifetime of fighting attempts to try him at The Hague.
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