Not the Best of All Worlds

I did not head off to work today meaning to write again about Syria, but some things just can’t be helped. I was launched into my current orbit by a remark in today’s Washington Post. After reporting that, “Activists have reported heavy casualties in recent days, with 84 civilians killed Monday, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, along with 19 members of the security forces and eight defectors”, the Post went on to say: “Hopes are rapidly dimming that a six-point peace plan that U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan negotiated with Syrian authorities can halt the violence.”

In the best of all worlds, this is a remark that would stun a water buffalo. Show me a sentient adult who actually held out hope that the Annan mission would have any effect other than to buy time for the Assad regime and I’ll show you one variety or another of a complete idiot. But this is not the best of all worlds, which is a world in which lessons learned at great pain over years, decades and centuries would not have to be learned all over again. Evidently, those lessons do have to be learned all over again, time after time after time—and still they are not learned. I don’t know why this is, and I suspect I never will.

Yesterday’s news illustrates that one thing, one very important thing, has not changed but that another very important thing has in the Syrian crisis. What has changed is that the violence is now spreading across borders. The Syrian regime is responsible for murdering a Lebanese journalist on the Lebanese side of the border, but that pales in comparison to the cross-border attack into Turkey on a group of refugees. At least four people, unarmed civilians, were murdered and at least 24 others wounded. Among the wounded were a Turkish policeman and a Turkish translator. The Turkish government characterized the upshot of all this as “a new stage” in the crisis. That is hopeful news.

What has not changed, at least in public at this point, is the attitude of the Obama Administration—and that is not hopeful news. The State Department made all the right noises about yesterday’s events, but Administration policy where it matters has changed not one whit. It is becoming ever more difficult, however, for the Administration to pretend that Annan’s diplomacy, or any other kind of diplomacy, is going to make this problem go away. The Administration remains in a logically impossible and an increasingly embarrassing situation, having demanded that Assad step down but then having subordinated its policy to Russian diplomacy, even though, as everyone knows, Russia is Assad’s main supporter in this crisis. The Administration appears to be practicing a form of policy Macawberism, so much beloved of those in all walks of life who don’t really know what they’re doing. They’re “waiting for something to turn up” to spare them any difficult decision that might impinge on the President’s political calendar. It’s not going to happen: Nothing is going to turn up for a while except a lot more dirt in the opening of many more fresh graves.

And the reason it’s not going to happen has to do with the rest of yesterday’s big news from Syria, in this case news from Aleppo.

It took the New York Times 14 paragraphs to get to it (the Washington Post did not report these facts at all), but it eventually related that 10 Syrian security personnel were killed and 11 wounded trying to quell a demonstration in Aleppo. A few demonstrators were killed, too, but only a few. The Times remarked in passing that Aleppo had been until yesterday a fairly quiet place compared to Dara’a, Homs, Hama and even Damascus.

At paragraph 14 (or not at all), it is not clear that the American press appreciates fully the significance of this news. Aleppo is a Sunni merchant town, above all else. Those who understand the country have been waiting for the breakpoint at which the Sunni middle-class finally gets off the fence and joins the opposition. That moment may be at hand, and if it is, the recent optic that the regime is winning will be reversed in due course, possibly very quickly.

It is impossible to say from afar just what has been going on in Aleppo over the past few days. We do know that opposition to the regime has been building for some time now, and that parts of the city have been effectively free of regime elements for some weeks. But the ability of demonstrators or activists or whatever you want to call them to take out 21 of the Syrian regime’s crack soldiers, killing ten of them, means that some in that crowd were organized, armed and very dangerous. One suspects the activity of the Free Syrian Army. As I said in an earlier post, just because United States refuses to arm the opposition doesn’t mean others won’t. To all appearances, they now have.

Is not clear whether the presence of armed support is what brought out the demonstrators in Aleppo, or if the will to demonstrate is what brought armed support to their side, but it doesn’t really matter how the match was made. A new reality on the ground now exists. Reports from inside the country suggest that Assad is kept in a bubble by his advisors and is told only good news, leading him to think that he is winning and that he could make use of Mr. Annan as a time-buying vehicle for mopping up. If Aleppo essentially goes over to the opposition, it is going to be very difficult for Assad to remain in that bubble for long.

If Aleppo develops into a de facto “no-go” zone for the regime, it also makes the prospect of the Turkish-led military scenario I laid out some weeks ago far more attractive. It seems clear by now that the Turkish willingness to discuss an active policy privately with the Obama Administration got nowhere thanks to the Administration’s refusal to consider it, but as time passes the likelihood grows that Turkey will act even without U.S. support. Had the Administration been willing to put U.S. strategic interests above the President’s political ones a month ago, it is at least possible that Assad would be gone by now and that all the civilians who have been murdered by the regime since then would still be alive.

But, as I say, this is not the best of all worlds. We must still pay for our lessons in blood.