Following the alleged chemical weapons use on August 21st
against civilians living on the outskirts of Damascus, there has been wide
spread condemnation in the International arena. Till then the ongoing civil war
in Syria which took lives of more than one lakh people hasn’t received such
serious retribution baring the sanctions imposed by UN, US and other European
countries. US vehemently criticised the Alawite regime of Bashar al Assad in
Syria for using chemical weapons and threatened of limited air strikes,
however, it appears the idea to hit the sock failed on the day the British
Parliament voted against any Syria action along with lack of assurances from
the Arab League. This definitely gave enough room for Russia to carefully
orchestrate its diplomacy. Having earlier vetoed against the any sanctions on
Syria, resulting in further deadlock of UN Resolutions, Russia appealed to the
Syrian regime to handover the chemical weapons to the international control.
This only means, the approach taken by the US, after abandoned by its prime
ally, the UK, in sending the issue for a Senate vote, gives even more enough
time for both Russia and Syria to engage other actors in diplomacy. Though
President Obama is not bound by the decision of senate, he is trying to find a
political cover if in case situation in Syria turns bad.
As the Senate delays its vote on the Syria strikes, or put on
hold, President Vladimir Putin has now come up with a holistic diplomatic
proposal to avert air strikes against Syria. The first step is to urge Syria to become
member of Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), while
simultaneously, reveal the details of the storage places of chemical weapons
for international control and finally, opening up these places for inspection
and further destruction of its estimated stock pile of 1000 tons of chemical
weapons. With this new plan, Russia has successfully checkmated US plans on
Syria. The new diplomatic dice casted by the Russians has many sides to it. While
this will temporarily prevent the destabilisation of Middle East, which is extremely
volatile and highly prone to civil unrest, this diplomatic effort signals
Russia’s intentions to resurge its former status of a superpower apart from an attempt
to protect its strategic ally in Middle East and the lone naval base outside. This
strategy definitely has now thwarted, at least temporarily, the attempts of the
West in toppling Assad’s regime. Russia reminded the fate of the League of
Nations, the predecessor to the UN, when influential nations carry out military
strikes at will. The larger pastiche of Syria portends a grim picture of its
future. The conflict began as a small uprising drawing inspiration from the
Arab Spring revolts that have brought down the dictatorial regimes in Tunisia,
Egypt and Libya. These silent protests have turned into rebellion attacks due
to the intervention of the armed forces and with tanks entering the streets to
control the agitating mobs massive insurgency erupted. Incessant internal
fights, led to civil war. The reasons go far beyond the apparent ethnic
conflict.
Syria experienced a massive five and half year drought before
the civil war broke. Droughts prevailed due to intensive wheat and cotton
farming coupled with unsustainable irrigational practices that resulted in
depletion of the ground water resources. The once fertile bastion has turned
into a partial desert. Farmers and herders slowly migrated to urban areas,
further a great influx of refugees from Iraq and Palestine around 2003 has put
lot of strain on the resources. This led to massive unrest. But military
analysts greatly disregard the idea of climate change leading to unrest.
Consecutive crop failures, drought, poor agriculture policy and massive exodus
of refugees and the prospective movement of Arab Springs acted as potential threat
multipliers and drove an otherwise immune country to a civil war. Main pillars
of Syrian economy are agriculture and oil production. Agriculture constitutes
about 25% of economy civil war has reduced agriculture to tatters. Cereal
yields, vegetable and fruit production has reduced to half. Earlier a massive
exporter of wheat is forced to import food grains. Oil production too suffered
as infrastructure has been hit by uninterrupted bombings and gun firing. The
frail economy was further crippled by the economic sanctions imposed by the west.
The foreign resources pooled up over a decade are now slowly depleting.
Restoring the tattered economy and reconstruction of infrastructure seems to be
a long way with warring factions showing no sign of respite.
Till now an estimated 5 lakh children have exiled to Lebanon
due to civil war. International agencies like Red Cross, UNICEF, UNHCR and
Inter- Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) are making efforts to
provide education to the displaced children. But there is severe crunch of
funds. The uneducated and unemployed children and youth hence forth might not
graduate into jobs but to violence indicative of the imminent threat. There are
roughly 4 million internally displaced people. According UNHCR estimates, nearly
17.5 million Syrians have been displaced by the civil war. Nearly 10,000people
are crossing border every day. They are taking refuge in the neighbouring
countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Algeria and Armenia.
Refugees pose new problems which include rehabilitation, resettlement. Refugee
treatment, assimilation, sustenance and integration of into new countries are
some issues of major concern.
Russian’s three pronged premeditated diplomatic strategy,
although appreciated by the West now, can be a time consuming process. Syria claimed
that it is willingly embracing the proposal of giving up chemical weapons not
for the fear of strikes by US but for Russian initiative. France along with
other western countries is preparing an agreement with proposed conditions with
time bound limitations. Syria will then be legally bound to execute the
proposals. But the biggest hiccup would be destruction of the chemical weapons,
which might take at least 1-2yrs as the experts opined. In addition the host
country is expected to provide all the manpower necessary for its destruction
indicating the involvement of several personnel. This activity might be
critically hampered if normalcy is not restored in the country.
In reality, the chances of diplomatic intervention yielding
desired result is miniscule. A grim example of North Korea destroying its
nuclear reactor in 2008 to abide by its nuclear deterrent status suddenly
sprang out a surprise yesterday. US-Korea Institute at John Hopkins School of
Advanced International studies announced that the satellite images show a white
steam emanating from one of the buildings housing Plutonium production
reactors. Indicating the ongoing research conducted in one of the stealthy
nuclear reactors. Syria might also follow similar lines. The destruction of the
weapons might be carried out as a joint exercise by the US and Russia under the
supervision of UN within couple of years. Still there is no guarantee that it
will refrain from indulging in the exercise of procuring and manufacturing more
chemical weapons as the regime and rebels are supplied with arms by these super
powers themselves.
While on one hand there are reports of US and Russia actively
engaging in diplomatic talks, there are simultaneous news that arms are beings
distributed to the rebels to embolden then. Since the use of chemical weapons
has been curtailed under certain International agreements, these super powers
are vying to clinch the title of a saviour. This diplomatic standoff doesn’t address the
issues of million lives already lost in this genocide. It doesn’t even provide
any reprieve to millions of Syrians who are living in constantly fear and whose
lives are torn away by this brutal civil war.
Latest reports indicate that Russia and China has objected to
use of chapter VII and blocked three other previous draft resolutions of the UN
charter. These mandate that if Syria fails to fulfil its obligations, it can be
subjected to sanctions. Syria in its stand- off reiterated that Russian
proposal is not unilateral and it will accept the diplomatic proposal if US
stops the military threats and also if all other nations supplying arms and
chemical weapons to rebels would also abide by the chemical weapons convention.
Precisely, this so called diplomatic proposal is tactical trick played to buy
time. Further, the real culprit will be
nailed down when the report of UN chemical weapons expert team will pronounce
its observations on Monday.
While the big nations are busy making headlines for their
diplomacy formalities civil war continues unabated in Syria. Social networking
media as always are pounded with the video footages of brutal killings and
dreadful genocide.
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