Perhaps it is time for Kosovo-style humanitarian intervention in Syria, writes Ayman El-Amir Kofi Anan's mission to Syria looks more like window dressing than a real opening to resolve an intractable crisis. Clearly, the dynamics of the brutal situation have not provided any real opportunity for a settlement between the murderer and the victim. The fundamental problem that started one year ago is that the Syrian people want Bashar Al-Assad and his lethal Baathist regime out, and he wants his 11-year regime entrenched and immune from accountability, with some cosmetic changes. This would defy the logic and purpose of the Syrian people's rebellion and the logic of the Arab uprising that now has a historic opportunity to break away from more than five decades of totalitarian governance. Besides, accountability for the more than 7,000 victims of peaceful demonstrations is more urgent. For Al-Assad, the issue is his security, immunity and the survival of his Baathist clan -- the last communist-style regime in the world. He therefore has to deny any wrongdoing and blame the crisis on terrorists -- the same way another serial killer, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, used to blame the Libyan revolution on Al-Qaeda and mysterious terrorists. Anan's mission was preceded by another Arab League fact-finding mission in December last year that presented yet another report. Arab states went to the UN Security Council with a draft resolution, that was later watered down, but the Russians and the Chinese vetoed it to protect the Al-Assad regime and what they believed were solid regional interests associated with it. They misread the momentum of the Arab Spring. A train of envoys trickled into Syria month after month to try to mediate, and the civilian death toll continued to rise. It proved to be buying time for a savage regime that was bent on winning the war at any cost. Anan's mission is providing some more time for carnage and, therefore, was rejected by the Syrian opposition. On the eve of Anan's arrival in Damascus, 70 Syrian protesters were killed in different cities. On his first day of talks with Al-Assad, 50 more were murdered by Al-Assad's artillery and tanks. On the second day, 80 were killed in Idlib, including 20 who were summarily executed. The Syrian army's field artillery and tanks heavily shelled Idlib, Deir Al-Zour, Deraa and Homs. In Homs, the Syrian National Council reported that civilian inhabitants were killed randomly, that some victims were doused with gasoline and set on fire, alive. Girls and women victims were stripped naked and raped before they were killed. That was a better performance than what the Syrian army had done in three wars when it scurried before Israeli forces in the Golan Heights. And that is how Anan, a former UN secretary-general, was greeted. The Al-Assad regime is fighting for its life. For both the revolutionaries and the Al-Assad clan the consequences of losing the battle are too dire to contemplate. Syrians in all cities and towns will press ahead with their uprising, no matter how many sacrifices they will suffer. Al-Assad, his henchmen and Baathist cadres know that retribution will be harsh and may extend to their ethnic and sectarian clans. For all the people that lost their relatives in Al-Assad's yearlong military campaign, no compensation is adequate, not even if he steps down from power. Even then, international criminal charges await him and his accessories. Several Arab foreign ministers who met in Cairo last week were outraged by Al-Assad's massacres with reticent Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal calling for enabling the Syrian people to defend themselves and outspoken Qatari Prime Minister/Foreign Minister Hamad bin Gassem Al-Thani demanding the arming of the Free Syrian Army. Anan's mission adds one more item to a crowded agenda. To strengthen his position, he has been named envoy of both the United Nations and the Arab League, and he will report to both on what he has called a very dangerous situation in Syria. The Al-Assad regime does not seem to have been impressed by Anan's visit and talks. It worries more about the continued support of Russia and China, which together with Iran and the Lebanese Hizbullah constitute a lifeline in the face of global condemnation. That is also why the US, earlier on, was pessimistic about Anan's mission, and for good reason. Too much blood has flowed between Al-Assad's militias and the Syrian people for any effective reconciliation or reform to be credible. The conflict has reached a point of no return. The massacres in Idlib and Homs have enraged the world and embarrassed Al-Assad's allies, mainly China and Russia, which wield veto powers in the UN Security Council. Their voting positions on the Syrian situation reflect their concern over international reaction should the same scenario play out in their own restive backyards, and their strategic interests in the region. They miscalculate Arab sentiment and the potential of the Arab revolution. As the crisis creeps back to the Security Council there will be little room for compromise or pacification between the Syrian people and their atrocious regime. During the Anan mission, several ideas were floated by Arab foreign ministers and the Syrian National Council in Istanbul. They called for a joint Arab-international peacekeeping force, safe corridors for humanitarian aid, enforcement of no-fly zones, evacuation of victims, supply of arms and military hardware to the Free Syrian Army and the prosecution of Al-Assad and his top lieutenants by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. In the extreme, this would invite international humanitarian intervention similar to the situation during the Libyan revolution. Arab governments have pronounced their opposition to international intervention without which some of the more effective measures in the package could not be undertaken. This will also give an excuse for Russia and China to oppose any meaningful action by the UN Security Council. And the Syrian regime, together with Iran, will babble about external aggression. On the other hand, a ceasefire that would be more broken than maintained, followed by marathon negotiations for a settlement that would exonerate Bashar Al-Assad and his cronies of any wrongdoing, will not be acceptable to the Syrian people. An Arab-international peacekeeping force led by Egypt may seem a reasonable contingency plan, but Egypt would be reluctant to undertake any foreign adventure that could invite clandestine intervention by Iran and Hizbullah. Resolution of the Syrian situation hangs between two scenarios: the Libyan scenario or the Yemeni one. Neither the Syrian people nor the Gulf Arab countries would prefer the Yemeni scenario, which allowed former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to escape unscathed and immune under the cover of the Gulf Arab Initiative. Al-Assad, with his Baathist-Socialist ideology and mediaeval dictatorship, in addition to his alliance with Iran, is not particularly favourable to them. The more effective course of action is international humanitarian intervention under a UN Security Council mandate, coupled with arming the Nationalist Syrian Army. It would be more close to the Libyan scenario with some refinement. Should this fail, making an argument that the situation could lead to the escalation of regional tension that would amount to a threat to international peace and security, Arabs and their allies should shift the focus to the General Assembly and ask for action under the Uniting for Peace Resolution. But that will have to secure the approval of the US and the European Union. International action to resolve an unbalanced military confrontation where a government employs its arsenal of weapons indiscriminately to subdue its civilian population fits in with the definition of humanitarian intervention. Anan is quite familiar with that since in 1998 he defended NATO's controversial air campaign against Serbia, undertaken without the approval of the Security Council because, as he told the UN General Assembly then, no country should hide behind the claim of domestic affairs to ethnically cleanse its population. He should recommend applying the example of the Kosovo situation to the Syrian situation in the hope of saving a few hundred civilian victims in the next few days. The writer is former corespondent of Al-Ahram in Washington, DC, and former director of the UN Radio and Television in New York.
