Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor: Syria refugee crisis: Arab League’s inaction is shameful/Sharif Nashashibi: Warplanes, not diplomacy, on Syria’s horizon

Syria refugee crisis: Arab League’s inaction is shameful
Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor/Al Arabiya/September 21/15

Everyone is talking about the refugee crisis overwhelming Europe – everyone apart from the League of Arab States, that is. To date it has had little to say on the topic and, as far as I can tell, has no plan to help alleviate the problem. Why have there not been any emergency summits announced? Where are the voices from Arab capitals offering solutions? Perhaps there is a notice pinned to the League’s front door with the words ‘Gone fishing’.Why is the League’s Secretary General Dr Nabil el-Araby not holding crisis meetings with foreign ministers and jetting around the region to find ways of preventing Syrians and Iraqis from being treated worse than street dogs expected to be grateful when they are handed a bottle of water every now and again?We Arabs are always stressing our honour but just how honourably is the Arab League behaving, as it watches as our Arab brothers are being shuttled from pillar to post like pawns on a chessboard? Surely he sees their plight. The lucky ones have tents or blankets. Most are sleeping on pavements, unable to wash for days or weeks. Women are giving birth in the street. Mothers run out of baby milk. Diabetics have nowhere to keep their insulin refrigerated. Many report that the little money they had was stolen along with their mobile phones.

‘Where are the Arabs?’
The very least the Arab League should be doing is finding temporary refuge to allow these unfortunate people to live in dignity, while pressing hard on the international community to solve the root causes of this exodus. We Arabs are always stressing our honour but just how honorably is the Arab League behaving, as it watches as our Arab brothers are being shuttled from pillar to post like pawns on a chessboard? Our countries have wealth and we have lands, and so it is little wonder that Europeans are increasingly asking “where are the Arabs?” The League is made up of 22 countries, yet two of the poorest – Jordan and Lebanon – are bearing the brunt of the refugee influx. The majority of the refugees are Syrians fleeing war and terrorism in their hundreds of thousands. Scared and tired, they trudge on hoping there is somewhere on this planet where they can live in peace. Instead, thousands have been met with barbed wire fences, riot police wielding batons, tear gas and water cannons. You would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by the hardships and indignities these people are being made to suffer. The images of a well-known Syrian football coach holding his young son being deliberately tripped by a callous camerawoman, or that of an anguished man seen carrying his child with blood streaming down his head, or those of children choking from gas or lying comatose on the ground in the no man’s land between Serbia and Hungary do not belong to Europe in the 21st century. Were we not given to believe that we would never again witness such examples of man’s inhumanity to man, let alone to women and children, on European soil?

Some opening their doors
That said there are European states, notably Germany, Austria and Sweden, that are opening their doors and doing what they can to handle this enormous influx of humanity as best as they can, even as others refuse to call terrorised people from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan “refugees”. Instead they are being referred to by countries that don’t want them as “illegal migrants”, “gangs” or “mobs” – their arrival characterized as “an invasion” with those who manage to break through prosecuted like criminals. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said he was shocked at the way refugees are being treated. “It’s not acceptable,” he said. Pope Francis has demanded that every Catholic parish or institution accept a minimum of one refugee family but he is facing a rebellion in some quarters, with the words “Today’s refugee could be tomorrow’s terrorist”.The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has shown exemplary leadership. Together with the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, she is calling for an EU-wide quota system that would oblige member states to absorb refugees according to their capacity in terms of GDP and unemployment statistics, against strong objections from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia threatened with losing their EU funding.

Diplomatic rifts
This situation now threatens to destroy the Schengen Agreement that allows for free movement between EU states; all the accusations flying between neighboring countries with very different views could cause severe diplomatic rifts. Bashar al-Assad says the refugee crisis is all the fault of the West for arming opposition forces. Naturally, he will say anything to lift the blame from his own shoulders. If he had heeded his own people by stepping down in 2011 instead of slaughtering them, none of this mess would have happened. No one emerges from this with a halo, and certainly not Barack Obama whose lack of leadership has allowed the Syrian conflict to fester into a terrorist swamp. Out of the so-called moderate fighters trained by the U.S. only five remain in theatre. Not five thousand or five hundred. Just five guys wandering around with guns.

A blind spot on Syria
European leaders have done nothing other than make speeches and attend summits. Turkey’s playing a duplicitous game, using Daesh as a pretext to kill its Kurdish enemies. And as for the Arab World… well, what can I say. I am not sure what is going on behind the scenes, but on the surface it appears that Arab leaderships, except those of the GCC, Jordan and Lebanon, have a blind spot on Syria. We did the right thing by intervening in Yemen and now the Houthi rebels are on the back foot. It is about time the Arab coalition turned its attention to Syria. It has taken a flood of refugees into Europe – and a Russian weapons build-up in Syria that could portend Moscow’s full scale military intervention – to galvanize the United Nations into sending its envoy to Damascus to discuss peace proposals. Plus, John Kerry appears open to discussions with his Russian counterpart on military solutions.Until when will we continue relying on foreign powers to save us? We did the right thing by intervening in Yemen and now the Houthi rebels are on the back foot. It is about time the Arab coalition turned its attention to Syria. The Arab world needs a union that is strong and resourceful with a mandate from all member countries to take action whenever the peace and security of our region is threatened. Otherwise, what is it other than an expensive mega majlis administrated by clerks?We will shortly be celebrating Eid al-Adha with family and friends, enjoying good meals and good company, while tens of thousands of Syrians at the mercy of European states go without food and shelter, their future uncertain. Enough! It is the time for the Arab League to resume its duties, and try to salvage our Arab honour.

Warplanes, not diplomacy, on Syria’s horizon
Sharif Nashashibi/Al Arabiya/September 21/15

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s call on Saturday for renewed diplomatic efforts to end the Syrian conflict is wishful thinking, amid several indications that if anything, the war is likely to intensify. The call shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin has outmanoeuvred Washington with his recent ramping up of military aid to the beleaguered Syrian regime, including heavy weaponry, training and advisers. Russian troops are reportedly even engaged in combat in Syria. Though Washington had been warning against such a build-up, Putin knew it would not reciprocate with an increase in U.S. military aid to Syrian rebels. Opposition groups’ foreign backers have never been as materially supportive as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s allies have been of his regime. Knowledge of this, and the unlikelihood of that changing, must have informed the Russian military build-up. Moscow’s build-up in Syria will embolden the regime to continue being as intransigent as it has been throughout the conflict.

Putin’s gamble – if one can call it that – has paid off, with Washington softening its tone and even attempting a face-saving U-turn. Laughably, Kerry now says the build-up presents an opportunity to progress diplomatically and to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as if the Assad regime will not use these new Russian weapons to continue slaughtering Syrian civilians. As Amnesty International pointed out last month: “Time and again, the Syrian government’s Russian-made fighter jets have targeted busy public spaces, including markets or near mosques after prayers, seemingly hell-bent on causing the maximum possible civilian death toll and destruction of the places they frequent.”Subsequent high-level military talks between Washington and Moscow will not contribute to a diplomatic breakthrough – their aim is likely limited to staying out of each others’ way as they continue their respective operations.

Military build-up
The West may not respond to the Russian build-up, but regional parties such as the Gulf states and Turkey may increase financial and military support to Syrian rebel groups. Such aid contributed to a series of battlefield successes this year, and they will not want to see those gains reversed. However, it will not include the kind of military backing – troops and heavy weaponry such as tanks and warplanes – that Assad is accustomed to. The Russian build-up will also likely swell the ranks of jihadist groups in Syria. Just as they have played on anti-Western and anti-Shiite sentiment to encourage recruitment, they can now also use the presence – or even just the prospect – of Russian boots on the ground to stir up bitter memories of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The Soviet withdrawal was brought about by jihadist fighters who would later form Al-Qaeda. And Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, is one of the most formidable military opponents of the Assad regime and its allies, as well as ISIS and Western-backed rebel groups.

Regime confidence
Moscow’s build-up in Syria will embolden the regime to continue being as intransigent as it has been throughout the conflict. Assad was way off the mark in arrogantly predicting in April that “this year, the active phase of military action in Syria will be ended.”However, his confidence will have since been renewed not just by Moscow’s muscle-flexing, but by the recent Iran nuclear deal, which entails the lifting of sanctions that will enable an increase in Tehran’s support for Assad. Both have since reiterated the unwavering strength of their alliance. The U.S.-led coalition war against ISIS has not only failed to significantly weaken the jihadist group after more than a year, but has also played into Assad’s hands by allowing him to focus more forcefully on fighting rebels that are opposed to both him and ISIS. Even U.S. officials have acknowledged the benefit to him. Assad and his allies are portraying his regime as indispensible in the fight against ISIS (ignoring, of course, their pivotal role in the latter’s creation and expansion). Those duplicitous efforts have been somewhat successful in the West, where a growing number of officials and members of the public have begun to view the Assad regime as the lesser of two evils.Countering this flawed view, Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote last month that “the greatest threat to Syrian civilians” comes not from ISIS, but from the Assad regime’s barrel bombs. ISIS “has distracted us from this deadly reality,” Roth added. “Too few people understand the extraordinary slaughter that the Syrian military is committing with its barrel bombs.”

Intransigence
The regime has consistently insisted that Assad’s future is not up for negotiation, and has refused to discuss any meaningful transition of power. The above factors mean that Assad, who in July admitted that manpower shortages meant his army could no longer control the whole country, may be willing to bide his time in light of increasing assistance from foreign allies and his opponents’ divisions. This will mean continued regime intransigence in any future diplomatic efforts, not that there is anything noteworthy on the horizon. Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy on Syria since July 2014, has made no headway since his appointment, and nor did his predecessors. And Moscow’s increasing military support for Assad will hurt its attempts – however superficial and hypocritical – to play mediator. The result of all this will be the prolongation and escalation of the conflict on the ground, while diplomacy will remain the hollow buzzword in press conferences, official statements and media interviews. Expect more corpses on Syrian streets and European shores.