John Kerry does not give up easily. On Thursday in Munich the US secretary
of state will promote a fresh
diplomatic effort on Syrian peace talks. Yet for all his determination, events on the ground
are not only working against a breakthrough, but raising increasingly profound
doubts about the coherence of US and western strategy.
For more than a week,
the rebel-held city of Aleppo, once Syria’s largest, has been pounded by
Russia’s air force, acting in support of Iranian-backed militias and Syrian
government troops. If this annihilation strategy continues, the balance of
forces in Syria’s civil war will change fundamentally. Mr Kerry’s proposed
negotiated solution will be null and void, for there will be no Syrian
opposition force left to be represented at any negotiating table.
The truth is that the humanitarian catastrophe in and around Aleppo ought
to be enough to trigger a rethink anyway. Tens of
thousands of Syrian civilians are already at the Turkish border in the winter cold. Now, according
to the United Nations, an estimated 300,000 more could soon be running for
their lives, as barrel bombs are dropped on their city.
These inhabitants think
they already know the fate that awaits them if Syrian government forces take
the city. A recent UN report described the torture methods of the Assad
regime as “extermination”. Aleppo, a symbol of the 2011 revolt against the
regime, and a stronghold of opposition forces since 2012, is in imminent danger
of being surrounded, starved and massacred.
The net result of Russia’s four-month-old military intervention in Syria
may now be a major turning point in the war, but one that will bring more, not
less, human suffering and one that will ultimately feed the so-called Islamic State. Indeed, the very groups that had successfully pushed
Isis out of Aleppo in 2013 and 2014 are now themselves being targeted for
destruction.
In one week alone, Syria has gone from bad to horribly worse. Mr Kerry is
clearly well aware of this. It lies behind his desperate push for talks.
Yet this cannot disguise the grim fact that the Obama administration is now
contemplating the complete collapse of its strategy. The rebels whom the US and
its allies have claimed to support all along are, in Aleppo, in need of
anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry, yet there is no indication they will be
supplied with it. If nothing changes, their defeat may be just a question of
time.
To fix US policy at such a critical stage of the conflict may well be
impossible, but some proper public accounting for Washington’s errors is
essential. In Syria, “red lines” have come and gone, with a huge human toll.
By contrast, Moscow has proved to be much more consistent and radical in
its support of the Assad regime than the west and its allies ever were in their
assistance to the opposition.
Nor is it clear what Mr Kerry has in mind when he
claims, as he did this week, that if diplomacy fails, the US has “other
leverage”. Russia has reportedly offered to put an end to its
bombing on 1 March – but this is a cynical proposal which leaves three weeks
for the assault on Aleppo to achieve many of its goals.
The large reality is that US options have been severely cut short by
Russia’s military involvement in Syria. Any notion of a western-protected
“no-fly zone” in northern Syria, aimed at creating a safe haven for civilians
and rebels alike, has been made all but impossible. Such a thing could have
made sense earlier in the war, but at this stage it would mean risking a wider
military confrontation with Russia – which the Obama administration
understandably cannot contemplate.
What is unfolding in Aleppo may soon
resemble the
siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s – only this
time with no relief in sight, and with much wider refugee consequences,
including in Europe. If ever there was a symbol of western failure in Syria, this
is it. Aleppo is already a stain on the UN. Now it is a stain on the record of
the US administration too, however well intentioned it wanted to appear.
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