Moscow is deftly pulling the rug from under President Barack Obama with today’s proposal to confiscate and destroy Syrian Bashar al Assad’s chemical weapons but Paris may be the one to deliver the coup de grace.
The Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s sudden diplomatic initiative gave the beleaguered French President Francois Hollande an opportunity to start backing away from his earlier strong support for Obama’s position on Syria.
He immediately announced support for Lavrov’s proposal so long as it does not allow Assad to procrastinate, but added more fog by saying he will wait for the US Congressional votes as well as reports from United Nations inspectors. He expected both to happen by next week end although such highly charged UN reports usually take several weeks to complete.
The French, who suffered the most from chemical weapons in World War 1, would have stood behind Obama as one. But the impression is that Obama dithered and has allowed Lavrov to outwit him within days of frosty meetings with Vladimir Putin.
Obama seemed to recognize that when he told NBC today the proposal “could potentially be a significant breakthrough.”
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, whose Syria peace conference is stalled, also jumped at the proposal. “I’m considering urging the Security Council to demand the immediate transfer of Syria’s chemical weapons and chemical precursor stocks to places inside Syria where they can be safely stored and destroyed,” Ban said.
Secretary of State John Kerry thinks verifying compliance is impossible but will find it very hard to avoid negotiations to work out modalities or prevent interference from the UN Security Council.
Keeping chemical stores inside Syria as Ban suggests will be very contentious because no entity in the country can guarantee protection of UN or other officials in charge of storage and ensuring that small quantities are not hidden elsewhere. So the negotiations will be harsh and divisive.
It is now most likely that Hollande will stand isolated both in French politics and in Europe if he continues to follow Obama instead of taking independent stands, particularly as Moscow suspects Washington of using the chemical issue to depose Assad.
Hollande’s wavering heightened after Obama’s and his own failure to persuade the G-20 or the European Union to endorse their decisions. Britain’s refusal to follow Obama has cast a deep shadow on assertions that Assad, rather than a rebel faction, is responsible for the chemical weapons horror. It has also turned French public opinion against Hollande and brought calls for a vote in Parliament.
The only current legal basis for attacking Assad is that Syria is a member of the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical weapons in war but that is a grey area since France controlled Syria in 1925. Syria did not become an independent republic until 1944.
The Syrian kingdom before 1920 extended over territories from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey to the Sinai desert in Egypt. To break its potential power, the 1920 San Remo Conference gave Britain a mandate over Palestine and awarded Lebanon-Syria to France.
Many Syrians distrust France, which signed a treaty of independence with Syria in 1936 but refused to leave until 1946. During 1925-27, the French were fighting revolts in Aleppo, Homs, Hama and Damascus by the Sunnis, Druze and Christians (other than the Maronites of Lebanon). The four cities suffered extensive damage and are being ravaged again. Ironically, after the revolts France favored the rise of Alawites from the West, who later put the Assads in power.
Syrians also distrust Turks because the Ottoman Empire ruled them from 1516 to 1918 until defeat in World War 1. But the new Turkey kept a disputed enclave on the Mediterranean coast called Sanjak of Alexandretta, after Alexander the Great (and later called Iskenderun, his name among Muslims).
The Turkish army was US-led NATO’s watchdog on Syria after the 1956 Suez crisis, when Damascus turned to the Soviet Union for weapons and became a front line state of the Cold War. Syria entered the Soviet embrace because of Turkey’s growing strength and fear of Israeli attempts to occupy the demilitarized Golan Heights, which Israel annexed after the 1967 war.
Obama might go ahead with his bombing regardless of Congress, France or the UN. But the lesson many Syrians – whether Alawite, Sunni, Druze or Christians – draw from history is to distrust foreigners. Most are nationalists trying to retain independence after centuries of foreign domination and interference.
Middle Eastern people rarely forget their past and the rebels favored by Washington are unlikely to be its friends even if they win. Assad is using Russia and the opposition is using America to get the upper hand. Then they will amass power to settle scores.
Iraq is an example of how little the mid-east defers to outsiders or their methods of governance to settle long-nurtured local conflicts.
moscow graphic via shutterstock.com