Syrian troubles: Right of pre-emptive war

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Syrian troubles: Right of pre-emptive war

Sunday, 13 January 2019 | Manan Dwivedi

Despite withdrawal of forces from Syria, the coalitional fundamentals of the American forces remain unchanged and nothing much has come undone as far as the American policy towards the area and its implementation is concerned

Syria lies en-route in the Oregon trail of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The American nation with the philanthropic dream and with an avowed objective of democratisation and the spread of rule of law, entrepreneurship and constitunatilsm has always played the role of a vigilante to stymie the vile empires, leaders and regimes such as the one of Saddam Hussein.

Syria has been home to an Alawite sect’s government since the times of Bashar-al-Assad’s father and enjoys the support of Shia Iran and jehadi groups based in Lebanon.

In the current context, the scuffle between Assad and the ISIS militia has intensified with the forces of President Assad scoring victories over ISIS with the support of Kurdish militia in places such as Manjib as the Syrian forces backed by Russia triumphed over the ISIS insurgents in the light of the American withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan.

There is an agreed confrontational truce between the allied-coalition led by the US and the French with the regime forces, which has been interlocuted by Moscow. Such is the myriad and complex detail of the terror and war terrain in the nation state of Syria. YPG the Kurdish group has welcomed the regime to occupy parts of the Manjib city, which, are further enabled by the USA. The US establishment has refuted the regime’s declaration of occupying Manjib with a call to respect the integrity and safety of the people in the town.

American intervention and mediation has a long history associated with it. Still, the larger Asiatic space posits the American incursions to bolster peace and order, as bland invasions and a flouting of the cannons of international law. The critics are always out with their “ubiquitous jholas” calling the American interventions as being an acerbic pronouncements and the practice of preventive diplomacy and preemption being dubious, as enshrined in the Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Chapters VI and VII of the UN Charter refer to the themes of economic, political sanctions in the case of war on even a mere threat of war by rogue and recalcitrant state actors across the global polity at different times.

An ace American adventurist, Colin O’ Brady, has emerged as the first human to traverse the entire length of the confines of Antarctica which has been ably and gleefully tracked by GPS and other technological instrumentalities. Thus, in the same spirit of conquering the Antarctica, the American propensity to make a foray into nations and regions with its men and equipment have been the cynosure of all eyes with the “liberal eye”persistently preening with photo ops to malign the fundamental tenets of the US Foreign Policy.

Cheeky tricksters as proponents of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), too, have been taking strategic pot shots at the nature and veneer of American interventions. Thus, the cause célèbre of the core premise of the US has always been castigated since the time it came of age as a global power in post World War II.

In the context of Syria, Lieutenant Colonel Earl Brown has commented that despite the partial American withdrawal from Syria, in a snippet from an Al Jazeera report, “Our mission has not changed. We will continue to support our coalition partners, while also conducting a deliberate and controlled withdrawal of forces, while taking all measures possible to ensure our troops’ safety and that of our partners on the ground.”

Thus, the coalitional fundamentals of the American forces remain unchanged and nothing much has come undone as far as the American policy and its implementation is concerned. The Syrian YPG has surmised the Assad regime is welcome to counter the Turkic forces as the Kurdish militia know that they are no match for the Turkish forces.

Syria is home to one of the oldest civilisations in the entire global polity with a great deal of heritage being destroyed in the aftermath of the turmoil. The UN terms it as the worst humanitarian disaster since World War II with its flow of migrants and refugees. Damascus became the avid centre of the Islamic world but was replaced by Baghdad later on in 750 AD. In the contemporary context, it’s the rivalry between Iran and Israel which delineates the strategic equation in Syria.

ISIS captured vast swathes of territory of Iraq and Syria, which was to be later militated against by the coalition forces of the US, the UK and France. The US began conducting airstrikes on Syria and local allies were bolstered with US military advisers as the ISIS’s gory bastions collapsed in the face of stiff confrontation by the coalition.

Syria saw a great deal of confrontation with the Assad forces as American missiles rained on Syrian land. Associated Press in a web feed reported,  “The US military launches rare airstrikes and artillery rounds against Syrian government-backed troops after as many as 500 attackers started what appeared to be a co-ordinated attack on US-backed Syrian forces and US advisers in eastern Deir Ezzor province. US officials said the strikes were in self-defence after pro-government forces began firing artillery and tank rounds at the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.”

Thus, the conflict in Syria created a demeanour of a new cold war confrontation between the US and a pesky new Russia. Still, the nomenclature of new Cold War cannot be talked of as a grossly adversarial scenario between the US and Russia as they supported opposite sides in the conflict but stayed away from direct military friction in a very deftly planned manoeuvre so this talk about the dawn of a new “Red October” was there for the exchange of media and op-ed jibes only, in the international media, including their western counterparts.

Steven A Cook writes in the Foreign Policy, “Syrian regime forces hoisted their flag above the southern town of Daraa. Although there is more bloodletting to come, the symbolism was hard to miss. The uprising that began in that town on March 6, 2011, has finally been crushed, and the civil war that has engulfed the country and destabilised parts of the Middle East as well as Europe will be over sooner rather than later.”

We also need to delve inside the ramifications of the conflict in Syria. First, it firms up and concretises the Shia unity against the Sunni counterparts in West Asia. The theme of great power intervention comes to the fore as an inescapable entity in the larger rubric of the region where micro nations are sublet and colonised in a post truth age sense of the term. The Americans too have argued that it is no longer the much tom-tommed oil factor which runs riot in West Asia as the American oil signposts and footprints have moved away from West Asia, Central Asia and all the way to the new found release of shale gas and shale oil through the process of fracking in the American homeland.

Thus, the sole malfeasance of the US with the hidden ambitions of the Russian Empire have been revived as attendant themes of deliberation.

The Yemen quandary too lies unsolved as Saudi Arabia and Iran are found to be indirectly at loggerheads with each other. Still, going by its, “Global Regular Status” and the fluidity of shifting scenarios in West Asia, the US would do well to stay put in the region, otherwise the “liberated nations,” might be compromised by threatening non-state actors or the regional thugs such as the ISIS.

(The writer teaches International Relations at Indian Institute of Public Administration, Delhi)

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