ANALYSIS – Idlib crisis: Last chance for UN, EU

By Mehmet A. Kanci

ISTANBUL (AA) - The establishment of the League of Nations was the first step taken to preserve world peace in the aftermath of World War I.

However, its relevance -- and existence -- ceased due to a failure that was quite similar to the inefficiency being exhibited today by the UN in its handling of the Syrian civil war.

While Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 was the final nail in its coffin, the longer chain of events leading to the end of the League of Nations commenced right after the Treaty of Versailles.

Italian nationalists invading Port of Flume in Yugoslavia in 1919 was followed in the same year by Poland and Czechoslovakia’s fight for Teschen and its coveted coal mines.

In 1920, Poland first invaded Vilna, a city in Lithuania, and then occupied 80 kilometers of land claimed by Russia.

These were followed by the crises of Manchuria and Abyssinia in 1931 and 1935, respectively.

The League of Nations did not have the power or the capacity to sanction the aggressors in all these conflicts -- an inability that heralded its eventual doom.

The U.S., which laid the foundation but never actually joined the League, also eventually abandoned it and opened the doors for World War II.

After nearly a century, the international community is again witnessing the inefficiency of multilateral organizations such as the UN and the EU amid continuing humanitarian crises and conflicts across the world.

The end of the Cold War, symbolized by the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, has since triggered a series of conflicts, instead of being the harbinger of global peace that it was expected to be.

The first Gulf War, Yugoslavian civil war, Chechen wars, Upper Karabakh invasion by Armenia, the U.S.’ invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the instability in Libya, Egypt, and Syria after the Arab Spring -- all are international crises seen over the past three decades.

The mutual outcome of all these conflicts have always been irregular migrants, who number in the tens of millions.

The fact that many civilians escaping from these conflict zones end up in Turkey, one way or another, is another indispensable result of the geopolitical significance of Anatolia.

- Idlib: UN’s last breath

The UN, having failed in its expected role of curbing conflict and preserving peace, has now drawn its last breath in Idlib.

After the U.S.’ so-called ‘Deal of the Century’, which obliterates all UN decisions defending the rights of Palestinians, the UN’s stance on the Idlib humanitarian crisis indicates that, as of 2020, it is now close to its doom and just awaits a final blow.

The EU, too, is in the same metaphorical boat.

France supporting Serbia, and Germany supporting Croatia in the Yugoslavian civil war; France bombing Libya in the Libyan civil war, without a UN decree, and becoming a party to the conflict; Europe turning its back on people who want democracy after the Arab Spring and intending to support military dictators such as Sisi in Egypt and Haftar in Libya.

All of this shows that the purpose of the decision-making mechanism in Brussels is not to achieve global prosperity, but creating a welfare society that is restricted to Europe.

At this point, the Idlib issue has become a litmus test for the UN and the EU.

And the results of this test till now indicate the EU will keep denying its role in the Idlib crisis, and take no responsibility.

The UN and EU’s callous approach in the face of the Idlib humanitarian crisis is not restricted to the past nine years.

If we look at recent history, we see the western world has ignored the crimes of the Assad dynasty since the 1960s, turning a blind eye to decades of grief and sorrow it has caused in Syria and Lebanon.

The Daraa uprisings of 2011, after the Arab Spring, were not the first time the Syrian people stood up against the Assad regime.

One of the peak points of resistance was the 1982 Hama uprising.

A center of the civil war over the past nine years, Hama was burnt to the ground by regime forces during the 1982 uprising against Hafez Assad.

The city was heavily bombed from the air and the ground for three straight weeks, and the regime even used chemical weapons against its people -- as it would again 30 years later.

The exact number of people killed remains unknown to this day, but it is estimated that 10,000 to 30,000 Syrians were massacred by the Assad regime.

It is also unclear if these estimates include the number of people killed in mass executions carried out after the uprisings were suppressed.

- Assad dynasty and the West: Defined by double standards

The Assad regime entered Lebanon under the pretense of ending the civil war, but became a party to the conflict and inflicted monumental misery on the people of Lebanon.

Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, which enjoyed immense historical and geopolitical significance, became home to international terrorist organizations, including the PKK, in the 1980s -- a development that came as no surprise.

However, the Assad regime’s crimes in Syria and Lebanon were whitewashed after it joined the coalition formed by the U.S. in the wake of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

The fact that Assad joined the anti-Iraq coalition -- in return for $1 million -- rejuvenated relations between the U.S., Syria, and Egypt.

With Hafez’s death in 2000 and Bashar’s ascension to power, hopes of democratization in Syria were cut short.

Syrian forces left Beirut in 2001, but in the same September, lawmakers supporting reforms were arrested.

In 2002, the Assad dynasty was included in the “axis of evil” by then-U.S. President George W Bush, and its range of action in the Middle East was further narrowed after claims emerged of Damascus’ role in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri.

The Assad regime’s nuclear station, which it built in Deir ez-Zour with the help of North Korea, was hit by Israel.

This time, though, it was ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy who ran to Assad’s aid to save the regime from international isolation and castigation.

Hosting Assad in Paris in 2008, Sarkozy reopened the gates of the West to Syria, following the country’s isolation due to Hariri’s assassination.

Sarkozy had extended a similar favor before by hosting Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in Paris, shortly after becoming president of France in 2007.

Later, in order to topple the Libyan leader, he sent in French warplanes without waiting for a UN decree.

Years later, it was revealed that Sarkozy received $8 million in donations from Gaddafi for his 2007 election campaign.

Since Bashar Assad is still in power, we do not yet know if he has had a similar relationship with Sarkozy or any other western leader.

This is only a fraction of the Assad dynasty’s relations with the West, which are interlaced with double standards.

When we look at the capability of the Assad dynasty to justify all its crimes and mistakes through dirty agreements with the West, it is not that hard to understand why the international community remains silent in the face of the growing humanitarian crisis in Idlib.

- Munich Security Report 2020: No mention of Idlib

We witnessed a resounding example of the world’s apathy and silence only a month ago.

The Munich Security Report 2020 was published in the second week of February, just before the 56th Munich Security Conference.

It contains a list of crisis areas that will be under close observation in 2020.

From Turkey’s perspective, though, there was a glaring issue with the report; Syria or Idlib was not mentioned in the list.

In evaluations by the Munich Security Conference and the International Crisis Group, which prepared the report, Syria and Idlib were not among the crisis regions.

What does this mean?

In my analysis published by Anadolu Agency shortly after the conference, I suggested that Syria might have become a taboo topic for the international community, including Europe, due to its very complicated problems and the issue of migrants.

The UN and EU’s unresponsiveness in the face of the Idlib crisis indicates that the issue of Syria is now out of the radar of the international community, and it is now an issue between the U.S. and Russia.

- EU in panic over migrants

The regime’s attacks aimed at taking complete control of Idlib province, and the situation of migrants triggered by these attacks, proves that this issue is too complicated to be solved just by the U.S. and Russia.

With the arrival of nearly four million Syrians to the Turkish border, Ankara laid aside the refugee agreement signed with the EU in March 2016 -- because the EU had not fulfilled its responsibilities under the deal -- and opened its borders to the migrants.

The EU’s response was to provide €1 million in financial support it had promised, and to suggest the creation of a safe zone in northern Syria.

The trauma of the 856,723 irregular migrants who reached Europe by passing through Turkey in 2015 was brought back to life in European capitals.

Out of the migrants that went to Europe, 56% were Syrian, 24% were Afghan, and 10% of them Iraqi.

In these countries, which can be defined as a source of irregular migrants today, instability has increased exponentially over the past five years.

As EU leaders have had to admit, what really worries them is not the irregular migrants currently reaching the Greek border, but the 4 million Syrians now congregating at the Turkish border due to attacks by the Assad regime and Russia.

- Ignoring Turkey’s early warning

As early as 2012, while the loss of lives was still around 5,000 and the Syrian civil war had just ended its first year, Ankara called on the international community to create a no-fly zone in northern Syria.

On Sept. 1, 2012, then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed out the necessity of a no-fly zone where civilians could take refuge.

However, there was a negative response from the UN Security Council, a forum that, in the first place, was established by the victors of World War II around the purpose of owning nuclear weapons.

In July 2013, when the civil war was further escalating, an interesting thing happened in Washington. The then-defense secretary, Martin Dempsey, wrote a letter to President Barack Obama about the possible military action options in Syria.

Although it was brought to the international media’s attention, this letter was not properly analyzed by the Turkish media and was interpreted as “the U.S. taking action to topple the Assad regime”.

However, Dempsey’s letter was a reflection of the typical western approach to issues in the Middle East.

Dempsey simply prepared a cost calculation for Washington and proposed five options for military actions.

The first option was military training and ammunition support to the Syrian opposition, which would cost $500 million a year. However, he also pointed out the possibility of American weapons falling into wrong hands.

The second option was attacking the regime forces to restrict their capacity, which would shorten the Assad regime’s durability. For Dempsey, this option could cost millions of dollars.

The third option was announcing a no-fly zone. However, he said the risks for U.S. soldiers and the cost would also be very high in this option.

The fourth option was creating buffer zones on the Turkish and Jordanian borders, where Syrian civilians could take refuge. This would entail the same military and financial risks as the third option.

The fifth and last option proposed by Dempsey was announcing a no-fly zone, attacking with missiles, and sending thousands of American soldiers to Syria.

He emphasized that this option would also cost over $1 billion.

- U.S. calculations caused Idlib disaster

Although it was not officially announced, Obama’s response to these suggestions was that the U.S., already feeling the effects of the 2009 global economic crisis, cannot afford this kind of an expense.

According to Obama, the U.S. was still paying the debt from the first Gulf War and could not spare that much money for Syria at a time of global economic crisis.

As a result of this response, the red lines drawn by the White House against Assad’s chemical weapons attacks were completely breached.

This profit and loss approach of the U.S., as if it were a business corporation, resulted in the monumental humanitarian disaster in Idlib today, the price of which can never be measured in monetary terms.

Despite Washington’s cheap tricks, Turkey did not let the issue go.

In 2015, in order to break the influence of Daesh in Iraq and Syria, the possibility of U.S. operations from the Incirlik military base in Turkey was suggested.

Turkey opened negotiations on the issue, while also demanding the creation of safe zones in northern Syria.

However, Turkey’s efforts were rendered futile as the U.S. wanted to use the Incirlik base to support the YPG/PKK terrorist group and Obama was unwilling to use American soldiers to create a safe zone in Syria.

Turkey started the mission of creating safe zones in order to protect its borders from terror threats and to pave the way for civilians to return home.

Operation Euphrates Shield was the first result of Turkey’s disagreements with its NATO allies and EU members.

On Aug. 24, 2016, the same day U.S. Vice President Joe Biden paid a visit to Ankara, President Erdogan explained the operation to the public in the following words: “We have repeatedly told all the leaders of the world that there has to be a safe zone in Syria in order to solve the problem of migrants.”

This mission of creating safe zones, continued by Turkey through operations Olive Branch and Peace Spring, has now reached a new level with Operation Spring Shield.

It is simply naïve to expect something from the UN at this point, which has surrendered its efficiency into the hands of the five permanent members.

Still, for the sake of implementing the deal it signed in 2016 and to make amends for the damage it caused by protecting the Assad dynasty for the past 50 years, the EU now has one last chance to make up for its mistakes.

It can, at the very least, lead and successfully execute a diplomatic initiative to create a safe zone in Syria.

[Mehmet A. Kanci is a journalist from Ankara focusing on Turkish foreign policy]

*Translated by Firdevs Bulut of Anadolu Agency English

**Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency