Was Barack Obama wise not to authorise military action against Bashar Al Assad in 2013 because the Syrian dictator used chemical weapons against his own people? Mr Al Assad is a brutal dictator who has overseen the horrific destruction of his country. He has the blood of thousands of civilians on his hands, and any equitable solution to the Syrian civil war will entail his removal from power. But unilateral US military action was not the answer and the Chilcot report on the United Kingdom’s failures in the run-up to the Iraq War demonstrates this.
Sir John Chilcot’s report revealed political, military and intelligence failures in the lead up to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. It found the political leadership of the UK made the decision to join the invasion “before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted”.
The report’s message is clear. Military invention must be based on facts, and only carried out after all options have expired. We can see that the United States is slowly learning the lessons of the Iraq war by Mr Obama’s reticence to launch military action against Syria.
In August 2012, Mr Obama said that Mr Al Assad’s use of chemical weapons would constitute a red line for US military intervention. But when the Syrian regime reportedly used chemical weapons against its civilians in 2013, the United States didn’t go to war. Writing for the London Review of Books, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh suggested last year that Mr Al Assad did not use chemical weapons on his own people. Citing anonymous sources in senior positions in the US government, Hersh alleges that Turkey and other countries in the region had a hand in manufacturing the 2013 chemical weapons incident to force the Americans to attack the Assad regime. It is an explosive claim that Hersh supports with sound theory, if not clear facts.
Since the beginning of the war, Turkey has been one of the most vociferous anti-Assad countries in the region. Early in the fighting, Ankara had opened its southern border to Sunni militants and the Free Syrian Army, and gave them the freedom to move fighters and weapons. Some of the weapons these fighters received via Turkey were looted from former Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi’s arsenal and then moved to a classified annex of the US consulate in Benghazi and funnelled to Turkey with US and UK oversight.
The United States facilitated the trafficking of weapons to these militants, many of whom would later join ISIL and Jabhat Al Nusra. When images of Al Nusra fighters began appearing on social media, depicting them with advanced surface-to-air missiles capable of bringing down a commercial air plane, the United States pulled the plug on the operation, and Turkey was not happy.
Hersh claims Turkey was worried that Mr Obama was changing his position on Syria, so it helped rebels carry out a chemical weapons attack on civilians and made it look as if Mr Al Assad had crossed Mr Obama’s red line.
While Hersh has been criticised for not revealing his sources and his allegations have been rejected by many, including Turkey, the fact is that Mr Obama never acted on his red line in Syria. There must have been some intelligence that swayed Mr Obama’s final decision.
Perhaps it was the advice of America’s own military leadership. Hersh alleges that military leaders told the president that they could easily remove Mr Al Assad from power but the aftermath would be a disaster.
The challenge of providing the number of troops and resources needed to stabilise the country after an intervention would be nearly insurmountable. The chaos would be similar to what is happening in Iraq. This is where the findings of the Chilcot report prove useful.
Removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq was the easy part in 2003. Mending the country and establishing stability has proved far more difficult. The invasion was poorly thought through and hastily sold to the US and British public using dubious intelligence. Just as in Iraq, the intelligence on Syria has holes.
Even if you are sceptical of Hersh’s reporting, there are clear gaps in our understanding of the Syrian conflict that social media analysis and hot takes can’t fill. Butit stands to reason that large-scale US military intervention in Syria would have broken the country beyond repair. Moreover, the American people clearly don’t have the desire to divert the incredible resources that would be needed to fix Syria after an invasion.
There is a bigger point here about the place of American military intervention. The US has often played an unhelpful role in the Middle East, especially when it comes to the use of its military. The chaos in Iraq over the past decade shows that America is unable to constructively assist nation building efforts in the Arab world.
Just because America is entrenched in the region doesn’t mean its influence is always positive or can’t be diminished through concerted effort.
If Arab countries are serious about asserting their independence, they have a rare opportunity to confront the challenges in their midst by directly dealing with the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Palestine, rewriting artificial colonial boundaries and demonstrating to the international community that they are able to manage their own affairs in a unified manner without western assistance.
The Chilcot report confirms that western motives in the region are often questionable and countries such as the United States have repeatedly failed to maintain a constructive leadership role. There is no such thing as a clean American military intervention to end a humanitarian disaster in the Middle East. Wishing one into existence does little to end the burning wars around us. Washington has too many conflicting interests for such an intervention to happen.
This is the legacy of the Iraq war and now it is time for the people of the region to assert themselves without foreign influence.
jdana@thenational.ae
On Twitter: @ibnezra