Syria: should we arm the rebels?

March 13, 2013, 4:48 PM GMT+0

John Humphrys asks: would arming the rebels in Syria be the right policy or would it make the situation even worse?

David Cameron dropped a big hint this week that the government is considering changing its policy on Syria. The Prime Minister told MPs that Britain might veto any extension of the European Union’s arms embargo, implying that he wanted to supply arms to rebel forces in the country. He also said Britain was quite ready to act independently of the EU if necessary. Would arming the rebels be the right policy? Or would it make the situation in Syria even worse?

It is now two years since the insurrection against the regime of Bashar al-Assad began. Those two years have seen a civil war in which an estimated 70,000 people have been killed. A million refugees have fled the country and two million people have been internally displaced. The effect on children has been horrific. The Save the Children Fund reported this week that two million of them had suffered either through disease, malnutrition or violence. It estimated that one in three children had either been hit, kicked or shot at during the conflict. A fifth of schools have been destroyed and in the city of Aleppo only 6% of children are able to go to school. Young boys have been used by both sides as porters, runners and human shields and parents have been forced to marry young girls off early in order to protect them from sexual violence. The SCF characterised what has happened as “a collapse in childhood”.

During this savage civil war what has the international community been doing? Precious little, many would say. The problem has been that the major powers cannot agree on what should happen. Everyone claims to share the goal of a peaceful, democratic Syria but disagrees about how to get there. Britain, along with other western countries, has called for President Assad to leave office as a necessary condition for a negotiated settlement, but Russia and China in particular have refused to go along with this.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has objected that it is not for foreigners to say who should or should not be the leader of a sovereign country and that, in any case, since it is perfectly clear that President Assad has no intention of leaving office, there is no point in demanding that he do. Instead, the international community should patiently encourage both sides to talk to each other. There is no reason to suppose that Mr Lavrov, who is in London this week for talks with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, will change his tune.

But Britain, and some other western countries, are losing patience with this approach. They see little prospect that an end to the civil war can be achieved this way. Rather, they see a further deterioration in the situation within the country. Almost half of the refugees who have fled Syria have done so since the beginning of this year. Things will only get worse, they are coming to believe, unless a quicker military victory can be brought about. And since they support the cause of the rebels rather than President Assad, that means helping the rebels.

So far Britain has agreed with its EU partners and the rest of the international community that there should be an arms embargo affecting both sides. But many believe that the Syrian government is receiving military help, especially from Russia, despite the embargo. Russia denies this but there is a widespread belief that the embargo is harming the rebels more than the Syrian government.

Recently, EU governments loosened the terms of its embargo to the extent of sending more “non-lethal” aid to the rebels, including armoured vehicles, body armour and other equipment that helps with search and rescue operations and communications. But the commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army, General Selim Idriss, wants much more, especially anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems.

William Hague recently said that “Britain’s policy couldn’t remain static in the face of an ever-deteriorating situation” and refused to rule out arming the rebels more effectively. The EU’s policy comes up for review in May and this is the opportunity the Prime Minister seems to want to seize.

He told MPs not only that Britain might be prepared to veto any extension of the EU’s arms embargo but also that Britain might be ready to go it alone, even though he preferred that EU countries should act in concert. He said: “We are still an independent country, we can have an independent foreign policy. If we felt action needed to be taken to help bring about change in Syria and felt our European partners were holding that back, we would have to change the approach. If we cannot [agree changes], we might have to do things our own way.”

Within the EU Britain is likely to be supported by France. The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said on Monday: “The question of lifting the arms embargo arises increasingly because there is a clear imbalance between Bashar al-Assad, who is supplied by powerful weapons from Iran and Russia, and the [opposition] National Coalition, which doesn’t have these weapons.”

Germany, however, disagrees. The German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, warned this week that arming the rebels could cause an escalation of the conflict beyond Syria’s borders and could lead to weapons ending up in the hands of al-Qaeda. He said: “I want to have a tolerant and pluralistic Syria on the day after … I do not want to see terrorists and extremists take over.”

British diplomats acknowledge that arms intended for the Free Syrian Army could end up in the hands of anti-western jihadists. But the Prime Minister believes that the longer the civil war is allowed to go on, the greater the danger that extremists will end up on top. “You can see the levels of jihadism getting worse,” he told MPs.

It seems very much on the cards, then, that whatever the EU decides in May, Britain and France will be prepared to go it alone and arm the rebels anyway. But will that be enough to end the stalemate and bring both a swift end to the civil war and victory for the rebels? Many commentators are sceptical. Logic suggests that Britain and France would then have to consider intervening directly themselves. No one in either government is yet talking openly in these terms but there has already been close cooperation between the two countries over direct military intervention in both Libya and Mali. Could Syria be next?

This week marks not only the second anniversary of the beginning of the Syrian civil war but the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq when Britain (though not France) joined the United States in an enterprise now widely (though far from universally) seen as a fiasco. Should this deter us from considering direct military intervention in Syria? Or should we be prepared to do whatever we think is necessary to bring a swift end to a war that has already inflicted such pain upon the people of that despairing country?

What’s your view?

  • Do you think that the current policy, of encouraging talks between the two sides and imposing an arms embargo, still stands a chance of ending the civil war?
  • Do you think Britain is right to take sides in the civil war and demand that President Assad leaves office?
  • Do you think the EU should end its arms embargo and be ready to supply the rebels with the weaponry it wants?
  • What do you make of the argument that arming the rebels risks extending rather than shortening the war and that those weapons could end up in the hands of those jihadists hostile to the west?
  • Do you think Britain should be ready or not to act independently of the EU if it cannot get agreement on its terms as to what should happen when the EU arms embargo comes up for review in May?
  • Should Britain be ready to consider direct military intervention on the side of the rebels in Syria?
  • And at a more fundamental level, do you think Britain’s policy should be determined by trying to achieve a specific outcome to the civil war, or should it steer clear of the whole conflict, indifferent to what the final outcome may be?

Let us know your views.