Case Against Intervention in Syria

When the protests started on the 15 of March, 2011, during the Arab Spring, the world had started to look at another Arab country with a dictator whose time was up. It had three major similarities to the other protests which made the world reason that President Bashar al-Assad time was up. He like Ben Ali, Qaddafi, Mubarak and Saleh had:

• Ruled his country for a considerable amount of time, 12 years to be exact.
• His government had a terrible human rights record, among the worst in the world.
• High youth unemployment rates and deterioration of standard of living.
• Western countries supporting the opposition.

However this is where the similarities stop and a new scenario is presented in an entirely new country. Syria is not the same as the countries mentioned above. Unlike Mubarak and Ben Ali, the military still supports Al-Assad. Unlike Qaddafi, he still has 3 major allies, 2 with veto power in the United Nation Security Council. If there is a major military intervention by the west it will no longer be considered a civil war, it will become a proxy war, because it is not simply the matter of a dictator who is a bad and everyone who is against him is automatically good. What started out as a protest by the people has become a very complicated scenario where one cannot be sure of who to support. 

First we need to understand why foreign intervention is wrong and what foreign intervention would mean. Firstly the problem with foreign intervention is that people will not be voting on who the military aid should go to. It will not be a democracy; in fact the countries giving the aid will decide. So in effect out of the several rebel groups that have sprung about, the ones supported by the west will actually win this civil war not those supported by the people. The rebel groups which the Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Turkey supports will be likely to win by an intervention these groups would not necessarily be true representation of the people. This distinction is important to make as it makes us realize that by intervention we will not be supporting the right of the people to rule, instead will be appointing a puppet ruler much like the case in Afghanistan. If we do look at the situation of Afghanistan, the western intervention did topple a totalitarian regime there and put there a western backed government as has been proposed for Syria. Yet Afghanistan is in a state of utter chaos with the government accused of massive corruption and human rights problem still exists.
 
The question remains is Syria any different? With an unorganized rebel group, who is to lead the country after the civil war if the rebels win? A war within the civil war is brewing in Syria. It is a battle of ideas, a struggle for the overall direction of the insurgency that is pitting moderate-Muslims against Salafists, jihadists and other Islamist groups. With the West backing the moderates and Saudi Arabia backing the Islamist, the Syrian civil war may lose its identity and become a proxy war where the victor would be decided on the basis of foreign support not domestic support which really matters when we look at what everyone in the world is presumably supporting, true democracy.

Muneeb Hussain