What now?

Bashar al Assad and his opponents have now both rejected Kofi Annan’s mission impossible.  On behalf of the UN and the Arab League, he sought a ceasefire, followed by humanitarian aid and dialogue on a political solution.

This failure was not surprising.  His was always a low-probability proposition.  But the rejection came faster than I anticipated.  I’d have guessed that Bashar would see some benefit in stringing Annan along.

Instead he slapped Annan’s proposition down without hesitation, grabbing some World Health Organization support for a Syrian Red Crescent mission to assess health needs in conflict areas.  Not bad:  wage war against your own population, then get the internationals to pay for your own cronies to assess the damage.

Bashar is feeling his cheerios.  Russian support is holding.  Arab threats to arm his opponents seem not much more than hot air at this point.  Lots of small arms are getting in to Syria, but they won’t do much against Bashar’s armor and artillery. Defections are growing, but the numbers are small and they still have not reached into the inner circle.

It is a bit harder to explain the attitude of the opposition, which is feeling abandoned by the West and not much supported in the East.  They’d have gained more from supporting Annan’s initiative, and then having Bashar reject it, than by opposing it from the first. They want Bashar out before dialogue can take place, which I understand perfectly well.  But they just don’t have the horsepower at the moment to make it happen.

Many, though not all, in the opposition want arms for the Free Syrian Army, the network of defectors who have refused to fire on demonstrators and taken up the cudgels against Bashar.  The problem is that arming the opposition will prolong the civil war and make it ever more sectarian, which is precisely what the West does not want.

The opposition’s main hope is international military intervention against Bashar, which still seems to me a distant prospect.  An American military attack on Syria without Security Council approval and in the midst of a high-stakes diplomatic duel with Iran over its nuclear program is unlikely.  Washington will want to keep its powder dry for the main battle.  Europe is absorbed in its defense of the Euro.

A combined Turkish/Arab attack on Syria is theoretically possible.  But without Security Council approval and extensive U.S. support, it risks political and military failure.  There are already far too many hints of a broad and prolonged Sunni/Shia war in the Middle East.  Do we really want to throw fuel on that fire?

This leaves us with few alternatives other than continuing to support the opposition, to isolate the Syrian regime and to press the Russians and Chinese to stop shielding Bashar from even a mild UNSC resolution.  The only big question is whether the support should include whatever the opposition needs to take up arms.  This includes not only the arms themselves but also intelligence support and training.  The opposition lacks real-time information on the disposition of the army and its checkpoints, a deficiency that is too often deadly to militants trying to move around Syria.

I’ve opposed arming the opposition, on grounds that doing so militarizes the fight and shifts it to means that favor the regime.  The same argument does not work for intelligence support, which is vital to protecting the opposition whether it takes up arms or not.  Our overhead capabilities are stunning.  If the opposition can organize itself to make effective use of real-time intelligence data to protect its adherents, we should be providing it.

I am at a loss as to what to recommend beyond that.  This is one of those situations where there are bad options and worse ones.  I don’t see a route out of the current impasse, other than the one Annan failed to sell to both sides.

What is happening in Syria is extraordinarily cruel and ugly.  Bashar is mowing down people who are asking for no more than the freedom to decide their own fates.  His moment of accountability will arrive, but for the moment we don’t seem to have a way of making it arrive sooner rather than later.

PS:  Annan declared himself optimistic after a second meeting with Bashar al Assad today (Sunday).  Hard to know what to make of that.  The Arab League seems to have softened its demand that Bashar step aside, leading the Russians to sound a bit more helpful.  The opposition should be getting ready to have its arm twisted to talk with the regime before Bashar is removed.  Meetings at the UN Security Council this afternoon and tomorrow are likely to lead in that “optimistic” direction.