Where humanitarian and strategic interests intersect

Thursday afternoon, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy hosted a policy discussion about US strategic interests and the humanitarian disaster in Syria. Featured speakers were former UK foreign secretary David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, and Robert Ford, a US diplomat retiring after serving as ambassador to Syria (he left there in October 2011). Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute, moderated.

Though it engulfs a large part of the Middle East,  many people no longer want to talk about the Syrian crisis, Miliband said.  It has become the defining humanitarian crisis of our time for all the wrong reasons.  The humanitarian community has failed to rise to the challenge posed by dictatorship, sectarianism, and geopolitics.

Massive humanitarian efforts have failed because they don’t meet the needs.  About 9.5 million people have been displaced from their homes. The UN says about 3.5 million Syrians are cut off from aid. Inside Syria the idea of “civilian” is lost.  Everyone is treated as a combatant, which contravenes international law.

Neighboring countries are overwhelmed.  Lebanon now has more than a million refugees. Jordan has 650, 000 registered refugees and an equal number of unregistered refugees. The refugees have been displaced multiple times within Syria before escaping. Currently there are 88,000 Syrian children in Lebanon going to school.  This leaves 300, 000 Syrian children who have had no education for the last three years. The UN has appealed for $5.5 billion but only $1 billion has been committed.

With the political process stalled, the humanitarian situation is worsening.  It took three years to get a UN Security Council resolution on humanitarian aid. Government restrictions on the UN and non-governmental organizations working in Syria have hampered aid to at least 12 of 14 governorates. With the winter over, the IRC is concerned with spring and summer, when infectious disease could become rampant.  Lack of access and the humanitarian crisis are not an unfortunate byproduct of a war without law. They are the strategic result of a war without law.

Miliband urges every member of the UN Security Council and other interested countries to name a humanitarian envoy, a diplomat of distinction with support from the head of a government,  to broker a ceasefire. Governments should also undertake cross-border humanitarian operations. If he had told an audience three years ago that 160,000 Syrians would die, several million would be displaced, and a large number would be tortured by their government, the response would have been, “We must do something.” We need make sure that our senses aren’t dulled.

Ford emphasized that the US government is hugely concerned about the crisis. It is the largest single donor to Syrian relief efforts, having committed $1.7 billion. Additional money is being provided to local communities where the regime has lost control. The US is providing rescue equipment and food, and now it is paying salaries of some teachers and police.

The situation is nevertheless deteriorating.  People in refugee camps are the lucky ones. The ones that are really suffering are still inside Syria and under blockade. According to the latest UN estimates, Syrian government forces have 175, 000 civilians under blockade. They are located primarily in the Damascus suburbs. Blockading aid convoys contravenes the Geneva Convention.  It is illegal and outrageous. The regime is starving people into ceasefires and eventually surrender. In return for armed opposition forces giving up heavy weaponry, the civilians are granted access to food. The blockades are a regime tactic that will continue as long as the regime is fighting for its life.

Some argue that both sides are blockading civilians. The opposition has wrongly blockaded some small towns, but those are not airtight blockades. The opposition does not fully control access.  For example, food supplies come in from the north to pro-regime Kurdish areas. The opposition blockades are in no way justified, but they do not compare with the much more vigorous and extensive regime blockades.

If the fighting goes on for another three years, what kind of crisis will we face? What will the implications be for humanitarian assistance, state structures in the Levant, and the prevalence of extremists?

Miliband replied that the Syrian refugees he has spoken to know Assad will not be toppled tomorrow. They see the war lengthening. No one is expecting a quick resolution. Ideas about reconstruction have not really been developed. The dangers of communicable diseases will rise over time if the crisis continues. Public health risks are massive even with sufficient food supplies. There are obvious dangers of a humanitarian and political explosion in neighboring countries. What is Lebanon’s capacity? There is an influx of 750 refugees a day into Lebanon. Lebanese asking themselves, what gives?  But there is no incentive for the regime to make necessary compromises. It is a very bleak situation.

Ford thought in 2012 that the regime’s days were numbered. What changed was assistance to the regime. Who could have imagined Hezbollah would send 5-6,000 soldiers?  Russia has increased assistance as well. This has enabled the regime to take and hold the area from Damascus up to Homs and over to Latakia.  In the short or medium term, the armed opposition will not be able to change that.  The country is being cantonized. Different factions of armed groups control different territories. There are six opposition groups that divide control in Abu Qamal.

The war of attrition inside Syria is between minority and majority. But it is also a war of attrition regionally between Sunni and Shia states. Assad is not the majority on either side of those divides.  Ultimately, he will lose.  But in the meanwhile the war leaves vast spaces governed by no one in particular or by bad guys. If the moderates don’t prevail against extremists, we will see a much more serious problem, as we have seen in the past in Afghanistan.