03 Sep 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: BDlive
With South Africa’s position
on the internationalisation of the Syrian conflict still deeply ambivalent, it
is perhaps time to get on the right side of human rights, writes Tony Leon
A US policymaker once described North Korea as "the land of lousy
options". If that taxonomy is accurate, then Syria must rank, for both the
US and the world, as North Korea on steroids. Its civil war has killed about
100,000 of its citizens over the past two years, and just two weeks ago
evidence emerged that chemical weapons were used in precision bombing in the
suburbs of Damascus. More than 1,400 people were killed, including 426
children, many of whom were "gassed as they slept … and awoke gasping for
breath", according to medical witnesses.
More than 90 years ago, the world — seared by the experience of poison
gas in the First World War — outlawed the use of such weapons. Winston
Churchill wrote of the "hellish poison of German mustard gas", which
in the Battle of Ypres alone killed 5,000 and wounded 10,000. The escalation of
tit-for-tat chemical attacks in the Great War ultimately killed 100,000 people.
In the words of Samantha Power, a human rights scholar and the US ambassador to
the United Nations, "the gases blistered the skin and singed the lungs.
The deaths were slow, the last days of life ghastly". In 1925, the Geneva
Protocol prohibited in war or conflict the use of "asphyxiating, poisonous
or other gases" and it is widely agreed that this convention is part of
international customary law. In 1930, South Africa became a treaty party.
More than a year ago, US President Barack Obama faced searing domestic
and international criticism for his reluctance to take a decisive stand on the
conflict in Syria. He was accused by some of "leading from behind".
But last August he announced that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian
regime of Bashar al-Assad would mean it had "crossed a red line". Of
course, as Obama told his country this weekend, "Americans are war
weary". The invasion of Iraq, essentially on a false prospectus of its
possession of weapons of mass destruction, which ultimately turned out not to
exist, has had profound consequences for the international order and some of
its key protagonists.
Of course, the evidence of the use of such chemical weapons, and by
whom, still remains to be proven conclusively. On Friday, US Secretary of State
John Kerry — ironically now with the support of France, a staunch opponent of
the Iraq invasion, but shorn of British approbation — laid out a strong case
that the Assad regime used such weapons. He offered "high confidence"
rather than proof beyond all doubt and indicated that the US would respond.
Obama now requires the US Congress to green-light a response which will hit the
regime with precision missiles, although not with a full-scale invasion.
On any version, it is clear that the Assad regime possesses stockpiles
of chemical weapons — including mustard, sarin and VX — and also has the
warheads to launch them. Such possession and capacity are beyond the reach of
its opponents.
South Africa’s position on the internationalisation of this conflict
remains deeply ambivalent. Almost from the beginning of the "Arab
Spring", South Africa has been — in the words of The Economist – "all
over the map". Surprisingly, and to some of us pleasingly, in March 2011,
we parted with Russia and China and supported United Nations (UN) Security
Council resolution 1973, which established a "no-fly zone" over
Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. But almost immediately, the government resiled from
the consequences of its vote.
From the moment the fires of the "Arab Spring" were lit in
Syria, our position down the road of inconsistency has gathered pace. Ignoring
the brutal nature of the Assad regime and its energetic slaughtering of its own
population, South Africa’s ambassador to Syria, for example, announced that the
social media used by regime opponents to expose its excesses created
"false distortions". The Department of International Relations and
Co-operation has pursued in its public pronouncements an extraordinary policy of
spectacular even-handedness between the regime and its opponents. This could be
interpreted as temporising with tyranny.
Last week, while correctly condemning the use of chemical weapons as
"wholly unacceptable", the government announced that any attack on
Syria "without a UN Security Council resolution would constitute a grave
violation of international law".
Of course, this standard for military intervention has been recently
breached by South Africa itself. Our military intervention earlier this year in
the Central African Republic had no council approval. The Nato campaign to
prevent the ethnic slaughter in Kosovo was widely welcomed, but also had no UN
imprimatur. In the latter case, of course, just as with Syria now, Russia’s
veto would have crippled any such resolution.
The eminent human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC, no poodle of
warmongers, put it best: "International law does not prevent action to
stop international crime."
Time for us, perhaps, to get on the right side of human rights.
• Leon is the author of The
Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on
Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA
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