Truce in Syria fails

Opinion: April 30, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

By Poppy McPherson

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting

LONDON

Experts warn that the U.N. observer mission to Syria will have no impact on the ongoing violence unless its numbers are significantly increased and it is given considerably more freedom and power.

Seven unarmed U.N. military observers were deployed to Syria to monitor the ceasefire announced on April 12, and to prepare for the arrival of a larger contingent of up to 250 monitors.

But the violence has continued despite the supposed truce, with activists and international aid groups arguing that the mission lacks the power to stop abuses.

Adam Simons, director of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, said the mission “needs to be rapidly expanded in size and scope,” and warns that the conflict could descend into a severe humanitarian crisis if the international community fails to act.

“History has been unforgiving in response to international inaction and frailty in Rwanda and Bosnia during the 1990s,” he added.

The observers are supposed to monitor the implementation of a six-point plan to halt the violence proposed by Kofi Annan, the joint U.N. and Arab League envoy for Syria.

The preliminary agreement between Damascus and the U.N. on their deployment calls on the Syrian government to “implement visibly” its commitment to a ceasefire, to ensure the observers are freed to travel anywhere in the country, to take pictures and to use technology to check compliance with the ceasefire.

But the monitors have so far not ventured beyond the suburbs of Damascus and have been forbidden from visiting Homs, the city considered the center of the uprising, where protests have continued despite ongoing shelling.

No agreement has yet been reached on whether aircraft can be deployed as part of the observer mission, despite calls by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to send in helicopters to get a clearer view of developments.

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said that even a force of a few hundred would be too small to operate in a country with a population of more than 22 million.

“The regime controls access and who will be coming in and out,” he said. “In a perfect world, this would be a perfectly independent and transparent mission, but of course the regime doesn’t want that.”

An echo

Akil Hashim, a retired brigadier-general in the Syrian army who now lives in Paris and is involved with the opposition, said the military observer mission was little more than an echo of the failed Arab League initiative in January, in which observers dispatched to Syria failed to calm the situation.

He accused the international community of a “lack of determination to intervene in Syria,” and called on the U.N. to establish buffer zones on its borders.

Radwan Ziadeh, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, SNC, said that the whole idea of sending in observers was flawed.

“I don’t see any point in expanding the mission. It will not work,” he said. “What can they do? Crimes against humanity have been well documented. We need a practical way to stop the killing.”

Poppy McPherson is a contributor to IWPR, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict.