It's Not Enough

Aleppo, 2012

"Within the world the way it is, some policing will always be necessary; policing will sometimes involve restraint; restraint will sometimes involve violence. Not to admit this is to risk colluding with the bullies who are waiting in the wings for good people to remove controls."

Tom Wright, Creation, Power and Truth, p 64

It's not enough to simply say that some ruler, or government, or other authority is corrupt and abuses its power, so it should be removed. We live in a fallen world and all authorities are prone to do that to a greater or lesser extent. If you remove authority and allow anarchy to take its place the result is all too often an illustration of just how evil human nature can get.

Syria is a recent illustration of this. Before March 2011 Syria was under a long-term Emergency Law, which allowed extensive government oppression. Over the period from spring 2011 to summer 2012, with extensive western encouragement, unrest and protest escalated into full-scale civil war. An oppressive climate transformed into an out-of-control fratricidal bloodbath, with enormous suffering and no sign of any sort of long term solution arising out of the mess. Not to mention all the foreigners coming in and further destabilising the situation.

Of course, not everybody sees this is a bad thing: the Syrian civil war alters the balance of power between Saudi Arabia and Iran - one a western ally, the other not - as well as leaving serious instability on the borders of Russia. Would anyone, politician or newspaper owner, see this as in any way justifying the evil of an unnecessary civil war? Of course they would, we live in a fallen world.

Tom Wright's quote above was originally in the context of the need for some form of trans-national policing, which can be seen across the board as fair and effective. The US and UK have no credibility in that respect, especially in the Middle East, and have done no good to the authority of the UN in the process.

It's not enough to simply change the ruling class and expect anything to change for the better. Change has to start amongst the people: in civil institutions, in people working together for the common good. Change has to start with conversation and cooperation not with violence. If the authorities are too rigid then change may well eventually involve destruction and violence, but only as a last resort, and only when there is a civil society which can step in to rebuild and continue, speedily and without anarchy.

It looks as though Egypt has fallen at this hurdle - they failed to distinguish between true democracy, which involves a range of civil institutions with checks and balances, and a winner-takes-all majority rule, leading them straight back to yet another military coup (strongly backed by US and Israeli interests, it seems).

It's not enough to say "something must be done" and pressure governments into unhelpful interventions. It certainly isn't helpful for foreigners to get involved directly in another country's internal conflicts - a civil war already has too many factions fighting one another, without bringing in ignorant outsiders to further stir things up.

What would be helpful would be to support strong governance at a grassroots level, to promote fairness and equality internationally - not treating countries as pawns in global power games - and to find better ways of addressing conflicting needs and demands without violence.

To put it another, arguably more religious, way: we need to support justice and peace, whilst recognising that we live in a fallen world. In a Christian context 'justice' is always restorative justice - restoring creation to the way it was made to be - not retributive justice, which has little or nothing to do with peace.

Is The West Making Syrian Suffering Worse?

The 'Arab Spring' hit Syria in March last year when security forces arrested and tortured a group of teenagers - for painting revolutionary slogans on their school's walls. They opened fire on the resulting protest march, killing four, and again at a funeral for the victims, killing at least one more. As a display of brutal incompetence by the Syrian regime it is hard to see how this could have been beaten.

Before that commentators were generally agreed that Syria was unlikely to be seriously affected by the changes affecting the more southerly autocratic regimes in the region. Although far from democratic, President Bashar Al-Assad was seen as reasonably popular within Syria, had already brought in some mild reform, and represented stability and security in a large country with a varied population. Opposition and protest groups were fragmented and localised; Syrians saw the possibility of breakdown, even civil war, and were thought to be horrified at the risk. The horrible example of neighbouring Iraq made it all too clear what could happen.

The trouble is that all those arguments still stand, except that Assad isn't doing so well at imposing security himself. Syria is currently headed toward anarchy and civil war, and Western intervention is just making chaos more likely. The Independent reports that the death toll to date is thought to be around 10,000, whilst a further 1.5 million are estimated to need 'urgent humanitarian assistance'.

Meanwhile the spotlight of the Western media is on every minor uprising, encouraging revolt to happen and criticising every attempt to prevent rebellion from growing. The publicising of the violence leads to pressure from consumers of the media to 'do something', without any idea what that 'something' is. So now Western leaders are again talking about 'regime change'.

We've been here before, in Iraq. Years of sanctions which hit the poorest, and limited oil-sale schemes which benefited the corrupt, until finally the West got the invasion it wanted and Iraqis got anarchy. At least in Iraq the regime had been genuinely evil: something like a million people had suffered and died under Saddam Hussein, so the half-million plus who died under US rule could, arguably, be said to be vaguely proportionate.

Under Bashar Al-Assad, the only report of significant regime killings I can find was at the 2004 Al-Qamishli riots, where clashes between Arabs and Kurds, combined with police brutality, led to some 30 deaths (some reports set the figure as high as a hundred). Since the Western media focussed on Syria the death toll is well up in the thousands; if full-scale civil war or other form of anarchy breaks out then that will be in the hundreds of thousands, maybe even worse. Brutal suppression of rebellion can be bloody; sometimes the alternative can be worse.

It is notable that the diplomatic games around Syria refuse to involve Iran: if there was a serious interest in peace then Iran and Russia are the two states with a realistic chance of making a difference, but peace and justice are really not the name of the game here. If they were then the focus would be much more on the Arab Gulf states, particularly Bahrain, where a tiny but immensely wealthy regime oppresses the majority of citizens with little more than token complaints from its Western 'friends'.

I'm not saying that Assad is a good leader, nor that Syria is anything other than autocratic and corrupt. But what's happening there now isn't part of an 'Arab Spring' movement toward democracy. It's small localised revolts which are gradually growing towards outright civil war; and civil war is very bad indeed for the people of a country.

So, next time you see a news report of deaths in Syria, before you indulge in self-righteous indignation and claim 'something must be done' ... just take a moment to think that it is likely that your 'something' will just make matters worse. By responding like that you may well be a part of the problem.