On RAI with Paul Jay, Phyllis Bennis examines the coming Geneva conference on Syria and the unwillingness of the West to deal with the humanitarian crisis. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced December 10, 2013, with Paul Jay.
TRANSCRIPT
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. Iâm Paul Jay. And welcome to Reality Asserts Itself now with Phyllis Bennis, who now joins us in the studio.
Thanks for joining us again, Phyllis.
PHYLLIS BENNIS, FELLOW, INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES: Great to be back with you.
JAY: So just quickly, Phyllis is the director of New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and sheâs written all kinds of books. And if you look down below the video player, youâll see the full biography. And if you watch the earlier segments, I list them all. So letâs just get into it.
Today itâs been reported in the British press that General Idris, who is a former general in the Syrian army and is now the head of the Free Syrian Army, has done a couple of things that seem significant. One, they seem to have dropped their demand that Assad has to step down before theyâre going to go to Geneva for some kind of peace negotiations. And two, let me read a quote from the The Independent:
âGeneral Salim Idris, the [now] commander of the Free Syrian Army warned that in particular Isis (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham), with thousands of foreign fighters in its ranks, was âvery dangerous for the future of Syriaâ and needs to be confronted before it becomes even more powerful.â
And in the report, Idris actually goes on to say that heâs willing to collaborate with the conventional current Syrian army to fight against these Islamic radicals. Thereâs some interesting shifts going on here.
BENNIS: There are, and itâs really a reflection of just how escalating this war in Syria is. I mean, thereâs now really six separate wars underway in Syria. There is the overall war between a large part of the population and the regime. Thereâs a regional war for power, largely between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Thereâs a sectarian war between Sunni and Shia. Thereâs the war between the U.S. and Israel versus Iran. Thereâsâyou know, all of these wars are being fought inside Syria to the last Syrian. Thatâs whoâs paying the price.
JAY: And it includesâ
BENNIS: And now one of them, one of the warsâ.
JAY: âHezbollah and their fight with Israel.
BENNIS: Right.
And one of the wars, of course, is the war thatâs emerging within, letâs say, the war within the opposition to the Assad regime, which is the opposition between the FSA, the Free Syrian Army, the secular parts who donât have as many fighters, as well-armed fighters, as well-trained fighters as the Islamist forces, some of whom are these al-Qaeda types. And thatâs a growing, emerging war.
So the situation in Syria is very, very serious and getting worse on a daily basis.
Whatâs, I think, important to recognize, though, is that the Free Syrian Army, like its civilian counterpart, the national syrian opposition, neither canâno leader can speak on behalf of everybody connected to either the Free Syrian Army or their civilian counterpart.
Idris can say what he believes. This is a shift for him, to say that they would participate in the so-called Geneva II talks, which are supposed to convene sometime early in January, peace talks aimed at hopefully ending this horrific war. But he reallyâitâs not clear how many people in his forces he can speak for who would agree either with his position about agreeing to participate without a guarantee that Assad would step down or agreeing to go to war against the Islamist forces, the pro-al-Qaeda forces. All of that remains very uncertain. And the same is true on the civilian side.
So itâs very messy. And it means itâs very difficult for the governments that are sponsoring these talks, the U.S. and the Russians at the center, but also Iran, also Turkey, also Jordan, also, crucially, Saudi Arabia, how they interact with the various forces on the ground, because they are hearing different things from different people.
JAY: Iâm a little surprised, I think (I shouldnât be, but I am a little), how little attentionâs being paid to what is probably the biggest humanitarian catastrophe on the planet at the moment. The Syrian people are caught between the Syrian government thatâs committed untold were crimes against themâand itâs been well documentedâand the growing force of the al-Qaeda type forces that seem to be the dominantâhave taken over most of the opposition fighting, who themselves have committed untold war crimes against the Syrian people.
BENNIS: Absolutely. Absolutely. Thereâs been were crimes on all sides.
JAY: Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of refugees, and you cannot pick up a newspaper and find it on the front page anywhere. Like, the odd time, you get a refugee story, and then everyone moves on.
BENNIS: And, of course, itâs going to get worse. Thereâs now more than 2.1 million Syrian refugees outside the country, of whom half, 50 percent, are children. And the real disaster is coming now in the winter, because people are living in tents, and the winter in Syria, Lebanon, Turkeyâthat whole area where the refugees are gets very, very coldâheavy snow, lots of rain. These tents are no protection. Children are already undernourished, lacking in medical care. They havenât been to school. Theyâre in very bad shape. And when it gets really cold, their immune systems are going to collapse. And weâre going to be seeing massive casualties. And it is a disaster.
The UN has been trying to get more money. Some of the pledged money has not come in. Some of the pledges have not been sufficient. So the whole question of how this is going to be dealt with is on the front agenda only for people who are already involved in the core of humanitarian aid work. As you say, itâs not on the front pages of newspapers.
JAY: And we know, if you look at even statements from Israeli pundits and American right-wing pundits and others, itâs actually almost that is the policyâlet Syrians kill each other. And you had people like Daniel Pipes even articulate it. But Iâve seen it in other places, in the Israeli press, you know, make sure you keep a balance of arms, donât let any side win, just make thereâs enough going on that people keep killing.
BENNIS: This is the old model that the U.S. used to some effect in the Iran-Iraq War through the whole decade of the 1980s. You know, this was a situation where you had two countries who were historically the only two countries in the Middle East who could become regional powers, regional hegemons, meaning they had size of land and population, they had wealth from oil, and they had water. Only two countries in the region had all three. That was Iran and Iraq. So they were constantly competing with each other.
When they went to war, the U.S. looked at that and said, wow, this kind of cool. If these guys keep killing each other, theyâll diminish their treasure, theyâll diminish the size of their armies, theyâll be killing their each other, and they wonât bother challenging us. So what do we do to make sure they keep fighting each other? We look at who is the weaker one, which in that case wasâIraq was the weaker party. Thatâs why the U.S. went to war with on the side of Saddam Hussein, provided arms, provided moneyâto keep the fighting going.
Now, I donât think thatâs actually the same that weâre seeing in Syria today. I think that once the fighting began, there was a concernâand is a concern in Israel and other countriesâthat neither side win decisively. But I think itâs a little bit different than wanting to continue, because Israel, among others in the region, knows that the possibilities are huge and are already happening of massive refugee flows, huge medical crises, you know, the fact that the polio epidemic is beginning in Syria. That ignores national borders. That doesnât pay attention to national borders. That doesnât mean that Israeli is going to be immune from the polio virus if it gets into the water system, if it gets carried in the region. You know, this becomes very dangerous for Israelis as well.
So I think itâs incredibly shortsighted, those people who would look at it purely as a military issue and say, this is good, people are fighting. People are dying. People are dying of communicable diseases, people are dying from the cold, and people are being killed in wars.
JAY: And if this Geneva conference takes place, is it actually going to matter in the senseâis there anyone going to Geneva that has enough guns on the ground that if they agree to something it actually is meaningful?
BENNIS: I think that right now the Geneva II possibility is all there is. It has to mean something. And the only way it will is if the sponsors of the two sides, meaning the U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan on one side, and Iran, along with Russia, on the other side, plus Iraq and some of the other countries in the region, agree to stop arming both sides. Thatâs the only way itâs going to happen.
If thereâs not an arms embargo imposed as part of the Geneva II process, then it wonât work. If both sides keep getting all the arms they want, signing an agreement by somebody is not going to beânobodyâs going to abide by it. The only way itâs going to work is if thereâs a serious arms embargo. And that means that the most powerful countriesâthe U.S., Russia, Iranâhave to be at the table.
JAY: And the Saudisâ
BENNIS: And the Saudis.
JAY: âhave to actually agree [crosstalk]
BENNIS: Have to agree to it. And there has to be direct threats. So if the Saudis are not willing to impose an arms embargo, for instance, the U.S. has to be prepared to say, you know what? Weâre going to stop selling you our weapons. And theyâve got to get the French to say, and weâre not going to sell you any new ones.
JAY: Well, the odds of the United States saying theyâre not going toâthereâs a $20 billion naval contract going on. I think itâs inâ.
BENNIS: I know. Thereâs aâitâs a $60 billionâitâs the largestâ.
JAY: The United States is not going to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia.
BENNIS: No. Butâitâs not going to stop right away, but thereâs got to be some ability to use those arms sales as a lever to force the end of arming all sides in Syria. If we think that we can expect Iran and Russia to stop arming the Syrian regime, the only way thatâs going to happen is if we stop arming the other side.
It doesnât mean that they will then be equal. I mean, you have thisâthis is the Bosnia problem, this is an age-old problem: when one side starts out much more powerful, they remain more powerful if you just stop with the rearming at a moment. But youâve got to do that. Itâs got to start somewhere, that there has to be an end to the infinite amount of new arms that are flooding the country.
JAY: Now, thereâs a body of opinion that is in the Arab world particularly that sees the struggle against Assad as a revolutionary struggle. They see, you know, Assad as not just a war criminal in recent times but has been for a long time. And they say that the al-Qaeda piece of this is being exaggerated, that everyoneâs kind of getting on this now because theyâve all decided they justâtheyâre going to go with the status quo, essentially, Assad regime. So thereâs a lot of kind of exaggeration of the role of the al-Qaeda forces. And the kind of more, you know, revolutionary forces that want to overthrow Assad are not getting armed or are getting diminished in all this.
BENNIS: The tragedy is that much of whatâs going on right now in Syria has everything to do with how the voices of the original nonviolent democratic opposition movement have been silenced by the violence on all sides. They still exist. There is still a nonviolent political opposition in Syria. And amazingly, despite the fact that some of them have been killed, some have been arrested, some have been driven into exile, some of them survive and some of them have been going out into the streets over and over again with signs, with flags, mobilizing people at the local level to create local ceasefires, among other things, trying to rebuild the idea of a nonviolent political opposition movement.
The people of Syria certainly have the right to choose their own government. And for those who believe that this is a revolutionary process, that itâs part of the process of the Arab Spring, they have every right to do that.
The problem is, when the struggle becomes militarized, the consequences are enormous. And it doesnât do anybody any good to sit and say, well, they do or they donât have the right to take up arms. People take up arms. But there are consequences when they do. We saw it in Libya. Itâs not about people in Libya didnât have the right to take up arms against a terribly repressive regime. It was that once they did, there was a known quantity of what the opposition to that was going to look like and what the consequences were going to be. The same thing is true in Syria.
So, you know, I think that there is no question that the Islamist fighters are better armed, better trained, and have more experience. Theyâre coming in from all over the world, having fought in Iraq, having fought in Afghanistan. They are not coming as, you know, people who used to be college professors and peace activists who take up arms, who of course donât have the training, of course donât know how to use heavy weapons even if they could get them.
JAY: Iâm a little taken aback about just how little attention is being paid to the role of Saudi Arabia in all of this. The Saudis have clearly been driving all sections and giving money and arms to all sections of the Syrian opposition, but including the al-Qaeda elements. Theyâre obviously well funded. We know the Saudis have a history of making use of terror networks.
BENNIS: Thatâs true. But I think we also know that other countries are doing it as wellâthe U.A.E. Qatar has been playing all sides of the game in Syria, all sides of the opposition. So this is not justâ.
JAY: Yeah, this is all Gulf, GCC countries, yes.
BENNIS: Right. This is not just the Saudis. And I think thatâ.
JAY: But the Saudis and Qatar had a big falling out over Egypt,â
BENNIS: They did.
JAY: âand apparently itâsâ
BENNIS: And thatâs also true in Syria.
JAY: âexpressed itself in Syria. Yeah.
BENNIS: They fund different sources. Itâs not true, I donât think, thatâI mean, Iâm not on the ground, so Iâm not sure, but from what Iâm hearing, I donât think itâs true that the Saudis are funding everyone. Theyâre funding their people that they see are carrying outâthat are willing to take their arms and are carrying out the struggle they see. For Qatar itâs the same thing. Theyâre funding other political and Islamist forces. Turkey is facilitating a lot of that. Jordan is facilitating it. Jordan is also allowing the CIA to train Free Syrian Army people on Jordanian territory. So everybody in the region is complicit in one way or another. Theyâre all looking to a postwar Syria and looking to how are we going to have more influence. Nobodyâs looking at the Syrian people.
JAY: So what should Americans demand of U.S. foreign policy?
BENNIS: That we should not be arming anyone, that we should goâthat the U.S. should continue the momentum towards the Geneva II talks and do so with a willingness and an urgency to impose a complete arms embargo on all sides and demand that from the other side as well. We should up by a huge margin the amount of money weâre paying to the United Nations for humanitarian relief, and we should be pushing governments in the region to take larger number of refugees. And we should be willing to take refugees if there are any who want to come to the United States. Thatâs a big question. But we should be doing far more on the humanitarian side than we are. And we should demand that we take much more seriously the role that the United States needs to play if these peace talks are going to have any success.
JAY: Okay. In the next segment of our interview, weâre going to imagine what might be a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All observers think this is certainly one critical issue at the heart of the tensions and crisis in the Middle East. Itâs certainly not all, âcause, I mean, in my view, even if this thing was solved, it would not eliminate the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the fight over oil and all the rest of that, but itâs clearly one of the most important issues. So weâre going to talk about what might a solution look like with Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network.