Six months into the Arab Spring, the ongoing carnage in Syria is a tragic reminder of how far parts of the Middle East have yet to travel on their putative journey to democracy. Although the authorities have banned foreign media and shut down phone and Internet connections in rebellious parts of the country, they have failed to prevent the transmission of provocative footage about what is taking place behind the media blackout. CNN recently broadcast an unverified video clip in which fresh corpses were hauled from a pickup truck and tossed off a bridge into a river. As the unidentified men in the footage disposed of the bodies they shouted “Brother of a whore!” “Animals!” and “Dogs!” (The government claims the footage shows rebels disposing of security forces; rebels say the reverse is true.) Other footage shows dozens of freshly dug graves in rebel territory. There is even a Facebook gallery of photographs that appear to show government snipers establishing themselves atop tall buildings in Deraa, in preparation for renewed assaults on the anti-government protests that have now lasted more than five months.
The ongoing horrors in Hama and Deraa make it clear that the government of President Assad is in no mood for compromise. For months the international community has spoken in support of the right to peaceful dissent, and cautioned the government against further violence. As far back as March, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that “the use of lethal force against peaceful demonstrators and their arbitrary arrests are unacceptable.” Ban called on the authorities “to abide by their international commitments regarding human rights which guarantee the freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom of the press and the right to peaceful assembly.”
In May, during a wide-ranging speech on how the Arab Spring would reshape US engagement in the Middle East, President Obama went even further. After making the bold promise that the region’s transition to democracy presented the chance to show that “America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator,” Obama stated bluntly that “The Syrian government must stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests [it must] start a serious dialogue to advance a democratic transition. Otherwise, President Assad and his regime will continue to be challenged from within and isolated abroad.” Yet, despite these stirring words, and targeted sanctions against senior figures in the government, Obama did not call for the resignation of Assad, as he had done with Hosni Mubarak, an American ally. After this ambivalent warning, Assad’s repression escalated. To date more than 1,500 protesters have been killed and the figure has been rising steadily.
Part of the problem is President Obama’s loss of credibility. Besieged at home, most recently with the lack of economic growth and the narrowly averted debt default crisis, he has regularly tried to shore up his image with over-ambitious gestures on the international stage. As David Bromwich recently observed in The New York Review of Books, “Obama has always preferred the symbolic authority of the grand utterance to the actual authority of a directed policy: a policy fought for in particulars, carefully sustained, and traceable to his own intentions.” And when Obama does furnish details they can be embarrassingly naive. At the outset of the Libya campaign, he said it would last “days, not weeks.” Several months later, with no likely prospect of imminent peace, that initial assurance seems hopelessly out of touch with the realities of war.
Undeterred by Washington’s lack of success, and by the UN debates which have reportedly continued round the clock but still managed to be entirely inconsequential, ordinary Syrians continue to brave the murderous assaults of the security forces with astonishing courage. A professor of Middle East studies in Washington DC recently told a Guardian reporter that “The protests are swelling constantly… The regime’s violence is increasingly counterproductive and what is remarkable is that there is no protester fatigue … [In Damascus] you can cut the tension with a knife. Damascus looks like it’s about to explode.” When this happens, the increasingly isolated Assad government will probably turn to Iran for further support, deepening uncertainty among the region’s tyrannical regimes and tempting them – especially with the humiliations of the Mubarak trial fresh in their minds – to even greater levels of violent repression. If it is serious about living up to its high rhetoric about street vendors and the “raw power” of dictators, the United States – and the United Nations – have just a small and narrowing window of opportunity to make a difference in Syria.