Patrick Cockburn: Diplomacy has failed to stop the suffering in Syria’s tragic war

This war is being decided on the battlefield, not by negotiations: our priority now should be helping civilians

Stalemate: thousands of people are trapped by the advance on East Aleppo by the Russian-backed Syrian army

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12 October 2016

Russian and Syrian aircraft are pounding the rebel enclave of East Aleppo, which is besieged and isolated from the outside world. Some 250,000 to 275,000 civilians and 8,000 fighters are trapped there, with every likelihood that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces will go on attacking until they win or the rebels leave. Hospitals and care centres are being systematically destroyed. UN aid convoys are being denied access by government forces.

It is a moment to consider what can be done to stop the suffering and save those who have not already been killed or maimed by the rain of shells and bombs. The emergency debate on Aleppo in the House of Commons yesterday did not provide many feasible ideas on how to do this but then such solutions are hard to find and may not exist. Other than as an expression of rage, talk of imposing a no-fly zone in which Russian and Syrian planes would be shot down is a silly diversion, since the US, Britain and their allies are not going to go to war against Russia or its Syrian ally.

The absence of a British policy was underlined by Boris Johnson’s call for “demonstrations outside the Russian embassy” as a protest against the bombing of civilian targets in Aleppo by Russian aircraft. But overall his approach was cautious and he distanced himself from calls for a no-fly zone over parts of Syria, saying: “We cannot commit to a no-fly zone unless we are prepared to confront and perhaps shoot down planes or helicopters that violate that zone. We need to think very carefully about the consequences.”

The truth is that there is no panacea for ending the war in Syria. The intensity of the violence is too great. There are too many players with divergent interests inside and outside the country to agree to a general ceasefire. This was demonstrated by the failure of the week-long ceasefire negotiated by Russia and the US in September, in what was the most serious attempt to agree a truce in five years of fighting. In the event, it turned out that the Syrian government believes it is winning the war and does not want to stop it. The armed opposition is dominated by Islamic State and Fatah al-Sham, formerly the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria known as the al-Nusra Front, neither of which were included in the ceasefire and had no reason to abide by it.

It may be that, as super-powers, the US and Russia are not as super as they used to be, in the sense that neither side was able to force its allies to give full support for the ceasefire. It is not clear how far either Moscow or Washington really tried hard to do so. There was always mystery over the real attitude to the ceasefire of Iran, which leads a powerful axis of Shia states and movements in the shape of Iraq and Hezbollah of Lebanon. The Shia in all these countries see the war in Syria as a struggle in which their very existence is at stake and which they have every intention of winning.

If there is going to be another ceasefire in Syria, then Russia and Iran will have to be part of it because they are such important participants in the conflict. Denouncing Russia as a pariah or calling for more sanctions against it may give rhetorical satisfaction to some, but it does nothing to help bring the conflict under control or mitigate the suffering of civilians.

The most immediate priority should be how to save the people of East Aleppo. The UN says half of them want to leave. The UN Special Envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has bravely offered to accompany them out of the city and suggested they relocate to the rebel-held Idlib province. But there are serious difficulties in arranging this because people in East Aleppo either do not want to go to Idlib or to deliver themselves to the mercies of the Syrian secret police. The extreme Islamists such as Fatah al-Sham do not want to give up East Aleppo tamely. To do so would be to admit that the great Syrian rebellion has failed. Assad is increasing his control of Damascus, where he is eliminating rebel enclaves. If he captures all of Aleppo he will be unassailable, something which may be true already.

'Denouncing Russia as a pariah or calling for more sanctions does nothing to help bring the conflict under control'

 <p>Patrick Cockburn</p>

The rebels will not want to see themselves driven from their last urban strongholds and confined to the countryside. They have always had an incentive to keep civilians with them as human shields. In some IS-held areas a five-storey apartment block may have three floors where families live, and two of which are occupied by fighters. Inability to distinguish civilians from fighters leads to massive destruction. The Russian and Syrian air forces may be destroying East Aleppo but in Iraq the US-led air coalition largely demolished the city of Ramadi, which had been held by IS. The care taken to avoid civilian casualties may differ from air force to air force, but in general their tactics are similar. The next few months will tell if this is going to happen in Mosul, the one large city that is still held by IS.

It may be that the evacuation of East Aleppo under the auspices of the UN would be seen as handing a victory to Assad. But he is probably going to win there anyway. This is the current trend in the war, with Assad tightening his grip on Damascus, Homs and Aleppo, and becoming more confident by the day. These advances could be reversed by one or more outside powers upping their support for the opposition by supplying them with arms, ammunition and money, but this does not seem to be happening. For now the outcome of the war is being decided on the battlefield and not by diplomacy.

Patrick Cockburn’s latest book, The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East (Verso, £20), has just been published.

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