Annan’s plan remains our best hope for Syria

T he unwavering determination coupled with the relentless push by the UN Syrian envoy Kofi Annan to bring about a sustainable and meaningful negotiated settlement in the trouble-torn Mid-Eastern country of Syria deserves to be supported at all costs.

For, if Annan fails, the repercussions are simply too ghastly to contemplate. Too many Syrian men, women and children have thus far lost their lives in the 16-month-old crisis.

What is crystal clear, as well as curious, is that the rebels fighting to oust the regime of President Bashar al-Assad are dangerous and armed to the teeth. This factor alone bears the hallmarks of the diabolical events leading to the gruesome killing of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi by bandits masquerading as freedom fighters. The barbarism was as shocking as the subsequent muted condemnation by the handlers of the heavily armed thugs in western capitals. The Assad regime, for its part, has lost the legitimacy to rule over all the citizens of Syria. However, it would be disingenuous to pretend that the regime does not enjoy some support within the population.

This, then, points to one important factor: The population is divided into at least two warring factions – the armed rebels on the one side and the Assad regime on the other, which is heavily insulated from total collapse by its diplomatic close proximity to Russia, a powerful permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Any lasting peaceful solution, therefore, ought to involve these critical role players in both the East and the West.

I am at pains calling on the need for genuine international diplomatic co-operation following calls by the partisan Nato for the UN to intervene militarily in Syria. In the aftermath of Nato’s conduct in Libya, surely the world must have grown to understand better the modus operandi of this powerful regional group.

Nato’s penchant for toppling regimes out of tune with the bloc’s foreign policy objectives is well documented. What is also well documented is the monumental mess that Nato operations invariably leave behind. Although Libya is a more recent case, Afghanistan is another. The illegal US-led invasion of Iraq is still fresh in the minds of the international relations practitioners and observers alike. Lest I forget, let me also mention that Libya today is a more deeply divided country than it ever was, with certain parts, particularly in the north, now demanding secession – a result of Nato’s drive to oust the long-time pariah of the West, Gaddafi. Furthermore, the seldom told truth about a post-Gaddafi Libya is that the country’s oil production and reserves can no longer be said to be under the control of the indigenous Libyans. The demise of Gaddafi therefore marked the tragic end of the sovereignty of a once-powerful member and generous funder of the African Union.

As for Assad, I am not writing this article in support of his discredited regime.

Far from it!

If Nato’s global mission to weed out undemocratic regimes was well-meaning, the plethora of oil-producing dictatorships in the Middle East – many of which are the blue-eyed boys of the West such as Saudi Arabia, need to be prioritised for regime change.

The glaring inconsistency in the West’s application of their foreign policy does more harm than good in a world yearning for equality before international law.

“Different strokes for different folks” is simply a recipe for prolonged conflict around the world as it perpetuates a deep sense of injustice and breeds guerrilla movements such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, among others.

The West’s double-standards also showed when they stood by the fallen Egyptian despot, Hosni Mubarak, despite his huge national unpopularity. That Mubarak was a useful ally in the West’s desire to minimise the risk of attacks on Israel by adversaries of the Jewish state was more important than the suffering of almost the entire Egyptian population.

It is in light of the evident inequality between the powerful and the weak nations that the UN could not have chosen a better candidate for the Syrian crisis, Annan. His background as UN secretary-general, I believe, has assisted him in appreciating the difference between the politics of persuasion and the politics of coercion.

I fully support the argument by Russia that any Syrian road map to peace ought to be led by the people of Syria under the watchful eye of the UN as well as the Arab League. The recent proposals following the meeting in Geneva of all the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and other critical stakeholders of a Syrian future without Assad is ill-advised and premature.

If anything, such calls can only help to harden the attitude of Damascus and drive away any chance for a peaceful solution.

South Africa has done very well so far, refusing to back any attempts to push through a Nato-led “peace-keeping” mission to Syria.

It is important that as champions of peacefully negotiated settlements, South Africa needs to demand nothing less than adherence to international law from any warmongers.

l Makoe is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Royal News Services.