What is currently happening in the Middle East is a reminder of just how quickly the geopolitical landscape is changing, and how fragile it all is.
Israel is inflaming the crisis by expanding its air attacks across Syria and has all but demolished the Syrian navy. According to the Washington Post, “Israeli officials have described the strikes as a measure to prevent Syrian weapons from falling into the wrong hands and to protect Israel from a future attack.”
The Guardian is reporting that several Middle Eastern countries – including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – are accusing Israel of exploiting the situation in Syria
As the tumultuous events in Syria unfold, there is a question over whether Britain will lift the ban on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the militant group that toppled Syrian tyrant, Bashar al-Assad (as covered by Playbook PM).
Al-Assad’s monstrous brutality
The humanitarian situation in Syria is also seen as key to how prospective decisions to freeze granting asylum to Syrian applicants will play out.
The notorious Sednaya prison continues to spew out the barbaric aspects of Assad’s regime. The Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented more than 112,000 disappearances –men, women, and children arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned with no formal or legal justification. Stuart Ramsey from Sky said “what we are seeing now is the daily proof, if it was needed, of a campaign of suppression and murder that was conducted on an industrial scale”.
It is the worst aspects of an autocracy – using fear as the ultimate weapon and denying hope to people as a form of suppression to the point where they just accept anything. It’s from a playbook we have been witnessing more frequently in the last few years.
The collapse of autocratic regimes tends to happen gradually and then suddenly – slowly, and then all at once writes Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic. The great unknown is what happens next.
Western inaction and indifference
For years Russian troops have propped up Assad in partnership with the Iranian government and Iran’s proxy Hezbollah. In recent years, the international community seems to have lost interest in one of the worst human tragedies in the last 20 years.
In Britain MPs ruled out an assault on Syria in 2013 after dozens of Tory MPs joined forces with Labour to stop Britain from taking part in military strikes against Assad’s regime.
In the debate on airstrikes against Isis in Syria in December of 2015 it was only Hilary Benn that opposed the position of the then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a rousing speech that was both courageous and possessed of foresight. In the end 66 Labour MPs sided with the government to give the government a majority.
Progressive Britain’s Adam Langleben took to social media, stating on X:
“We know the left see everything through the prism of opposing the US. But Labour also allowed this to happen as it has, when we opposed intervention, scuppering US involvement.
“Half a million dead, tens of thousands of political prisoners facing imprisonment, torture or execution. Millions of refugees. And over 10 years of growing regional instability led by Iran and Russia. Inaction can have consequences as damaging as taking action.”
The Tories in government were equally split on what action to take with little clarity on what options were on the table or what Syrian regime change would look like.
Counting the human cost
We are where we are. For now, Mohammed al-Bashir has been appointed as Syria’s interim prime minister. He used a televised address to say he will stay in the post until 1 March 2025 to lead the transition government.
But as ever we, the international community are, to a large extent, culpable for allowing the horror to continue. Sometimes there is a cost to inaction. And Syrians have been paying the highest costs since 2011. It’s time for joint action to support Syria as it tries to make peace with itself.
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