FOREIGN military intervention in Syria offers the best hope for curtailing a long, bloody and destabilizing civil war. The mantra of those opposed to intervention is “Syria is not Libya.” In fact, Syria is far more strategically located than Libya, and a lengthy civil war there would be much more dangerous to our interests. America has a major stake in helping Syria’s neighbors stop the killing.
Simply arming the opposition, in many ways the easiest
option, would bring about exactly the scenario the world should fear most: a
proxy war that would spill into Lebanon,
Turkey, Iraq
and Jordan and
fracture Syria
along sectarian lines. It could also allow Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups
to gain a foothold in Syria
and perhaps gain access to chemical and biological weapons.
There is an alternative. The Friends of Syria, some 70
countries scheduled to meet in Tunis
today, should establish “no-kill zones” now to protect all Syrians regardless
of creed, ethnicity or political allegiance. The Free Syrian Army, a growing
force of defectors from the government’s army, would set up these no-kill zones
near the Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders. Each zone should be
established as close to the border as possible to allow the creation of short
humanitarian corridors for the Red Cross and other groups to bring food, water and medicine in and take wounded patients out.
The zones would be managed by already active civilian committees.
Crucially, these special forces would control the flow
of intelligence regarding the government’s troop movements and lines of communication to
allow opposition troops to cordon off population centers and rid them of
snipers. Once Syrian government forces were killed, captured or allowed to
defect without reprisal, attention would turn to defending and expanding the
no-kill zones.
This next step would require intelligence focused on
tank and aircraft movements, the placement of artillery batteries and
communications lines among Syrian government forces. The goal would be to
weaken and isolate government units charged with attacking particular towns;
this would allow opposition forces to negotiate directly with army officers on
truces within each zone, which could then expand into a regional, and
ultimately national, truce.
The key condition for all such assistance, inside or
outside Syria,
is that it be used defensively — only to stop attacks by the Syrian military or
to clear out government forces that dare to attack the no-kill zones. Although
keeping intervention limited is always hard, international assistance could be
curtailed if the Free Syrian Army took the offensive. The absolute priority
within no-kill zones would be public safety and humanitarian aid; revenge attacks
would not be tolerated.
Syria’s
president, Bashar al-Assad, is
increasingly depending on government-sponsored gangs and on shelling cities
with heavy artillery rather than overrunning them with troops, precisely
because he is concerned about the loyalty of soldiers forced to shoot their
fellow citizens at point-blank range. If government troops entered no-kill
zones they would have to face their former comrades. Placing them in this
situation, and presenting the option to defect, would show just how many
members of Syria’s army — estimated at 300,000 men — were actually willing to
fight for Mr. Assad.
Turkey and the Arab League should also help opposition
forces inside Syria more actively through the use of remotely piloted
helicopters, either for delivery of cargo and weapons — as America has used
them in Afghanistan — or to attack Syrian air defenses and mortars in order to protect the no-kill zones.
Turkey
is rightfully cautious about deploying its ground forces, an act that Mr. Assad could use as grounds to
declare war and retaliate. But Turkey
has some of its own drones, and Arab League countries could quickly lease
others.
As in Libya,
the international community should not act without the approval and the
invitation of the countries in the region that are most directly affected by
Mr. Assad’s war on his own people. Thus it is up to the Arab League and Turkey
to adopt a plan of action. If Russia
and China were
willing to abstain rather than exercise another massacre-enabling veto, then
the Arab League could go back to the United Nations Security Council for
approval. If not, then Turkey and the Arab League should act, on their own
authority and that of the other 13 members of the Security Council and 137
members of the General Assembly who voted last week to condemn Mr. Assad’s
brutality.
The power of the Syrian protesters over the past 11
months has arisen from their determination to face down bullets with chants,
signs and their own bodies. The international community can draw on the power
of nonviolence and create zones of peace in what are now zones of death. The
Syrians have the ability to make that happen; the rest of the world must give
them the means to do it.