British meddling in Syria has been inglorious and ineffective
For 25 years, the misguided actions of UK leaders contributed to keeping Bashar al-Assad in post, rather than bringing him down.
Along with almost all western political leaders, the British prime minister has welcomed the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s “barbaric regime”. Few tears are being shed for a brutal dictator who bombed and gassed his own people and locked his country into decades of civil war.
For all its post-imperial pretensions, the UK was never a key player in what happened in Syria. Diplomatic experts here are quick to point out that, under the Sykes-Picot agreement, it fell into the French sphere of influence. That did not stop us striking attitudes.
UK leaders deserve no credit for what is now taking place. For 25 years their actions contributed to keeping Bashar al-Assad in post rather than bringing him down. Whether for or against Assad, British meddling in Syria has been inglorious and ultimately unhelpful to the security of the Syrian people.
In the first decade of this century, the UK pursued what it saw as trade and influence advantages through closer relations with official Syria. Once those delusions soured irreparably with the Arab Spring, the House of Commons voted critically not to do anything to right our mistakes.
Assad took over as Syrian dictator when his father, Hafez al-Assad, died in the summer of 2000 after 29 years in power. The constitution was altered to permit a 34-year-old to become president and he was “elected” with a laughable 97.29% share of the vote. The Foreign Office saw nothing but opportunity for the UK. After all, Bashar had lived and worked in this country as an eye doctor and his wife, Asma, grew up here. Her family still own a house in Acton.
Briefing documents sent to then Prime Minister Tony Blair talked of Bashar’s “drive against corruption”, “desire for modernisation”, “substantial liberalisation” and plans to “promote the economic reform necessary”. Within a year, liberalisation in a so-called “Damascus Spring” was followed by the return of repression of dissidents in a “Damascus Winter”. An Amnesty International report detailed continued “daily torture, inhuman conditions, constant victimization, and humiliation” in Syria’s main prison. Such reports were largely overlooked by international diplomats.
Tony Blair included Assad and Syria in his alliance-building world tour in the wake of the Al-Qaeda attacks on America on 9/11. He went to Damascus in October 2001 for one of his least successful meetings. After what Blair called “candid dialogue”, young Bashar tore a strip of the then twice-elected prime minister in public. He condemned the US-led invasion of Afghanistan as “the killing of innocent civilians” and backed Palestinian “freedom fighters”.
British officials claimed that the talks in private had been more constructive. They pointed out that the Syrian regime recognised the state of Israel. Syria was regarded as an essential ally in the “War on Terror”, the top priority at the time, helping the CIA with detention, interrogation and extraordinary rendition of Islamist fighters, so-called “enemy combatants”.
The courtship of Bashar al-Assad continued. France enrolled him in the Légion d'Honneur, Tony Blair thought about offering an honorary knighthood. The process of “engagement” continued. In December 2002, Bashar became the first Syrian leader to be invited to 10 Downing Street and to meet the Queen. Anglo-Dutch Shell and British Gulfsands Petroleum had lucrative contracts in Syria.
Even after the Syrian connivance in the assassination in 2005 of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, relations were maintained. In 2006, Blair’s foreign policy advisor Sir Nigel Sheinwald went for talks with Bashar commenting “He is a bully… but OK if you stand up to him, and people who work with him like him.”
In 2011, Vogue praised Asma as “A Rose in the Desert”.
Such optimistic contacts were typical of the time – “the end of history” or “the unipolar” moment when the US and allies fondly believed that the rest of the world would eventually be brought round to their values and outlook. The so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011/12 was the final test of these assumptions, and it was disproved comprehensively in Egypt, in Libya and in Syria.
Rather than opt peacefully for western-style democracy as had happened in much of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, religious, tribal and socio-economic factionalism led to civil wars. Assad rejected reform, opting to crush rebellion instead. In the first decade of conflict, more than 300,000 Syrian civilians were killed while millions more became refugees and fled the country.
To stay in power, Assad became increasingly dependent on backing from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. His fall now is a consequence of the weakening of these dark actors as a consequence of conflicts with Ukraine and Israel.
By 2013, international sanctions and red lines had been imposed on Syria in an attempt to curb Bashar’s vicious actions. On 21 August, President Obama’s red line was violated. Forces under the command of Bashar’s brother, Maher, fired rockets containing the chemical agent Sarin on Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus under rebel occupation.
A week later, manifesting his trademark over-confidence, David Cameron rushed to hold a vote in parliament endorsing UK participation in proposed US-led punishment strikes against Assad’s forces.
MPs were only back briefly from their long summer recess and the ground had not been prepared adequately either on the government side or with the opposition, who are usually consulted on national security matters. Instead of ordering his MPs to abstain, Labour leader Ed Miliband bowed to left-winger Jeremy Corbyn and the Stop the War coalition and gave his MPs a free vote. Scarred by the previous Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, thirty Conservative MPs also voted against the motion, which was defeated by 13, 285-272.
President Obama cited the British vote in his decision not to enforce his red line with a military response.
In defeat, George Osborne, Cameron’s closest ally, commented: “I hope this doesn’t become a moment when we turn our back on all the world’s problems.” This week, the former Foreign Office chief Simon MacDonald argued that the British vote was not “the watershed moment in the conflict”. But bloodshed continued unabated for more than a decade after Ed Miliband said “people want us to learn the lessons of Iraq.”
In 2018, there was “clear evidence” that Assad's forces had used chemical weapons, again, this time in Douma. Prime Minister Theresa May committed British forces to join the US in air strikes against Syrian targets without seeking prior approval from parliament. May rejected the charge from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn that she had acted “on the whim” of President Donald Trump. She argued that it was “legally and morally right” to prevent “further human suffering”. She also conceded that the attack was “limited, carefully targeted action”. By now, it amounted to little more than a token gesture.
A major consequence of the continued war was the millions of Syrian migrants who crossed into Europe, destabilising politics in their unwilling host countries. Meanwhile, the UK has paid out £4 billion of aid for the refugees, its biggest ever contribution to a single crisis.
Once again, British politicians and diplomats are agonising over what happens now in Syria and debating whether its apparent new rulers Hayat Tahrir al-Sham should be taken off the list of terror organisations. They are unlikely to follow president-elect Trump’s social media stipulation that “Syria is a mess, but it is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”. Though, looking back at the UK’s ineffective and misguided recent Syrian relations, perhaps we should consider holding back.