Timothy Garton Ash
Syria demands that we think again about the relationship between politics and humanitarian action.
by Timothy Garton Ash
Some 18 million British children, women and men have fled their homes as a result of the civil war that has torn Britain apart over the last two years. About 280,000 people have been killed, and many more wounded. That, proportionately translated, is the scale of the Syrian tragedy. And there is no end in sight.
The Guardian today documents individual human stories from this disaster. They are more moving than any statistic. But the numbers are eloquent too. Some 6,000 refugees pour out of Syria every day, straining international humanitarian aid resources and destabilising the country’s neighbours. Syrian refugees already make up 10 percent of the population of Jordan. That’s like the whole of Bulgaria moving to Britain.
António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, says the displacement of people has not risen “at such a frightening rate” since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. He told the Guardian that this might mean asking countries like Britain to take some of Syria’s uprooted. The absolute size of the humanitarian catastrophe may not yet match the largest, but Syria is working hard to catch up.
Its political knock-on effects are potentially far greater than those of any mere tsunami, drought or earthquake. Syria’s civil war has set the old Sunni-Shia wound bleeding again in the whole neighbourhood. Iran, Hezbollah and Shias in Iraq support the forces of president Bashar Al Assad against internal and external Sunni foes. Blood flows more freely than water across the arbitrary, post-colonial frontiers of the region. Beside the external Islamic patron states, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey on the Sunni side, there is Russia arming Al Assad’s forces against rebels who are being (very tentatively) supported by the US — almost as if we were back in the cold war. Syria also fits into a larger picture, with the UNHCR recording an 18-year high of more than 45 million forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2012. The current rate of displacement is about one person every four seconds. Give the wider Middle East another year or two, and the world will have a whole England of the uprooted (around 56 million people). The record of Western military intervention in this region is disastrous. Yet the notion that not intervening in any way, militarily or otherwise, is always the most moral option simply does not stand honest scrutiny.
Syria demands that we think again about the relationship between politics and humanitarian action. Earlier this month, the former foreign secretary David Miliband reflected on this in his last major public speech before leaving his first life, as a politician in London, to begin his second life, as the leader of a humanitarian organisation — the International Rescue Committee — in New York.
On the one hand, the morality of what he will do as a humanitarian is far simpler than that of what he did, or might still be doing, as a politician. Deploying tents to shelter people in desperate need is more obviously, unambiguously good than deploying half-truths to win votes. In that sense, David might exclaim “it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done”. On the other hand, it could also be a far less effective thing than what his brother Ed may yet have a chance to do as Britain’s prime minister. For the nature of humanitarian relief in man-made disasters is that you are treating the symptoms and not the causes. Were politicians to address the political causes of Syria’s disaster, that would be more valuable than everything all the humanitarian organisations in the world can do.
If the US, Europe and Russia really got together and said, “we’re going to de-escalate this conflict, through stopping all the arms supplies we have any influence on, followed by a negotiation involving all the relevant internal parties and external powers, including Iran under its new president”, they might get somewhere.
David Cameron described the situation inside the country as a “stalemate”, with Assad’s military position somewhat strengthened, and growing sectarian extremism on the opposition side.
That’s no excuse for abandoning the politics. But given that they are blocked, humanitarian relief becomes even more vital. Until the surgeons finally tackle the causes of the disease, we have to keep changing the bandages, alleviating the pain and feeding the patient. But this too is not happening enough.
Governments have only met a third of the UN’s funding targets for humanitarian assistance for Syria. That puts even more strain on non-governmental humanitarian organisations, yet Oxfam says people have so far donated just a third of its £30m Syria target.
THE GUARDIAN
Syria demands that we think again about the relationship between politics and humanitarian action.
by Timothy Garton Ash
Some 18 million British children, women and men have fled their homes as a result of the civil war that has torn Britain apart over the last two years. About 280,000 people have been killed, and many more wounded. That, proportionately translated, is the scale of the Syrian tragedy. And there is no end in sight.
The Guardian today documents individual human stories from this disaster. They are more moving than any statistic. But the numbers are eloquent too. Some 6,000 refugees pour out of Syria every day, straining international humanitarian aid resources and destabilising the country’s neighbours. Syrian refugees already make up 10 percent of the population of Jordan. That’s like the whole of Bulgaria moving to Britain.
António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, says the displacement of people has not risen “at such a frightening rate” since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. He told the Guardian that this might mean asking countries like Britain to take some of Syria’s uprooted. The absolute size of the humanitarian catastrophe may not yet match the largest, but Syria is working hard to catch up.
Its political knock-on effects are potentially far greater than those of any mere tsunami, drought or earthquake. Syria’s civil war has set the old Sunni-Shia wound bleeding again in the whole neighbourhood. Iran, Hezbollah and Shias in Iraq support the forces of president Bashar Al Assad against internal and external Sunni foes. Blood flows more freely than water across the arbitrary, post-colonial frontiers of the region. Beside the external Islamic patron states, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey on the Sunni side, there is Russia arming Al Assad’s forces against rebels who are being (very tentatively) supported by the US — almost as if we were back in the cold war. Syria also fits into a larger picture, with the UNHCR recording an 18-year high of more than 45 million forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2012. The current rate of displacement is about one person every four seconds. Give the wider Middle East another year or two, and the world will have a whole England of the uprooted (around 56 million people). The record of Western military intervention in this region is disastrous. Yet the notion that not intervening in any way, militarily or otherwise, is always the most moral option simply does not stand honest scrutiny.
Syria demands that we think again about the relationship between politics and humanitarian action. Earlier this month, the former foreign secretary David Miliband reflected on this in his last major public speech before leaving his first life, as a politician in London, to begin his second life, as the leader of a humanitarian organisation — the International Rescue Committee — in New York.
On the one hand, the morality of what he will do as a humanitarian is far simpler than that of what he did, or might still be doing, as a politician. Deploying tents to shelter people in desperate need is more obviously, unambiguously good than deploying half-truths to win votes. In that sense, David might exclaim “it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done”. On the other hand, it could also be a far less effective thing than what his brother Ed may yet have a chance to do as Britain’s prime minister. For the nature of humanitarian relief in man-made disasters is that you are treating the symptoms and not the causes. Were politicians to address the political causes of Syria’s disaster, that would be more valuable than everything all the humanitarian organisations in the world can do.
If the US, Europe and Russia really got together and said, “we’re going to de-escalate this conflict, through stopping all the arms supplies we have any influence on, followed by a negotiation involving all the relevant internal parties and external powers, including Iran under its new president”, they might get somewhere.
David Cameron described the situation inside the country as a “stalemate”, with Assad’s military position somewhat strengthened, and growing sectarian extremism on the opposition side.
That’s no excuse for abandoning the politics. But given that they are blocked, humanitarian relief becomes even more vital. Until the surgeons finally tackle the causes of the disease, we have to keep changing the bandages, alleviating the pain and feeding the patient. But this too is not happening enough.
Governments have only met a third of the UN’s funding targets for humanitarian assistance for Syria. That puts even more strain on non-governmental humanitarian organisations, yet Oxfam says people have so far donated just a third of its £30m Syria target.
THE GUARDIAN
