Tag Archive for: civil war

Tipping the scales in Myanmar’s civil war

Conflicts within and between countries take many forms, but they’re always about power. That’s as true for the brutal military coup that toppled Myanmar’s elected government two years ago as it is for Russia’s war against Ukraine. But while Ukraine’s plight has dominated world headlines and attracted billions of dollars in military equipment and other assistance, Myanmar’s subjugation from within has gone largely unnoticed by outsiders, and the civilian opposition has received little support.

To be sure, Southeast Asia is a coup-prone region. Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines all endured ‘coup eras’ before settling on roughly democratic trajectories, albeit with autocratic characteristics. Thailand has endured two putsches since 2006 and has yet to achieve a political bargain that can break the military’s and monarchy’s joint hold on power.

But Myanmar tops the lot. Its generals seized power in 1962. While direct military rule eventually gave way to constitutional dictatorship, it was not until 2011 that the military junta was officially dissolved and a nominally civilian government established. Even then, however, the military, under General Thein Sein’s leadership, retained key levers of power.

During the ensuing decade, Myanmar experienced political liberalisation, economic reform and real progress on development. As foreign investment poured in, businesses flourished and embassies were established, the country seemed increasingly eager to leave military rule in the past. Consecutive elections—in 2015 and 2020—boosted civilian power, as Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) secured landslide victories over the military’s Union Solidarity and Development Party.

After languishing for decades in dictatorship and despair, Myanmar’s ethnically diverse society—especially its younger cohort—saw the glimmer of a more prosperous, democratic future. But their hopes were dashed in February 2021—less than three months after the country’s last election—when the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces, General Min Aung Hlaing, staged a new coup.

But, this time, Myanmar’s people did not acquiesce. Immediately after the coup, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest the military takeover. As the months went on, the military junta blacked out the internet, declared martial law and initiated a violent security crackdown: the regime has reportedly killed nearly 3,000 civilians and arrested nearly 17,000. But the people continued to resist.

Within days of the coup, the protesters joined forces with a committee representing the NLD members of parliament who had been elected in the previous poll. This led to the formation, in April, of the National Unity Government (NUG), which includes members of the NLD, other parties and independents. Working in tandem with the National Unity Consultative Council, the NUG promotes a vision of an inclusive, civilian-led government that serves the Bamar majority and ethnic minorities alike.

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s ethnic armed organisations, particularly the Karen near the border with Thailand and the Kachin in the north, began pursuing open combat operations against Myanmar’s battle-hardened military. Then, in May, the NUG’s armed wing, the People’s Defence Force, was formed—a remarkable display of defiance by Myanmar’s young people, who make up the majority of the force’s local militias. Unwilling to give up the freedom that was denied to their forebears, they took up rudimentary, often homemade arms and began, together with the ethnic armed groups, to fight.

Despite no central command structure or international support, the ragtag militias have become increasingly coordinated and skilful in their use of guerrilla-style tactics, and have begun carrying out targeted assassinations. And, given widespread support for their cause, their ranks are growing. The ethnic armed organisations, for their part, are carrying on the fight in their enclaves.

Myanmar’s military still has the advantage in terms of armour, artillery and airpower. But the determined resistance that Myanmar’s people have mounted has prevented the junta from gaining full power over the country, roughly half of which is currently controlled by the opposition alliance. While the military can generate enough cash to sustain its patchy rule by selling natural resources, Myanmar’s civil war has become a stalemate.

So far, the international community has done little to help Myanmar’s people, even as they have endured a humanitarian crisis that recalls the country’s darkest days of dictatorship. Yes, sanctions have been imposed and condemnations issued. But China backs the junta, to which Russia supplies arms. Even the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—which includes Myanmar—has been ineffectual and done little to bring about peaceful dialogue.

Rather than remaining effectively complicit in the junta’s crimes against its own people, the international community should recognise the NUG, which has proved itself to be a viable government, able to provide political direction and raise revenue from both domestic supporters and the diaspora. Given that the civil war will ultimately be won and lost on the battlefield, it also means arming the opposition with defensive weapons, particularly portable anti-aircraft capabilities, which would neutralise the punishing airstrikes that have often claimed civilian lives.

Myanmar’s people are putting their lives on the line to take back a future stolen from them by a heinous regime. They deserve the international community’s support, just as Ukraine’s defenders do.

Red Cross report reveals the pain and loss of Syria’s youth

Today is tagged, by some who give historical events a beginning and an end, as the 10th anniversary of the start of the war in Syria.

It is, in fact, one of several days, over many months, which might be picked as the start of that nation’s slide into one of the most brutal and destructive conflicts of the modern era.

In December 2010, Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi responded to years of abuse by police and officials by setting himself on fire. That act triggered public anger and violent protests that drove President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country after 23 years in power.

Hopeful Western commentators later called the events that followed the street vendor’s death the Arab Spring, helping build an expectation that major positive change was coming to the Middle East and that people power could topple dictators. Major change was coming, but it was mainly bad.

The protests that followed in a number of countries were met with varying degrees of violence.

When this wind of change stirred the leaves in Syria there was, for a time, reason for optimism.

The security services established in Damascus by the ruling Assad family had a long-held reputation for brutality towards dissenters. But Bashar al-Assad, who’d by then been president for a decade, was a young ophthalmologist who’d trained in London (his wife, Asma, was born there of Syrian parents). His education and his cosmopolitan image brought an international anticipation that he would reform and modernise his country.

In February 2011 protesters staged a demonstration in Damascus demanding the release of a man who’d been assaulted by police and arrested. The protest was largely peaceful.

Then, in early March, teenagers were arrested for spray-painting slogans critical of the government on walls in the city of Daraa. Word spread that they were being tortured, and protesters marched through the city’s streets demanding their release. Again, those protests were largely peaceful but they worried Syria’s rulers.

On 15 March 2011, 10 years ago today, thousands of protesters marched in Damascus, Aleppo and several other cities. Many were arrested and some were reported killed.

Protests across the country continued into July, triggering military operations by Assad’s security forces.

On 31 July, matters escalated when the Syrian army met the protests with tanks.

Rebel groups with varied ideologies mounted armed opposition to the government and consolidated their hold on cities and towns across the country.

The Assad regime responded with unrelenting force, a complete absence of humanity and an extraordinary lack of adherence to the ‘rules’ of war.

Its forces used helicopters to drop barrel bombs—literally drums and sometimes larger containers packed with explosives—into heavily populated neighbourhoods that opposed the regime, killing whole families in the process.

With the only warning the steady thumping of the aircraft overhead, these cheap and easily assembled devices could turn whole city blocks into piles of rubble—the awfulness of the September 11 terrorist attacks, day after day for years.

Into this landscape, and into Iraq, came the Islamic State terror group with its beheadings and mass graves. The bad guys in this conflict had been overshadowed by something unimaginably worse.

The West intervened, and then the Russians, and Assad survived.

The International Committee of the Red Cross takes great care to maintain its neutrality and to avoid attributing blame in conflicts. It aims to protect victims of armed conflicts and promotes respect for international humanitarian law and its implementation in national law.

But its research paints a horrific picture of the war’s impact on a generation of young people in a country of around 20 million people.

The ICRC commissioned a report on the impact of 10 years of conflict on Syria’s youth, revealing some of the deeper effects. The survey was carried out by market-research company Ipsos, which interviewed 1,400 men and women aged 18 to 24 in Syria, Lebanon and Germany in December and January.

A decade of loss: Syria’s youth after ten years of crisis says a decade of violence has had a devastating impact on Syria and left deep scars on a generation of young men and women.

Hundreds of thousands are dead, tens of thousands have gone missing without a trace, millions are displaced and an entire region has been destabilized by the lasting consequences of this long-running crisis.

The conflict has also robbed an entire generation of Syrians of their younger years. Traditional milestones such as graduating from school, getting a job or starting a family have been missed during a decade of financial struggle, disrupted access to education and anxiety about the future.

The ICRC says that in a country where more than half the population is under the age of 25, the survey is a glimpse of what millions have endured in the past decade.

Of those interviewed who still live in Syria, nearly half said a close relative or friend had been killed in the conflict. One in six of those interviewed said at least one of their parents had been killed or seriously injured and 12% had themselves been injured in the conflict.

More than half of those interviewed who’d fled to Lebanon or Germany had lost contact with a close relative.

The major impact on mental health has been largely neglected, the report says. ‘Nearly two out of three young Syrians report having experienced anxiety in the past 12 months, while more than half have struggled with depression and sleeping disorders. Tragically, among all those who reported such emotional distress, very few have been able to receive medical treatment.’

Syria once boasted a basic level of enrolment in education of almost 93%, with 2.8 million students enrolled in secondary education and more than 650,000 at university. Now, more than half (57%) of the young Syrians surveyed reported having missed years of school—if they got to go at all.

The report says that after 10 years of loss, displacement and disconnection, the impact on young Syrians’ families and friendships has been devastating and is, in many cases, permanent and beyond repair.

But Syrians in all three countries appear united in their hopes for the future. ‘While those who left Syria feel fairly well accepted (especially in Germany), most young Syrians continue to view their native land as their home.’

Over the next 10 years, many of them hope to find stability and happiness, and to start a family. ‘Crucially’, says the report, ‘70% of young Syrians consider themselves optimistic about the future.’

That finding, after all the horrors of barrel bombs and beheadings, gives a foundation for Syrians and the international community to build on.

Seven lessons from Syria

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has outlasted the country. For the foreseeable future, Assad will be trying to restore central government control and manoeuvring between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the future of Idlib province and northeastern Syria. He will aim to deal with Arab tribal leaders in the Euphrates valley who are now bitterly opposed to Damascus but also potentially at odds with the YPG Kurds. Kurdish–Arab tribal frictions in Deir ez-Zor and Kurdish resistance to ethnic cleansing and Turkish proxy occupation will grow.

Now it’s time for external parties to learn the lessons of Syria since 2011. Here are seven suggestions.

Lesson 1: Aim to avoid further, prolonged urban campaigns

Mosul, and Raqqa, demonstrated that if jihadists become entrenched again in cities they won’t be defeated without prolonged, substantial external kinetic, training, logistic, intelligence and other support. Inadequate support risks unsustainably high attrition rates among largely conscript armies (the attrition rate among well-trained elite forces in Mosul was 50–60%).

Lesson 2: Local actors will be constrained by limited access to external air support

All local actors, except Turkey, will have to rely on airpower support for both offensive and defensive purposes. Only external parties can supply—or deny— enough of it to shape the battle space.

Lesson 3: Expect complexity

Other regional conflicts (Yemen; West and sub-Saharan Africa, especially Mali) will follow the Syrian pattern: multiple interconnected fights sharing the same space and time. Some (such as the north–south separatist contest in Yemen and the al-Qaeda derivative in Mali exploiting farmer–herder tensions) won’t be directly related to the war on terror.

Expect combinations of coercion, co-option and subversion; transactional, situation-specific alliances; vicious turf battles and unstable deals; and an absence of transitional justice.

Lesson 4: Keep it real and keep it local

Being an effective external actor in such conflicts requires more than the possession of kinetic capability. It requires language and cultural skills, and a sophisticated appreciation of the micro-political dynamics, sensitivities, interests, personalities and ambitions at the local level. It demands flexibility, but it’s not helped by mixed messages. It also demands high levels of personal authenticity, credibility and skill in building a sense of solidarity of purpose.

Those attributes are beyond the capacity of most external players.

The US, Saudi and Qatari track record in deciphering the political-military operating environment in Syria is haphazard, at best. It contrasts with the Russian approach, which is devoid of illusions about remaking the regime and the region, and backed by an intimate understanding of Syrian political culture and trends.

Lesson 5: No one else is coming to the front lines

Significant new force deployments to the region are unlikely. Capable Western governments and political audiences are (correctly) risk-averse or (incorrectly) uninterested in Syria. Moreover, there’s rarely likely to be a peace to keep, even when conflict abates, because of centre–periphery contests, regional dynamics, insurgency risks and, eventually, intra-regime division-of-spoils contests. UN Security Council legal frameworks to legitimise formal force deployments are also unlikely.

Lesson 6: International humanitarian law and R2P are so last century

It remains to be seen what the Jackson Pollock school of diplomacy, otherwise known as the Donald Trump administration, will produce as its erratic approach to Syria continues.

But we are unlikely to see a return to values of the pre-Trump global order. Collective punishment, sieges, clear-felling of populated urban areas and the use of chemical weapons have continued because such practices work better at the tactical and regime-survival levels than high-intensity urban warfare. They have also proven to be cost-free for those who use them. And all parties have become adept at ignoring or contesting the narratives surrounding blatant breaches of international humanitarian law.

Lesson 7: Don’t aim too high

One may ask how Western countries can hope to have the values they advocate respected in the region if they aren’t prepared to act in support of those values. It’s also obvious that programmatic and durable reform is unlikely to be possible in the absence of security.

History demonstrates, however, that external military interventions in the Middle East can stabilise Arab regimes. But they will neither bring about reform, nor protect and promote the values we wish to be respected.

Those interventions that served Western interests (for example, UK/US intervention in Jordan and Lebanon, 1958; UK/Kuwait, 1961; UK/Oman/Yemen in the 1970s; and US/UK/Kuwait, 1990–91) had aims limited to securing the morale and capability of regimes seeking Western support and sharing or benefiting Western strategic interests. Most had a light military footprint. Some, such as Oman, had a special operations character. All had clear, limited political objectives directed towards supporting the status quo.

Interventions that arguably failed to serve Western interests (Suez, 1956; US/UK/Iraq, 2003; Libya, 2011; US/Syria since 2011) were aimed at, or evolved into, attempts at regime removal or were undertaken in pursuit of illusionary goals, mostly driven or promoted by domestic political agendas. Some were also driven, initially, by political/principled concerns, such as not to witness a repeat of Srebrenica in Benghazi.

Adding to the capability of Middle East regimes to defend themselves may widen the space for reform, in theory. In practice, however, it will probably decrease their willingness and capacity to address underlying structural issues of state dysfunctionality (corruption, inequality of opportunity, human rights abuses, disempowerment) that lie at the core of legitimate opposition. Those shortcomings also provide ongoing opportunities for non-state armed groups to recruit and grow.

Syria is a tragedy, but it is also a symptom of much deeper concerns relating to governance and security beyond the reach of external parties. It is now highlighting the operational, tactical, humanitarian, ethical, political, diplomatic, narrative and strategic challenges of asymmetric warfare. And those concerns are likely to endure, long after the conflict subsides, or is contained, and the caliphs and the kings depart.

Syria: a war with no winners

One of the frustrating and tragic aspects of the Syrian conflict is its capacity to regenerate in ever-more complex guises. So many players are involved, both internal and external, that the conventional media have pretty much given up on trying to summarise what’s happening and the audience has mostly switched off.

As a result, little notice has been given to events on the seam between the regime’s forces north and west of Hama and the rebel-held territory (largely overlapping with Idlib province) in the northern Orontes valley and the limestone hills to the west of Aleppo. For the past three years, government forces have been trying to push rebel units back from the freeway that crosses the Orontes and then drops over the Bdama pass to the regime heartland on the coast, only 50 kilometres away. The rebels’ push four years ago to reach the pass (and strike into the government’s heartland) is what brought Russia into the conflict as a direct participant.

Having regained the momentum in the south, regime forces redeployed to the north. Idlib province was chosen as the disposal site for rebel units that had been evacuated from ‘hot’ areas in the south under the series of disengagement agreements, usually brokered through Russian supervision. The rebel enclave in Idlib, previously held by a mix of forces from secular- to al-Qaeda-based origins, has increasingly become a haven for the latter. Turkish observation posts provided a ring around the enclave, but it is increasingly a hellish blend of Salafism and racketeering with the civilian population caught in the crossfire.

Turkey’s earlier policy of cutting back its support to rebels has reportedly now been rebalanced with resumed delivery of rocket-borne weaponry. Clearly, this is being reflected in the difficulty the regime is having in pushing back rebel efforts to threaten Hama (a city that has largely stayed out of the conflict so far) and the Aleppo–Latakia highway.

Further north, in the belt south of the Turkish border from Afrin to the US-coalition enclave stretching across to Iraq, conflict has been sporadic. But resentment among the Sunni population at the primary role the tiny US presence accords to Kurdish militia forces is hardly a basis for a lasting settlement across this vast Arab-majority area.

The Geneva- and Astana-based peace ‘processes’ are currently frozen, though they might yet provide a mechanism for scaling down violence. While the Syrian population faces a ninth year of disruption, violence or displacement, some of the external players may be wearying too and holding back from active support for new campaigns. Russia retains a high-profile role, but the Iranian militia elements that effectively stiffened the resolve of the depleted and war-weary Syrian units in other sectors are conspicuous by their absence in the Idlib fighting.

As of July 2019, official UNHCR figures for the number of Syrian refugees outside Syria can be broken down as follows: Turkey, 3.614 million; Lebanon, 930,000; Jordan, 662,000. Those totals don’t include Syrians who have sought refuge in Europe or in other Middle Eastern countries or who have applied under UNHCR auspices to seek resettlement outside Syria (163,834 at May 2019).

The number of Syrians returning to home areas, mostly in the south, has been rising since 2016, but it’s still a fraction of the outward flow over the previous five years. UNHCR, however, has begun to give figures for ‘self-organised’ returns—173,000 as of 31 May 2019. The actual number may be higher, as the estimate only includes cases ‘verified/monitored’ by UNHCR.

UNHCR surveys of refugees in the neighbouring countries indicate that 76% intend to return but only 4% plan to return in the next 12 months. The main barriers are ongoing violence in some areas, loss of home and livelihood, fear of reprisal, and difficulty in establishing claims to abandoned property. These are the same factors discouraging the 6 million internally displaced Syrians from returning to their homes and livelihoods.

The effects of the war are still reflected in a massive drop in the country’s GDP. Most of Syria’s current situation, therefore, points to a state that has reached the edge of an abyss. Even if some economic activities are ticking over, 2018 World Bank figures depict an economy that has shrunk to 20% of its pre-2011 level of activity.

The external players that have backed forces in the contest may be getting tired, but all profess a continued commitment to outcomes that are becoming increasingly forlorn as the war grinds on. By no stretch of the imagination can the external powers and funders get 100% of their dreams—the Salafists’ supporters in the Gulf; Iran and its local proxies; Turkey and its phobia at the prospect of a Kurdish superstate; or the US, which clearly lacks any achievable goal.

Russia isn’t on that list because it has been playing a long game that goes back to before the collapse of the USSR. Its involvement is costing it, but its aim is relatively viable—an outcome that will preserve Syria as a basically secular state, multi-ethnic and with its territorial integrity restored.

In contrast, Western powers, by basing their response to the Syrian conflict on a shopping list of morally worthy but totally unrealisable demands, have only prolonged the country’s agony. Sanctions adopted in a number of EU and multilateral bodies were never fit for purpose. In other cases, sanctions have been an effective weapon against national entities that have proper banking systems and effective frontier controls. They are dangerously counterproductive if they simply hand a society over to racketeering elements that use sanctions-busting as a means of reinforcing alliances with internal power structures.

The daily outbreak of confrontations in the Gulf makes the task of winding down wider regional tensions even harder. The US, having brought on a crisis with Iran by withdrawing from the nuclear deal, now risks hair-trigger miscalculations if President Donald Trump again veers impulsively towards his hardline advisers. John Bolton and Mike Pompeo have long been itching to find a casus belli to pursue the decades-old vendetta against Iran.

Syria is now the centre of a web of catastrophic decisions whose aftermath is still to be played out. Only those countries that are prepared to look at the long term, accept the need to restore Syria as an integral state (rather than see it broken up into religious or ethnic cantonments) and avoid short-term posturing can aspire to have any positive influence.