Bernd Debusmann

When U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of  Germany, France, Britain, Canada and the European Union first issued public calls for President Bashar al-Assad to step down, the death toll in Syria stood at 2,000. That was in August 18 last year.

When Obama repeated the call on May 19, as host of a summit meeting of the Group of Eight, the body count had reached 10,000, according to United Nations estimates. The two figures highlight the lack of success of economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure on a ruthless leader who learned lessons in unrestrained brutality from his father, Hafez al-Assad, whom he succeeded in office.

A peaceful solution to Syria’s protracted crisis now looks remote enough to wonder whether Bashar al-Assad might outlast Obama in power. The U.S. president is not assured of winning another term in office next November. But the odds of the Assad regime surviving into 2013 look better with every passing day, even though one of the U.S. government’s top experts on Syria has labeled the Syrian president a “dead man walking.”

There are several reasons for skepticism about a resolution to the Syrian crisis in the near future. One is the government’s military superiority over fractured and lightly-equipped opposition forces. More importantly, there is no international consensus on how to deal with what began 14 months ago as peaceful demonstrations against a 40-year family dictatorship and now includes huge suicide bombings of government targets that have raised suspicions of al-Qaeda involvement.

At the summit of the G8 – the United States, Germany, France,  Italy, Japan, Russia, Canada and Japan – an  aide to Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev made clear, again, that Moscow, unlike the West, does not see Assad’s departure as a necessary step towards ending the bloodshed.  “Some may like or dislike the Syrian government…but one cannot avoid a question – if Assad goes, who will replace him?” said Mikhail Margelov.

That’s a question to which there is no  answer in Washington or the European and Arab capitals whose leaders say that Assad must go. Doubts over what would happen “the day after” explain why the U.S. and its allies have been reluctant to consider arming the opposition and why they rule out military intervention on the model of Libya.

Where Russia is concerned, some critics see motives that go beyond opposition to regime change, the prospect of losing a major client for arms exports, and fears of  losing the Soviet-era naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus, Russia’s only outpost in the Mediterranean. Said Gary Kasparov, a vocal Putin critic, in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal:

“The Kremlin is desperate to keep Bashar al-Assad in place…since any conflict in the region sustains the high oil prices  Mr. Putin and his cronies need to maintain power.”

ASSAD’S FRIENDS

Whatever the motive, it’s difficult to see Assad leaving as long as he enjoys arms supplies and backing from Russia, diplomatic support from China, military and intelligence advice from Iran, and shipments of diesel fuel from Venezuela. After a flurry of wrong predictions of Assad’s imminent exit late last year, political crustal-gazers have been wary of forecasts.

But punters on an online exchange that allows bets on political events, rate Assad’s chance of being in office by the end of the year at 68 percent, up from 42 in February, when China and Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that provided for Assad to hand over power to a deputy.

The two countries voted in favor, two months later, of a Security Council resolution that backed a six-point peace plan drawn up by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Its provisions included an end to all violence by the government and the rebels, talks aimed at a “political transition” and the dispatch of an unarmed U.N. force to monitor a truce that both sides are ignoring. .

There’s a Catch-22 in the Annan initiative. It specifies a “Syrian-led, inclusive political transition “which perversely makes al-Assad part of the negotiations (if ever they begin). There is no good reason to think he would be inclined to make concessions on the negotiating table after making none in months of bloody crackdowns on the opposition.

Administration officials have made clear that U.S. patience with Assad, and with the slow progress of the Annan plan, is running out. Some of the bluntest language from Obama aides has come from his ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice. She has pointed out that the mandate of the truce supervision mission runs out at the end of July.

“No one should assume that the United States will renew this mission,” she has said. “If there is not a sustained cessation of violence, full freedom of movement of UN personnel and rapid meaningful progress on all other aspects of the six-point plan, then we must all conclude that the mission has run its course.”

And then what? Obama wading deeper into yet another Middle East conflict four months before the elections?

PHOTO: REUTERS/Khaled al-Hariri (SYRIA)

For decade after decade, diplomats at the United Nations have had on-again, off-again talks on how to reform the Security Council, the supreme decision-making panel on international security. The crisis in Syria shows that progress has been minimal and that power politics often trump human rights.

At issue is the composition of a body “frozen in amber since the end of World War II,” in the words of Stewart Patrick, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based foreign policy think tank. The biggest difficulty in unfreezing it is the veto power wielded by the five permanent members of the 15-nation council – the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

A veto by one permanent member is enough to sink a resolution. On February 4, two veto-wielders, Russia and China, banded together to vote against a resolution that provided for Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to step aside, halt a ruthless crackdown on dissidents, and begin a transition to democracy. Assad saw the veto as a green light to crack down even harder. A week before the vetoes, the U.N. estimated the death toll at 5,400.

On February 28, it was revised to more than 7,500, the result of a merciless artillery and tank bombardment of the central city of Homs, an opposition stronghold. In the weeks between those body counts, there has been a growing chorus of condemnation of the Assad government, including a United Nations General Assembly vote (by 137 to 12) criticizing “widespread and systematic human rights violations by Syrian authorities.” Russia, China and 10 other countries voted against that resolution. It has no legal force, unlike council resolutions.

More international condemnation came from a “Friends of Syria” meeting that brought together Western and Arab foreign ministers whose calls for ending the violence and allowing access for humanitarian aid fell on deaf ears in Damascus.

Russia and China stayed away from the Tunis gathering and were showered with blistering criticism from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for their “despicable” Security Council vetoes.

Why the make-up of the council and the way it operates has remained unchanged since 1945 is a question that merits more vigorous public debate than there has been in the past. The case for re-thinking the system becomes stronger every time a veto frustrates the will of the majority. Clinton complained that the council had been “neutered” by the vetoes on Syria but the neutering is a logical consequence of the power wielded by the permanent five.

NEVER SAY NEVER

They have the privilege to ignore the rest, push their own interests and protect their allies, as Russia did on Syria and as the United States (the most active veto-wielder in the past four decades) has done often to shield Israel from censure. None of the five have shown eagerness to change the veto system but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.

Ideas on what to change and how to do it have been tossed around since 1993 in the bureaucratic obscurity of the bureaucratically-named “Open ended Working Group to consider all aspects of the question of an increase in the membership of the Security Council and other matters related to the Council.”

An expansion of the top UN decision making body is more likely in the foreseeable future than “other matters”, a phrase that embraces abolishing the veto. In February, the four countries that have lobbied most energetically to become veto-wielding Security Council members (Germany, Japan, India, Brazil) issued a statement urging tangible progress before September, when the current session of the U.N. General Assembly ends.

Japan and Germany are the second and third-biggest financial contributors to the U.N., India is a nuclear power and the world’s second-most populous country, and Brazil is becoming a regional superpower in Latin America. Their inclusion would be a big step towards a Security Council that reflects the world as it is now, not as it was in 1945.

Skeptics tend to argue that expansion of the council would result in a decision-making process even more difficult and time-consuming than it is now. Perhaps. But adding four stable, liberal democracies to the lineup would probably also result in better decisions.

PHOTO: Members of the United Nations General Assembly vote to endorse the Arab League’s plan for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York February 16, 2012. The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a non-binding resolution endorsing an Arab League plan that urges Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

As Syrian government forces bombard Homs and other cities with merciless brutality, day after day, calls for arming the opposition are becoming louder. But there is a powerful case for caution, and for thinking twice before good intentions pave the road to even worse hell in Syria.

Most importantly, potential armourers of the opposition need to find answers to a number of key questions. The following exchange at a hearing of the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Committee in mid-February helps explain what is at stake.

Question: “What is the nature of the Syrian opposition? Who are they? How much of this is domestic? How much of it is foreign? What is the regional dynamic? Is al Qaeda involved?”

Answer: “The Free Syrian Army … is not unified. There’s an internal feud about who’s going to lead it. Complicating this … are neighborhood dynamics. We believe that al Qaeda in Iraq is extending its reach into Syria.”

The question came from Jim Webb, a Democratic Senator with a military background. The answer was from America’s spy chief, James Clapper, who added that extremists had infiltrated Syria’s motley opposition groups which, in many cases, may not be aware of the infiltration.

Bombings in Damascus and in Aleppo, Syria’s second city, against government security and intelligence buildings bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, he said.

In other words,  what began as peaceful mass demonstrations against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad almost a year ago (the Arab Spring came to Syria later than to other countries in the region) has morphed into parallel movements of mass protests and an armed insurgency whose composition is not entirely clear. It’s clear, though, that anti-Assad forces are outgunned and outmanned. To significantly increase their firepower would require arms supplies on a scale that would virtually guarantee some of the weapons falling into the wrong hands.

U.S. hawks arguing for arms aid, such as John McCain, the Republican senator, might do well to remember that sizable quantities of the military hardware America supplied to anti-Soviet insurgents in Afghanistan ended up in the hands of the Taliban. That conflict appears to have faded from the hawks’ memories and American interventionists now feel the urge to “plunge in with no plans, with half-baked plans, with demands to supply arms to rebels they know nothing about,” Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank, wrote in a column in The Daily Beast.

“Their good intentions could pave the road to hell to Syrians – preserving lives today, but sacrificing many more later.”

“FRIENDS OF SYRIA”

The number of lives being lost has increased sharply after Russia, the Syrian government’s main arms supplier, and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that provided for Assad to step down, hand over power to a deputy, stop killing dissidents and begin a transition to democracy.

The vetoes prompted the formation of a “Friends of Syria” group including the United States, European and Arab countries plus Turkey. They will try to succeed where the Security Council failed – stop Syria from sliding deeper into civil war.

Syria unraveling would not be in the interests of anyone except for al Qaeda, argues Kamran Bokhari, an analyst with the private intelligence company Stratfor, except for.

Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has cheered the anti-Assad opposition and urged Muslims in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan to join the fight. The violent overthrow of “apostate” regimes is the main plank of al Qaeda’s ideology.

Its lack of appeal for the vast majority of Arabs became obvious in the Arab Spring, when people power rather than martyrdom-seeking jihadis brought down authoritarian governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen. In Libya, where the Gaddafi dictatorship ended in violence, it was thanks to the help of the United States and NATO, not al Qaeda followers.

Such acts as the Damascus and Aleppo bombings, if indeed they were carried out by al Qaeda militants, serve to keep the conflict going and give Assad, who insists that his government is fighting terrorists, an excuse to crack down even harder. In doing so, he emulates his late father, Hafez. Young Bashar was 17 when Hafez deployed tanks and artillery to flatten the center of the city of Hama to crush a revolt by Sunni Muslims against his Alawite minority regime.

That was in February 1982 and it took 27 days to bomb and shell the city into submission. Estimates of the death toll range from 10,000 to 40,000. No-one was ever held accountable. Hafez al-Assad died in bed, age 69, of pulmonary disease.

His son, 30 years later, is trying to bomb the city of Homs into submission. On Feb. 22 alone, two days before the “Friends of Syria” meeting in Tunis, activists inside the beleaguered city reported 80 people killed, including two Western journalists. Grim video clips of hollow-eyed, fear-stricken women and children huddling in shelters touch even the hardest heart.

But whether shipping more arms to the opposition is the best way out of the crisis remains open to debate.

PHOTO: A Syrian opposition member shouts slogans as he holds posters against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and to express solidarity with Syria’s anti-government people in Homs, during a sit-in organized by the March 14 allies in Beirut, February 22, 2012. REUTERS/Jamal Saidi

In mid-December, the U.S. State Department’s point man on Syria, Frederic Hof, described the government of President Bashar al-Assad as ‘the equivalent of a dead man walking.” On February 6, President Barack Obama followed up by saying the fall of the regime was not a matter of if but of when.

He gave no timeline, unlike Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak who predicted months ago that the Assad regime would fall “within weeks.” Since that wishful thought, hundreds have died in ruthless government crackdowns on dissidents and the death toll in the 11-month uprising climbed past 5,000, according to the United Nations. Politicians now shy away from the risky business of predicting dates for an end to the widening conflict.

Not all bets are off, though. There are punters wagering money on the fall of the house of Assad on Intrade.com, a Dublin-based online exchange that allows traders to bet on politics and other current events. Like other markets, the exchange’s odds are based on the collective opinion of traders. On February 9, Intrade gave a 31% chance to Assad being out of office by the end of June and a 58% chance that he would be out by December 31, 2012.

Before you scoff on prediction markets, it’s worth noting that the Intrade market favorites, according to the company, won the electoral vote in all states in the 2004 U.S. presidential elections and market participants correctly anticipated the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003. That year, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced plans to set up an online market where investors would have traded futures in Middle East developments including coups, assassinations and terrorist attacks. Congressional opposition sank the idea.

Some experts on Syria expressed deep pessimism over an early end to the Syrian bloodshed even before the Chinese and Russian vetoes of a United Nations Security Council resolution that provided for Assad to hand over power to a deputy, withdraw troops from towns, stop the killing of dissidents and begin a transition to democracy.

Joshua Landis, a Middle East scholar at the University of Oklahoma who runs the blog Syria Comment, wrote a week before the  February 4 Security Council vote that the Assad government was likely to last well into 2013. He argued that there was no sign that the Syrian army, most of whose officers belong to Assad’s Alawi sect, was turning against the president. The regime had a good chance of surviving as long as the Syrian military leadership remained united, the opposition fragmented, and foreign powers stayed on the sidelines.

Assad clearly saw the Russian and Chinese vetoes as a green light for ever bloodier crackdowns. Syrian government forces swiftly stepped up artillery barrages of the city of Homs, an opposition stronghold. Bashar follows in the footsteps of his late father, Hafez, who ordered the centre of the city of Hama flattened 30 years ago this month to crush a revolt against Alawi minority rule. Estimates of the number of people who died in tank and artillery bombardments range from 10,000 to 40,000.

GILDED EXILE?

Hafez’s brother Rifaat, who oversaw the massacre and earned the nickname “butcher of Hama,”  lives in comfortable retirement in London. In the unlikely case that Bashar would agree to step down, the prospect of him following his uncle into gilded exile is very remote. Who would take him?

While there has been a chorus of condemnation of the Syrian government’s replay of history, the United States and its Western and Arab allies have ruled out military intervention and some of the options now being discussed sound like prescriptions for the kind of long and bloody civil war that wrecked Lebanon in 16 years of fighting between factions armed and financed by outside sponsors.

As Uzi Rabi, chairman of Tel Aviv University’s Middle East department, put it during a recent visit to Washington: “Syria is going through a process of ‘Lebanization.’”

The Assad government is backed by Iran and armed by Russia, whose foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov,  in a splendid display of hypocrisy, has complained that weapons from NATO countries were being smuggled to anti-Assad forces across the borders with Turkey and Iraq. In Lavrov’s version of events, the weapons go to “armed extremists who are using peaceful demonstrations to provoke Syrian government violence.”

The government vastly outnumbers and outguns the motley band of army defectors and civilians-turned-insurgents known as the Free Syrian Army. Judging from reports of its hit-and-run raids and attacks on military checkpoints, it lacks coordination and is no serious threat to the Syrian armed forces. But the armed dissidents give Assad a pretext to hang tough.

Which brings us back to online future contracts. Intrade offers one on Assad being out of power “by midnight ET, June 30.”  The other is by midnight Dec. 31.  Perhaps it’s time to bet on December 2014.

PHOTO: Demonstrators gather during a protest against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, in Hula, near Homs, in this handout picture received February 13, 2012. Syrian forces resumed their bombardment of the city of Homs on Monday after Arab countries called for U.N. peacekeepers and pledged their firm support for the opposition battling President Bashar al-Assad.  REUTERS/Handout