Justification of "Humanitarian" Military Intervention

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, we can easily push to have the Security Council refer cases to the ICC.

oralloy wrote:

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, we can easily push to have the Security Council refer cases to the ICC.

Such a push would be easily resisted by Russia, who by the way is not a party to the ICC either.

As the atrocities mount, it will become harder and harder for them to do so, especially if we are trying to refer both sides to the ICC.

BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian president has told Lebanon's Hezbollah-owned TV station that Damascus received the first shipment of Russian air defense missiles, according to remarks released Thursday.

Bashar Assad's comment on the arrival of the long-range S-300 air defense missiles in Syria will further ratchet up tensions in the region and undermine efforts to hold U.N.-sponsored talks with Syria's warring sides.

Israel's defense chief, Moshe Yaalon, said earlier this week that Russia's plan to supply Syria with the weapons is a threat and that Israel was prepared to use force to stop the delivery.

The Al-Manar TV, owned by the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group, released Assad's comment on the Russian missiles through its breaking news service to clients on Thursday morning. An official at the station confirmed to The Associated Press that the remark was from the interview. The TV is to air the exclusive interview later Thursday.

On Monday, the European Union lifted an arms embargo on Syria, paving way for individual countries of the 27-member bloc to send weapons to rebels fighting to topple Assad's regime. The move raised fears of an arms race in the Middle East.

Israel has carried out several airstrikes in Syria in recent months that are believed to have destroyed weapons shipments bound for Hezbollah. It is not clear whether Israeli warplanes entered Syrian airspace in these attacks.

But with the Russian missiles in Syria's possession, the Israeli air force's ability to act could be limited.

Israel has lobbied Moscow over the planned sale of S-300 air-defense missiles to Syria but on Tuesday, Russia's deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said his government remained committed to the deal.

The S-300s have a range of up to 200 kilometers (125 miles) and the capability to track and strike multiple targets simultaneously. Syria already possesses Russian-made air defenses, and Israel is believed to have used long-distance bombs fired from Israeli or Lebanese airspace. The S-300s would expand Syria's capabilities, allowing it to counter airstrikes launched from foreign airspace as well.

Monday's decision by the EU paved the way for individual countries to send weapons to Assad's outgunned opponents. The EU's move may have little impact on the conflict since no single European country is expected to send lethal weapons to the rebels anytime soon.

Britain and France, the main military powers in the EU, had pushed for lifting the embargo. They have argued that Europe's threat of arming the rebels in the future would force Assad to negotiate in good faith.

Russia, an Assad ally, harshly criticized Europe's decision to allow the arming of Syrian rebels, saying it undercuts international efforts to bring the opposing sides in Syrian conflict together for a peace conference.

The British government has written to United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon alleging three new incidents of chemical weapons use by Syrian government forces.

The allegations are to be passed to a UN investigations team set up to look into claims that the government of Bashar al-Assad is using chemical weapons against rebel forces.

Disclosure of the British government letter came 24 hours after the French government said it was testing samples for suspected chemical weapons use smuggled out by Le Monde reporters. The results will be published in the next few days, the French government said.

The new allegations add to pressure on the Obama administration, which is reluctant to be drawn into another Middle East conflict, saying there is no definitive evidence of chemical weapons use and that if there has been, it has been used only in small amounts. Washington says it is awaiting the report of the UN investigations team.

The use of chemical weapons is banned under international law and their use should theoretically trigger international intervention.

The British and French government have been at the forefront in pushing for intervention in Syria because of what they say are widescale human rights abuses by the Assad government, including the use of chemical weapons.

Barack Obama vowed earlier this year that if evidence emerged of use of chemical weapons by the Assad government, it would be tantamount to having crossed a red line. But he has since backtracked, saying that there has so far been no definitive evidence.

The British and French sent a joint letter to the UN secretary-general on March 25 saying there was evidence of chemical weapons being used Homs in December and Aleppo in March. The British government sent a letter separately on Friday about three further alleged incidents.

Sir Mark Lyall Grant, British ambassador to the UN, speaking to reporters at the UK mission in New York on Wednesday, said: "We continue to inform the secretary-general and Mr Sellstrom [Ake Sellstrom, Swedish head of the UN chemical weapons investigation team] of any information as, and when, we get it."

Iona Thomas, spokesperson for Lyall Grant, added later that he had drawn attention to "three further allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria".

The Friday letter is the third he has written to the secretary-general. The alleged incidents referred to in Friday's letter were at Adra, near Damascus, in March; Darayya, also near Damascus, and Saraqib, near Aleppo, both in April.

Western governments say there is no evidence, contrary to assertions by the Syrian government, that the rebels have used or even have access to chemical weapons.

Although there is little sign of the UN investigations team declaring chemical weapons have been used, western governments say that reporting of such incidents keeps up pressure on the Assad government and could deter it from large-scale use of chemical weapons.

The fear expressed by western governments is that Assad is testing international reaction and, if he senses a lack of resolve to intervene, he might be tempted to use the weapons on a bigger scale.

Sellstrom recently had his contract extended to November, suggesting that a definitive conclusion is far from imminent. His team is stuck in Cyprus, denied access to Syria.

Alleged evidence of chemical weapons use is being gathered from doctors from within Syria and neighbouring countries, as well as refugees and others.

On Monday, the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said in Brussels, said there "are stronger and better substantiated indications of the local use of chemical arms. We have to check this and are doing this with our partners".

interviewing government officials with access to intelligence on Syria’s chemical weapons program, refugees and other potential eyewitnesses who have fled.

I am not sure that a journalist report would actually constitute confirmation that Syria used chemical weapons.

The other day I posted about Syria receiving anti-aircraft missiles, well Russia is denying they have received it

Like I once said on Yahoo, one thing we could do is fight to have the UN Security Council refer this conflict to the International Criminal Court.

That might not make the conflict any less brutal, but it will make it much more likely that those who perpetrate atrocities (no mater which side they are on) will one day have to answer for what they've done.

Russia will surely try to oppose it. But as the atrocities mount, it will become harder and harder for them to do so, especially if we are trying to refer both sides to the ICC.

And we should refer both sides to the ICC. Assad may be responsible for a greater number of atrocities, but the victims of rebel atrocities deserve justice too.

Syria has not even ratified the ICC Treaty. Therefore there's no jurisdiction.

The White House on Thursday confirmed that Syria has used chemical weapons and will increase military assistance to rebels. But officials will not specifically say what new aid it will give rebel fighters.

For months, President Obama called the use of chemical weapons "a red line" that would be met with swift action from the U.S. However, critics of the president, most notably Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have said that the U.S. has delayed too long. Following an investigation by U.S. and European investigators, the White House has concluded that chemical weapons have been used by President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year," White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said in a statement Thursday.

Rhodes said the intelligence community has "high confidence" in the assessment, which found that 100 to 150 people have died from chemical-weapons use.

Part of the U.S. response will be to arm and train rebels within the Jordan, The Wall Street Journal reports. In order to protect those rebels, the U.S. will enforce a no-fly zone within Jordan and 25 miles into Syria. This limited no-fly zone is also aimed at protecting refugees in Jordan and will cost $50 million per day.

The president has made a decision about providing more support, but Rhodes would not discuss or confirm this plan. He said, instead, that the U.S. will increase the "scope and scale" of assistance to the rebel Supreme Military Council. The aid would be substantively different both militarily and politically, he said.

"We are aiming to be responsive to the needs of the Syrian opposition," Rhodes said. "I can't go through an inventory of the type of assistant we're going to provide."

Rhodes also said that the Obama administration will consult with Congress.

Russia has reinforced its ties to the Assad regime in recent weeks, sending further weaponry as rebel forces seemed to have lost ground. The White House again pressured Russia to allow Assad to step down and help further a dialogue between the regime and rebels.

This week, the United Nations said that at least 93,000 Syrians have died in this conflict, and estimates the number is substantially larger. Since last July, the report notes, at least 5,000 people have died every month.

For the first time in April, Obama acknowledged the likelihood that the Assad regime used chemical weapons, but wanted those suspicions to be confirmed by investigators. It was only after those results confirmed the chemical-weapons use did the U.S. respond to its threat.

Rhodes outlined what tools the U.S. used to detect the use of chemical weapons, even though the Assad regime would not allow United Nations personnel to investigate:


The body of information used to make this intelligence assessment includes reporting regarding Syrian officials planning and executing regime chemical-weapons attacks; reporting that includes descriptions of the time, location, and means of attack; and descriptions of physiological symptoms that are consistent with exposure to a chemical-weapons agent. Some open-source reports from social-media outlets from Syrian opposition groups and other media sources are consistent with the information we have obtained regarding chemical-weapons use and exposure. The assessment is further supported by laboratory analysis of physiological samples obtained from a number of individuals, which revealed exposure to sarin. Each positive result indicates that an individual was exposed to sarin, but it does not tell us how or where the individuals were exposed or who was responsible for the dissemination.

The New York Times adds this:

According to a C.I.A. report, which was described by an American official who declined to be identified, the United States has acquired blood, urine and hair samples from two Syrian rebels — one dead, and one wounded — who were involved in a firefight with Syrian government forces in mid-March near the town of Utubya, northeast of Damascus.

Rockets with toxic agents were launched at the suburbs of the Ghouta region early on Wednesday as part of a major bombardment on rebel forces, they say.

Syrian officials have denied the claims, saying they are an attempt to distract UN weapons inspectors.

The main opposition alliance said that more than 650 people had been killed by the attacks.

Activist networks also reported death tolls in the hundreds, but these could not be independently confirmed.

It is also not clear how many died in the bombardment of the sites and how many deaths were due to any exposure to toxic substances.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague and French President Francois Hollande called for UN inspectors to be allowed access to the area and said Britain and France would raise the issue at the UN.

If confirmed, the attacks would mark a "shocking escalation in the use of chemical weapons in Syria", Mr Hague said.

The Arab League echoed the call for the inspectors to go to the site.

Syrian sources on the ground and expatriate human rights organizations are alleging Wednesday morning that Syrian aircraft have killed hundreds of people in rebel-held East and West Ghouta and some other areas outside the capital with bombings and poison gas.

The attack comes as international observers are in the country to investigate past alleged use by the regime or rebels of poison gas (mainly sarin) in its attempt to put down a two-year-old insurgency. It is the third alleged use of sarin by the regime against the rebels in Zamalka, Rif Dimashq (pop. 50,000)

The BBC and other news organizations are reporting the allegations while noting that we have no independent observers at the scene who can verify them.

Regarding the plausibility of these reports, the con is that it is not easy to kill a dispersed population with sarin. Chemical weapons are mostly battlefield weapons, used in WWI and the Iran-Iraq War at a military front where troops were massed together. In contrast, when the terrorist cult Om Shinrikyo loosed sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, they killed 12 people instead of the thousands they were aiming for. This is because the circulating air in the subway dispersed the gas. Likewise, towns are heat pumps throwing warm air into the atmosphere, and this air circulation would typically disperse the gas.

The rebels are alleging that the gas was delivered by fighter-jets in the form of gas-tipped missiles and that they know it is sarin because the victims were nauseous.

The more likely scenario for hundreds of deaths like this would be the firing by helicopter gunships of sarin-tipped missiles at close quarters into markets or schools. Fighter jets fly high and don’t have that accuracy (Syria doesn’t have smart bombs)

The pro is that if hundreds of people are dead for reasons other than shrapnel, then something killed them, and we could be seeing a repeat by the Baath Party in Syria of the Iraqi Baath Party’s genocidal Anfal campaign against Kurdish separatists in 1987-88 toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War.

If the regime did use gas, what are its motives? Iraq used gas in the 1980s because it had far fewer troops than Iran and wanted to level the playing field. Likewise, the Syrian army has shrunk through Sunni desertions to a shadow of its former self and so can’t control the whole country any more. Its recent advances in the Homs area were offset by losses around Aleppo in the north, including the fall of a major military air base. Weakened armies facing a demographically larger foe often resort to unconventional armaments.

Likewise, the regime clearly is seeking to terrify the population into submission. Again, Saddam Hussein tried that with the Kurds and Shiites. Mass killings of restive populations by a regime raise the cost of insurgency, the regime hopes to unacceptably high levels. Could the Baath have done this? This is the regime that slaughtered at least 10,000 at Hama in 1982, so sure.

Did they do it? Hard to tell this morning. But if they did, it will increase pressure on a reluctant Obama to speed up promised shipments of weapons to the rebels. If Damascus is playing it this way, it is clearly calling Obama’s bluff. Lesson to Mr. Obama: don’t bluff and don’t set red lines unless you’re really committted to reacting if they are crossed.

slammite brohood "rebels"

MOSCOW, August 22 (RIA Novosti) – Reports alleging the use of chemical weapons in Syria may be aimed at disrupting the preparation of an international conference on Syria in Geneva, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday.

The Syrian opposition has accused the government of killing scores of people in a massive nerve gas attack in Damascus on Wednesday, with death toll estimates varying from a hundred to more than a thousand people. The Syrian government promptly denied the reports as baseless.

“It all looks like attempts to use any means to persuade the UN Security Council to take the side of the opponents of the [President Bashar Assad] regime and to derail the preparation of the Geneva conference, led by high-ranking Russian and US experts whose meeting is planned for August 28 in The Hague,” ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

The official reiterated that Moscow considers it important to conduct an objective and professional investigation to confirm the authenticity of the reports.

Lukashenko said the Syrian government had expressed willingness to offer full cooperation and logistics support to UN experts who are currently conducting an investigation of a reported March 19 chemical attack in Khan al-Assal as well as alleged attacks in two other locations being kept secret for security reasons.


The UN team of chemical weapons investigators, headed by Swedish expert Ake Sellstrom, started working in Damascus on Monday.

“The experts will be allowed to question witnesses, victims and local officials,” Lukashevich said.

Moscow and Washington proposed in May to hold an international conference aimed at facilitating a solution to the Syrian crisis through political dialogue. At least 100,000 people have been killed in Syria since fighting broke out between government forces and rebels in March 2011.
The so-called Geneva-2 conference is designed to be a follow-up to last summer’s international meeting in Geneva during which a peace roadmap for Syria was drafted, including the establishment of a transitional government, with full executive powers and made up of members of the Assad regime and opposition groups.

Russia has repeatedly warned against further delaying the new conference on Syria because the peace terms set by the previous conference have never been implemented and the civil war continues to tear apart the once prosperous Arab nation.