War for peace
As I write this, a poignant bit of text is coming to mind. It’s the preamble to the United Nations charter, written right after the end of World War II. It began by stating: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind …”
It is really that simple. War, conflict only results in people’s lives being ruined. It’s a scourge in every sense of the word.
Why am I saying this? We all know the demerits of war. Having witnessed deadly conflicts on news channels for much of the last decade, we are now aware that there is no end to a conflict, except when all parties in it decide to stop violently engaging each other.
We are all battle weary, as reflected in most of the public opinion polls around the world. We are also aware that interventions in conflicts, no matter how much they’re called for, generally do not end well and are rarely effective in sending any long term message of dissuasion.
Syria is a mess. It’s been so for quite some time now. The conflict there is very complex. The fallout from the conflict has repercussions in all of the Middle East. Countries around the world are backing different sides in the conflict and are invested in the outcome.
Amidst all this, there is one glaring reality: an untold number of people, including women and children, have been killed, maimed, and continue to be affected in this greatly flawed but once peaceful state.
It’s a shame that instead of everyone banding for peace in trying to resolve the situation, a few world powers have worked only to escalate the tension in the region. There are many who have used the devastating chemical attacks in Syria as a pretext to ramp up the need for the use of military action against the Assad regime, which has repeatedly contended it had no role to play in the matter.
For most observers of international conflicts, the situation is slightly more black and white. People are dying in Syria. Many as results of bombs, bullets, heavy artillery, and now, many have been killer by deadly chemicals.
The result is the same. Dropping bombs on Syria, no matter how surgical or limited in scope, is going to result in further collateral loss of lives. This does not even account for the destabilisation of politics in the entire region.
It may be fashionable in some circles, especially diplomatic ones, to suggest that one needs to go to war for peace. But after Iraq and Afghanistan, there are very few who will buy into that claim.
So, while there must be investigations and protests in the strongest terms against the use of chemicals in any conflict, being trigger happy and going to war will actually be a cheap response.
Super powers like the United States must return to be parts of the global voice that works hard and consistently advocates the ceasing of hostilities by all sides unequivocally.
The international community must urge and create pressure for peace using all available means and continue to do so equally to all sides lest it wants to fruitlessly continue to support rebel fighters who eat the hearts of the opponents, raw, after having dismembered their bodies, or regimes who find it acceptable that infants die in the embrace of their mothers from bombs they drop on their own people.
The message must be: the untold number of deaths are unacceptable, no matter what the circumstances.
In recent times, sense has rarely prevailed when states begin drumming the need for a war under whichever pretext. This seemed to be the case this time around when surgical strikes were expected to be undertaken by Thursday evening.
It’s Saturday now and the beat for war is all but a distant, muffled noise. Therefore, it’s a welcome change that the UN clearly came out to state that there were other options on the table and the US must not be hasty in its response — in the strongest of terms I have seen them do in many years — further insisting that any action bypassing the security council would be against international law, especially when there wasn’t even a context of self-defence to justify unilateral action.
As a result, it was heartening to see the British parliament voting against military intervention in Syria despite being led by a prime minister who kept demanding nothing less than a military response.
The UN has once again proven its relevance in such scenarios, and the need for a global response when battling such situations.
If now, the US chose to strike unilaterally, it would risk being further labelled as a warmongering state whose actions are meant only to satiate itself or to make a few western powers feel as if they did something about the situation.
It’s important that the voices for peace are given a chance. Let the investigators finish their reports. Let the world order come to a judgement on what is to be done next. There are better ways to secure peace than drop a bomb.
Originally published at www.dhakatribune.com on August 30, 2013.
