The Renewed ‘Struggle for Syria’: From the War ‘in’ Syria to the War ‘over’ Syria

ABSTRACT

Syria is generally considered a case of non-intervention. One of the dominant (since the 1990s) kinds of intervention, namely multilateral humanitarian intervention, failed, as did other attempts by a select group of countries to implement a ‘red line’ concerning the use of chemical weapons. However, in this case, there is no sharp dichotomy between intervention and non-intervention. In lieu of an intervention that would tilt the balance and coordinate help to halt massacres, various rival and uncoordinated international and regional interventions overlapped over time, fuelling a market for violence. ‘Weakened interventionism’, as opposed to principled and hierarchical intervention, has manifested itself in Syria in a model recalling “the struggle for Syria” of the 1960s in a new, contemporary setting.

KEYWORDS:

• Syria
• humanitarian intervention
• non-intervention
• multilateralism
• proxy war
• weakened interventionism

Notes

¹ In the beginning, the SNC opposed intervention with three ‘NOs’: no external intervention, no violence, no sectarianism. Then by early 2012, the SNC actively began to lobby for Western and Turkish interventions.

² Trucks smuggling weapons from the Turkish intelligence (MIT) allegedly to jihadist groups were inadvertently intercepted by the Turkish gendarmerie (Al-Jazeera Türk 2014) and photographs published on 29 May 2015 by Cumhuriyet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gd515Gp7YQ), whose journalists were arrested.

³ In his weekly TV show on Al-Jazeera, on 18 March 2011, the influential Islamist preacher al-Qaradawi stated: “The train of the Arab revolution stopped today at the Syrian railway station, Syria can no longer stay out of history.”

⁴ Author’s interview with confidential humanitarian source, May 2014.

⁵ Author’s interview with confidential humanitarian source, January 2013.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Philippe Droz-Vincent

Philippe Droz-Vincent is Professor of International Relations at Sciences-Po Grenoble, Grenoble, France.