THE RENEWED shelling yesterday of the Homs districts of Khalidiya, Ashira, Bayada, Baba Amro and the old city was eloquent testimony to the real nature of Bashar al-Assad’s weekend attempt to legitimise his rule through a constitutional referendum.
Damascus yesterday announced an “89 per cent” vote in favour, endorsing provisions that, according to the regime, will usher in “freedom and democracy”. The media hailed the improbable vote as an expression of “steadfastness” in the face of the year-old insurrection.
The new constitution drops an article making Assad’s Baath party the leader of state and society, aspires to political pluralism, and introduces a presidential limit of two seven-year terms (not retrospective, in theory allowing Assad serve two more terms after 2014). Assad has promised parliamentary elections in three months.
Few are convinced – internationally only the Russians were playing it up. “An important step on the path of reforms”, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called it laughably. As reformist as Vladimir Putin?
Yesterday, diplomatic pressure continued to be ratcheted up. The EU agreed another round of sanctions – the freezing of the central bank’s assets and restrictions on the regime’s access to the gold and precious metals market. Its sanctions already include an arms embargo, a ban on EU oil and gas equipment exports, and visa/asset bans against more than 100 regime figures.
But in the wake of Friday’s meeting of the 60-nation Friends of Syria group, which endorsed a call on Assad to step down and urged the setting up of a UN peacekeeping force, there remains strong reluctance in the international community to go beyond sanctions, specifically to the use, or assist in the use, of force against the regime. Russia and China remain determined to use UN Security Council vetoes against it. And while the Qataris yesterday joined the Saudi call to arm the opposition, even calls for UN peacekeeping troops were dismissed by British foreign secretary William Hague “in the absence of a peace to keep”.
In the face of the appalling brutality of the regime the temptation to back external military intervention is enormous. But it must be resisted. Syria is not Libya and intervention is likely not to tilt the balance of forces decisively and easily against the regime, but to ignite the civil war that is in danger of exploding. It would not spare lives but condemn thousands more. Frustrating as it may be, the international community must confine itself to external diplomatic and economic pressure.