Nicholas Noe

When NGOs Call For Military Intervention in Syria : The Case of the International Crisis Group
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-noe/when-ngos-call-for-intervention_b_8136362.html

En réaction au dernier article de l’#ICG ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/405430

L’auteur rappelle d’abord les #prévisions erronées de l’ICG dès le début des événements en #Syrie, qui ont contribué à écarter l’option de la #diplomatie,

In July 2011, a mere four months into the Syria revolt, the venerable, Brussels-based conflict-mitigation NGO, International Crisis Group (ICG), released a lengthy report with the provocative title, “The Syrian Regime’s Slow-motion Suicide.”

“The situation has reached an apparent stalemate,” the report’s authors declared, “but it would be wrong to bet on the status quo enduring. Economic conditions are worsening; should they reach breaking point the regime could well collapse. Predominantly Allawite security forces are overworked, underpaid and increasingly worried. They could conclude that the regime is unsalvageable and defect, precipitating its end.”

By projecting such certainty that the regime was essentially in its death-throes, and then ignoring any serious discussion about how Russia, Iran or Lebanon’s Hezbollah might possibly intervene to change the calculus (the trio are barely mentioned in the report), ICG laid an important intellectual plank for the erroneous assumption that was then gathering steam in so many world capitals: It was just a matter of time before the regime led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad imploded.

Regrettably, ICG’s overconfidence in regime suicide not only encouraged the premature and disastrous rejection of diplomacy that has helped prolong the Syria war. It also essentially abdicated the main role for which peace, promotion, and conflict mitigation NGOs exist in the first place: Advocating for strong international engagement and negotiated solutions that regard the safety of civilian populations as paramount.

The Battle for Southern Syria Has Been Joined and a Regional Conflict May Just Be the Main Event | Nicholas Noe
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-noe/the-battle-for-southern-s_b_6668744.html

Perhaps not surprisingly, given its politically explosive nature, the opposing alliance has been much more difficult to understand and document. The main exhibit over the past few months has been a single, published UN report at the end of last year detailing increased Israeli-rebel contacts and coordination in and around the occupied Golan. Since Al-Qaeda’s franchise, al-Nusra, is known to mostly control the area where the Israeli contacts are reported to have taken place, and since some Israeli attacks in the area have materially benefited Nusrah’s advance against the Syrian army, it hasn’t exactly been a tough sell in the region, at least, to argue that Israel is likely engaged in an effort to coordinate and support some of the most bitter (and well-equipped) opponents of Hezbollah, Iran and Syria in the hope of, quite possibly, staking out a “security zone” in Southern Syria (beyond the Occupied Golan) that would more effectively buffer it from its main foes.