Editorial: UN peacekeeping plan for Syria

The United Nations is working on a Syrian peace-keeping plan in the event of real cease-fire. It is absolutely imperative that this time, the entire UN Security Council stands full behind the initiative. It cannot be that the Russians and Chinese can continue much longer, to obstruct the rest of the international community and by extension a real Syrian peace deal.
The UN’s planning is for something far more than the Eid Al-Ahda holiday proposed by UN and Arab League envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi. Drawing on its bitter experiences earlier this year, with its observer mission, the UN is looking to how it can deploy, support and sustain, an international force of blue berets, which is likely to be many thousands strong.
The supposition is that this body of troops will only be deployed when both sides have reached a point, where there seems no immediate point in continuing to fight, and when presumably diplomatic avenues will have re-opened, and negotiations are set to begin or have actually begun.
At that point UN peacekeepers will have the onerous task of ensuring that the combatants do not re-engage in fighting and that a cease-fire is honored. As has happened in past peace-keeping operations, the job will also be to monitor infringements of the truce and report them to the Security Council.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon could be said to be treading a risk path by authorizing the advance planning on a UN peacekeeping operation in Syria. Moscow and Beijing remain adamant that the international community should be interfering in no way at all in the conflict. However, it would be harder for them to protest against the UN interfering in the peace, when it comes.
Indeed, though it might be risky for their men on the ground, China and perhaps also Russia could be invited to contribute contingents to a UN peacekeeping force. The Russian Navy after all has the recently-modernized Syrian naval base at Latakia, from which it could support its own troops and other UN soldiers.
Ban could argue forcefully that under the UN charter, he has the right to prepare in advance of the Security Council awarding a peace-keeping mandate. It is for the Security Council, once it has agreed on sending such a force, to define its composition, mission and other priorities, including, if needed, rules of engagement.
Indeed, such contingency planning is being undertaken by military planners the world over, if only as a table top exercise. Ministries of defense everywhere have cupboards stuffed with long out-dated plans. Ban also has an even more powerful argument for pressing ahead with work on the peace-keeping force.
This is that, as and when a cease-fire comes, there may only be a very narrow window of opportunity to get a UN force to the country, along with all the vast quantities of supplies and complex logistics it requires, and then deployed to the potential flash points between the two sides. The UN would have to hit the ground running. Anything like the gradual build up of the Arab league monitors earlier this year, would be a recipe for disaster.
Hopefully the Russians and Chinese will not seek to obstruct Ban’s proactive initiative. Indeed, though certainly the Kremlin would not wish to say so in public, there is probably some satisfaction at the UN planning. There is after all a large Russian community still in Syria, to say nothing of the naval base. The Blue Berets could play an important part in protecting such Russian interests.
What is more, the UN calculations are based on the assumption that the Assad regime will not be driven from power by the insurgency and that the Free Syrian Army will not be marching victorious through the streets of Aleppo and Damascus. Despite their still infinitely smaller firepower, the rebels are continuing to take ground. Increasingly Assad’s troops are reluctant to go head to head with FSA units. They prefer to rely upon artillery and rockets and serial bombardment. An army that is not prepared to look its opponents in the eye, is an army that is beginning to lose it. The Assad regime is running out of options and its strength is ebbing from it, little by little, day by day. Many rebel commanders still fervently believe that it is only a question of time.
Nevertheless, it is absolutely right that the UN is busy planning for a cease-fire rather than an outright Assad defeat.