The US Congress will probably vote next week to authorise a punitive military strike against Bashar al-Assad’s regime over the alleged use of chemical weapons. John Boehner, Republican speaker of the House of Representative, said that he would “support the president’s call for action” in Syria.
The Assad regime allegedly used chemical weapons in a mass attack in eastern Damascus on August 21. Four days later, Mr Assad agreed to gain UN weapons inspectors access to all areas, where a suspected attack took place. The Obama administration, though, dismissed the offer as too late to be credible.
The US, Britain and France started to press ahead with a plan for a punitive military strike to prevent the Syrian regime from using chemical weapons again, even without a United Nations Security Council resolution authorising a military action (which is, by the way, impossible to obtain, because strong opposition from Russia).
The Obama administration ruled out a military intervention in the Syrian two-and-a-half-year civil war, which has killed more than 100,000 people, on the side of opposition groups, some of them linked to al-Qaeda, but said that weapons could be sent to some fractions of Syrian rebels.
On August 28, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said that UN weapons inspectors would need four more days to complete their work. This announcement thwarted a US plan for a swift military bombardment of Syrian targets.
US politicians as well as those in Britain are still hunted by memories of their failure to give UN weapons inspectors more time to establish whether or not Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. As a result of that failure, they didn’t approve an attack, while UN inspectors were carried out their work.
On August 29, David Cameron, the British prime minister, suffered a humiliating defeat in the House of Commons, which forced him to rule out Britain’s participation in a potential US-led military strike. Memories of Britain’s involvement in the wars in Afghanistan, and particularly in Iraq ten years ago, were behind the government’s failure to win bipartisan support for an intervention by 285 votes to 272. After the vote, Mr Cameron said he had no intention to ask the Commons to reconsider the vote. The White House said that it was ready to act without Britain.
The US government released an intelligence report on August 30, which concluded with high confidence that a chemical weapons attack had come from areas controlled by the Syrian regime and targeted rebel-held districts, later destroyed by artillery assaults in an attempt to obliterate all evidence. The US said that 1,429 people, including 426 children, were killed on August 21.
Mr Obama unexpectedly announced on August 31 that he would seek an approval from Congress for a bombardment of Syrian targets, when it comes back into session on September 9. On the same day, UN weapons inspectors left Syria.
François Hollande, France’s president, has summoned parliament to discuss the French involvement in Syria. No vote is required under the French constitution, but the opposition insists that Mr Hollande should follow the example of Mr Cameron and Mr Obama and hold a parliamentary vote to approve a military action.
photo: James Gordon / flickr.com / CC BY 2.0
