Doug Saunders: A Bloody History Repeating Itself in Syria?
Doug Saunders is a Canadian-British author and journalist.
Moscow is sending three warships to back the regime. Washington has made it known that the CIA is aiding the rebels. Talks aimed at a peace deal or surrender have broken down. And the United Nations Security Council is deadlocked by Russian and Chinese vetoes, raising the spectre of a long and ugly conflict.
That is Syria today, but it also happens to sound a lot like Kosovo in 1999. Then, as now, a bloody guerrilla struggle against the increasingly violent actions of a strongman leader became a symbolically loaded conflict of wills between the United States and Russia, and as a result the United Nations was unable to play any useful role.
After former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan resigned in frustration on Thursday as the UN-appointed negotiator between Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and opposition rebels, the comparisons to the Kosovo conflict became even more acute...