As Britain prepares for a week of peaceful celebration, Syria will be bracing itself for more bloodshed. The Assad regime, perhaps emboldened by the knowledge that the west has no appetite to intervene in Syria, is becoming ever more brutal in its repression. The massacre in villages around Houla, where 108 were slain, most of them women and children, has shocked the world. The images of tiny bodies being prepared for burial pose an uncomfortable question for Britain. Is David Cameron prepared to intervene to stop the bloodshed as he did in Libya?
For more than a year now, the West has mulled over its options. During that time Assad’s soldiers have killed more than 10,000 Syrians, and 20,000 are now in exile. The death toll and the accelerating exodus is focusing minds in Turkey. The Turkish government has now prepared a plan (backed by France) to create humanitarian corridors through which civilians can escape. They could also double as military corridors, sheltering the rebels between raids. In Washington, Senator John McCain has called the failure to act ‘an abdication of everything America stands for’. Britain’s UN ambassador has been quoted as saying that the murder of children is ‘a game-changer’.
But war is never that simple. It is easy to say we ought not to ‘tolerate’ violence, and we have the technology to depose many bloodthirsty dictators. The question is whether the regime that would follow would be any better, or whether it would impose a different type of repression on a new group of victims. In Syria, we ought to consider another factor: the thickness of the fog of war. It is perfectly clear that children were executed at point-blank range, but less clear on whose orders. The Assad regime vehemently denies responsibility for the massacre at Houla, suggesting it may have been a hideous incident in what has become a civil war.
Syria is a tinderbox of religious groups, ethnicities and tribes. The recent use of suicide bombers suggests that al-Qa’eda is helping the rebels. With Assad gone, his enemies may well turn on the Alawite minority. Another factor to consider is Syria’s ancient Christian community, which has enjoyed protection under Assad. They fear becoming the next candidates for mass killing if Islamists seize Damascus and implement the kind of religious cleansing witnessed in other Arab countries in the last few years.
Britain is a country that seeks to shape the world, rather than be shaped by it. It is natural to wish to act to stop the slaughter in a far-away land. We felt this with Libya, and thanks to David Cameron’s leadership a massacre at Benghazi was averted — although the character of the new regime is still far from clear, as Peter Oborne reports on page 20. Cameron judged that the risks associated with deposing Gaddafi were worth taking.
With Syria, the situation is more complex. The country is far more densely populated. No area is under rebel control. The effects of resurgent Sunni nationalism are impossible to predict from London or Washington. Cameron’s government is not holding back because it has any doubt about the ongoing atrocities. The Prime Minister has shown that he will advocate the use of force, if it helps. But not if it risks making the chaos and carnage worse. He is right to be cautious.
Everyone gains
How unexpected for the Leveson inquiry to unearth a piece of genuine good news. As Michael Gove was being cross-examined this week, he let slip that profit-making schools are a bridge to be crossed, implying that they will be established in time.
This is an excellent development. Though people have an understandable wariness about profit-making schools, it’s an unfounded anxiety. Some of the best schools in the world are run for a profit — and they use the money not to feather nests, but to expand and improve. In Sweden, profit-seeking schools have been opening at a much faster rate than Britain’s free schools, often in the communities that need them most.
The distressing truth is that this country is in urgent need of more schools — especially primaries. England needs 410 new primaries each year just to keep up with the rising tide of pupil numbers, and so far, Gove’s ‘Free schools’ revolution has failed to deliver. There have been only 17 new ‘free school’ primaries in 2011, and only 21 more are approved to open in September.
Letting schools profit has always been the obvious answer to this dire situation — so what has been standing in the way? The short answer is Nick Clegg. The Deputy Prime Minister has vetoed profit-seeking schools because it offends him ideologically, and he remains the single biggest obstacle to this part of Gove’s plans.
If he continues to object, Cameron must overrule him. It would be wrong to let children suffer just to save Nick Clegg’s face. Crossing the bridge will have its dangers, but there is no other solution to England’s schools deficit. The union bosses and their allies may stand aghast at the idea of profit in the state sector. Let the argument against them be a thousand excellent new schools.
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