By Emanuele Scimia
France has lately called for a
more assertive role of the European Union (EU) in the civil war that has
been scouring Syria since early 2011, demands that have routinely
fallen on deaf ears, while European countries keep on holding a cautious
position on this crisis.
EU foreign ministers on
November 19 welcomed the establishment of the National Coalition for
Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the cartel that opposition
forces to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime had set up in Qatar a
few days earlier.
Yet, unlike Paris’s auspices, the
European bloc was careful not to accord full diplomatic recognition to
the new Syrian opposition grouping. It did not commit itself to
providing rebels with "defensive" weapons as well. The fear of
accidentally arming extremists in Syria runs high in both Brussels and
Washington.This sentiment has grown stronger after Islamist and Salafist
fighters in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo scornfully rejected the
Western-backed National Coalition.
During their
meeting, EU foreign ministers also underscored the EU's pledge to boost
humanitarian support to both the civil population within Syria's
boundaries and Syrian refugees in neighboring countries. In reality,
humanitarian agencies could dispute this assertion, since EU countries
would be aiming to cut spending in development and humanitarian
assistance as part of the planned slash in the 2014-2020 budget of the
European Union.
France has been the first Western power
to recognize the National Coalition as the Syrian people's sole
legitimate representative. French President Francois Hollande has
allowed Syria's restyled opposition to appoint an ambassador to Paris.
Britain
also acknowledged the National Coalition on November 20. London ruled
out sending in arms to the opposition rebels, but it earmarked a first
package of support worth US$3.1 million for communications assistance,
deployment of a Stabilization Response Team into the opposition-held
areas (so as "to meet basic needs of people there", the British Foreign
Office said) and humanitarian medical aid.
In addition
to supplying anti-aircraft weapons to the rebels, the French government
is pressing on its European counterparts to create a no-fly zone along
the Syrian-Turkish border. Turkey, along with the six Gulf states, has
also officially acknowledged the National Coalition and is finding
common ground with France on how to bash Assad. While shelving their
quarrel over the World War I-era genocide of Armenians, Paris and
Ankara, with the support of Qatar and Jordan, are promoting the creation
of protected civilian zones in northern Syria.
In this
regard, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) does not seem to
be springing to France's aid either. The trans-Atlantic military
organization is mulling over a demand from Turkey for the deployment of
ground-to-air missiles along its southern border, after mortar shells
fired from the Syrian side landed within its territory.
However,
NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen has stressed that the
stationing of Patriot missiles in southern Turkey would have essentially
a defensive nature and not result in the creation of a no-fly zone over
the Syrian northern region. Rasmussen has also underlined that "it is
up to the individual NATO countries that have available Patriots -
Germany, the Netherlands and the United States - to decide if they can
provide them for deployment in Turkey and for how long".
Going
it alone in the Syrian crisis, Paris appears much more intent on
offsetting the EU's amnesia about the Middle East than filling the
geopolitical vacuum that Washington might leave in this area if its
"pivot" to Asia-Pacific were eventually to materialize.
Quite
surprisingly, indeed, the proposal for a new EU Common Security and
Defense Policy, which Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the same France
sketched out in Paris on November 15, did not include the Middle East
among the areas singled out for future crisis-management support by the
European Union. On the other hand, in their bid for updating the EU
military policy, these five countries would prefigure Europe's proactive
engagement in the Horn of Africa, Sahel, North Africa, West Balkans,
Caucasus and Central Asia.
Divisions among European
countries over the vote for Palestinian non-member status at the United
Nations represent yet another sign of the chaotic course of the EU
foreign policy with regard to the Middle East.
France
already tried to revive its outdated "grandeur" in 2011 by playing a
leading role in NATO's military campaign in Libya. The active
involvement in the Syrian quagmire, the efforts to fight jihadist groups
in the Saharan-Sahelian basin and the accelerated military withdrawal
from Afghanistan - Paris will pull out from the Afghan terrain all its
combat troops as early as in December, two years before the main NATO's
departure - appear to be all part of the strategic rebalancing towards
the Maghreb and Mashreq that the French government is carrying out
today.
In pursuing this aim, France is teaming up with
Qatar, the more energetic sponsor of the Arab Spring. To date, Doha is
one of the largest investors in France: a lifeblood for the nation,
which has been recently stripped of its triple-A rating by Moody's
Investors Service.
Qatar has a 2% share in French oil
company Total and owns the Paris Saint-Germain football club. It
controls 13% of Lagardere, the French media group that has an 7.5%
interest in EADS, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company.
Qatar
is set to invest US$130 million in the French "banlieues", the
peripheral areas where the majority of the six million Muslim immigrants
in France are concentrated. This investment, which Hollande's
administration approved in September, has the scope to sustain small
businesses managed by the country's Muslim citizens.
Qatar
also became in October 2012 an associate member of the International
Organization of the Francophonie (IOF), a body representing
French-speaking communities throughout the world. This move has raised
many doubts among the IOF countries, which find it hard to believe in
the Francophone identity of the nation ruled by emir Sheikh Hamad bin
Khalifa al-Thani.
The quite fresh French-Qatari
connection should work on the basis of a mutual convenience: Doha helps
France's plans in the Levant, while Paris props up Qatar's diplomatic
and commercial expansion in Africa.
Yet, apart from
widespread suspicions that Qatari sheikhs are bolstering jihadist forces
from the Levant to Mali, the current evolution of the crisis in Syria
highlights that the new "dynamic duo" has made its debut in the
geopolitical business with a false start.
Simply put,
the French-Qatari strategic joint-venture is collecting one misstep
after another, as its failed mediation to stop Israel's Operation Pillar
of Defense against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip has of late demonstrated.
Indeed, France's and Qatar's attempt to broker a ceasefire between the
two belligerent sides was bluntly dismissed by Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, who privileged the US-backed (and successful)
mediation of Egypt.
Emanuele Scimia is a journalist and geopolitical analyst based in Rome.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NL01Ak03.html