It’s worth noting that the entrance of the term, and indeed concept, of ‘humanitarian intervention’ into the general lexicon was a mere quarter-century ago. In the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War between an American-led coalition and Iraq under Saddam Hussein the latter ruthlessly crushed widespread uprisings against his rule carried out by Shia Iraqi Arabs and the country’s Kurdish minority. When the uprising was clearly set to fail and it was clear the Americans were not coming to their aid hundreds of thousands of Kurds scrambled toward their neighbouring countries fearing that they would be subjected to chemical attack as they had been a mere three-years beforehand.
In images uncannily reminiscent of the Syrian refugee crisis of the present Kurds desperately sought refuge and sanctuary in their neighbouring states. Turkey only allowed a small number in while over one million Iraqi Kurds were permitted entrance into Iran. Images of desperate Kurdish civilians in the mountains were broadcast around the world. The American administration of President George H.W. Bush – who had argued that it was a moral duty on the part of the civilized world to confront what he claimed to amount to a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler – did nothing to support the uprising. However those powerful images of the Kurds brought home their desperate plight to television viewers around the world. After a brief visit to the area the then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker conveyed to the president the magnitude of the crisis and how it might tarnish their military victory over Hussein.
This consequently saw to the transpiration of the first humanitarian-motivated military intervention. U.S.-led coalition jets guarded the Kurdish region and established a safe-zone there. This lead to some questioning how many lives could have been saved had that zone been established much earlier. The journalist Quil Lawrence once said that upon seeing how the media essentially “guilted” the major powers into intervening on humanitarian grounds and saving countless innocents was one of the main reasons he decided to pursue a career in journalism.
Proponents of humanitarian intervention throughout the rest of the 1990’s despaired over the situation in Bosnia not long thereafter and the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 has led to many retrospective arguments about how a small but effective humanitarian military intervention there could have potentially saved hundreds-of-thousands of lives.
By the onset of the 2000s military intervention would become synonymous with the failure of the unpopular and widely opposed, even resented, Iraq War (2003-11). The shaky pretext upon which it was executed (Saddam Hussein being an imminent Weapons-of-Mass Destruction possessing threat to the world) and the many failures that came with it led to an aversion to, and suspicion of, military intervention–even if done primarily on humanitarian grounds or in order to mitigate a likely humanitarian disaster brought on by a war.
That being said, despite the many complications, failures and abuses such enterprises cause proponents of humanitarian intervention argue that they are a comparable small price to pay. Had, for instance, the world powers intervened in Rwanda before the infamous genocide of that year that intervening force would likely have accidentally shot innocent civilians in the midst of a disorderly and chaotic environment, no matter how strict the rules of engagement were. But such things would have been, advocates invariably argue, a small price to pay had such an intervention successfully prevented the deaths of hundreds-of-thousands Rwandans caused by that horrific genocide.
Similarly in Syria today non-intervention has nevertheless seen to that war-weary country essentially imploding. Half of the country’s population of 22-million are displaced. Millions are refugees in the neighbouring countries. Thousands of whom are beginning to stream into Europe. The refugee problem caused by the Syrian crisis will likely worsen in the near future since the situation in Syria itself is only getting demonstrable worse.
In other words, does the failure of the world to do anything meaningful in Syria to alleviate the crisis we now face renew, or even reinvigorate, the case for humanitarian intervention?
Perhaps. But even in retrospect it’s questionable about what exactly could have been done. Turkey (which hosts about 2.2 million Syrian refugees) had long proposed militarily establishing and guarding safe-zones in Syria’s north (particularly in the northern Aleppo region) which could have become a safe part of Syria for displaced Syrians to resettle (and for fighters opposed to the Syrian regime to organize without coming under attack) in. Whether the execution of such a policy would, or would have, worked and made a decisive difference on the ground in Syria, is far from clear.