Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputies Daly and Wallace on using their scarce parliamentary time on this important issue. The conflict in Syria, as others have said, is the world's gravest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. Millions of people have been displaced, both inside and beyond the borders of Syria, and more than half a million people are believed to have been killed since 2011, the vast majority by the Assad government and its allies. The regime has also used chemical weapons against civilians.

It has prevented aid from reaching those affected on the ground. Syria has become a free-for-all. The belligerents have received political, military and operational support from Russia, Iran, North Korea, Algeria, Iraq, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others. It was reported last week that China will deploy troops to aid President al-Assad. We saw the Syrian Administration's barbaric treatment of its own population, the large-scale breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law and, in particular, we saw civilian populations exposed to indiscriminate attack, loss of life and the destruction of essential infrastructural services and basic medical care. We saw the great powers return to Cold War-style fuelling of proxy wars in third countries. These conflicts have resulted in or contributed to the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIL, the Yemeni civil war and the re-emergence of the Taliban.

Tensions between the United States and Russia have helped to stymie the efforts of the United Nations and others to broker a ceasefire. Both countries should have a vital role in resolving the Syrian conflict but they are at odds in their analysis and profoundly mistrust each other's motives and intentions. There can be no dialogue between them without a basic level of trust and understanding. The dispute between them predates the Syrian civil war. Russia believes that it has been treated unfairly since the 1990s and that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it alone was not welcomed into the new community of nations but remained instead the focus of western distrust. This incorporation into NATO of countries formerly of the eastern bloc has been a major cause of increased tensions between East and West since the 1990s. Arguably, subsequent Russian aggression against Georgia, Ukraine and now Syria was fuelled, at least in part, by ongoing resentment about the continuing NATO expression to the very borders of Russia, although Russia was left on the periphery of a post-Cold War Europe. It has literally fought its way back. It retreated from the world stage for a time but it is back with a vengeance now and is eager to restore itself as a global power.

The end of history brigade on both sides of the United States congressional aisle trumpeted the victory of western ideology and economics and, indeed, seems incapable of distinguishing between the two. They had a simplistic notion that all the West had to do was guide the aims and goals of the Arab Spring, directing it towards an inevitable western-style liberal democracy and that has proven to be disastrous. Look at Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Lebanon. The Arab Spring was a revolutionary wave of violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots, coups and civil wars in north Africa and the Middle East which began in December 2010 in Tunisia. Early hopes were that these popular movements would end corruption, increase political participation in populations and bring about economic quality. Only the uprising in Tunisia has resulted in a transition to constitutional, democratic governance. Various commentators, anticipating a major Arab movement towards democratisation, spoke of an "Arab street", of a young generation peacefully rising up against oppressive authoritarianism to secure a more democratic political system and a bright economic future for their countries. The real world is not that simple. On one hand, the Arab Spring caused the biggest transformation of the Middle East since the old colonial powers drew up the map of the region. At the end of February 2012, rulers had been forced out of power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. On the other hand, by 12 June 2012, the United Nations peacekeeping chief in Syria had declared that Syria had entered a period of civil war.

There was a wave of violence and instability in the aftermath of the Arab Spring that became known as the Arab winter. It has been characterised by extensive civil wars, general regional instability, economic and demographic decline of the Arab League, and increased sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. In Syria and Libya, the result of the Arab Spring protests has been a complete societal collapse. We must all use all diplomatic means and fora available to us to raise these important issues. We must incorporate into our views what is happening on the ground. We must co-operate with like-minded states in the European Union and United Nations. We must work towards a genuine cessation of violence and humanitarian aid access throughout each of the countries involved, particularly Syria. We must seek the withdrawal of personnel, support and other interference by all those states that are now active in Syria but which have no legitimate interest in what is going on in an independent state.

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