Welcome to the Syrian peace conference that will prolong the war

Every Syrian conference, like this week’s in London, comes with the same plea: don’t just give money – end the war. Money is given. Attempts are made to end the war, but the war goes on. Could there be a connection?

Next month it will be five years since the “day of rage” against the Assad regime in March 2011. Western intelligence said the regime would fall within months if not weeks. Western powers duly began assisting the rebels. That assistance has continued ever since, with evident diminishing effect.

It is now clear that, whatever the horrors of President Assad and his government, they are trivial compared with the horrors of war. It is equally clear that the west was cruelly wrong. Assad is not about to fall or stand down. His regime is not about to capitulate either to the “official” rebels or to the Isis militants. It is inhumane for the west to intervene to prolong the war by giving hope and aid to the losing side.

The Russians and the Iranians are supporting Assad. This support has no moral virtue but is at least more likely to end the war in his favour than the west is likely to bring victory to his opponents. Assad’s allies give him weapons, bases and boots on the ground. Western aid to his enemies, including from Britain, consists only of dropping bombs on an already devastated country. This merely creates more refugees. Britain is helping to prolong the war, the opposite of what the refugees want.

All wars end, but civil wars usually end when one side admits defeat. Britain’s aid to the Syrian rebels has always been mere “virtue signalling”. But by appearing to side with them it merely encourages their resistance, while incidentally helping the cause of Isis.

This terrible war must clearly fight to some sort of finish. But it is not our war, and will not be our finish. The thesis that humanitarian goals are best served by grandstanding, by taking sides in foreign conflicts and pretending to “resolve” them, is the madness of our age. It has reduced much of the Middle East to bloody chaos.

Our sole obligation to the Syrian people is humanitarian. It is to relieve suffering with charity, not increase it with bombs. It is to send aid to bordering countries, and take in those refugees that fate washes, quite literally, on to our shores. It is to do good, not to pretend to do good by doing harm.