A demonstration in
support of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, in Damascus. 'Some 55% of
Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of civil war.' Photograph:
Hussein Malla/AP
January 17, 2012
Suppose a respectable opinion poll found that most Syrians are
in favour of Bashar al-Assad remaining as president, would that not be major
news? Especially as the finding would go against the dominant narrative about
the Syrian crisis, and the media considers the unexpected more newsworthy than
the obvious.
Alas, not in every case. When coverage of an unfolding drama
ceases to be fair and turns into a propaganda weapon, inconvenient facts get
suppressed. So it is with the results of a recent YouGov Siraj poll on Syria
commissioned by The Doha Debates, funded by the Qatar Foundation. Qatar's royal
family has taken one of the most hawkish lines against Assad ~ the emir has just called for Arab troops to intervene ~ so it was
good that The Doha Debates published the poll on its website.
The pity is that it was ignored by almost all media outlets in
every western country whose government has called for Assad to go.
The key finding was that while most Arabs outside Syria feel the president should resign, attitudes in the country are different.
Some 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of
civil war ~ a spectre that is not theoretical as it is for those who live
outside Syria's borders.
What is less good news for the Assad regime is that the poll
also found that half the Syrians who accept him staying in power believe he
must usher in free elections in the near future. Assad claims he is about to do
that, a point he has repeated in his latest speeches. But it is vital that he
publishes the election law as soon as possible, permits political parties and
makes a commitment to allow independent monitors to watch the poll.
Biased media coverage also continues to distort the Arab
League's observer mission in Syria. When the league endorsed a no-fly zone in Libya last
spring, there was high praise in the west for its action.
Its decision to mediate in Syria was less welcome to western
governments, and to high-profile Syrian opposition groups, who increasingly
support a military rather than a political solution. So the league's move was
promptly called into doubt by western leaders, and most western media echoed
the line. Attacks were launched on the credentials
of the mission's Sudanese chairman. Criticisms of the mission's performance by one of
its 165 members were headlined. Demands were made that the mission pull out in
favour of UN intervention.
The critics presumably feared that the Arab observers would
report that armed violence is no longer confined to the regime's forces, and
the image of peaceful protests brutally suppressed by army and police is false.
Homs and a few other Syrian cities are becoming like Beirut in the 1980s or
Sarajevo in the 1990s, with battles between militias raging across sectarian
and ethnic fault lines.
As for foreign military intervention, it has already started. It
is not following the Libyan pattern since Russia and China are furious at the west's
deception in the security council last year.
They will not accept a new United Nations resolution that allows
any use of force. The model is an older one, going back to the era of the cold
war, before "humanitarian intervention" and the "responsibility
to protect" were developed and often misused.
Remember Ronald Reagan's support for the Contras, whom he armed
and trained to try to topple Nicaragua's Sandinistas from bases in Honduras?
For Honduras read Turkey, the safe haven where the so-called Free Syrian Army
has set up.
Here too western media silence is dramatic. No reporters have
followed up on a significant recent article by Philip Giraldi, a former
CIA officer who now writes for the American Conservative ~ a magazine that criticizes
the American military-industrial complex from a non-neocon position on the
lines of Ron Paul, who came second in last week's
New Hampshire Republican primary.
Giraldi states that Turkey, a NATO member, has become
Washington's proxy and that unmarked NATO warplanes have been arriving at
Iskenderum, near the Syrian border, delivering Libyan volunteers and weapons
seized from the late Muammar Gaddafi's arsenal.
"French and British special forces trainers are on the ground," he writes, "assisting the Syrian rebels, while the CIA and US Spec Ops are providing communications equipment and intelligence to assist the rebel cause, enabling the fighters to avoid concentrations of Syrian soldiers …"
As the danger of full-scale war increases, Arab League foreign
ministers are preparing to meet in Cairo this weekend to discuss the future of
their Syrian mission. No doubt there will be western media reports highlighting
remarks by those ministers who feel the mission has "lost
credibility", "been duped by the regime" or "failed to stop
the violence".
Counter-arguments will be played down or suppressed.
In spite of the provocations from all sides the league should
stand its ground. Its mission in Syria has seen peaceful demonstrations both
for and against the regime.
It has witnessed, and in some cases suffered from, violence by
opposing forces.
But it has not yet had enough time or a large enough team to
talk to a comprehensive range of Syrian actors and then come up with a clear
set of recommendations.
Above all, it has not even started to fulfill that part of its
mandate requiring it to help produce a dialogue between the regime and its
critics. The mission needs to stay in Syria and not be bullied out.
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