Syria's unhappy friends and supporters.
I could not find Hillary; she blends in too well.
Ankara ~
The ‘Friends of Syria’ conference in Istanbul ended with a pledge of qualified support for the Annan plan while agreeing on concrete measures to undermine it.
Saudi Arabia and other
gulf states are going to stump up the money to turn the so-called Free Syrian
Army into a fully-fledged mercenary army. Saudi Arabia and Qatar had previously
said that they intended to spend millions of dollars arming the ‘rebels’
and at the ‘Friends of Syria’ conference, the US, Britain and the gulf
states agreed to spend millions more on providing the armed groups with
unspecified ‘humanitarian’ assistance and ‘communications equipment’.
The Gulf States are also
hoping their money will lure Syrian soldiers into defecting.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar
operate on the basis of human cupidity and greed. They must be surprised
on those occasions when they discover that not everyone has a price. Late last
year the Qatari Prime Minister, Hamad bin Jasim al Thani, was reported to have
offered Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al Muallim $100 million and permanent
residence in Qatar if he would defect.
The occasion was a
meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah. Muallim
declined, asking in return, rhetorically of course, how much money Qatar had
spent so far internationally and regionally to deepen the crisis in Syria.
This follows on from the
money Qatar spent on the destruction of the Libyan government.
In February eight million
Syrians voted for political reform that will usher in a multi-party political
system and will remove the Baath party as the central pillar of state and
society.
The armed gangs have been
chased out of the cities where they had dug themselves in.
Human rights groups and
the media are finally drawing attention to what they have willfully ignored for
months, the extreme violence of the FSA and other groups of armed men, directed
against soldiers and civilians.
Recently Der Spiegel,
rightwing and openly hostile to the Assad government, ran an article on the
executioners of Homs, the men who were taking the captives of the FSA to a
burial ground and cutting their throats. Interesting that none of the
correspondents smuggled across the border into Homs seem to have picked this up
before.
If there is a role for
any outside party surely it should be to help wind down the conflict in Syria,
not wind it up, yet this is precisely what the ‘Friends of Syria’ are
doing.
Will Ban Ki-Moon or Kofi
Annan have anything to say about this?
They have a peace plan
which cannot possibly work as long as its ostensible supporters are working to
undermine it.
Syria has accepted the
Annan plan but has made the obvious point that it cannot pull its soldiers and
tanks off the streets unless the armed gangs lay down their weapons.
Here we have Saudi Arabia and Qatar shelling out money to ensure they keep fighting, with the backing of the other ‘Friends of Syria’.We can see what this is intended to produce, a situation in which every time the Syrian army is involved in conflict with armed groups it will be blamed for violating the Annan plan.All the ‘rebels’ have to do is keep shooting.This is exactly what their peace-loving supporters meeting in Istanbul want them to do.
If there is a proper name
for the group that met in Istanbul it should be the Bad Losers’ Conference.
These people have thrown
everything into the struggle to bring down the Syrian government. They have
plotted and conspired. They have used their media and they have thrown money
and weapons at the ‘rebels’ but they have failed.
Assad ~ abused and insulted by them ~ is still there and more on top of the situation than he was a little while ago.
It should be ‘game over’
but Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in particular, are determined to play on
irrespective of the cost in human lives and destruction to Syria and its
people.
Hillary Clinton or her
public relations machine tried to give the impression that she was in Saudi
Arabia to talk the Saudis out of doing anything rash. More likely she was there
to frame how the next steps would be taken, with Saudi Arabia stepping out in
front and the US appearing to follow on behind.
There is no point in
saying anything about Clinton. She is what she is and no comment is
needed.
The Saudis are driven by their own agenda, which is to set up a Sunni Muslim wall against Iran and Shi’ism across the Middle East.Does anyone seriously think they have the best interests of the Syrian people at heart?
As for Turkey, its
relationships with near neighbors have been transformed in the space of a year
from good to bad. Insofar as Syria is concerned, the Turkish Prime Minister and
his Foreign Minister have burnt their bridges. It is either them or Assad from
now on. Certainly there can be no resumption of good relations as long as he or
they remain in government. Someone has to go and they are determined it is
going to be him.
Alienating Syria has
meant alienating Iran and raising the suspicions of the Shia-dominated
government in Iraq, which has strongly opposed Turkey’s line on Syria.
In January the two
countries exchanged harsh words over the warrant for arrest issued against
Iraqi Vice President Tariq al Hashimi, a Sunni Muslim accused of organizing
death squads used against Shia Muslims. Fleeing to Kurdistan, Mr. Hashimi has
now turned up as a guest of the ruler of Qatar. He denies being ‘part of
Turkey’s geopolitical project’ but admits to receiving ‘advice’ from Turkey and
has stated that he feels ‘indebted’ to the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, for ‘making statements on my case’.
These amounted to the
view that Mr. Hashimi was being pursued because he was a Sunni Muslim. At a
party meeting in Ankara, the Turkish Prime Minister, responding to Iraqi
accusations of meddling, said that ‘Mr. Maliki [Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri
al Maliki, a Shia] should know very well that if you initiate a period of
clashes in Iraq based on sectarian strife it is impossible for us to remain
silent’.
The refusal of the Kurdish governorate to hand Mr. Hashemi over to the government in Baghdad deepens the divide between these two centres of power in Iraq. The warm welcome Mr. Hashimi was given in Qatar is further evidence of the broader divide that is taking shape in the Middle East, with the US, the EU, the Gulf states and Turkey standing on one side and Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Russia and China on the other.
After the meeting of the
‘Friends of Syria’ in Istanbul, Nuri al Maliki strongly condemned the decision
of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to give further support to the armed groups in Syria.
‘We reject any arming [of Syrian rebels] and the process to overthrow the regime because this will leave a greater crisis in the region. The stance of these two states is very strange. They are calling for sending arms instead of working to put out the fire and they will hear our voice, that we are against arming and against foreign interference. We are against the interference of some countries in Syria’s internal affairs and those countries that are interfering in Syria’s internal affairs will interfere in the internal affairs of any country’.
His position is shared by
Egypt, whose Foreign Minister, Muhammad Kamal Amr said after the Istanbul
meeting that ‘arming the Syrian opposition, as Egypt sees it, will increase the
rate of killings and will transform the situation in Syria as a whole to
full-scale civil war’.
Egypt’s misgivings are
certain to be shared by other Arab governments, suggesting that in their
single-minded pursuit of the Syrian government and their continued support for
armed ‘resistance’ the Gulf States and Turkey are very much in a regional minority.
In confronting Syria,
Turkey inevitably alienated Iran and further exacerbated relations by agreeing
to give the US the right to install an anti-missile radar station on its soil.
Its only possible use
could be to forestall missile retaliation in the event of an attack on Iran by
the US or Israel (or both).
Turkey has tried to placate Iran but insofar as Syria is concerned Iran is standing firm. It knows full well that it is next on the chopping block.
A perceptible nervousness
about the actions of the government is beginning to appear in the Turkish
media. In confronting Syria in such a belligerent manner and giving support to
an armed group carrying out attacks in a neighboring state, the government has
opened a new chapter in Turkey’s foreign policy.
The legal dimensions of
this policy are now coming up for scrutiny. Writing in Hurriyet Daily News,
Yusuf Kanli made the following observation:
‘In the absence of a declaration of war or authorization by parliament, it is a crime under Turkish law to allow Turkish territory to be used for hostile purposes against any neighboring country.‘Turkey is hosting scores of rebel commanders and there are serious claims that the rebel forces are receiving arms through Turkish territory. With almost 50 per cent electoral support, the current Turkish government can escape all kinds of accountability but as electoral support cannot last forever, tomorrow may be bleak, particularly if the effort to change the Syrian regime fails’.
Well, up till now it has
failed and the continued attempt to drive Bashar al Assad out of office is
going to cost more lives than the thousands who have died so far.
As Syria is not just the
will of one man, contrary to the image projected by the media, what would this
achieve anyway?
Rather than back off and
throw their weight behind a peaceful solution, the ‘Friends of Syria’ decided
to continue their campaign of support for the armed men at the precise moment
Kofi Annan is calling on everyone to lay down their arms.
The logic is Macbeth’s. They
have gone so far in this venture that ‘returning were as tedious as go o’er’
but it is Syria and Syrians who will have to pay the price for their decision
to keep going.
~ Jeremy Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.
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