UN General Assembly vote reflects shift in Syrian public opinion

by FRANKLIN LAMB, source

It’s not hard to find critics of the Assad government in the Governorate (Muhafazat) of Homs or for that matter, to varying degrees in Syria’s other thirteen Governorates according to Syrian analysts interviewed by this observer and reports from human rights groups including lawyers representing dissidents in Syria. However, after nearly 27 months of turmoil, the public opinion pendulum is markedly shifting back in support of the current regime.

One international political result was registered at the United Nations this past week when a US-Qatari-Saudi drafted General Assembly Resolution that was designed to increase pressure on the Assad government stumbled badly and fell far short of what the Saudi Ambassador to the UN and other US allies predicted would be an overwhelming vote in favor.

Effect of shift in popular opinion in Syria

Over the past four or five months it has become increasingly clear that public opinion in Syria is shifting for reasons that include, but are not limited to the following:

While inflation at the grocery stores in probably the most common complaint heard from a cross-section of society here, the population is adapting somewhat to higher prices and it appears to credit the government for efforts, some successful, to soften the impact of the illegal US-led sanctions that target this same Syrian population for purely political reasons to achieve regime change.

While Syrians demand dignity and freedom from oppressive security forces and an end to corruption, as all people do in this region and beyond, they are witnessing a return to near normalcy with respect to supplies of electricity, benzene, mazout fuel oil, bus schedules, schools, and a host of public services such as garbage collection, street sweeping, park maintenance, and sympathetic traffic cops who are rather understanding of short-cuts taken by drivers and pedestrians due to “the situation”.

In addition, public service announcement and even text messages demonstrate that the government is aware of the degree of suffering among the population, accept partial blame, and are focusing on remedial measure and crucially, ending the crisis with its horrific bloodshed. One observes here a definite trend of the pulling together of a high percentage of Syrians who share a very unique history and culture and who are deeply connected to their country and who are increasingly repelled by the continuing killing from all sides including the recent barbarisms of body mutilations and summary executions videotaped and broadcast on utube by [armed group] elements. The latter who these days come from nearly three dozen countries, paid for and indoctrinated by enemies of Syria’s Arab nationalism and deep rooted pillar of resistance to the occupation of Palestine.

In addition, many among Syria’s 23 million citizens, who initially supported the uprising following government reaction to event in Deraa in March 2011, now have serious second thoughts about who exactly would replace the current government. Events in Syria are also making plain that the army is still loyal to the Assad government, and according to Jane’s Defense Weekly, is actually gaining experience and strength as well as the well-known fact that as western diplomats are admitting, the “opposition militias” are hopelessly fractured, turning one another, many essential mafia outfits, and beginning to resemble their fellow [armed groups] from Libya, Chechnya and in between.

Opinion in Damascus and surrounding areas visited this past week, confirms this observers experience the past five months of a sharp and fairly rapid shift in opinion that now strongly favors letting the Syrian people themselves decide, without outside interference, whether the Assad regime will stay, and indeed, whether, the Baathist party will continue to represent majority opinion, not through wanton violence but rather via next June’s election. Many express confidence in the run up to this critical vote, noting that the election will be closely monitored by the international community to assure fairness.

Perhaps aided by the current glorious May weather, a certain optimism, that was more scarce in the past, pervades many neighborhoods.

For different reasons, foreign powers, including the USA, Turkey, European Union, the UK Jordan and even the majority population of the six Gulf Cooperation Council family run countries, according to Pew Research, are shifting their earlier positions which were based in part of the US administration, NATO, and Israeli assurances that the Assad government would surely fall quickly, “A matter of days, not weeks” US President Obama promised. That was two years ago.

As noted above, this trend has accelerated since the UN General Assembly vote with last weeks which did not go as planned on the biased and politicized non-binding draft resolution on Syria.

The public reaction in Syria and across the Middle East is substantially that the “Friends of Syria” non-binding GA resolution contradicts the reality on the ground, backs terrorism in Syria and hinders the international efforts to help achieve a political solution to the crisis in this country. Only 107 states voted in favor of the resolution, 12 against while 59 countries, mostly from Africa and Latin America, abstained from voting.

One reason the vote fell short of the 130 favorable votes that the basically same resolution garnered the past two times is that it is widely viewed as ignoring the crimes and atrocities committed by the armed – groups in Syria and the flow of thousands of international terrorists backed by the West, the Gulf states and Turkey who provide them with weapons and money. According to the Russian delegate, backed by several other speakers, “the resolutions ignores all the terrorists’ heinous crimes and denounces what it called the escalation of the attacks by the Syrian government”. Afterward one Latin American Permanent Representative told Inner City Press that the count would have been below 100 if not for some “last minute arm-twisting.” As it turned out, 15 countries didn’t vote at all, opting to “get coffee,” as one African Permanent Representative put it before the vote.

Syria’s Ambassador al-Jaafari exposes a hoax in the Gulf

Syria’s permanent Envoy to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari said his country regretted the adoption of a biased and unbalanced UN resolution, thanking the countries that rejected the resolution “for their responsible positions which support the UN principles and the international law articles”. He noted that the decrease in the number of countries that voted in favor and the increase of numbers of those who abstained from voting indicates the growing international understanding of the reality of what is happening in Syria due to the foreign interference, support of terrorism, the spread of extremism and incitement besides the refusal of dialogue.

“We rely on the UN and its member states to support Syria and its people against the culture of extremism and terrorism, and to encourage the comprehensive national dialogue to peacefully resolve the Syrian crisis.” he said. In a statement released after the vote on the UN draft resolution on Syria, al-Jaafari He said that the French delegation had foiled the issuance of a number of UN press releases to condemn the terrorist acts committed by al-Qaeda-linked armed groups in Syria which claimed the lives of thousands of Syrians as it foiled a UN release to condemn the attempt of assassination of the Syrian Premier.

After Qatar’s ambassador spoke in favor of the resolution his country drafted (and re-drafted several times), Ja’afari revealed that there existed an e-mail, from the representative of the Syrian opposition given to Syria’s embassy in Qatar, showing Qatar’s involvement in the kidnapping of UN peacekeepers by the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade. He read out a phone number from the e-mail as several Gulf diplomats grimaced or scowled, and three left the Chamber.

Visibly stunned, the UK Permanent Representative Lyall Grant called the whole matter “deeply confusing”. Another Permanent Representative, from a militia contributing country, said that if true, it’s “very problematic.” The reasons include the fact that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had just thanked Qatar for its roles in the release of the UN Peacekeepers the earlier kidnapping of whom the Qatari government may have planned, paid for and executed.

Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon’s spokesperson Martin Nesirky said he would not disclose any more about the “negotiations to free the peacekeepers or who was behind the crime.”

Score a major diplomatic victory for Syria’s UN Ambassador as public opinion shifts in favor of the Assad government and pressure as well as certain optimism builds in the run-up to the Geneva II conference being organized by the White House and the Kremlin.

Unprovoked attack on Syria: “Israel” commits egregious international crime

(File photo)

by Tony Cartalucci, source

The US feigns disassociation with Hitlerian act of Israeli aggression – as was planned since 2007.

Unprovoked, Israel has attacked Syria numerous times over the past 2 days, including attacks on the Syrian capital of Damascus, in what appears to be a series of intentional provocations designed to drag the region into a wider conflict its US sponsors can then enter militarily. Neither attacked directly by Syria, nor able to cite credible evidence in regards to perceived threats Israel claims to be reacting to, the assault on Syria represents a Chapter VII breach of the United Nations Charter.

What’s more is that while the US feigns disassociation with Israel’s breach of international peace, after jointly fueling a genocidal sectarian conflict within Syria’s borders for the past two years, it is documented fact that the US and Saudi Arabia planned to use Israel to conduct military attacks against Iran and Syria, they themselves could not justify politically, legally, or strategically.

What is now hoped is that Syria and Iran retaliate militarily, allowing the “other shoe to drop,” and for the US, UK, France, and their regional axis to directly intervene in Syria.

Insidious ploy engineered and documented in 2007-2009

As early as 2007, it was reported that a US-Saudi-Israeli conspiracy to overthrow the governments of Iran and Syria by arming sectarian terrorists, many linked directly to Al Qaeda, was already set in motion. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article “The Redirection” stated:

“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”

Of Israel and Saudi Arabia’s partnership it specifically stated:

“The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.”

Additionally, Saudi Arabian officials mentioned the careful balancing act their nation must play in order to conceal its role in supporting US-Israeli ambitions across the region. It was stated even then that using Israel to publicly carry out attacks on Iran would be preferable to the US, which would ultimately implicate the Saudis. It was stated:

“The Saudi said that, in his country’s view, it was taking a political risk by joining the U.S. in challenging Iran: Bandar is already seen in the Arab world as being too close to the Bush Administration. ‘We have two nightmares,’ the former diplomat told me. ‘For Iran to acquire the bomb and for the United States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them. If America does it, we will be blamed.’”

This ploy was further developed in 2009 by the Fortune 500-funded (page 19) Brookings Institution in their document, “Which Path to Persia?” in regards to Iran, and now clearly being utilized against Syria, the gambit was described as follows:

“…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)” – page 84-85, Which Path to Persia?, Brookings Institution.

And:

“Israel appears to have done extensive planning and practice for such a strike already, and its aircraft are probably already based as close to Iran as possible. As such, Israel might be able to launch the strike in a matter of weeks or even days, depending on what weather and intelligence conditions it felt it needed. Moreover, since Israel would have much less of a need (or even interest) in securing regional support for the operation, Jerusalem probably would feel less motivated to wait for an Iranian provocation before attacking. In short, Israel could move very fast to implement this option if both Israeli and American leaders wanted it to happen.

However, as noted in the previous chapter, the airstrikes themselves are really just the start of this policy. Again, the Iranians would doubtless rebuild their nuclear sites. They would probably retaliate against Israel, and they might retaliate against the United States, too (which might create a pretext for American airstrikes or even an invasion).” – page 91, Which Path to Persia?, Brookings Institution.

And Israel not waiting for a plausible justification to attack Syria is exactly what has just happened. It should also be noted in particular, the last paragraph which gives insight into what the US-led axis plans to do after this egregious international crime – that is – to incrementally engulf the region into a conflict it finally can justify its own entry into open military aggression.

What should Syria and its allies do?

Syria, Iran, Russia and other nations that support the besieged nation most certainly were aware of the Brookings document Which Path to Persia? and familiar with this strategy. It would be hoped that anything of value that the Israelis would seek to attack in order to provoke a much desired retaliation and subsequent war, would have been provided additional protection, or moved entirely out of range of potential Israeli attacks.

A media campaign to illustrate the hypocritical and very revealing convergence between Al Qaeda (the so-called Free Syrian Army or FSA) and Israeli interests would undermine whatever remaining support the battered and failing Western-backed terror campaign inside Syria may still have.

Additionally, Israel’s selection by the US to carry out this attack was done specifically because Israel has long ago exhausted its international legitimacy. What it is doing in Syria is a blatant international crime, in direct violation of international law. Currently, Syria and its allies hold the moral high ground against an enemy who is no longer fooling the world. If it is calculated that Syria can survive Israel’s unprovoked brutality, it would be best to do little or nothing, and incur internationally the same outrage that accompanies Israel’s brutality against the Palestinians.

In light of the US using Israel as its proxy against Syria, should Syria and its allies retaliate, it would be best to do so through any proxies they themselves have at their disposal. Just as Hezbollah and the Palestinians now routinely defeat Israel both strategically and politically, Syria now faces an opportunity to do so again, only on a much bigger scale.

The outrageous actions of Israel, the despicable double-game the US attempts to play by feigning disassociation with its regional beachhead in Tel Aviv, and the silent complicity of the UN, has people around the world desperately seeking retaliation from Syria, or Iran, or both. In reality, this is precisely what the West hopes to achieve – a wider conventional war in which they hold the advantage. By refusing to retaliate directly, Syria cripples the West politically, highlighting the unprovoked nature of their attacks on a nation they claim is a threat, yet fails to strike back even when its capital is under bombardment. By responding through its own plausibly deniable proxies, tactical and political pressure can be put on Israel to end its aggression.

It appears that the Western-backed terrorist front in Syria has been dealt a fatal blow and is in the process of complete collapse. The attack by Israel is a sign of desperation, seeking to expand a conflict that is about to end. Syria and its allies face difficult decisions and dangerous desperation in the coming days and weeks – with an axis of rogue states committing increasingly heinous atrocities in search of a response.

US arms deal gathers “Israel”, UAE, KSA in face of Iran

Moqawama

The New York Times US daily reported Friday that the US War Department is expected to finalize a $10 billion common arms deal with “Israel”, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates next week.

According to the daily, “the deal will provide missiles, warplanes and troop transports to help them counter any future threat from Iran.”

This comes as a weeklong visit to the region by US War Secretary Chuck Hagel will culminate a year of secret negotiations on a deal that Congressional officials said will be second only to the $29.5 billion sale of F-15 aircraft to Saudi Arabia announced in 2010.

“While one goal was to ensure that “Israel” continues to field the most capable armed forces in the region to deter Iran and counter a range of threats, it was equally important to improve the capabilities of two important Arab military partners,” the report said.

“Another challenge,” senior US administration officials said, “was coming up with a package that could help “Israel” deal with various security challenges – but devised so it would not be viewed as an American endorsement of accelerated planning by “Israel” to strike alone at nuclear Iranian facilities.”

In this context, one senior administration official claimed, “the goal was not just to boost “Israel’s” capabilities, but also to boost the capabilities of our Persian Gulf partners so they, too, would be able to address the Iranian threat – and also provide a greater network of coordinated assets around the region to handle a range of contingencies.”

To the US official, “other security risks, include the roiling war in Syria – a country with chemical weapons- and militant violence in the Sinai Peninsula.”

Under the agreement, all sides would be allowed to purchase advanced armaments from American contractors. In the case of “Israel”, there is also substantial American financial assistance, topping $3 billion in military aid this fiscal year.

“Israel” would buy new missiles designed to take out an adversary’s air radars, as well as advanced radars for its own warplanes, new refueling tanker planes and – in the first sale to any foreign military – the V-22 Osprey troop transport aircraft. The United Arab Emirates would buy 26 F-16 warplanes, a package that could reach $5 billion alone, along with precision missiles that could be launched from those jets at distant ground targets. Saudi Arabia would buy the same class of advanced missile.

The expectation is that the arms sale, which was outlined to Congress on Thursday, will encounter little opposition from lawmakers, especially from members representing the many districts where military contractors are concerned about the impact of cutbacks in the Pentagon’s own weapons budget.

But Congressional officials said members were seeking assurances that the package was in keeping with American policy to guarantee “Israel’s” “qualitative military edge”.

Under the terms of the deal, “Israel” would be allowed to buy the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey, an aircraft that can take off and land like a helicopter but fly with the speeds and range of an airplane. “Israel” could use the Osprey for patrolling its borders, coastline and out to sea, and for moving troops to troubled areas.

A new generation of KC-135 refueling tanker planes would let “Israel’s” warplanes stay in the air longer, an ability essential for any long-range mission – like a strike by Iran. The tankers would also be useful for air patrols.

“Israel” also would receive anti-radiation missiles. New, advanced radars for “Israel’s” military jets also would be in the package.

US Administration officials declined to identify the new missile to be sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, except to say that it is an advanced class of precision “standoff munitions” – those designed to be launched from warplanes safely distant from ground targets.

The missile, one senior official claimed, is to “address the threat posed by Iran.”

After Syria, sedition in Iraq (II)

(Iraq-file photo)

Part II

by Sadeq Khanafer – Hussein Mallah, Al Manar

In Part I of the “After Syria, Sedition in Iraq,” We presented a report on Iraq’s position, its strategic importance, oil and resources. Those elements are considered to be among the most attracting elements to list this country on the American-Western plans to disintegrate and weaken the region until totally destroy it through divisions and finding disaccords on the sectarian, doctrinal, ethnic and even tribal levels between the small countries-to-be.

In Part II, we are going to present the political background of the recent crisis broke out in the western and northern governorates. We will also highlight the foreign role in this regard, starting from the American administration and not ending with Turkey, some Gulf countries, especially Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

It might be political stupidity to limit the ongoing events in Iraq within local political affairs, noting that some demands, such as reforms and releasing the detainees, might be righteous. Therefore, this case must be viewed in general.

The Western Scheme

Targeting Iraq is not new matter. Since the Sykes-Picot agreement, it has been a target of many western plans. However, the most seriousness today is that it comes at a time of “mobile sedition” hitting several Middle Eastern countries. Symbols of division are quiet clear, in addition to the already set plans among Washington strategies.

The organized scheme started with dividing Sudan into clashing north and south. This plan is applicable to many countries in our region. For instance, the way to tribal divisions is being paved in Libya, since sectarian and doctrinal divisions do not exist. Southern Yemen is also very close to division, not to mention the struggle in Egypt, the confederation of Palestinians in Jordan, and Syria which is meant to be the starting point of divisions.

Perhaps the main causes behind acceleration in implementing the scheme in Iraq was the humiliated withdrawal of US occupation troops from Iraq, and its disability to set any military base that serves its interests to control the region. For this reason, the Americans hurried to take advantage of their allies, locally and regionally, to ignite struggles inside Iraq.

This is what Iraqi political analyst, Abbas Al-Mousawi, assured during an interview with Al-Manar website. “The US support to the current incidents on the Iraqi lands is clear, especially its good relations with the Turkish and Qatari governments, the most two supporters and seditious parts in the ongoing events,” Mousawi stated.

Mousawi’s opinion came along with that of Habib Fayyad, the expert in strategic affairs, who reminded us of “the US-West project, in cooperation with some regional sides, based on worsening the sectarian atmosphere and going on with the sedition.”

Fayyad told Al-Manar website that regarding the critical political and social combination in Iraq, “we can expect that the current events would spread sedition more and more, and enlarge the gap between Muslims.”
He further considered that “among the causes of what is taking place in Iraq, are the sanctions imposed on the Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki due to his refusal to apply western policies in dealing with the Syrian issue.”

Alternative for Syria

According to the expert in Turkish affairs Mohammad Noureddine, “the recent events in Iraq occurred during the past weeks aren’t different from those happening in Syria. Countries seeking to topple regime there are the same countries seeking to move the crisis to Iraq. This aims at hitting many birds with one stone. The pioneers of those countries are Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.”

Mousawi also assured this analysis. “There is intimidation, as well as Qatari and Turkish intervention in the crisis after failing to settle the struggle in Syria, besides the highly expected peaceful solution on the basis of applying the Geneva Accord; therefore, they started provocation in Iraq,” says Mousawi.

Turkey’s Role, Goal

Ankara’s way of intervention in the Iraqi affairs unveiled the true face of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governmental policy towards Iraq and the whole region. This was especially after announcing his positions on the Syrian crisis. Turkey’s Justice and Development Party found the changes in the region, especially in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, an opportunity to play a regional role after it had lost the chance to join the European Union. Why not? It’s a way to revive the Ottoman Empire’s glories.

To achieve its goals, Ankara took advantage of the Syrian events. It supported, armed and sheltered militant groups. The same was done in Iraq, where Turkey directly intervened several times in its affairs. It also ignited sectarianism calling some groups to oppose the government and the protestors not to recede their demands. Among those interventions, for example, sheltering the sentenced to death Iraqi Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi, who is accused of committing “terrorist” crimes, as well as attempting to lobby the Kurds and ignite them against the central government.

Governorates protests in the west of Iraq assured the total Turkish involvement in attempting to destabilize Maliki’s government, since slogans supporting divisions by establishing sectarian provinces were raised, along with signboards and flags of the foreign sides supporting these protests, the first of which is Turkey for it seeks the following:

Increasing pressure on Maliki after his positions on the Syrian crisis
Intervening in the Iraqi affairs
Lobbying the Iraqi Kurds and building political and economic relationships with them
Benefiting from the oil resources, especially in the North
Pressuring on Iran in an attempt to change its position towards Syria
In this context, Noureddine explained that “Turkey’s ultimate goal is Syria and its regime.” In addition, he said “the Turkish role is more influential than that of other states due to its geographic position between Syria and Iraq.”

He also noted that Ankara followed a two-goal policy with Baghdad:

Adopting the suggestions of Maliki’s opponents, among which are the Kurdish Coalition and the Iraqi List
Igniting sectarianism, especially that Turkey considers itself as one of the Sunni Muslims’ guardians

Gulf Goals

Ankara’s targets inside Iraq intersect with some regional countries’, especially the Gulf States, which had frozen relations with Baghdad for some time. The most significant among them are Qatar and Saudi Arabia, that were accused by Iraqi milieus of direct involvement in the mobile explosions , as well as in the ongoing events through funding some movements and organizations, and supporting their leaders.

Perhaps Arab satellite channels’ coverage of the Al-Anbar movements uncovers the identity of the supporting countries, especially since such channels are owned and funded by those countries, led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

According to Iraqi sources, the clearest goals of those two countries from igniting struggle in Iraq are:

Cracking down Maliki’s government, and trying to topple it and change the regime
Disconnecting links between Iraq and Syria after the failed plans to topple the regime in Damascus
Targeting Iran by hitting Syria and weakening Iraq
Making Iraq busy with its local afairs to prevent it from playing its regional role
In this context, Fayyad considered that “the Gulf (Qatari-Saudi) standpoints in the region are fixed on the Syrian crisis in the meantime, through their insistence to stay till the end of the regime toppling battle and the bloody events.”

“It is not strange that those countries tend to hit and dry up the sources of the Syrian government’s power,” Fayyad added, believing that the Gulf goals in Iraq are:

Causing local sectarian and ethnic riot
Pressuring Maliki’s government to recede its positions from Syria
Causing local instability, which – in their opinion – makes Iran busy and leads it to recede its support to the Syrian government.

Western Movements… Messages to the East

Because Syria represents the bound in the opposing axis that links Iran with resistance movements in Lebanon and Palestine, it was a must to target it for being the main pillar of this axis. This is with respect to the Western-Gulf viewpoint, which seems unable to get closer to the Islamic Republic, due to the latter’s strategic position and military abilities; thus, their only escape to press on Tehran is to humiliate its Iraqi allies.

Moreover, Fayyad assured to Al-Manar website that there is Western and regional annoyance from the Iranian support to the Syrian regime. This is because those sides hold Tehran responsible for Syria’s steadfastness.

“West, in the meantime, considers Iraq an Iranian backyard, and is convinced that playing in this place might influence the Iranian position’s immunity and support for Damascus,” he stated.

On the other hand, Fayyad said that “the forthcoming new round of negotiations between Iran and the six countries about the nuclear issue, in addition to the riot inside Iraq, might cause pressure on Iran to retreat during the negotiations.”

All the above do not keep aside the Turkish actor that, beside the Gulf position towards Iraq, wants to set a base from which it can spread the discord in Syria into several places in the region, starting from Iraq and reaching…

After Syria, Sedition in Iraq I

Shedding crocodile tears while collaborating with US-led sanctions

by Franklin Lamb, source

Are the Arab League and Organization of Islamic Cooperation targeting Syria’s civilian population?

Damascus– One powerful image from Damascus that has become seared into this observers mind these days is when I walk by a Western Union office. Most of them remain open despite the brutal US-led sanctions which in their pervasive effects target almost entirely the civilian population.

But all Western Union offices were closed last Thursday and Friday due to heavy snowfall, some say the deepest here for more than a quarter century. Still, some Syrians braved the extreme cold and could be seen huddled outside some branches, evidently in vain hope that they might open and their families might eat.

One of the few economic lifelines not yet cut by the ever strangling, profoundly immoral and illegal US-led sanctions with their throat-hold tightening around the civilian population in Syria in order to achieve regime change, “WU” as it’s known, has become, for some, literally a lifesaver. This is because its money transfer service is still allowing family and friends from abroad to send in assistance to Syria for their desperate families caught up in this regional contest between Resistance and a return to Western hegemony.

Peering in the window or stepping inside a Western Union outlet in Damascus, reminds this observer of scenes from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange or a European bourse wherein traders wave pieces of paper or other objects trying to get the attention of someone. But in Syria those trying to submit their ten digit Money Control Transfer Number (MTCN) numbers and ID’s in order to collect cash, are not wearing clothes from the fashion houses. Rather, given the frigid temperatures and lack of mazot(heating oil that 90% of the population here relies on for heat) they are tightly bundled. Women and kids generally wrapped tight in thick head scarves.

Last week this observer went into the Western Union office in central Damascus to collect some cash sent from Canada for a family that had managed to escape from Aleppo. The place was packed but orderly. I smiled to myself as I thought about my own country when sometimes during a Black Friday type sale, the scene of waiting in queue collapses into yelling, insults, fights, throwing objects, threats, all to save a few dollars or get one’s hands on the, soon to be trashed, “must have” sale item.

The stressed but committed staff behind the WU counter could not give assurance how long I would have to wait but graciously did agree to take my passport and I could return later. On arriving after about three hours, my MCTN # had just been processed and I was in and out fast. I can’t imagine that I will see a yellow and black Western Union sign ever again without thinking about US sanctions targeting the Syrian civilian population.

An historical irony is that it was a Syrian gentlemen, Mr. Hiram Sibley, one of the thousands of Syrians who emigrated to the United States in the mid-19th Century (the first and largest Arab migration then and since came from Syria) who in 1851 established the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company with the goal of creating one great telegraph system with unified and efficient operations. Four years later Western Union was born and became an American icon and thirty three years on it had become one of the top ten companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange the day it opened in 1888.

The reason Western Union is able to avoid the US-led sanctions that include medicines and food (White House claims to the contrary notwithstanding), is quite simply that the US Treasury Department cannot easily face the domestic American political fallout from curtailing Western Union anywhere.

According to a July 2012 US Senate Banking Committee memo, were Treasury to be seen as tampering with Western Union’s $7 billion annual revenues, there would be a significant problem. Already there are growing complaints from US businesses flooding the White House & Congress claiming that sanctions imposed on Syria are costing American businesses hundreds of millions of dollars in lost profits — even more regarding US sanctions on Iran. So to date the Office of Financial Assets Control (OFAC) at Treasury has kept its hands off Western Union and this is good for Syrian civilians.

For these reasons a thin lifeline — a reed really — exists for many in Syria with families and friends abroad able to use WU’s “Money in Minutes” to help them. It’s a relatively small factor in the larger Syrian crisis but it does help many.

Much more significant than Western Union remaining open, and the subject of much current criticism here, is the lack of assistance to Syria’s severely sanctioned civilian population from the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, neither of which lack officials who are wringing their hands in public these days, in mock anguish it is claimed, over their brothers and co-religionists “victimization.”

Claiming solidarity with the Syrian people, on 11/12/2011 the Arab League suspended the membership of Syria (Lebanon and Yemen voted no and Iraq abstained) and cancelled its monitoring mission in Syria on 1/28/12. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation suspended Syria’s membership on 5/15/12 at a summit of Muslim leaders in Mecca. Saudi Arabia, the summit’s host, has led all Arab League and OIC calls for the Syrian rebel opposition
to be armed, which Foreign Minister Saud al-Fasial described in February and since as “an excellent idea.”

By their actions, the OIC and the Arab League are themselves sanctioning the Syrian people in brutal forms and doing nothing to object to the immoral and illegal aspects of the American sanctions. Both organizations stand accused of abandoning their charters in order to maintain profitable relations with NATO countries as they funnel large sums of money and weapons to various militias inside Syria. It is their “agents,” the jihadist groups, who have turned on the Syrian civilian population increasingly resorting to theft, kidnapping for ransom, rape, sale of children and killing hundreds according to UN agencies.

In one poignant interview near Omayyad Square the other day, a solemn, long bearded Sunni Sheik told this observer that the American sanctions are also directly targeting Islam because the sanctions constitute an attack on Islamic values. When pressed for specifics, he reluctantly replied, “Because your countries sanctions are impoverishing our people and forcing our Muslim women into prostitution. These sanctions are also flooding the streets with Muslim beggars, both adults and children. I am sure you have seen them, here in Damascus, across Syria and in bordering countries. But the claimed protectors of our holy sites are silent and shed only insincere tears in public. But if they resisted these sanctions they could defeat them. What is required in a 1970’s type Arab boycott of American and western companies until these anti-Muslim sanctions are lifted.”

The honorable gentleman has a point.

The Arab League’s recent ministerial-level meeting held in Cairo was called to focus on the Syrian refugees file. But the rather pathetic quick one day deliberations ignored the causes of the suffering of the civilian population as well as the fact that most of the 22 countries comprising the Arab League have been a main cause behind the displacement of the Syrian civilian population. Both the AL and the OIC stand accused here in Syria of participation in the sanctions which are decimating the Syrian people’s livelihood. Some AL and OIC officials are shedding crocodile tears about
the miserable living conditions of the Syrian refugees “in spite of spending millions on recruiting mercenaries and salifi-takfiries, training them and purchasing weapons for the terrorists,” the Sheik explained.

One frustrated American NGO director, affiliated loosely with the World Food Program, expressed her frustration: “If these organizations (AL and OIC) wanted to aid Syrian refugees they should stop supplying the gunmen with weapons and money and stop inciting sedition in Syria.”

The Arab League Secretary General, Nabil al-Arabi, still does not get it.

He used last week’s Arab League session to insist on foreign intervention and regime change, renewing the AL demand that the UN Security Council deploy international forces in Syria.

The Lebanese Foreign Minister, Adnan Mansour, offered his views of the Syrian refugee’s displacement. Notable causations, he claimed, are the flow of weapons and money into Syria, the entry of foreign gunmen and not joining a political dialogue. To his credit, Mansour called on the AL and OIC to “shoulder their responsibilities towards the refugees through ensuring their humanitarian, medical, livelihood, educational and services requirements in order to ease their daily suffering.”

As for the Kuwaiti Minister, he considered that the US-led sanctions were not a problem but rather that the suffering of the Syrian people was caused by the failure of the UN Security Council to meet the demands of the AL for immediate military intervention in Syria. He also insisted that Kuwait has mobilized all its resources to ensure that financial and relief resources alleviated the suffering of the Syrian refugees.

To date, the Syrian refugees, victims of US led and AL-OIC complicity, have not received any of the assistance Kuwait, the Arab League or the Organization of the Islamic Conference has promised. Rather, these organizations appear to be propping up the US-led sanctions.

Meanwhile, according to officials, Syria’s government has just authorized the UN World Food Program to extend its reach in the country where 2.5 million people are suffering from hunger. Ertharin Cousin, spokeswoman of the WFP, announced on Tuesday that Syria is allowing the organization to work with local aid groups to reach more of those in need. To boost the number of people receiving emergency assistance, the Syrian government last week drew up a list of 110 local NGOs authorized to participate in the aid effort.

WFP is working closely with the Syrian Arab Republic Red Crescent Society (SARCS) which, thanks to more than 9000 volunteers, are operating the following facilities to serve every Syrian and Palestinian without consideration of sect or political views: Damascus 15, Damascus countryside 68, Suwayda 2, Homs 71, Idelb 2, Aleppo 185, al-Raqqah 52, al-Hasakah 52, Dayr al-Zawr 4, and Quneitra 12.

Unlike the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, SARCS, the World Food Program, and more than 40 other NGO’s can be observed any day of the week confronting and attempting to ameliorate the profoundly immoral and illegal US-led sanctions — manifold actions, not crocodile tears — in aid of the civilian population of Syria.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and can be reached c/o fplamb@gmail.com

America’s New Proxy: The Syrian National Coalition

The Many Faces of its Leader, Sheikh Ahmad Moaz Al-Khatib

by Thierry Meyssan, source

Completely unkown to the international public only a week ago, Sheikh Moaz al-Khatib has been catapulted to the presidency of the Syrian National Coalition, which represents pro-Western opposition in the Damascus government. Portrayed by an intense public relations campaign as a highly moral personality with no partisan or economic attachments, he is in truth a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and an executive of

The dislocation of the armed Syrian opposition is a reflection of the conflict between the various States which are trying to “change the regime” in Damascus.

We should pay particular attention to the Syrian National Council (SNC), also known as the Istanbul Council, since it was instituted there. This council is guided with an iron hand by the French DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure), and financed by Qatar. Its members, who have obtained residency and various other privileges in France, are under constant pressure from the secret services, who dictate every declaration they make.

The Local Coordination Committees (LCC) represent those local civilians who support armed action.

Finally, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is principally managed by Turkey, unites most of the combatants, including the d’Al-Qaida brigades. 80% of these units recognise the Takfirist Sheikh Adnan Al-Arour as their spiritual leader. He is based in Saudi Arabia.

Seeking to regain leadership and bring a little order to this cacophony, Washington ordered the Arab League to call a meeting in Doha, sabotaged the SNC, and obliged as many of the tiny groups as possible to integrate a single and exclusive structure – the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. Behind the scenes, ambassador Robert S. Ford himself allotted the seats and privileges for this assembly, and has imposed as President of the Coalition a personality who has never yet been mentioned in the Press – Sheikh Ahmad Moaz Al-Khatib.

Robert S. Ford is considered to be the State Department’s principal specialist for the Middle East. He was the assistant of John Negroponte from 2004 to 2006, while this master spy was busy applying in Iraq the methods he had developed in Honduras – the intensive use of death squads and Contras. Shortly before the events in Syria began, Ford was nominated as Ambassador to Damascus, and assumed his functions despite Senate opposition. He immediately applied the Negroponte method to Syria with obvious results.

While the creation of the National Coalition objectifies Washington’s take-over of the armed opposition, it does not solve the question of representivity. Very quickly, various components of the SLA withdrew. In particular, the Coalition excludes any form of opposition which is hostile to armed struggle, especially Haytham al-Manna’s National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change.

The choice of Sheikh Ahmad Moaz Al-Khatib responds to a clear necessity – in order for the President to be recognised by the combatants, he has to be religious figure, but in order to be accepted by Westerners, he has to appear moderate. And especially, in this period of intense negotiations, the new President has to have a solid understanding of the subject in order to discuss the future of Syrian gas – but this is not a subject to be introduced in public.

US spin doctors quickly gave Sheikh Ahmad Moaz Al-Khatib a make-over, dressing him in a suit but no tie. Some of the media speak of him as a “model” leader. For example, a major US daily newspaper presents him as “a unique product of his culture, like Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma” [1]

Here is the portrait of him drawn up by the Agence France Presse (AFP):

“Sheikh Ahmad Moaz Al-Khatib, the consensual man

Born in 1960, Sheikh Ahmad Moaz Al-Khatib is a moderate religious figure who was for a time the Imam of the Omeyyades mosque in Damascus. He belongs to no political party.
It is this independence, and his proximity to Riad Seif at the origin of the initiative for a wider coalition, which makes him a consensual candidate for the leadership of the opposition.
His background is in Sufi Islam. A religious dignitary, he has studied international relations and diplomacy, and is not linked to the Muslim Brotherhood or any other Islamist organisation in the opposition.
Arrested several times in 2012 for having publicly called for the end of the regime in Damascus, he was forbidden to speak in Syrian mosques by order of the authorities, and found refuge in Qatar.
Born in Damascus, he played a decisive role in the mobilisation of the suburbs of the capital, notably Douma, which was active from the very beginnings of the peaceful demonstrations in March 2011. “Sheikh al-Khatib is a consensual figure who enjoys true popular support on the ground”, underlines Khaled al-Zeini, a member of the Syrian National Council.” [2]

The truth is quite different.

In reality, there is absolutely no evidence that Sheikh Ahmad Moaz Al-Khatib ever studied international relations and diplomacy, but he does have training as an engineer in geophysics. He worked for six years for the al-Furat Petroleum Company (1985-91), a joint-venture between the national company and other foreign enterprises, including the Anglo-Dutch Shell, with whom he has maintained contact.

In 1992, he inherited the prestigious charge of preacher at the Omeyyades mosque from his father, Sheikh Mohammed Abu al-Faraj al-Khatib. He was rapidly relieved of his functions and forbidden to preach anywhere in Syria. However, this episode did not occur in 2012, and has nothing to do with the present contestation – it happened twenty years ago, under Hafez el-Assad. At that time, Syria was supporting the international intervention to liberate Kuwait, in respect of international law, in order to get rid of their Iraqi rival, and also to forge closer ties with the West. As for the Sheikh, he was opposed to “Desert Storm” for the same religious motives which were proclaimed by Oussama Ben Laden – with whom he aligned himself – notably the refusal of Western presence on Arab lands, which they consider sacrilegious. This position led him to deliver a number of anti-semitic and anti-Western diatribes.

Following that, the Sheikh continued his activity as a religious teacher, notably at the Dutch Institute in Damascus. He made numerous trips abroad, mainly to Holland, the United Kingdom and the United State. Finally, he settled in Qatar.

In 2003-04, during the attribution of oil and gas concessions, he returned to Syria as a lobbyist for the Shell group.

He came back to Syria again at the beginning of 2012, where he inflamed the neighbourhood of Douma (a suburb of Damascus). He was arrested, then pardoned, and left the country in July to settle in Cairo.

His family is indeed steeped in the Sufi tradition, but contrary to what the AFP claims, he is a member of the Muslim brotherhood, and declared this quite clearly at the end of his speech of investiture at Doha. According to the usual technique of the Brotherhood, he adapts not only the form, but also the content of his speeches to his audience. Sometimes leaning towards a multi-religious society, sometimes towards the restoration of sharia law. In his writings, he qualifies Jewish people as “enemies of God”, and Shiite muslims as “rejectionist heretics”, epithets which are the equivalent of a death sentence.

In the end, Ambassador Robert S. Ford has played his hand well – once again Washington has duped its allies. Just like in Libya, France has taken all the risks, but in the major compromises which are to come, Total will have gained no advantage.

Translation
Pete Kimberley

US pushes Persian Gulf states to develop missile shield: US officials

Press TV

The United States is pressing the Persian Gulf littoral states to develop a Washington-engineered multi-billion-dollar missile system, senior American officials say.

“It’s the United States’ goal, to encourage the [P]GCC countries ([Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council) to develop this missile defense architecture,” a senior US official said prior to Washington’s negotiations with the six Arab states in New York on Friday.

“To be able to defend against a missile in your territory often requires radars and other types of capabilities outside your territory,” he added.

The American official expressed optimism that the Persian Gulf states will sign contracts to develop the missile system in the coming months.

The New York talks were held in line with a new strategic cooperation forum set up in March, which also led to Washington’s plan to hold drills near the Persian Gulf on September 16-27, in cooperation with 20 countries.

“I think that the important thing to understand is that if they are buying US missile defense equipment, it’ll make it easier to knit that together, because by its nature, it’ll be more inter-operable,” the US official noted.

According to another US administration official, Washington seeks to put the security of the Strait of Hormuz under spotlight in an attempt to encourage the Persian Gulf states to develop the missile system.

The missile system would include the deployment of radars to boost the range of early warning coverage across the Persian Gulf, as well as launching command, control and communications systems that could exchange that information with missile interceptors whose triggers are controlled by individual countries.

Despite the purchase of such massive amounts of weapon systems, it is the US military forces that provide a core capability for ballistic missile systems in the Persian Gulf.

NATO preparing vast disinformation campaign

by Thierry Meyssan, voltairenet.org, source

11-6-2012

Member States of NATO and the GCC are preparing a coup d’état and a sectarian genocide in Syria. If you want to prevent these crimes, you should act now: circulate this article on the Internet and alert your elected officials.

In a few days, perhaps as early as Friday, June 15, at noon, the Syrians wanting to watch their national TV stations will see them replaced on their screens by TV programs created by the CIA. Studio-shot images will show massacres that are blamed on the Syrian Government, people demonstrating, ministers and generals resigning from their posts, President Al-Assad fleeing, the rebels gathering in the big city centers, and a new government installing itself in the presidential palace.

This operation of disinformation, directly managed from Washington by Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, aims at demoralizing the Syrians in order to pave the way for a coup d’etat. NATO, discontent about the double veto of Russia and China, will thus succeed in conquering Syria without attacking the country illegally. Whichever judgment you might have formed on the actual events in Syria, a coup d’etat will end all hopes of democratization.

The Arab League has officially asked the satellite operators Arabsat and Nilesat to stop broadcasting Syrian media, either public or private (Syria TV, Al-Ekbariya, Ad-Dounia, Cham TV, etc.) A precedent already exists because the Arab League had managed to censure Libyan TV in order to keep the leaders of the Jamahiriya from communicating with their people. There is no Hertz network in Syria, where TV works exclusively with satellites. The cut, however, will not leave the screens black.

Actually, this public decision is only the tip of the iceberg. According to our information several international meetings were organized during the past week to coordinate the disinformation campaign. The first two were technical meetings, held in Doha (Qatar); the third was a political meeting and took place in Riyad (Saudi Arabia).

The first meeting assembled PSYOP officers, embedded in the satellite TV channels of Al-Arabiya, Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Fox, France 24, Future TV and MTV. It is known that since 1998, the officers of the US Army Psychological Operations Unit (PSYOP) have been incorporated in CNN. Since then this practice has been extended by NATO to other strategic media as well.

They fabricated false information in advance, on the basis of a “story-telling” script devised by Ben Rhodes’s team at the White House. A procedure of reciprocal validation was installed, with each media quoting the lies of the other media to render them plausible for TV spectators. The participants also decided not only to requisition the TV channels of the CIA for Syria and Lebanon (Barada, Future TV, MTV, Orient News, Syria Chaab, Syria Alghad) but also about 40 religious Wahhabi TV channels to call for confessional massacres to the cry of “Christians to Beyrouth, Alawites into the grave!.”

The second meeting was held for engineers and technicians to fabricate fictitious images, mixing one part in an outdoor studio, the other part with computer generated images. During the past weeks, studios in Saudi Arabia have been set up to build replicas of the two presidential palaces in Syria and the main squares of Damascus, Aleppo and Homs. Studios of this type already exist in Doha (Qatar), but they are not sufficient.

The third meeting was held by General James B. Smith, the US ambassador, a representative of the UK, prince Bandar Bin Sultan (whom former U.S. president George Bush named his adopted son so that the U.S. press called him “Bandar Bush”). In this meeting the media actions were coordinated with those of the Free “Syrian” Army, in which prince Bandar’s mercenaries play a decisive role.

The operation had been in the making for several months, but the U.S. National Security Council decided to accelerate the action after the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, notified the White House that he would oppose by all means, even by force, any illegal NATO military intervention in Syria.

The operation has a double intent: the first is to spread false information, the second aims at censuring all possible responses.

The hampering of TV satellites for military purposes is not new. Under pressure from “Israel”, the USA and the EU blocked Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Libyan and Iranian TV channels, one after the other. However, no satellite channels from other parts of the world were censured.

The broadcast of false news is also not new, but four significant steps have been taken in the art of propaganda during the last decade.

• In 1994, a pop music station named “Free Radio of the Thousand Hills” (RTML) gave the signal for genocide in Rwanda with the cry, “Kill the cockroaches!”

• In 2001, NATO used the media to impose an interpretation of the 9/11 attacks and to justify its own aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq. At that time already, it was Ben Rhodes who had been commissioned by the Bush administration to concoct the Kean/Hamilton Commission report on the attacks.

• In 2002, the CIA used five TV channels (Televen, Globovision, ValeTV and CMT) to make the public in Venezuela believe that phantom demonstrators had captured the elected president, Hugo Chávez, forcing him to resign. In reality he was the victim of a military coup d’etat.

• In 2011, France 24 served as information ministry for the Libyan CNT, according to a signed contract. During the battle of Tripoli, NATO produced fake studio films, then transmitted them via Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, showing phantom images of Libyan rebels on the central square of the capital city, while in reality they were still far away. As a consequence, the inhabitants of Tripoli were persuaded that the war was lost and gave up all resistance.

Nowadays the media do not only support a war, they produce it themselves.

This procedure violates the principles of International Law, first of all Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relating to the fact of receiving and imparting information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Above all, the procedure violates the United Nations General Assembly resolution, adopted after the end of World War II, to prevent further wars. Resolutions 110, 381 and 819 forbid “to set obstacles to free exchange of information and ideas” (like cutting off Syrian TV channels) and “all propaganda provoking or encouraging threats to peace, breaking peace, and all acts of aggression”. By law, war propaganda is a crime against peace, the worst of crimes, because it facilitates war crimes and genocide.

Bahrain backs Saudi plan to unify six Persian Gulf Arab states: report

(File photo)

Press TV

Bahraini Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa has declared Manama’s support for a Saudi plan to unify the six Arab states of the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council, a report says.

According to a report published by the Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh on Sunday, the Bahraini premier said the “option of a union has become urgent.”

Riyadh is reportedly seeking to initially merge with Manama in line with a proposal to unify the six Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Leaders of the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council states are expected to meet and discuss the Saudi proposal on May 14. The Arab states claim the purpose of the unity is to counter regional threats.

In December 2011, Saudi King Abdullah called on the council members to move “beyond the stage of cooperation and into the stage of unity in a single entity.”

The Bahraini premier told al-Riyadh the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council must “concentrate during this period on achieving and ensuring security and increasing coordination in the fields of security, military and defense by adopting a unified [Persian] Gulf security structure to protect the council’s states.”

Bahraini Information Minister Samira Rajab said on Saturday the idea of Arab union could follow the “European Union model.”

The report by al-Riyadh comes as Sheikh Ali Salman, leader of the main Bahraini opposition group, al-Wefaq, censured the unity proposal on Sunday, demanding a referendum on the issue to be held in all the six Arab countries.

“Bahrain gained its independence (in 1971) following a referendum” overseen by the United Nations, Salman said in a speech.

The Bahraini opposition leader also stated that the people of Bahrain “alone have the right” to decide and the ruling Al Khalifa regime has “no right to decide a union or confederation with any country.”

A committee of representatives from the six Arab states will submit its findings on the Saudi proposal to the meeting on Monday.

The Road to Hell: Libya and Now Syria?

(File photo)

by Jeremy Salt – Ankara, source

The report just issued by the UN Human Rights Council’s ‘independent international commission of inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic’ is now being passed along the line to the UN Security Council, with the recommendation by the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Navi Pillay, that the Syrian government be referred to the International Criminal Court for prosecution.

In its terms of reference the commission describes itself as a ‘fact-finding body’ based on the standard of ‘reasonable suspicion’. Yet if there is anything that characterizes this document, it is the lack of attention to fact. The report is based on accusations, allegations and claims against the Syrian government which it does not even attempt to verify. It repeats the claim that the Syrian government’s security forces are responsible for the deaths of 3500 people – the figure usually given – when there is strong prima facie evidence that a large number of the dead, civilians as well as soldiers, have been the victims of armed gangs operating across the country. It does not even say where it picked up this figure, since increased to 4000 by Navi Pillay, or whether it has any independent evidence that it is accurate.

Two central questions needed to be dealt with if this commission wanted to get at the facts. First, how much truth is there in the allegations being made against the Syrian government and its security forces? Here the commission records the allegations but makes no attempt to verify them. Thus the fact remains unknown. Second, how much truth is there in the allegations made by the Syrian government? Here the commission does not even deal with the allegations. Despite this bias, the result is the same: the fact remains unknown.

The commission says it interviewed 223 victims and witnesses of alleged human rights violations, ‘including civilians and defectors from the military and security forces’. It does not say who these people are, where it got their names from, why they were chosen and who covered the costs of their travel and accommodation. It indicates that other sources of its information include ‘non-government organizations, human rights defenders, journalists and experts’. As this same group is the source of many of the unsubstantiated if not patently false accusations (i.e. dead people who have turned up alive) appearing in the mainstream media, it is obviously important to know precisely which organizations and individuals helped the commission and what the information was that they supplied, but the commission does not say.

The commission regrets that the Syrian government, ‘despite many requests’, failed to engage in dialogue ‘and grant the commission access to the country’. But as the Syrian government points out, in a letter printed as an annex to this report, it had established its own Independent Special Legal Commission, with sub-commissions operating across Syria since the end of March, and therefore would not be able to provide the UN commission with the material it wanted until it had concluded its own inquiries. However, because it could not accommodate itself to the commission’s timetable, it is accused of failing to cooperate.

On September 12 the president of the Human Rights Council (Laura Dupuy Lasserre) appointed three ‘high level experts’ as members of the commission of inquiry: Paulo Pinheiro (chairman), Yakin Ertürk and Karen Koning AbuZayd. They were required to produce their report by the end of November, with an update to be handed in by March, 2012. There is no indication of why the end of November was chosen for the deadline and not December or January, giving the commission more time to investigate the allegations being made. The time frame was extremely constricted given the work load. Within the space of six weeks (end of September to the middle of November), 223 witnesses were interviewed and a report prepared. The commission’s mandated task was ‘to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law since March 2011 in the Syrian Arab Republic, to establish the facts and circumstances that may amount to such violations and of the crimes perpetrated and where possible to identify those responsible with a view of ensuring that perpetrators of violations, including those that may constitute crimes against humanity, are held accountable’. This clearly could not be done in six weeks. The apparent rush to get the report out will raise questions in many minds about timing, given the way in which the net is being closed around the Syrian government by those who want to bring it down.

The commission presents one side of the story throughout. For virtually every claim it makes there is a counter narrative which it ignores. One such claim involves the use of snipers. The commission says or implies that they were state security forces. There is countervailing evidence of armed civilians shooting at demonstrators to throw the blame on to the state. Perhaps there is truth in both versions, but both versions needed to be considered. The fact remains that the identity of these snipers is not known.

The report alleges that roadblocks and security checks were set up to prevent people from joining demonstrations but makes no mention of allegations of roadblocks being set up by armed gangs and the consequent kidnapping and killing of civilians. It refers to killings and arrests at Jisr al Shughur but not the evidence of the massacre of soldiers and civilians around the town in July: even if only prima facie it deserved to be considered. It produces claims of torture and killing ‘reportedly’ taking place in Homs military hospital ‘by security forces dressed as doctors and allegedly acting with the complicity of medical personnel’. Such a serious charge surely needs more to back it up than ‘reportedly’. The report mentions the raid on a mosque in Dar’a early in the protest movement but not the stockpile of weapons found there. It refers to the torture and murder in custody of two teenage boys and claims that up to November 9, ‘reliable sources’ indicated that 256 children had been killed by state forces. This is such a serious accusation that some corroborative evidence was needed but there is nothing, not the name even of one of these children and not the circumstances in which they were allegedly killed.

It quotes a ‘defector’ (no evidence that this person actually is one) as being told by his commander to ‘disperse the crowd or eliminate everybody including children’. There is no supporting evidence for this accusation. The state security forces are accused of rape but there is no mention of the cases of rape reported by the Syrian authorities to have been committed by armed gangs as part of their project to terrorize and intimidate the civilian population. The army is accused of using tanks and heavy weapons against residential buildings. These accusations are denied by the government. Furthermore, if they were used, were the civilians inside those buildings armed and shooting at the army, as seems to have been the case at Homs and probably elsewhere? The commission does not mention the use of heavy weapons by armed men against the army. Apparently it has not seen the videos of the charred bodies of soldiers lying beside burnt-out tanks. The commission’s statement that it is ‘aware of acts of violence committed by demonstrators’ is a minor point besides the violence of the armed gangs. The substantial body of evidence of their crimes surely needed to be considered if the human rights of all Syrians and not just those who have died at the hands of state security forces are to be taken into account.

In short, this report does not even meet its own ‘lower standard of proof’. In fact, and this seems to be the only fact insofar as this report is concerned, there is little proof of anything. The commission perhaps needed to be reminded that the ‘defectors’ and the Syrian National Council do not represent the Syrian people. Bashar al Assad’s personal popularity plays out well for his government amongst a normally skeptical people. His face has been the focal point of demonstrations of support by millions of people in recent months. If anything, sanctions imposed by the US, the EU, the Arab League and Turkey, along with the constant threat of force, seem to have strengthened public support for Bashar and his government. The commission certainly would have had no difficulty in finding Syrians prepared to come to Geneva to tell another side of the story. Apparently there was no room for them and no interest in what they had to say.

We have just seen what has been done to Libya in the name of human rights and the ‘responsibility to protect’. Uncounted thousands of Libyans were killed in eight months of bombing and missile attacks by French, British and American warplanes. There is prima facie evidence that war crimes were committed but there is not even the suggestion that someone will be held accountable. Further back stands Iraq, invaded in 1991 and then subjected to a decade of sanctions which ended the lives of about one million Iraqis, including hundreds of thousands of children. The second war launched in 2003 brought the overall civilian death toll since 1991 to somewhere between 1.5 and two million Iraqis. Again, prime facie evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity without any of the perpetrators being punished. The kind of lies told before the attacks of 1991 (babies being thrown out of their incubators in Kuwait) and 2003 (weapons of mass destruction) were duplicated in the propaganda war which preceded the aerial assault on Libya this year (mass killing and Viagra-fuelled rape).

To their eternal shame, the Arab League and governments which sell themselves on their Muslim credentials took part in or came in behind this war on a Muslim country by three non-Muslim governments. Now a third Arab country is being laid out on the chopping board, not in North Africa but at the very heart of the Middle East. The US, France, Britain and their Arab allies can sense that a momentous victory is at hand and they are pushing as hard as they can, using every weapon at their disposal. At the end of the road lies the possibility of armed intervention through the declaration of a ‘no fly’ zone and a cross-border operation to establish a ‘buffer zone’ or what the French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppé, prefers to call a ‘humanitarian corridor’. These are propaganda phrases, of course. What the advocates of intervention are talking about is war and everything it entails – widespread destruction and the death of thousands of people.

Reconstructed Syria’s future is already being written. A leading figure in the Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghaliun, has said that a new government would break relations with Iran and would overturn the present strategic relationship with Hizbullah. The connections of other members of this council with the Gulf States, the US State Department and Israel’s lobbyists in Washington are further evidence of how Syria is to be remolded if the present government can be brought down. Short of the toppling of the Islamic government in Iran, it would be hard to think of a greater triumph for ‘the West’ and its reactionary allies across the Middle East, not to mention the benefits for Israel. Are those Arabs joining the chorus against the Syrian government in the name of human rights even thinking about this?

- Jeremy Salt teaches the history of the modern Middle East in the Department of Political science, Bilkent University, Ankara. He previously taught at Bogazici (Bosporus) University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne. His publications include The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press, 2008).

Turkey’s Syrian ambit: New war in the making

by Carlos Latuff

by Jeremy Salt – Ankara, source

Possibly for the first time in the life of the Turkish republic, a Turkish government has adopted a policy of open, unprovoked confrontation with a neighboring country. The citizens of that country, Syria, are flabbergasted. Turkey spent years repairing relations with neighbors under the banners of soft power, strength in depth and ‘zero problems’. At every level, the outcome was very positive. Some months ago, however, under the impact of the so-called ‘Arab spring’, that policy was abandoned virtually overnight. It has been replaced by threats, belligerence and support for an armed group seeking the overthrow of a government with which Turkey had friendly relations until very recently.

While calling on the Syrian government to ‘end the violence’, the Turkish Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister make no mention of the violence for which the Syrian government is not responsible. Armed gangs – some apparently salafists and some apparently causing chaos for money – have been attacking soldiers, police and civilians virtually since the beginning of the protest movement. The government can pull all its tanks off the streets but that won’t stop the violence of these gangs (and now ‘army defectors’) and may even be seen as a sign of weakness and encourage it. Of the 3500 Syrians said to have been killed in the past seven months, a great many, including many civilians and more than 1100 soldiers, have fallen victims to these gangs. The violence has completely undermined the peaceful movement for reform, and together with the recent attack on Libya has alerted Syrians to what is in store for their country if the US and its allies ever get their foot through the door. Bashar al Assad has an undeniably strong base of personal popularity and if anything, especially after the hostile decisions taken by the Arab League, under the influence of Qatar, the Syrian people are closing ranks behind the government. They are facing the spectre of armed intervention in their country and devastation on a scale that would eclipse what has just been delivered to Libya in the name of a ‘responsibility to protect’.

Syrians are well aware of the brutality of the mukhabarat and corruption associated with high places in government. It is probably safe to assume that most support reform. The question is how to get it and at what price. Many are demonstrating but there is no sign that the majority of the people (and this largely includes the internal opposition) want anything other than evolved political reform. They are strongly opposed to foreign intervention and they object to Turkey’s aggressive involvement in their affairs. Once upon a time Syria gave sanctuary to Abdullah Ocalan. Turkey threatened war unless it got rid of him. For decades Turkey has had to put up with PKK attacks on its soldiers and civilians from across the border, yet its government is now supporting a man, Riad al Assad, whose ‘Free Syrian Army’ is doing exactly the same across the Syrian border. In confronting Syria, furthermore, Turkey has put itself at odds with Syria’s ally, Iran, whose cooperation it needs in dealing with the PKK. It certainly would be unwise to trust the US, which has played ducks and drakes with the Kurds for decades.

The violence being directed against soldiers and civilians is not ‘recent’ but has been going on for months. The stockpiling of weapons in a mosque in Dar’a, where the protests were sparked off by the arrest of children for writing anti-government graffiti on a wall, suggests that groups inside Syria were ready and waiting. Large quantities of weapons – pump action shotguns, Israeli machine guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers – are being smuggled into Syria along with money in various currencies and sophisticated communications equipment. There is evidence of Syrian army uniforms being worn in an attempt to throw the blame for killings on to the government. Arrested men have confessed to shooting into demonstrators for the same reason. Of course, there are two narratives here – the Al Jazeera version where the violence was all one way until army ‘defectors’ began shooting back and the Syrian government version in which armed gangs were causing chaos across the country well before the ‘defectors’ joined in. Like most narratives neither is likely to be completely true or untrue, but there is abundant if unreported evidence in support of the case being made by the Syrian government. Many of the accusations against the Syrian government are coming from exiled groups such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Al Jazeera reports them with little or no attempt at verification. Its bias in its ‘reporting’ of Libya and Syria was so great, in the eyes of its Beirut bureau chief, Ghassan bin Jiddu, that he resigned in disgust.

What is happening in Syria bears the hallmarks of an orchestrated plan put into action by the US and its gulf allies. Reform is not the objective because that might still leave the Ba’ath Party in a position of power. The destruction of the government and therefore the removal of a long-standing obstacle in the way of US and Israeli policies is the objective. In addition the Saudis would like to see the power of the Alawis – heterodox Shia – broken forever.

On its past record the US would never miss an opportunity like this. It has been interfering in Syrian politics ever since the CIA helped to bring Husni al Zaim to power in the first of three coups in 1949. The State Department put Syria on its list of states that ‘sponsor terrorism’ in 1979. In the 1980s the US and Israel confronted Syria in Lebanon but were outsmarted by Hafiz al Assad. In 2005 the US and its Lebanese proxies tried to blame Syria for the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. They succeeded in using the killing as leverage to get remaining Syrian troops out of Lebanon but their accusations felt flat four years later when the four generals who had been arrested were released for lack of evidence. The struggle with Syria also embraced Hizbullah. In 2000 Hizbullah finally forced Israel to end its long occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel waited for revenge and in 2006 – with the backing of the US – launched a devastating attack on Lebanon with the intention of destroying Hizbullah. It failed in the most humiliating fashion. Even with air cover its soldiers could not hold villages a few kilometers from the armistice line. The collapse of the government of Saad Hariri in January this year underlined the strength of Hizbullah and its ability to outflank its enemies. Soon afterwards, the Bahrain uprising seems to have convinced the Saudis that something had to be done against resurgent Shi’ism. The end target, of course, remains Iran.

In this struggle with the Syrian regime the US has used every weapon at hand. In 2003 the US Congress passed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act (SALSA) of 2003, preventing US companies from trading either in or with Syria. The Israeli lobby was chiefly responsible for pushing this legislation through Congress. Through the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) the US has been funding Syrian exiles and movements as well as funneling money into Syria through proxy organizations. One would not expect to find footprints let alone a ‘smoking gun’ but according to well placed sources, the former Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and the former US ambassador to Lebanon, and now the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, began working on a plan to destabilize Syria as far back as 2008. The plan was multilayered and involved a range of actors as well as the spending of $2 billion.

Caught off guard by the wave of popular revolutions breaking out across the region, the US and its allies soon scrambled to their feet and started doing their best to turn the ‘Arab spring’ to their advantage. Ben Ali and Mubarak had to be abandoned but once an uprising broke out in Benghazi, they moved swiftly. On the basis of lies told to the UN Human Rights Council the UN Security Council passed a ‘no fly zone’ resolution which was quickly converted into the pretext for a general aerial assault on Libya aimed at bringing down Muammar Gaddafi. Qatar played its part alongside the US, Britain and France, providing hundreds of troops as well as the propaganda support of its satellite broadcast channel. There was no popular revolution in Libya. There was not the slightest indication that anything but a small minority of Libyans wanted outside intervention in their country. Gaddafi had a genuine base of popularity, whatever the outside world thought of him, but seven months later the US and its allies had got what they wanted. The government in Tripoli had been overthrown and Gaddafi done to death in the most vile way. The centre of Sirte lay in ruins and tens of thousands Libyans had been killed in the name of protecting them. The most advanced country in Africa had been disabled not through the actions of its own people but through the intervention of three outside powers. Now they were free to concentrate their attention on Syria.

Apart from its support and funding of Syrians in exile, and apart from the covert support it is giving to the opposition inside Syria, the US has openly sought to inflame the situation in Syria at every turn. Its ambassador travelled to Hama before Friday prayers and let it be known in advance that he would be there. When the Syrian government offered an amnesty to people who handed in their weapons, as long as they had not committed serious crimes, the US intervened by advising Syrians not to hand in their weapons.

Behind the screen of the ‘Arab spring’ the US appears to have embarked on a spring-cleaning program. Iraq went in 2003 and now Libya has been dealt with but there are still three bumps on the road – Hizbullah, Syria and Iran – that need flattening. Strategies for dealing with them, alongside economic warfare, subversion and the possibility of direct military attack, include ‘dialogue’ with Sunni Muslim movements hostile to both Iran and Shia Islam. At the top of the list is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is about to come power in Egypt. The ideology of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey is a modified liberal version of the brotherhood’s policies as they are bound to take shape in Egypt. The connecting link between both of them is Saudi Arabia, which is a major investor in Turkey and will be a financial mainstay of the brotherhood if (more likely when) it takes government in Egypt. In summer the Turkish Prime Minister was reported (by Agence France Presse, a reputable source) to have told Bashar al Assad that if he brought the Muslim Brotherhood into government, he would help him control the opposition. As the Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Syria, this was roughly the same as someone telling the Turkish Prime Minister that if he brought the PKK into government, he would be given help to control the Kurds. Of course Bashar was reported to have said no. The way in which the Turkish Prime Minister is attacking the Syrian president – feeding on his own people’s blood and so on – suggests that he was personally offended by this rebuffal.

Some of the most extreme voices in the Muslim world are now calling for the overthrow of the ‘heretical’ secular government in Damascus. They include the ranting Yusuf Qaradawi, whose home is in Qatar. Al Jazeera, the house organ of the Qatari government, is playing its part by beaming propaganda around the world, as it did following the attack on Libya (an Arab critic described it as the ‘voice of NATO’). .

Now the Arab League, a useless organization if ever there was one, is issuing ultimatums which the Syrian government cannot comply with. It cannot end the violence because it is not responsible for all the violence but the script has been written and the lines must be recited. The Arab League is simply putting an Arab face on western designs. The interference of an Arab organization which has done nothing in its life for Palestine or any other Arab cause has infuriated the Syrian people. Stage by stage, the crisis is being deliberately deepened with the intention of driving Syria further into a corner and setting the scene for armed intervention. If the US cannot get the resolutions it wants from the UN Security Council, because of the Russian and Chinese veto, the focus of action will come to rest even more firmly on Turkey.

Ultimately Libya was as defenceless against aerial attack by Britain, France and the US as any small country would be. In any case, Syria is not Libya. It has a much bigger army and it will defend itself against armed attack. It has had to fight for its existence against the French, the Americans and the Israelis, so there should be no illusions about how it is likely to react if any attempt is made to cross its border and set up a ‘buffer zone’. No country has any right to sequestrate the territory of another country and any such move would probably end in war. There is no knowing where or when or how such a war would end and who it would ultimately involve. Iran has a defence treaty with Syria so its involvement should be anticipated. Hizbullah has already threatened to respond with an attack on Israel. Any conflict between Turkey and Syria would open the door to NATO intervention. Against the background of US military encirclement of the Middle East and penetration of Central Asia and the Caucasus, Russia and China might decide to draw a line in the sand. Bashar’s warning that Syria is the fault line should be taken seriously. The US and its allies have delivered devastation to two Arab countries in the past eight years and now they have their sights on a third. This is not just about the Middle East or the region but the global balance of power. One has to ask whether Turkey’s leaders have really thought this situation through.

A short list of the players who think they would benefit from this war would include the US, Saudi Arabia and its gulf state allies, Israel (although opinion is divided), the Muslim Brotherhood and assorted salafists across the Middle East whose goal is the establishment of Islamic states. In Washington the same discredited bunch of people – the neo conservatives – who campaigned for war against Iraq and now want war on Iran, are very happy with developments on the Turkish-Syrian border. They might not think too far into the future but their planning for wars on Syria and Iran go back a long time. The destruction of the Syrian government and of the strategic alliance between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah would be a strategic victory of incomparable value for the US and its Arab world allies. Most of these governments would never give their own people the freedoms they are demanding for the Syrian people. Saudi Arabia does not even allow women to drive. Qatar does but otherwise has no constitution, no parliament, no unions and a system of ‘sponsored’ labor (the qafil, a word which comes from the wooden yoke fixed around the necks of Africans as they were led into slavery) which allows employers to prevent workers from entering or leaving the country.

As negotiator and facilitator between the Syrian government and the internal opposition, Turkey has a role to play but provoking Syria along the border, lecturing Bashar al Assad as if he were a refractory provincial governor during Ottoman rule and giving support to people who are killing Syrian citizens is not the way ahead.

- Jeremy Salt teaches the history of the modern Middle East in the Department of Political science, Bilkent University, Ankara. He previously taught at Bogazici (Bosporus) University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne. His publications include The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press, 2008).

The Pentagon-Arab Spring love story

by Mr. Fish

by Pepe Escobar, source

Anyone who hoped the Arab Spring might eventually take over the Persian Gulf and those lands once known as Arabia Felix has enough reason to drown in sadness.

The Arab counter-revolution is stronger than ever – led by the House of Saud and its monarchy minions at the Gulf Counter-revolution Club (GCC), officially known as Gulf Cooperation Council. And their most precious ally is the Pentagon.

The New York Times made it official by relaying related White House/Pentagon spin. Considering the NYT can hardly pose as an icon of credibility since those months in 2002/2003 when its front page peddled outright lies about Iraq’s nukes and/or its carnal ties with al-Qaeda, the spin must be translated.

The further militarization of the counter-revolutionary Persian Gulf – especially via more boots on the ground in Kuwait, and more warships – is being sold as a response to “a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran”.

Note that both are pure wishful thinking. The NYT’s martial sources insist, “the withdrawal [from Iraq] could leave instability”. The fact is the Nuri al-Maliki government in Baghdad effectively booted the Americans out (the Pentagon wanted at least 20,000 US boots on the ground after late 2011).

Thus the necessity of revamped Pentagon Central Command (Centcom) newspeak, as well as a Plan B, a grand new “security architecture” for the Persian Gulf crammed with air and naval hardware and even missile defense sold as a bland “post-Iraq footprint in the region”.

As for “the threat of a belligerent Iran”, very precise interests – sections of the industrial-military complex, the Republican party as a whole, the Israel lobby, the majority of corporate media – have been cheerleading for a strike on Iran for years.

Major General Karl R Horst, Centcom’s chief of staff, is a big fan of “commitment in building partner capability and partner capacity” (translation; what we say, goes). He sold the firepower increase in the Persian Gulf to the NYT as a bland, Hollywoodish “back to the future” strategy, focused on “smaller but highly capable deployments and training partnerships with regional militaries”.

Translation: lots of special forces, lots of weaponized drones and an inflation of those “partnerships” the Pentagon and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are so fond of. This is spun as “more efficient ways to deploy forces and maximize cooperation with regional partners”; or the best way to “expand security relationships”, especially when there will be a “steep decrease in the number of intelligence analysts assigned to the region” (translation; let the towel heads do the footwork).

It also helps that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) proved their unlimited love for NATO in the Libya war (while Bahrain and the UAE have boots on the ground in Afghanistan). That Arab willingness to please the masters goes a step further than the standard mantra, “the United States will not abandon its commitments in the Persian Gulf.”

To sum it all up; think of all this as the GCC as a de facto annex to NATO.

Behind the ‘security architecture’

Out there in Tajikistan – where she was examining the non-proliferation of the Arab Spring in Central Asia – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged what was later leaked to the NYT as “a robust continuing presence” throughout a region that “should be freed from outside interference to continue on a pathway to democracy.”

So this means the further militarization of the Persian Gulf comes as a response for US/Saudi interference preventing democracy? That can’t possibly be; somebody’s got to rewrite the script.

This whole scenario was predictable ever since Washington struck a deal with Riyadh for the consolidation of the Arab counter-revolution; you get us an Arab League vote so we take Muammar Gaddafi out, and we leave you alone to do what you want in the Persian Gulf (see Exposed: The US-Saudi deal Asia Times Online, April 2, 2011).

This led to the House of Saud invading Bahrain; Qatar training Libyan NATO rebels in their own territory while also sending Qatari special forces to Libya; and now a “stronger, multilateral security alliance” between the GCC and the Pentagon.

Lost in space US senators spinning that the US withdrawal from Iraq will be interpreted as a “strategic victory by our enemies in the Middle East”, is business as usual. But it’s another thing to see the NYT being gullible enough – or basically treating its readers as idiots – as it swallows the Saudi propaganda line that Iran is “the most worrisome threat” to all GCC members “as well as to Iraq itself”. It’s as if the paper was edited in Riyadh.

As a matter of fact, the Barack Obama administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East seems to be edited in Riyadh. One just had to follow the US corporate media falling over themselves to kiss the hem of the gown of the new crown prince (the next in line for the throne) at the House of Saud, Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz.
Nayef, 78, supported by the nec plus ultra of medievalism and counter-revolutionary, damn-this-Arab Spring forces, is essentially the House of Saud’s inquisitor-in-chief. Since 1975 he has presided over the security apparatus at the Ministry of Interior, which along with the US-trained National Guard, faithful to frail King Abdullah, 87, are the best weaponized bodies in Saudi Arabia.

Nayef is the Darth Vader of a 130,000-strong paramilitary force, all the national and local police, customs, immigration, the coast guard, the border guard and the dreaded religious police. His ministry’s response to the Arab Spring has been a non-stop crackdown. Anyone who’s even suspected of trying to start a political demonstration, not to mention a movement, is arrested; that includes young people uploading YouTube videos.

There are at least 20,000 political prisoners in Saudi jails. Since April, it’s illegal to “threaten national security” or “insult Islam”; Nayef was responsible for the vagueness of the new law and all that implies. Anyone trying an Occupy Riyadh or Occupy Jeddah would be beheaded.

Yet for his countless Washington fans, who beam at this 36-year counter-terror CV, Nayef is a “conservative pragmatist”. This is his official denomination since revealed by a WikiLeaks 2009 State Department cable.

No wonder they love Nayef in Washington. His Holy Trinity is Washington-Riyadh joined at the hip; his hatred of Iran and Shi’ites in general (even Saudi Shi’ites); and his war on terror commitment against al-Qaeda.

No one talks about his visceral hatred of women’s rights, and his visceral hatred of all things democratic; that’s when the label “social conservative” comes handy. At the start of the Arab Spring, Nayef dismissed Tunisians as “basically French”, and Cairo residents as “louche urbanites”. The only true Arabs were Saudis; democracy, as they see it (or as the House of Saud sees for them) is for sissies.

In internal House of Saud politics, that palace intrigue realm of desert macho men who love to dye their moustaches black, Nayef’s top opponents are not his brothers, the powerful Sudayri seven, who are now five (after the death of King Fahd and recently Prince Sultan), named after the tribe of their mother Hassa, Ibn Saud’s favorite wife.

Still gerontocracy is the name of the game; brothers Bandar, Musaid and Mishaal’s health conditions are appalling. As for brother Salman, the governor of Riyadh, he likes to pose as a journalist, as owner of the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

Nayef’s top opponents are the nephews of Ibn Saud, starting with wily former Washington ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush; Prince Talal, father of billionaire prince al-Waleed; Vice Minister of Defense Khaled bin Sultan; and Prince Turki al-Faisal, former head of intelligence in the 1980s and former Osama bin Laden pal.

None of these will threaten Nayef; what matters for the House of Saud is the dynasty’s survival. As King Abdullah prepares to meet his maker, the Pentagon could not find a more reliable regional partner: Grand Inquisitor Nayef.

NATO will soon rule over the whole Mediterranean as a NATO lake. Africom is implanting itself deeper and deeper in Africa. Centcom rules the Persian Gulf with the GCC in tow. Democracy is for sissies; there’s no business like the “security architecture” business.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

Egypt: Gulf ‘gifts’ fill budget gap but raise suspicions

by Steve Bell

by Maggie Hyde, Source

After turning down loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Egypt is now turning to oil-rich Arab Gulf States to finance its budget deficit.

Some of the money is supposedly being given freely, as “gifts” rather than loans, but some fears that accepting the money will come with political baggage and behind-the-scenes deals. The grants come as Egypt is testing its foreign policy in the region.

The irony of a newly-democratic Egypt turning to the traditional monarchies stifling dissent within their own borders has not been lost on many commentators.

“Why, how, what did we do to get their satisfaction?” said Reda Issa, an independent economic researcher who objects to Egypt taking money from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. “Why are they offering to give this money? Why now? Nobody knows.”

Just months ago, Gulf states did not express support for the revolution, said Issa,
Because their interests do not align with the forces that overthrew Hosni Mubarak, he said Egypt should be wary of their money.

Throughout the weeks of protest against the former president, the Gulf countries suppressed democratic movements in their own monarchies. Saudi Arabia offered to financially support Mubarak ‘s government if the United States decided to withdraw its US$1.5 in annual aid. Following his ouster, various Saudi government figures called for pardoning Mubarak.

In the most recent offer on 7 July, the United Arab Emirates promised that it would give Egypt $3 billion in financial assistance. The money would be in addition to Qatar’s pledge of $10 billion and the $4 billion Saudi Arabia has already promised.

Most of these offers are a mixture of funds, loans, and grants. The amounts will probably be paid at intervals.

The UAE money includes a $1.5 billion fund for small to medium businesses, $750 million in loans, and a $750 million grant, with no expectations of repayment. The Saudi money includes a $500 million grant to help finance the budget deficit, $500 million in loans, and $500 million in Egyptian bond purchases.

The $10 billion from Qatar will probably be mostly investments, but the country has also given some grants.

In the weeks that Egypt was revising its budget so not to take on IMF and World Bank loans, Qatar provided $500 million to help the budget immediately. Finance Minister Samir Radwan, when asked about any conditions to the money, said “That is a gift.”

Earlier this week Egypt’s new foreign minister announced that there is no pressure from Gulf countries to prevent the criminal trial of Mubarak, a theory that has been widely circulated. The foreign minister also denied that the Gulf states are pressuring Egypt not to resume regular ties with Iran.

The interim government has said it requires between $10 and 12 billion in international funding in the next year to keep running. It was initially thought that IMF and World Bank would help Egypt close the fiscal gap.

But after announcing a budget that was conditioned upon acceptance of a $3 billion IMF loan and World Bank money in June, Egypt’s finance ministry retracted the proposed budget last week.

In taking the money from the Gulf, analysts say, Egypt’s interim government is avoiding taking on debt from the World Bank and IMF, perhaps at the expense of making political concessions to Arab neighbors. The decision came as a surprise to some, including those involved in the talks.

Radwan said in an interview with the Financial Times that the decision was made in response to public disapproval of the IMF and World Bank. Other reports said the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) had taken issue with conditions of the loans and did not approve them.

Two days after Radwan’s announcement, a World Bank spokesperson said that discussions were still ongoing and that they had heard nothing from the government to suggest the contrary. Ratna Sahay, IMF deputy director of the Middle East, maintained that Egypt had not decided against the fund’s offer because of IMF stipulations.
“Nothing was hidden or kept quiet,” she said.

And so a new budget was formulated and ratified on 4 July, with Gulf, not IMF, money picking up the slack. The new budget cut back on government spending and reduced the projected deficit from 11 percent to 8.6 percent. A copy of that budget has yet to be made public.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera television, Radwan said that the decision to reject IMF and World Bank money was because neither the government nor the SCAF wanted to leave behind “a legacy of debt.”

When asked whether money from the Arabian Peninsula came with any conditions, he said, “None whatsoever.”

But the disarray and opaqueness of it all, including how the Gulf money will be given and used, is what concerns Issa. Who knows, he said, what conditions could be attached to the money, because the government is not conducting talks in a transparent way.

“There has to be a political reason,” he said. “We are not foolish enough to believe that money is given for nothing.”

The UAE announcement comes just after Foreign Minister Mohamed al-Orabi assured Gulf leaders that Egypt will not pursue relations with Iran if it means risking stability in the region. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar consider neighboring Iran a threat to their security. During Orabi’s visit to the region, Orabi mostly assuaged the fears of Gulf leaders. Sharaf’s trip to the UAE struck the same tone. .

Alanoud Al-Sharekh, a senior fellow for regional politics at the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and former analyst at the Kuwait National Security Bureau, said Gulf countries simply see their grants as an investment in the region’s stability that will help restore Gulf investors to Egypt.

“The GCC countries have all been crucial in supporting Arab states financially, they have a history of giving money to Egypt,” she said. “This is not a new phenomenon.”

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are also home to hundreds of thousands of Egyptian workers, whose remittances feed money into Egypt’s economy. In addition to government support, Gulf businessmen are some of Egypt’s biggest investors.

It is a crucial period for the Gulf and the rest of the region, Sharekh said, a time when relationships can be strengthened or broken.

Saudi Arabia in particular, formerly a strong ally with Mubarak, does not currently enjoy a good reputation among most Egyptians.

In the days following the uprising, many speculated that Saudi royalty and businesses were funding a counterrevolutionary movement, perhaps even providing money to extremists that would incite sectarian violence.

In February, a government official said that Saudi Arabia had offered to host Mubarak in the country, but the former president turned it down, determined to die on Egyptian soil. Former Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, also an unpopular figure, found sanctuary in the kingdom after being deposed by a Tunisia’s popular rebellion.

In May, Saudi princes offered to pay Mubarak’s hospital expenses, upon hearing that the Egyptian government was unwilling to foot the bill.

Not all Gulf States were on great terms with Mubarak; the Qatari ruling family and Mubarak were far from close, and their investments could be seen as a way to rewrite the relationship with Egypt.

In that light, the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia might be making clever plays to bolster their image and gain influence in Egypt’s new government.

The moves “also cement [the GCC countries’] position in foreign policy,” she said, “[irrespective of] whether they are popular on the street.”

NATO, the ultimate transformer

by Carlos Latuff

by Pepe Escobar, source

Forget about the Hollywood Transformer franchise; as facts on the ground go, the ultimate transformer in real life is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

NATO has just admitted it was “probably” responsible for the humanitarian liberation of nine Libyan civilians, plus 18 injured, via an early morning strike against an apartment building in a densely populated Tripoli neighborhood.

Liberating Northern Africans in their sleep under tons of debris now adds to NATO’s – and the Pentagon’s – routine liberation of Pashtun wedding parties.

Forget about the Ministry of Truth-style non-denial denials enveloped in newspeak of the “weapons system failure” or “great care in conducting strikes” variety. Or don’t – as the war on Libya, under the newspeak moniker Operation Unified Protector, slouches towards its fourth month and over 4,300 “humanitarian” strikes.

After all, NATO’s wars – now already spanning the Pentagon-coined “arc of instability” from Northern Africa though the Middle East towards Central Asia – are as much against “unsavory” regimes (as in “not our bastards”) as against civilians.

One model army

In the dizzying labyrinth of NATO’s Ministry of Truth – which includes schemes such as Partnership for Peace, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Mediterranean Dialogue, to name but a few – one now finds virtually every certified or aspiring member of the Gulf Counter-Revolution Club (also known as GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council), as well as monarchic minions Jordan and Morocco. These paragons of democracy are all involved in liberating the wretched of the world for “humanitarian” reasons.

Unctuous Danish opportunist and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is on overdrive across Europe. He has just boasted that, “NATO is more needed and wanted than ever, from Afghanistan to Kosovo, from the coast of Somalia to Libya. We are busier than ever before.”

This enthusiastic, across-the-board embrace of Atlanticist weaponry though is still not enough for US Defense Secretary Robert Gates – for whom NATO is not lethal, or overreaching, enough. Considering that NATO is no more than the weaponized European arm of the Pentagon, that was a classic case of once again Martian Americans deriding wimpy Venusian Europeans.

Yet the most sinister Rasmussen utterance was that, “we can help the Arab Spring well and truly blossom”. That is code for never-ending bombing of Libya, fierce lobbying for a “humanitarian” intervention in Syria, and, why not, weaponized “humanitarian liberation” slouching towards Algeria and even Lebanon.

As for Egypt and Tunisia, Rasmussen has already stated NATO wants to re-train their military establishments – an operation modeled on the ongoing retraining in Iraq. The Transformer’s tentacles are ubiquitous.

The war on Libya started as the Pentagon’s Africom first African war – remember Odyssey Dawn? – and then merged into NATO’s first Mediterranean and also first African war. NATO’s overt agenda is to rule the Mediterranean – Ancient Rome’s mare nostrum – as a NATO lake.

That explains the current Pentagon/NATO Sea Breeze 2011 naval exercise in the Black Sea, off the coast of Ukraine and quite close to the Sebastopol-based Russian Black Sea fleet.

The Pentagon is being joined by the United Kingdom, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Belgium, Denmark, Georgia, Germany, Macedonia, Moldova, Sweden, Turkey and Ukraine. All of these – except Algeria and Moldova – fall into another NATO scheme; they are Troop Contributing Nations for NATO’s war in Afghanistan.

Sea breeze is not a pop song; it is an overt intimidation directly related to Syria. Russia’s Black Sea fleet has a base in Syria – that is, in the Mediterranean. The Pentagon/NATO want it gone. Thus the categorical imperative of regime change in Syria.

So Libya is just the beginning. Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitri Rogozin has been quick to point out, “the war in Libya means … the beginning of [NATO's] expansion south.”

Transformer NATO – the global Robocop – is on a roll, from Southeastern Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean; from the Persian Gulf to South and Central Asia. All hail the One Model Army. As for civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time, duck for cover.

The cold hard cash counter-revolution

by Dave Brown

by Pepe Escobar, source

The counter-revolution, paraphrasing the late, great soul jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron, will not be televised; it will float downstream flush with hard cash. Take Egypt. The House of Saud has just given Supreme Military Council leader Field Marshall Tantawi US$4 billion in cold hard cash – although not even the Sphinx knows for sure how much power Tantawi, 75, deposed tyrant Hosni Mubarak’s former minister of defense, really wields.

Washington extended Cairo $1 billion in “debt forgiveness” and another $1 billion in loan guarantees. Not much – compared to what Washington extends to Israel, but still a signal. And then theInternational Monetary Fund extended an extra $3 billion in loans. The “new” Egypt will start to do business already bound in unforgiving chains.

This goes a long way to explain how the “opening” of Rafah – the border with Gaza – was not really an opening. The quota of free-moving Gazans is a maximum of 400 a day; and no less than 5,000 Gazans remain blacklisted. So essentially the gulag situation remains similar to Mubarak-sanctioned levels.

This also goes a long way to explain why now you see it/now you don’t tentative Egyptian presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei is now on an overdrive charm offensive on Saudi media – singing the praises of King Abdullah while performing the contortionism of ignoring frenetic Saudi support for Mubarak until (and beyond) the last minute.

Cash is king

In Yemen, the House of Saud is – what else – buying Yemeni tribes with cold hard cash, in the name of “stability in the region”. Even though it is living up to its reputation of prime asylum for fleeing Arab dictators, the House of Saud officially is in favor of President Abdullah Saleh stepping down in the name of “less bloodshed and less unpredictability”.

The House of Saud insists – no irony intended – Saleh is being hosted for “humanitarian motives”. Officially, the House of Saud also abhors a “power vacuum”. Said vacuum nonetheless remains quite persistent, now coupled with fears of “rising chaos”. Washington, meanwhile, scans the horizon frantically trying to spot any dronable al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP) “targets”.

If Saleh ships himself back to Yemen that could only happen because the House of Saud said so. So we have a situation where Saleh’s son Ali is commanding the elite Republican Guard – from inside the presidential palace – and his four cousins are also in control of key military units. The current “acting” leader, Vice President Abdu-Rabo Mansur Hadi, is a figurehead.

Saudi Arabia seems to condone, for now, this theoretically vacuum-cleaned power arrangement. As for the wide-ranging Yemeni protest movement, their only shot now would be to force Hadi to hang on, push for a transitional government, and try to quell the counter-revolution, directed by Saleh’s family, with people power. If that’s the case, the House of Saud will brutally – and directly – step in.

In Bahrain, the House of Saud explicitly supports the National Human Rights Organization; no wonder, its head was appointed by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa last year, so the organization must support the ruling dynasty – yet not as much as the Saudi masters. Bahrain’s really independent human-rights organizations, meanwhile, have had their leading activists arrested and facing military trials.

And just like a thief in the dead of night, who sneaked into Washington to be received at the White House by US President Barack Obama this past Tuesday? No one else than Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman al-Khalifa.

There was no press conference. There were no pictures. It’s like this conversation would self-destruct in five seconds – but it did take place, between a drone-heavy Nobel Peace Prize and the head of the military of a Persian Gulf American satrapy which is busy toppling its own people. No amount of rhetoric will alter the math: Washington fully backs outright repression all across the Persian Gulf – to the extreme delight of the House of Saud.

He is heavy, he’s no brother

Then there’s the Muslim Brotherhood question – essential in the context of the carefully orchestrated US/Saudi counter-revolution.

The Muslim Brotherhood is being instrumentalized by the House of Saud all across the board, from Syria to Egypt. In Egypt, the reactionary old guard Brotherhood is working very close with the Military Council; “rewards” for good behavior by both Washington and Riyadh should be in the works.

Clearly this won’t translate as an endorsement of ElBaradei – whose appeal is towards disenfranchised young people, liberals, a few leftists and a smatter of progressive Islamists who defected from the “traditional” Muslim Brotherhood.

As for the even more reactionary Salafis, they are now getting into Facebook groups, in a public relations offensive to try to improve their dreadful image and sort of mingle with “other intellectual and political currents”.

Saudi media meanwhile is awash with their own public relations extolling the merits of the kingdom and denigrating the “corruption of the ruling family and its cronies” in selected Arab republics such as Syria and Libya. According to the official platform of the Gulf Counter-Revolution Club, also known as Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), all Arab monarchies are as virtuous as virgins in paradise.

As the cold hard cash counter-revolution goes on, the future of the great 2011 Arab revolt looks grimmer and grimmer. It all depends on how forcefully the Tahrir Square spirit will keep the Military Council in Egypt in check. And how progressive forces in Egypt, Yemen and beyond find ways to counterpunch the relentless impact of the House of Saud oil wealth.