Category Archives: Middle East

Britain, France, Government, Middle East, Syria, United Nations, United States

President Obama’s ‘red-lines’ and America’s moving goal posts…

IS AMERICA SERIOUS ABOUT ITS RED-LINES?

On August 20, 2012, President Obama delivered a statement of huge significance on the Syrian crisis. But just 12-months on, many are pondering whether the ‘red lines’ which he laid down amount to anything other than political rhetoric. During a White House press briefing a year ago, the President said: ‘We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised… That would change my equation.’

Syrian rebels and opponents of the Assad regime claim to have substantive evidence that Bashar al-Assad has done more than just ‘move around’ stockpiles of chemical munitions. Accusations are such that Mr Assad has utilised nerve agents, such as sarin or vx nerve gas, to kill between 500 and 1,300 people. Photographs have beamed the world this week depicting scores of dead children with no visible signs of injuries. It is highly likely that chemicals were used.

If this attack is proved, which must come from tests carried out by UN inspectors, then it would amount to the deadliest attack of this kind since Saddam Hussein gassed tens of thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988. Saddam Hussein used chemicals left-over from the 8-year Iran-Iraq war, but much of it still remains unaccounted for.

Mr Obama’s red-line would appear to have been crossed, and with that his ‘equation’ (or calculus) has also been changed. The ante has been upped with both Britain and France expressing the view that some reaction is now necessary. An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was called for by Britain, though no one ever expected permanent council members Russia and China to change their indifferent stance to a raging civil war in Syria that has now claimed more than 100,000 lives and the deaths this week of more than 1,000 civilians in what seems an almost certain chemical attack. France, too, has been angered and has warned Syria of a forceful response.

What President Obama will do remains to be seen, but any decisive action will be tempered by the complex situation on the ground. The American public will be wary of putting weaponry in the hands of some rebel groups affiliated with radical Islamists such as Al-Qaeda, and any attempt to establish a no-fly zone would be tantamount to a declaration of war because its longer-term aim would be to decapitate Assad’s air defences. Russia continues to supply Assad with arms and refuses outright to bring those supply lines to an end. This has become a significant contributory factor in a bloody war that can only exasperate the death toll and worsen the humanitarian crisis as refuges flock in their tens of thousands to neighbouring countries for safer sanctuary.

Mr Obama’s foreign policy is hardly helping the situation, either, which has turned into an almost stagnated Zen. The U.S. refused to act earlier in Syria because it would have meant military action in the middle of the presidential election; he spoke out against the Assad regime yet failed to offer real support to the rebels; and, he has moved his red-lines to such a degree that they are now almost impossible to cross. America’s attitude towards Egypt, too, has a similar pattern to it, where Mr Obama has swung from tolerating one dictatorial regime to another.

The United States needs to be at the forefront in seeking a solution to the Syrian crisis. As impregnable as the situation has become, that is no excuse for America to avail itself of responsibility. Mr Obama is the leader of the free world, and as such should be striving harder to bring this ghastly war to an end.

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Britain, European Union, Government, Middle East, Politics, Syria, United Nations, United States

Syria, chemical weapons and direct intervention…

SYRIA

Television and media images from Syria have been truly horrendous. Pictures have been depicted showing dozens of bodies laid out in rows, many of them children. Others, including very young infants, are seen suffering convulsions and spasms – symptoms that are typical of a major gas attack.

Ghastly as the images are, however, is all as clear cut as it seems? Photographs and video productions have been circulated by Syrian opposition activists; their release, as a UN team arrived to investigate the reported use of chemical weapons, maybe perceived as being opportunistic with powerful propaganda value.

The conundrum here is whether any leader, even one as beleaguered and brutal in defence of his presidency as Bashar al-Assad, be so heedless and perverse of the consequences as to launch such an attack just as the UN inspectors were arriving. Assad has denied he did it, but many say he would have if he had done it.

The alternative is even less plausible – that the Syrian rebels staged, exaggerated or even manipulated an attack on areas they hold with the intention of persuading both the UN inspectors and international opinion towards a Western intervention.

Whichever it is, we should constantly bear in mind the barbaric and brutal lengths to which a desperate regime will go to keep power.

Whilst the response from most international leaders has been one of outrage, comments have been tempered, rightly, with a measure of caution. ‘If proven’ is the crucial phrase that has emanated from Britain, France, and from others who are calling for more direct action. Legally, it is also a pointer as to what the priority should now be: to establish, so far as is possible, the truth of what happened. To fulfil that end, the UN inspectors must be granted immediate and unfettered access to the area of the alleged atrocity.

Establishing the truth is vital because the stakes are so high. The use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict was defined by President Obama as a ‘red line’ when he said almost a year ago that if the Assad regime deployed chemical weapons, ‘the whole calculus would change’. This was widely interpreted as a condition for the U.S. to intervene, either directly or by arming the rebels.

Yet, nor can it be excluded that the rebels have attempted to orchestrate something in which they might force America’s hand. So far, an EU investigation has only reported small scale use of sarin nerve gas on both sides. But if such an extensive attack, as seems to have taken place this week, is found to be the work of Syrian government forces, that could not but ‘change the calculus’.

Crucially, though, would it (or should it) prompt Western intervention? Intervention can take various forms, from air strikes targeting Syrian weapons, cruise missile launches from the naval fleet operating in the region, or a full ground incursion with boots on the ground. But as we know from Iraq and Afghanistan, even limited intervention tends to produce perverse and unwieldy results. In Syria it could be even more riskier, given the regional complexity and its ever more volatile neighbourhood.

At the present moment, doing nothing seems less perilous than direct intervention. Being sucked into a bloody civil war that is increasingly sectarian with regional alliances taking hold – Iran and Hezbollah siding with the Assad regime, and Saudi Arabia arming the rebels – direct intervention would certainly appear the worse of two evils. But even now the case has still not been made for direct intervention in Syria.

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Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Politics, Society

Egypt’s future hangs by a thread…

HOPE

The present situation in Egypt looks grim, both in the wider picture and in the detail.

Tensions in Cairo remain high following the deaths outside the Presidential Guard barracks on Monday, fatalities which included women and children among the dead. The prospect of any government being formed soon looks extremely remote.

Hazem el-Beblawi, the 76-year-old former finance minister, named last week as the interim Prime Minister, has struggled in his task to form a cabinet. That task has been made more difficult due to the issue of arrest warrants by the state prosecutor for senior figures in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Following the removal of Mohammad Morsi, Egypt’s deposed leader, it was suggested that the priority for the interim administration was to form a broad-based coalition government, and one that was reflective of Egypt’s political diversity. President Morsi had not sought allies beyond his immediate supporters, a crucial reason as to why he was removed following millions who had taken to the streets in protest. It can hardly have been helpful, then, that a slew of new arrest warrants was the best way to go about fostering peace and reconciliation. The Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, had already refused to join a unity government – on the not so unreasonable grounds that it had led a democratically elected government that was unlawfully removed.

On Tuesday, the British Foreign Secretary’s statement in the House of Commons highlighted some of the difficulties. Mr Hague has urged Egyptians to move swiftly to hold free and fair elections, as well as working towards openness, democracy and economic reform. Whilst the sound-bites are sensible, they must ring pretty hollow to those Egyptians who thought they already had a freely elected government following the election of Mr Morsi 12-months ago.

Mr Hague also skirted around the uncomfortable fact that the army had seized power and the refusal by some, notably the United States, in referring to the takeover as a coup. The feeling that the Western world promotes and lauds democracy elsewhere, until it produces something they don’t want, will only have been reinforced with what is happening in Egypt.

In the short-to-medium term at least the situation in Egypt seems likely to remain highly problematic. In the unlikely event that all parties and vested interest groups can be persuaded to take part in amending the constitution, approving it in a government-run referendum will undoubtedly leave some to question the authority of any newly formed government – built as it will on the back of an army takeover.

Over the past week, Egypt’s democracy has not been strengthened. Following the carnage on Monday, descent into a Syria-style bloody civil war seemed inevitable. But whilst the confrontation at the Presidential Guard barracks, in which more than 50 people died and dozens of others were injured, it also seemed to shock all sides into stepping back from the brink. It is too soon to be abandoning hope.

Rather than issuing new arrest warrants, the authorities should be exploiting this pause to offer some kind of peace reconciliation – for example, by starting to release detainees.

Egypt’s compelling sense of national identity is a permanent and immovable asset. Unlike many states in the region, it has a common history going back millennia; it has borders that are well defined, and there are no serious challenges from ethnic minority groups. Egypt’s differences are invariably religious and political which, though it doesn’t make them any less sharp, does still leave Egypt’s national identity intact. The interim administration as well as any new government needs to capitalise on this and should provide a roadmap in helping Egypt to complete its revolution.

However untidy Egyptian society has become of late, the taste that many in Egypt have developed over the past two-and-a-half years for freedom and democracy can be a force for good as well as ill. As we have seen it veered all too easily when Mr Morsi was deposed a week ago, into a rule by a discontented mob. Such proof of political engagement, however, could also deter the military from the excesses to which it is prone.

There are slivers of hope for Egypt’s future, but hope is all that is currently on offer.

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