Category Archives: United Nations

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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Britain, Syria, United Nations, United States

The Syrian tinderbox as the West considers sending arms to the rebels…

PRESIDENT Barack Obama is considering arming Syrian rebels in a bid to end a civil war that is now into its third year.

There are growing concerns that President Bashar al-Assad may be gaining the upper hand in the conflict that has claimed at least 80,000 lives and displaced millions more, as government forces recently captured the strategic key town of Qusair.

Mr Assad’s forces are said to be preparing for an assault on the city of Aleppo.

A decision to approve military aid for Syria’s opposition forces could come within the next few days. US Secretary of State, John Kerry, postponed a Middle East trip to attend a Syrian summit in Washington instead.

Opposition leaders in Syria have warned the White House their rebellion could soon face devastating losses without greater support from the United States.

Syria’s precarious position in the heart of the Middle East makes the conflict extremely unpredictable.

The major stumbling block of supplying arms to rebels remains the fear that Al-Qaeda linked and other extremists fighting alongside anti-Assad militias could end up with the weapons.

Washington is still examining evidence that Assad’s forces may have used chemical weapons against the rebels – something Mr Obama has warned Assad would cross a ‘red line’ in provoking swift US military intervention.

Britain and France claim they already have substantive evidence that Assad’s forces have used low levels of the deadly nerve gas sarin in several attacks on rebels, which they have presented to the UN.

OPINION

The threat to world peace and prosperity posed by the bloody civil war in Syria is impossible to exaggerate. The shock-waves from the conflict between rival Islamic factions are spreading far beyond the country itself. The entire region is on the brink of being destabilised.

In Iraq, for example, supposedly rescued from tyranny by Allied forces in the war that ‘ended’ with American troops being withdrawn in December 2011, some 2,000 violent deaths have been recorded in the past two months alone.

In Turkey, Lebanon and Jordon, tensions are rising as hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees pour across the borders in pursuit of safe haven and refuge. Many thousands are in need of food and medical attention. The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) has largely been prevented from attending the sick and dying as Assad has launched wave after wave of attacks on civilians on routes that should have been safeguarded as humanitarian corridors.

On the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel, after a 40-year ceasefire monitored by the United Nations, Austrian peacekeepers are pulling out as the area braces itself in becoming a war zone again.

In Syria, President Assad, far from being defeated, is being supported with Russian arms along with Hezbollah, the fanatically anti-Israeli terrorist group based in Lebanon.

Yet, this is the powder-keg into which President Obama is said to be on the verge of igniting a bigger flame. A decision is imminent on whether to send American arms to the beleaguered opposition forces.

Leaving aside the danger that Iran will retaliate by targeting Israel or US/UK interests in the region, the fact remains that the Syrian rebels (just like their counterparts in Libya two years ago), are riddled with factions hostile to the West – including Al-Qaeda.

Mr Obama, and the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, speak glibly of arming only ‘vetted, moderate rebel units’. The inherent risks of doing so should not be played down with an awareness that these weapons could end up in the hands of the perpetrators of 9/11.

No one can know the way to peace in Syria, the tense geopolitical situation in the region is a cocktail of extremism and hatred. If the United States and Britain have learned anything from the West’s recent past interventions in the Middle East, they must surely realise that ramping up the violence in Syria comes with grave dangers.

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