Category Archives: United States

Britain, Syria, United States

Decision time over Syria. Avoid making historic mistake…

As world leaders gather for the G8 conference in Northern Ireland, one issue seems certain to dominate all others: the Syrian civil war.

On Friday, President Obama triggered an escalation in this already terrifying crisis by announcing the US will shortly send weapons to moderate elements of the Syrian opposition.

William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, then rushed out a statement of support, saying ‘we have to be prepared to do more to save lives’ and put pressure on the Russian-backed Assad regime to negotiate.

Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, has been visiting Britain today, and, officially, Downing Street insists no decision has been taken for Britain to deliver arms to the rebels. Worryingly, though, there is every indication that, where the US leads, Britain will wish to follow.

Of course, it’s not difficult to sympathise with politicians wanting to find a solution to a humanitarian disaster which has already claimed more than 90,000 lives. Millions more have been displaced.

But, as Conservative MP John Baron has said: ‘Arming the rebels and escalating the violence could be a mistake of historic proportions.’

In Syria, the ineluctable truth is we simply do not know who the enemy are. There is absolutely no way of preventing the supply of weapons falling into the hands of the extremists who are bolstering the ranks of the opposition forces – including Al-Qaeda.

Nor, even more frighteningly, can Downing Street predict the extent to which ramping up the violence in Syria will further destabilise a wider region which – with tensions simmering in Lebanon, Turkey and Israel – already resembles a fraught tinderbox.

We should not forget how Tony Blair’s egomania (and the subsequent suspension of the democratic process) enabled the former British prime minister to plunge Britain into its worst foreign debacle since Suez.

David Cameron has promised Parliament a say before Britain is dragged any further into Syria. He must honour his word on this. Making a historic mistake with Syria would prove disastrous.

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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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Britain, Government, Intelligence, United States

Whistleblower and ex-CIA operative breaks cover…

America’s most wanted man has broken cover to reveal why he decided to leak documents from one of the world’s most notorious spy organisations.

Edward Snowden, the former CIA worker, admitted he would be ‘made to suffer’ after triggering shockwaves across the globe by handing over top-secret files from the US National Security Agency (NSA).

The 29-year-old whistleblower, who reputedly earned £130,000 a year, exposed chilling details of how the covert agency, based in Maryland, gathers private information from people around the world –  including in Britain – using a programme called Prism.

The system gives officials easy access to data held by nine of the world’s top internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Skype.

Mr Snowden acted after becoming convinced the US government’s bid to harvest personal information from millions of individuals was a ‘threat to democracy’. He fears he will be kidnapped and returned to America to face espionage charges and possible life in jail.

Mr Snowden had been working at the NSA for the last four years as an employee of defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton after working for the CIA as a technical assistant, specialising in computer security. His role allowed him access to classified material. He fled the United States after handing reporters from the Guardian Newspaper and Washington Post numerous documents from the agency’s computers.

Mr Snowden said:

… I don’t want public attention because I don’t want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing.

… My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.

In shining a light on the NSA’s widening surveillance net the whistleblower has sacrificed a comfortable lifestyle because, as he says, he can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building. Mr Snowden insists the spy chiefs at the NSA are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them. It is this, he says, which poses a ‘threat to democracy’. He believes this will stifle intellectual exploration and creativity, with the US government granting itself power it is not entitled to.

Mr Snowden fled to Hong Kong on May 20 because of its spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent. The former UK colony, now part of China, could well resist the demands of the White House in apprehending him. However, it is possible that the Chinese government might seize him for questioning about US methods and secrets.

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