Category Archives: United States

Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

Aleppo is on the brink of annihilation…

SYRIA

Intro: The Syrian government has demonstrated time and again how little it cares for international humanitarian laws

Aleppo is now more at a critical juncture that it has ever been since the start of Syria’s internecine civil war five years ago. Aleppo’s worsening situation comes at a bad moment when western attention has been turned sharply on terrorism in Europe and the impending US presidential election. Syria, however, is now demanding immediate attention too. What has been happening recently in Aleppo could be a decisive turning point in the conflict; any diplomatic hopes of whatever remain in negotiating a solution is fast deteriorating. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people are trapped in Aleppo’s eastern neighbourhoods, which are now entirely surrounded by Syrian government forces of Bashar al-Assad.  These troops are being assisted in their offensive by Russian air power and Iranian-controlled militias. Alarmingly, no food, no medical aid, nor any humanitarian assistance has been able to reach the population of Aleppo’s rebel-held territory for several weeks, because of the magnitude and intensity of the ongoing military onslaught.

Aleppo is of historical significance. It was once Syria’s second largest city, and it has become one of the key symbols of rebel resistance to the Assad regime since 2012. It has been a long-held objective of government forces to crush and obliterate Aleppo, and, if nothing is done to stop Assad’s forces advancing such a disaster seems imminent. That would not just be a defeat for the rebels, many of whom which have received western support, but perhaps an irreversible defeat for the uprising. Aleppo is staring into the abyss with the prospect of a new, humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented proportions unfurling in Syria.

Aleppo

Map depicting Aleppo in Syria and surrounding countries.

With Aleppo encircled, the tragedy is being exasperated following the tightening of the knot in recent days by government forces whose aim has been to starve or empty it. Aleppo has been so ruthlessly shelled and bombed that it has become an inferno for those desperate people struggling among the ruins. There are hardly any doctors left in the city, and the last remaining hospital has been destroyed. UN agencies say food stocks are barely sufficient to last for more than three weeks.

The Syrian government and its Russian allies have resorted to a tactic of siege and starvation that has been used previously in Syria, but they are now doing it on a much larger and openly deliberate and provocative way. Their announcement of “humanitarian corridors” for civilians and rebels who would want to flee the area must be exposed as a cynical ruse. No one should be surprised that Aleppo’s population has not rushed towards these exit corridors, which have not in any case materialised on the ground. The Syrian government has demonstrated time and again how little it cares for international humanitarian laws. Assad’s machine of repression makes no distinction whatsoever between armed combatants and civilians. Tens of thousands of civilians have died while being held in detention centres. The announcement by Syrian and Russian officials without consulting or even warning UN agencies in advance is implicit proof that they want no external witnesses to their misdeeds.

Aleppo is on the brink of annihilation and the siege must be urgently lifted. International pressure is void of any credibility and its responses to a dire and stricken situation has been pitifully pathetic. It must put proper pressure on Russia to force Syrian troops to retreat, so that lives can be saved. The fate of Aleppo’s inhabitants, however, may now depend to a large degree on how global public opinion can now be mobilised. Saving Aleppo from utter destruction is not only a humanitarian imperative, but also central to any thin chance of a settlement in Syria ever being salvaged.

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Middle East, Turkey, United States

Turkey’s failed coup raises concerns for the west…

TURKEY

News of a failed coup attempt in a NATO member country bordering the European Union would surely merit loud expressions of relief. Relief that the death toll has stopped rising from the 290 fatalities already recorded.

With almost every passing hour since last Friday’s putsch searching questions continue to arise over the nature of this coup attempt and what the resulting arrests of 6,000 people, including senior army commanders and some 3,000 judges, now means for the country and for geopolitical stability across the region.

Whether Turkey can now be considered a functioning democratic state within its own right must now be open to question in the wake of a remarkably swift and sweeping series of arrests of government critics. Not only have few dissenting voices been spared, but the imagery used by the country’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to describe them suggests an orchestrated retaliation altogether better organised (and more vicious) than the coup attempt itself. Mr Erdogan has wasted no time in expressing vitriolic language, declaring: ‘We will… continue to cleanse the virus from all state institutions, because this virus has spread… (and) has enveloped the state.”

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A US aircraft takes-off from Incirlik air base, a strategically important base for raids against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Such use of language, combined with the seizure and arrest of so many members of the country’s judiciary, suggest that President Erdogan is making full use of the opportunity to move against anyone he considers an enemy.

He has also taken advantage of the opportunity to accuse the American-based Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, of being directly behind the plot and is demanding his extradition. No evidence has yet been furnished to support this demand and Mr Gulen strongly denies any involvement. The attempted coup, however, as mystifying in its origins as in its failure to succeed despite a notable mutiny of army personnel and air power support, has been swiftly seized upon to buttress Mr Erdogan’s position and to provide the pretext for further measures and reforms to tighten his already extensive grip on power. Autocracy is what Mr Erdogan ultimately craves.

Among the arrests was the military commander of Incirlik air base in the south, a strategically important site used by US-led coalition jets for raids against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. It is said he and 10 other soldiers had been detained for their role in the coup.

In addition, 50 senior soldiers were detained in the western province of Denizli. Those arrested in the immediate aftermath of the failed coup included the commander of the Third Army, the commander of the Second Army and the former Chief of Air Staff.

One of the country’s most senior judges, Alparslan Altan, was among thousands of the senior judiciary taken into custody. Quite how Turkey can comply with US President Barack Obama’s stricture that it should remain within the rule of law is moot.

The putsch has created problems for western powers dependent on Turkey’s co-operation both in military actions against IS strongholds, and in curbing the flow of migrants into the EU. The country is also a putative EU member; and, it is widely thought that in order to secure Turkey’s continuing co-operation in migrant control its application for full EU membership has proceeded this far.

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Asia, China, Foreign Affairs, United States

China: An international ruling over the South China Sea

CHINA

Intro: The ruling was made by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, following a case which was brought by the Philippines

OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS China has displayed an often aggressive stance over its vast territorial grab in the South China Sea. This has terrified its neighbours and set it on a collision course with the United States, long seen as the guarantor of peace in East Asia. In the last few days an international tribunal has demolished China’s vaguely defined claims to most of the South China Sea. How Beijing now reacts to this ruling is of the utmost geopolitical importance. If, in its anger, China flouts and ignores the verdict and continues its creeping annexation, it will be perceived as elevating brute force over international law as the arbiter of disputes among states. Continued bullying by China of its neighbours greatly raises the risk of a local clash and which could escalate into a war with America. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

The ruling was made by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, following a case which was brought by the Philippines. The verdict is firm, clear and everything which China did not want to hear. The judges decreed that the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) should solely determine how the waters of the South China Sea are divided among countries, and rejected China’s ill-explained ‘nine-dash line’ which implies the sea belongs to China. They ruled that none of the Spratly Islands in the south of the sea, claimed (and occupied) by several countries including China, can be defined as islands that can sustain human life. In practice, this means that no country can assert an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending up to 200 nautical miles around them.

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Map depicting the disputed islands in the South China Sea

While the court had no power to decide who owns which bits of land in the South China Sea, the judges said that by building on rocks visible only at low tide (and thus not entitled under UNCLOS to any sovereign waters), China had encroached illegally into the Philippines’ EEZ. The court also determined that China had violated UNCLOS by blocking Philippine fishing boats and oil-exploration vessels, and cited that Chinese ships had acted dangerously and unlawfully in doing so. Moreover, China’s island-building had caused ‘severe harm’ to the habitats of endangered species, and Chinese officials had turned a blind eye to such practices.

For China, this is undoubtedly a humiliation. Its leaders have been quick to denounce the proceedings as illegal. Its massive recent live-firing exercises in the South China Sea implies it may be planning a tough response. This might involve the imposition of an ‘Air Defence Identification Zone’ of the kind it has already declared over the East China Sea. Or it might mean that China starts building on the Scarborough Shoal, which it wrested from the Philippines in 2012 after a stand-off involving patrol vessels. That would be hugely provocative. Although the U.S. is deeply reluctant to risk a conflict, President Barack Obama is believed in March to have warned his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, that any move on Scarborough Shoal would be seen as threatening American interests (the Philippines is a U.S. ally). Any attempt by China to call its bluff in a sea that carries $5.3 trillion in annual trade would be reckless and irresponsible.

There is a better way. China could climb down, and, in effect, quietly recognise the court’s ruling. That would mean ceasing its island-building, letting other countries fish where UNCLOS allows and putting a stop to poaching by its own fishermen. It should have good reason: its prestige and prosperity largely depends on a rules-based order. It certainly would be in China’s own interests to secure peace in its region by sitting down with the Philippines, Vietnam and other South-East Asian neighbours and trying to resolve differences.

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