Tag Archives: Bashar al-Assad

Britain, Government, Politics, Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

Among the rubble seize the chance of peace in Aleppo

SYRIA

aleppo-rubble

Rubble from destroyed buildings blocks a street in Aleppo. The scene is all too common across the country.

Intro: As Aleppo has been subjected to Russian bombardment over the past two weeks, the city has been left in a condition that can only be described as inhumane and beyond belief

RUSSIA has said that forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad are in possession and are controlling a third of the city of Aleppo.

What in fact they are in possession of is a lot of rubble from the devastation that the fighting has caused. The city is almost destroyed and is horrendous for the inhabitants that remain in this besieged city. In Aleppo, very little is left.

The situation has undoubtedly been made far worse since Putin’s forces have stepped in, with their military fighter jets and bombers and their boots on the ground. Russian intervention in Syria has been decisive, hard though it may be for the West to accept. The near annihilation and stomach wrenching images being beamed back from Aleppo is a very clear signal that we have been backing the losing side. That backing was only ever partial and delicately targeted to specific anti-Assad militant groups. There is no political appetite in the West – or in the UK – to increase our military resources that would inevitably lead to a face-off with Russia and Assad’s well equipped forces. We must now accept that the Syrian tyrant has won.

The best we can now do is to persuade the groups who we do back to call a ceasefire and try to end this brutal and destructive war. It has been raging now for more than five years.

As Aleppo has been subjected to Russian bombardment over the past two weeks, the city has been left in a condition that can only be described as inhumane and beyond belief. Hospitals have been flattened, babies have been taken out of their incubators as doctors desperately try to protect them, and aid agencies have been blocked in their task of reaching those most in need with medical and food stocks. About 250,000 people have been left without vital supplies; more than 450,000 people are believed to have died in the conflict to date.

As much as the West may detest the idea of Assad still being in power, we need to convince people to negotiate so that Syria can be rebuilt. This is essential not only for the besieged people of the country, who have had their lives disrupted for so long, but for the whole of Europe and other countries in the Middle East, many of which are struggling to cope with a huge influx of refugees.

This is all we can now hope for.

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Foreign Affairs, Syria, United Nations, United States

Syria gas attacks are continuing…

SYRIA & CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Intro: Despite Syria agreeing to dismantle its chemical weapons programme, Bashar Assad is using chlorine against his people

IN 2013 Washington went back on its pledge to strike at the heart of Bashar al-Assad’s regime for having used sarin nerve gas against Syrians in Damascus that summer. Brokered by Russia, the Syrian regime agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons programme.

Theoretically, the deal has been a success: to date, 98% of the country’s banned substances have been eliminated and destroyed, and Syria has joined the treaty against their use. Yet, as is his convoluted way, Assad still appears to be making a mockery of the agreement.

Since 2014 there have been increasingly frequently reports of chlorine gas attacks against towns and villages held by the rebels, most recently in three separate incidents on May 7th. Chlorine is not a banned substance since it has industrial and commercial uses, but it is strictly prohibited when used as a weapon. Inhalation causes a burning sensation, and fluid can accumulate in the lungs resulting in suffocation.

Then, on May 8th, reports surfaced from the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPWC) that unexplained traces of sarin and VX nerve agent had been found at a research centre in Damascus. Suspicions that Syria had failed to declare all its facilities first arose in 2014 when the regime suddenly added four new sites to the list it handed over in 2013.

Few believe the regime’s claims that the rebels are responsible for the chemical attacks, including the one in the summer of 2013 that left hundreds dead. The physical evidence points the other way, too. Chlorine is usually delivered in barrel bombs dropped by helicopters, which only the regime possesses. All have been targeted at rebel-held areas. More recently, the attacks have been concentrated on Idleb, the north-western province where the regime is losing ground.

The international community is deeply troubled. Some members broke down at a recent UN Security Council session when they were shown graphic video images of the aftermath of one attack and heard testimony from doctors who were at the scene. On March 6th the Council passed a resolution expressing ‘extreme concern’ about the attacks and authorising the UN to use chapter VII (military action or sanctions to enforce its decisions) against anyone found responsible.

The UN is now setting up a commission to determine who is carrying out the attacks rather than just whether they actually happened, as has been the case in past investigations. The OPCW and Human Rights Watch are satisfied that chlorine was used in at least three of the several reported instances. Diplomats from America, Britain and France are convinced that the Syrian leader is still using chemicals as a weapon. Assad’s regime is the only government in the world to do so since 1988 when Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds in Halabja in northern Iraq.

However, there is unlikely to be much more than public censure. It is probable that Russia would veto any chapter VII action, and the appetite by Western countries’ for ousting Assad has greatly diminished since the emergence of Islamic State.

Throughout this long and protracted civil war the regime has carefully calibrated its actions to deliberately avoid triggering western intervention – the sarin attack in 2013 is reckoned to have been far bigger than the regime planned, and only a handful of people have died in the recent chlorine attacks. Using an alternative to conventional weapons also suggests a calculated choreography. Bashar al-Assad is getting away with saying one thing whilst clearly doing another.

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Britain, Iraq, Islamic State, NATO, Syria, Turkey, United States

Turkey: why isn’t it doing anything to curb the advances of Islamic State?

THE LACK OF TURKISH ACTION

Almost 200,000 people have been forced to flee and abandon their homes, joining 1.5 million Syrian refugees already in Turkey.

Poorly equipped Kurdish fighters – men, women and children – have tried in vain with AK-47 assault rifles to hold back the maniacal hordes of Islamic State fighters. The terrorists are armed with modern, heavy-grade American weapons.

IS now has a clear grip on at least a third of the Syrian Kurdish stronghold of Kobani on the border with Turkey.

U.S. and Arab warplanes and drones have been targeting IS positions, but to little avail. U.S. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accepts the town could fall, leaving its remaining citizens facing rape, murder and torture at the hands of the barbarians besieging it.

All the while, just a few hundred yards over the border, Turkish troops look on. As IS fighters stalk the deserted streets of the town, Turkish tanks in clear sight of the calamity stand idle.

Turkey’s inaction as Kobani falls has provoked worldwide fury. Kurdish expats have taken to the streets throughout the country, and at least 19 people are known to have died in violent clashes against the government’s troops and police.

Washington has ‘voiced concern’ about Turkey’s reluctance to engage IS, even though it has its own parliament’s approval to do so.

Less diplomatically, a U.S. State Department official reportedly told the New York Times: ‘This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone’s throw from its border.’

It does, indeed, seem outrageous that Turkey, the second-largest land power in NATO with 290,000 troops, and a candidate for EU membership, is doing nothing to prevent a massacre on its doorstep. Why does it view the prospect of IS’s dreaded black banner fluttering over a town near its border with such apparent equanimity?

The main reason – and it is a very simple one – is that Turkey abhors the 1.3million Syrian Kurds more than it hates IS.

Turkey is home to some 15million Kurds – about 20 per cent of its population – many of who are locked in a violent secessionist battle with the Turkish government.

What Turkey really fears is that the Syrian Kurds will establish their own state on the Turkey/Syria border, which could prove deeply destabilising in a country with such a large Kurdish population. Anything – even IS – that weakens the Syrian Kurds reduces that threat.

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Turkey has, for 30-years, fought a brutal war against the far-Left militant Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), until a fragile ceasefire was declared in 2013. In those blood-soaked decades, 40,000 people were killed in vicious fighting that involved suicide bombers on the terrorist PKK side, the flattening of Kurdish villages on the other – and widespread allegations of torture on both.

What makes Turkey particularly reluctant to defend the Syrian Kurds in Kobani is that they are allied to the PKK, and committed to Kurdish homeland. This explains why Turkish border guards have been stopping PKK militia and other Kurdish fighters from joining their Syrian kinsmen in Kobani to fight IS.

And why, in contrast, they turned a blind eye to foreign jihadis flying into Turkey to take the long bus journey over the border to Syria – not to mention the 3,000 Turks who have joined IS after being recruited in rundown provincial towns.

Turkey’s response to IS was certainly complicated by the terrorists’ seizure of 49 Turkish hostages in Syria. But rather than refuse to negotiate, the Turks exchanged them for 180 imprisoned IS sympathisers.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made it plain he sees no moral difference between the Kurds in Kobani and IS.

In a briefing, Mr Erdogan said: ‘It is wrong to view them differently; we need to deal with them jointly.’

One diplomat who is involved in attempting to build the anti-IS alliance says Erdogan hates the Syrian Kurds. What is more, the diplomat said, is that ‘he thinks they’re worse than IS.’

Elsewhere, the EU’s counter-terrorism co-ordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, said: ‘The Syrian Kurds are a big concern for Erdogan because he is not done with the PKK.’

Both the EU and the U.S. has designated the PKK as a terrorist organisation. The irony is that the West is now implicitly relying on PKK fighters to relieve Kobani. And the fact is that, until IS came along, the Syrian Kurds were getting ever closer to their dreams of an autonomous state.

In the chaos of the Syrian civil war, they had declared their own statelet, calling it ‘Rojava’, which straddled Syria’s northern border with Turkey like a series of cantons.

An embattled President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, locked in a lethal war with IS, tolerated this arrangement, which put Kobani right in the centre of the statelet. Little wonder IS considers the town to be of such strategic significance.

The Syrian Kurds have taken their lead from Kurds in northern Iraq, who have established their own thriving and virtually autonomous regime in an oil-rich region now known as Iraqi Kurdistan.

The difference, however, is that Turkey does not see the Iraqi Kurds – who will have nothing to do with the PKK – as a threat. Ankara invested heavily in the region and has become increasingly dependent on Kurdistan’s oil and gas to fuel its own growth.

In contrast, Turkey fears that any concession to the Syrian Kurds will fuel demands from its own restive Kurdish population for autonomy.

On top of all of this, you have the autocratic and self-determined nature of Erdogan who, in a move reminiscent of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, appointed himself president this summer after serving 12-years as prime minister.

No Turkish leader since the death in 1938 of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, has invested himself with such power as Erdogan. But whereas Ataturk wanted to distance Turkey from its religious heritage, turning it into a power player in modern Europe, Erdogan has very different ideas.

As part of his general conservative push, Erdogan has been trying to re-orientate the country away from the decadent West and towards the Arab world, which the Ottoman Turks ruled for centuries.

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With his ambition to revive Turkey’s once-great power status, Erdogan has allied the country not only with the conservative Sunni Muslims of Saudi Arabia, but with the Muslim Brotherhood regime of former President Morsi in Egypt, and with the Sunni militant Palestinian group Hamas.

In doing so, he destroyed Turkey’s good relations with Israel, a staunch ally of the Kurds.

Relations with the newly-elected military regime in Egypt are grim, too. Erdogan’s emotional pull towards Sunni Arabs means he is implacably opposed to Syria’s President Assad, who is an ally of Shia Iran, and explains why he is so keen to back Assad’s enemies, even if it means backing IS.

That is why he is telling the U.S. that only if America extends its intervention in Syria to toppling Assad will he then move to help the Kurds in Kobani.

Erdogan will drive a very hard bargain before he contemplates any military action, not least because the Turks realise that while Western intervention comes and goes in the Middle East, Turkish intervention in Syria could involve the country in an intractable war that lasts decades.

Yet, this is a NATO country which the West hopes will put men on the ground to repulse IS. Some hope that is. For as well as supporting the terrorists, Turkey has been allowing British jihadis to cross its borders, while simultaneously claiming its desire to join the anti-IS coalition.

At this terrifying moment and juncture when IS appears to be unstoppable, it’s tragic for the West that Turkey is the country that holds most of the cards.

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