Tag Archives: Syria

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Iraq, for example, supposedly rescued from tyranny by Allied forces in the war that ‘ended’ with American troops being withdrawn in December 2011, some 2,000 violent deaths have been recorded in the past two months alone.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

UN Report on Syria: ‘Conflict at new levels of brutality’…

A picture taken on April 26, 2013 shows smoke rising after shelling in Houla in Syria’s Homs province. The opposition National Coalition has accused the regime of using chemical weapons in the northern province of Aleppo, in Homs in central Syria, and in rebel-held areas near Damascus. (Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images)

The Syrian conflict is now two and a half years into a violent and civil bloody war between the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad and various rebel groups. According to a recent report from United Nations investigators, the bloodshed is only intensifying: in a survey of events in Syria between Jan 15 and May 15, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s independent commission on the civil war says it has reached ‘new levels of cruelty and brutality’ – and that there’s no reason to believe the carnage will abate any time soon.

This week, commission chair Paulo Pinheiro told the Human Rights Council that ‘Syria is in free-fall… no one is winning… more weapons will only lead to more dead civilains and wounded.’

Investigators report that there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe that chemical agents of an unspecified variety had been deployed in civilian areas. The commission found no conclusive proof determining whether one or both sides in the conflict have deployed chemical weapons, but warn there to be a heightened risk in the future.

On top of the grave risk that nerve gas and other chemical agents could be deployed in civilian areas, ‘non-combatants’ are continually under attack from all sides of the conflict. More than 70,000 civilians have died (with some estimates as high as 100,000) and millions more have been displaced since the civil war broke out over two years ago. The commission concludes that both Assad’s forces and many factions within the rebels are guilty of war crimes against civilains, including torture and rape. Nearly 7 million people, half of them children, are ‘in need of urgent assistance’ due to lack of medical care and food shortages instigated by the conflict.

The U.N. commission ends its report with a strong recommendation for a negotiated settlement:

… A diplomatic surge is the only path to a political settlement. Negotiations must be inclusive, and must represent all facets of Syria’s cultural mosaic.

In the United States, foreign policy hawks such as Sen. John McCain, continue to call on the White House to militarily intervene. Mr McCain believes that America could intervene by launching cruise missiles from the US naval fleet in the region. This, he says, would decapitate Assad’s air defences and would not require boots on the ground or the establishment of a no-fly zone (NFZ).

President Barack Obama has previously said that the use of chemical weapons on civilains would cross a ‘red line’ and therefore may justify intervention. Last month, the White House said it was supportive of Israeli air strikes within the country.

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Syria

Syria’s war and diplomacy: A response…

In response to an article that appeared on the website of The Economist, dated June 1, 2013, entitled: ‘Syria’s war and diplomacy – Argument and Arms’

THE EFFECTIVE BLOCKING by Britain and France by other European nations to extend the weapons embargo on Syria is a diplomatic victory, and, is being portrayed as a tool aimed at pressurising Bashar al-Assad to negotiate an end to the conflict. Britain says it has no immediate intention to ship arms to Syria until diplomacy has been given a chance.

The decision to allow movement of arms and weapons has opened a possible route for Britain and France (either through Turkey or more likely via Jordan) which have been leading the charge in the West for more support to be given to the Syrian opposition, to act unilaterally should they decide to do so. Other European countries fear that any arms sent to the rebels could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists and lead to a wider and regional spill-over of the conflict. Britain and France have agreed not to deliver any weapons until at least August 1, to give more time to international attempts at brokering a peace deal and not to imperil the prospects of a US/Russian-brokered peace conference scheduled to take place in Geneva in June. The Obama administration has voiced strong support for letting the embargo lapse, saying its end would contribute to the two-track policy pursued by supporters of the Syrian opposition: backing the rebels while pushing for a political settlement. The U.S. administration opposes continued Russian shipments of arms into Syria, including sophisticated S-300 air defence systems. The West has seen how the Assad regime uses those arms in enormous onslaughts against people who are unable to defend themselves.

The Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition group, urged the EU to promptly send ‘specialised weaponry to repel the fierce attacks waged against unarmed civilians’ by the Assad regime, its allies in Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group and their Iranian backers. Washington and many of its European allies have been reluctant to send sophisticated weapons to Syrian rebels, fearing they could end up in the hands of radical Islamic groups such as the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, a group which has emerged as the most effective and organised fighting force on the opposition’s side.

Israel has signalled it is prepared to strike Russian deliveries of air defence missiles systems to Syria, portraying them as a threat to the Jewish state and raising the spectre of a regional conflagration.

Russia, Mr Assad’s closest ally, has harshly criticised the decision by the EU to allow the arming of Syrian rebels, and says it undercuts international efforts to negotiate an end to the two year civil war. But Moscow has renewed its pledge to supply Assad’s regime with advanced missiles, which could transform an already brutal and bloody conflict into an East-West proxy fight. Russia insists it is carrying out deliveries of S-300 missile batteries under a contract signed with Syria several years ago.

Empowering Islamic extremists (through weaponry) to achieve questionable short-term goals will not serve the West’s long-term security or interests. And neither will shipments serve the interests of nearly 2 million Christians in Syria who fear they could suffer a similar fate as Iraqi Christians who were abused and expelled as radical Islamic forces gained influence and power. The welfare of these Christians is an important balancing act when deciding how to arm the Islamic militants. History must have taught by now that lessons should have been learnt from the past.

Although there are some well-intentioned reasons for wanting to intervene in Syria, there are far more well-documented reasons not to do so. In the aftermath of Afghanistan and Libya western weapons ended up in the hands of terrorists only later to be turned against their suppliers. The current irony is that a British neo-conservative government is actually lining up on the same side as al-Qaeda and Islamic extremists in Syria.

The lifting of the EU embargo does, though, come with conditions. European countries wishing to send weapons to Syria’s rebels may only send them to the moderate Syrian National Coalition and the affiliated Free Syrian Army, and they may only be used to protect civilians.

Whilst Western countries could conceivably provide rebels with small arms and ammunition, they’re unlikely to provide rebels with the type of arms they need most. The rebels will need weaponry like the portable shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (MANPADS) to counter Assad’s domination of Syrian airspace. Without anti-aircraft missiles or heavy armour piercing ammunition, it’s unlikely that the rebels will be unable to win the war.

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