Tag Archives: Syrian civil war

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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Europe, Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Syria, United Nations, United States

Syria’s chemical weapons and the deadlines to eliminate them…

SYRIA’S CHEMICAL STOCKPILES

The United Nations set deadlines for Syria to remove its chemical weapons. At first, the country cooperated. But as time has gone on Syria’s promise of removing its deadly chemical stocks appeared to stall, triggering concerns it would drag its feet as the regime of Bashar al-Assad became more confident of prevailing in the civil war. Its response in general terms to the UN’s decree has never been easy to read. Some of those fears, though, have now been allayed and to some extent seem exaggerated. The complex and difficult process, being overseen and supervised by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), has gone in fits and starts. The process has involved transporting toxic and dangerous materials from some 23 sites through a war-torn country to the port of Latakia. The target for getting most of the dangerous stockpiles onto waiting cargo ships by the end of April has now been met.

A week ago, on April 22, the OPCW declared that 86.5% of all chemicals and 88.7% of the most deadly ‘Priority 1 substances’, such as sulphur mustard and precursors for sarin nerve gas, had been boarded and removed. According to reports, six consignments have been delivered to Latakia since early April, leading to the OPCW to declare that a ‘significant acceleration’ has occurred following a long gap when very little had happened.

A pictogram highlighting sites previously attacked using Syria's chemical weapons.

A pictogram highlighting sites previously attacked using Syria’s chemical weapons.

The chemicals are destined for a container terminal at Gioia Tauro, in southern Italy. Most of it is then expected to transfer to an American ship, the MV Cape Ray, which is equipped with two mobile hydrolysis units for neutralising the chemicals. The Cape Ray will then head into international waters with a ten-country security escort, and begin its work.  The director of American naval operations in Europe and Africa, Rear-Admiral Bob Burke, says that if the sea is fairly calm some 60-days of round-the-clock processing will be needed to neutralise the chemical agents. That makes it just about possible for the June 30 deadline to be met, a date in which all of Syria’s chemical weapons must be destroyed.

Anxieties persist, however. The first is the continuing disagreement between Syria and the OPCW over the destruction of production and storage sites. The issue is of setting bad precedent because, whilst the Syrians are arguing only for ‘destruction by inactivation’, which merely implies just locking some doors, the OPCW has a completely different interpretation as to what destruction of structures means. Because the Chemicals Weapons Convention (CWC) does not specifically define what that is, the OPCW has reverted to using a ‘common law’ standard which implies structures being ‘taken down to the foundations’. A compromise may be possible, but the setting of an inappropriate international legal precedent will be something the OPCW will wish to avoid.

For Syria to be certified as being entirely free of chemical weapons, a mechanism for future ‘challenge’ inspections will be needed. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the OPCW has never previously carried out such an inspection. It remains possible, of course, that the regime has hidden stocks, which on past form it might use (and then, later, blame the rebels for). The status of one chemical-weapons site, in an area the regime says is too dangerous for decommissioning purposes, remains ‘unresolved’.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the regime has not changed its ways. Reports earlier this month showed that helicopters dropped bombs filled with industrial chlorine gas on the rebel held village of Kfar Zita, injuring and terrifying dozens of civilians.

The use of chlorine gas is always hard to prove. It is not banned under the CWC and it does not linger, making the extraction of evidence from soil samples almost impossible. That is one reason why no signatory to the convention has asked the OPCW to investigate. If its use, however, was intended to maim or kill, and that would have to be established, it would be a clear breach of the convention.

A further requirement of the convention is that signatories give a full history of their chemical-weapons inventories and programmes, accounting for those scientists who worked on it and other countries that may have assisted it – in Syria’s case, probably Russia and Egypt with Iranian proxy support. But we should doubt that, with the architect of the programme still in power, the regime would reveal anything that might incriminate it in the killing of more than 1,000 people by sarin nerve gas in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta exactly 12 months ago, a crime for which it still denies all responsibility.

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  • 2 May, 2014

SYRIA’S CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Reviving the Geneva peace talks is urgently needed…

Last autumn, America (along with France) came within hours of launching military strikes on Syria in punishing the regime of Bashar al-Assad for killing at least 1,400 people in sarin gas attacks. Had those air strikes gone ahead Syria’s stockpiles and reserves of sarin would have been degraded along with other nerve agent stocks. Under an agreement brokered by the United States and Russia, Syria agreed to hand over its stocks of chemical precursors and weapons by February, a deadline which was later extended and which has just past. Yet, despite this added leeway, the evidence suggests that Damascus has still not surrendered its entire arsenal. UN monitors and observers believe that up to eight per cent of stockpiles remain.

Intelligence suggests that, even if the Assad regime had handed over its full inventory, it would not have mattered – for the regime has continued to use chemical weapons in rebel held areas. Tests on samples of soil taken after three recent attacks show definite and unambiguous traces of chlorine and ammonia, the first independent scientific confirmation of what has long been suspected: that the Syrian army has been fitting helicopter-borne barrel bombs with chlorine gas, and then dropping them on towns and villages. Chlorine gas reacts with moisture in the throat and lungs, which in turn forms into hydrochloric acid, leaving victims exposed to fits of coughing, choking and, ultimately, gasping for breath. Several people have died.

Using chemicals in this way is a clear breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria signed last year. It is also an infringement of the international norms that have regarded the use of chlorine as monstrously barbaric since the First World War, when it was used to asphyxiate men in the trenches. Although the gas has many industrial uses, it is not a banned substance. Using it as a weapon, however, is strictly prohibited under the convention’s general purpose criterion.

With international attention having been clearly focussed on Ukraine in recent weeks, Assad has seemingly calculated that he can continue to carry out gas attacks with relative impunity, even though he pledged to end their use. He has come to realise there is little or no appetite in the West to intervene militarily in this savage civil war that has now claimed more than 150,000 lives. But he cannot be allowed to think there are no consequences for such ruthless actions.

A fresh effort to revive the stalled Geneva peace process is needed. Securing a diplomatic settlement in Syria remains the best way of ending the internecine warfare and the continued misery that are being suffered by its people. Pressure needs to be applied to Damascus to grant unfettered access to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is sending a fact-finding mission to investigate the most recent attacks.

Syria’s protectors must also examine themselves. Vladimir Putin, in particular, must ask himself whether, despite his continued belligerence, he is really happy to sit and watch as his ally in Damascus gasses his own people.

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Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, National Security, Syria

Recent peace talks in Syria have been a complete failure…

SYRIA

The recent round of peace talks in Geneva concerning Syria collapsed in just under 30 minutes. If anyone believed that the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, and his enemies had the slightest intention of making peace, this latest setback should be evidence enough of just how difficult it is going to be in bringing about a peace treaty. At this stage it seems wholly impossible. Just to get the blood-stained dictator and a selection of his foes to the negotiating table required almost three years of international endeavour and a death toll that has now reached 140,000 people since the civil war started. All efforts to bring about peace in Syria have ended in failure.

The crisis has usurped even the bleakest of forecasts. Last year, it seemed reasonable and rational to believe that Assad’s agreement to disable his poisonous gases and chemical weapons would at least rid the conflict of these ghastly weapons. But even that deal is unravelling.

Under the agreed timetable, 700 tons of Assad’s most dangerous chemical agents should have been shipped out of Syria by 31 December, 2013. In January, the best estimate was that a mere 4 per cent had actually been removed. It is understood that a further shipment (of an undisclosed size) has taken place since, but it will not have altered the overall stockpiles of chemical agents being held by the Syrian regime by that much. The agreement was designed to destroy Syria’s entire inventory of some 1,300 tons; less than 50 tons has been deemed to have been disposed of.

More worryingly, hundreds of British Muslims have travelled to Syria’s war-torn country to join the most radical rebel groups, most of which are aligned to Al-Qaeda. British intelligence and senior police officers are gravely concerned of the prospect of these people returning home to the UK with their newly-found skills acquired from Al-Qaeda run training camps disbursed throughout Syria and neighbouring countries in the Middle East. No counter-terrorism official doubts that such radicalised individuals threaten our national security.

Syria is systematically destroying itself before our very eyes. Millions of refugees have been displaced and are placing an intolerable strain on neighbouring countries as they seek refuge and shelter. All efforts to bring peace to this blood-soaked land have been foiled, and have created in the process a new generation of jihadists.

No one should forget that Assad has been aided in his mission – and been given a licence to do what he has been doing – through Russia and Iran who have sustained this war by arming and funding the Syrian regime.

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