The Syria debacle – part II

By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
January 20, 2012

This is part two in my new series following the complex developments in the Syrian uprising which I began just days ago. For previous coverage of this issue please scroll to the bottomof the article to find a reading list of previous material I have written.

Today the Washington Post reported that senior officials in the Obama administration have said that they are preparing to close the American embassy in Damascus and evacuate all personnel if President Bashar al-Assad cannot provide additional security.

If Assad cannot give additional security to the U.S. embassy, they reportedly plan to close the facility by the end of January.

Officials said that the United States is not alone in pulling their diplomatic missions out of Syria with other Western countries and Arab embassies making similar moves over the past week.

Currently they are still in talks with Assad’s government and have not reached a final decision.

Yet, they do say that there have been no visible results in terms of additional protection for the embassy.

This is hardly a surprise given that U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford previously met with leading figures in the opposition, a move which not only rightly enraged the Assad government but also the Syrian people who reacted in a violent manner.

“We have serious concerns about the deteriorating security situation in Damascus, including the recent spate of car bombs and about the safety and security of embassy personnel,” said a statement from the United States’ State Department.

“We have requested that the government of Syria take additional security measures to protect our embassy, and the Syrian government is considering that request. We have also advised the Syrian government that unless concrete steps are taken in the coming days we may have no choice but to close the mission,” the statement said.

The car bombs mentioned are part of no less than three unexplained car bomb attacks recently which killed up to 80 people in the Syrian capital of Damascus which was previously relatively peaceful.

Emphasizing that these car bombings are unexplained is quite important as there is a good chance those responsible very well might be the Western-backed opposition forces and their armed insurgent arm (arguably a terrorist organization) known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The FSA have bragged about attacking government targets in the past, so bombings in the capital very well might be an attempt to create chaos and further destabilize the Assad regime.

The process of removing personnel from the American embassy began last week, reportedly due to the bombings.

The Syrian government put the blame for the bombings on al Qaeda, while some activists predictably pointed the finger at the Syrian government itself, according to the Washington Post.

Of course, this would be completely illogical as car bombings in the nation’s capital only serve to further destabilize Assad’s power and erode his support.

A poll commissioned as part of the Doha Debates – thus sponsored by Qatar which has called for foreign military intervention in Syria – actually found that the majority of Syrians do not, in fact, want Assad to resign immediately.

The poll found that 81% of the Arabs questioned (over 1,000 which is far from a huge sample) wanted Assad to step down but since these individuals are not Syrians, their opinion is completely irrelevant.

Therefore, with 55% of the public supporting him, I can see absolutely no reason why he would seek to weaken such support by conducting bombings which make the Syrian people feel as though they are in danger under his rule.

The Obama administration has, unsurprisingly, not ruled out possible involvement in the attacks on the part of the Syrian government, but unnamed American officials stated that signs indicate Syrian and Iraqi militants linked to al Qaeda were involved.

“It smells like a terrorist attack and looks like a terrorist attack, but none of us knows for sure,” the anonymous official said, according to the Washington Post.

Logic alone would tell us that the most likely culprits would be militant opposition forces like the FSA who would benefit from such a terrorist operation.

By murdering innocent people in Damascus, they could say that Assad cannot even keep control over his own capital and keep his people safe, proving that he should step down from power immediately before more people die.

The specifics of the security measures being sought by the United States for the embassy have not been disclosed.

U.S. officials also refused to comment on if there had been specific threats to the embassy other than saying that the car bomb attacks “have brought the situation in Syria to another level.”

The Washington Post says that if Sunni extremists had come from Iraq to become involved in the Syrian uprising “it would add an alarming new dimension to what has been an overwhelmingly peaceful uprising that has been brutally attacked by the decades-old dictatorship.”

Of course, for those of us who have been paying attention, it is quite obvious that it has not been “an overwhelmingly peaceful uprising” but in fact both sides have engaged in violent acts since the beginning.

The Washington Post cites “Many Syrian opposition activists” (the typically ambiguous label leveraged by the Western media to control the narrative by giving a false sense of consensus) who “already are concerned about signs of a creeping Islamization of the revolt,” much like what is occurring in every other nation embroiled in the so-called Arab Spring revolts.

They claim nonsensically, “the failure of the West to intervene will open the door to Islamists, threatening the kind of destabilization that took hold in Iraq following the U.S. invasion there.”

Of course to most analysts like myself, this is nothing short of laughable.

Western intervention will not help stifle the Islamist element in the uprisings; in fact it will just serve to reinforce this anti-Western Islamist sentiment.

This is because many people will see the intervention has unwelcome meddling in their domestic affairs, which is exactly what it is.

Informed citizens would know immediately that the West will move in, destroy the infrastructure, and then loot the nation’s natural resources and wealth by getting all the contracts to rebuild the same infrastructure they destroyed.

We have seen this exact process in Libya and I do not see how any individual in the Arab world would think Western intervention is a good idea after seeing what happened there.

It appears that the car bomb attacks – if they are indeed carried out by the FSA – are achieving exactly what I believe they could be trying to do.

The anonymous senior official in the Obama administration cited by the Washington Post made this very clear in saying that the deteriorating security situation in Syria “demonstrates further that Assad is losing control of the country and reinforces our point that Assad has lost all legitimacy.”

Knowing that these bombings are in fact hurting the Assad regime, as I said, how could they still say that his government might be involved?

We can apply the classic qui bono logic here and in doing so realize that all roads lead to the armed insurgent groups like the FSA.

The Washington Post speculates that in explicitly warning that they might close the embassy, the Obama administration might be “signaling Assad that [the Obama administration’s] patience is running out.”

However, I would argue that they have been attempting to give that impression for months now and instead this move might be a warning that foreign military intervention is just over the horizon.

The Washington Post also mentions that Robert Ford returned to Syria last month after he was removed in October due to threats.

These threats were hardly surprising given that Ford not only vocally criticized the Assad government on the official embassy website (behavior hardly becoming of a diplomat) but even met with opposition leadership which clearly angered the many pro-Assad Syrians.

It seems the United States either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that Syrians do not take kindly to the United States openly getting involved in Syria’s domestic problems.

The Washington Post writes that, “Officials emphasized the importance of maintaining direct contact with opposition leaders and providing the opportunity of real-time reporting from Damascus.”

Do American officials really think that having a close relationship with opposition leaders will make them look impartial or evenhanded in their approach to Syria’s problems?

The Washington Post makes sure to highlight the Assad government’s security efforts, saying “Damascus felt as though it was under siege. Soldiers sealed off several major roads and checkpoints dotted the city. Outside one of the main offices of the security branches, there were sandbagged machine gun positions. Soldiers wearing flak jackets and machine guns kept guard.”

This is hardly a drastic measure given that the FSA has attacked government targets several times.

Furthermore, it is almost guaranteed that whatever police state measures they have in place pale in comparison to the security situation near American military facilities or in places like Washington.

Al Arabiya is also reporting today that “Pressure mounted on the Arab League Friday to seek U.N. intervention in the face of growing exasperation that the bloc’s hard-won observer mission in Syria has failed to staunch 10 months of killing as [the] death toll mounted across the country.”

However, U.N. intervention is very unlikely given Russia and China’s opposition to such an operation.

Many analysts, myself included, say it is much more likely for the West to create something like the “coalition of the willing” created to invade Iraq outside of the U.N.

General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi is preparing to report to foreign ministers of Arab League nations who will then decide if the Arab League’s observer mission will be extended for another month.

Meanwhile, Burhan Galiun, the head of the opposition’s Syrian National Council, traveled to Cairo in an attempt to get Arab ministers to refer the findings of the Arab League’s observer mission to the United Nations Security Council for what Al Arabiya called “tough action.”

Of course this is ignoring the veto power of Russia and China – both nations wholly opposed to another foreign intervention after the horrific Libyan intervention.

An official statement from the Syrian National Council (SNC) said that Ghaliun planned to “ask the head of the Arab League and Arab foreign ministers to transfer the file on Syria to the U.N. Security Council with a view to securing a decision to establish a buffer zone and a no-fly zone.”

It is hard to understand why anyone would call for a no-fly zone over Syria after seeing what NATO and the Arab League nations did in Libya, but then again given that many of the SNC’s members are not even inside Syria at the moment; it is somewhat understandable that they would be divorced from the situation on the ground.

“The SNC delegation will insist that the report contain a clear text concerning the ‘genocide’ and ‘war crimes’ carried out by the [Syrian] regime against unarmed civilians,” the SNC’s statement said.

This makes it clear that they care not what the observers actually find, but instead care only that they come to the conclusions the SNC and the West want.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the Arab League should urge the United Nations Security Council to impose more targeted sanctions which should include an arms embargo.

However, this is one again failing to recognize the strong opposition in the Security Council from Russia and China.

The Arab League’s panel on Syria is set to meet Saturday before the foreign ministers meet.

This panel is far from objective, with Qatar chairing the panel and calling for Arab troops to invade Syria, as I discussed in the previous part of this series.

However, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe claimed such an approach was not in the works in an interview published today in the French Ouest-France daily.

“In the present regional context we are not working towards such a scenario,” Juppe claimed.

On the other hand, French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave a much different impression of France’s position.

Sarkozy said that France would not silently stand by and watch the crackdown occur, hinting that indeed such an approach was being considered, if not planned as the Russians have been saying for a long time now.

“We cannot accept the ferocious repression by the Syrian leadership of its people, a repression that has led the entire country into chaos, and a chaos that will help extremists of all kinds,” Sarkozy said.

Sarkozy also seems to hold the delusional position that the United Nations Security Council must vote in condemnation of the crackdown and support the Arab League’s mission in Syria, despite the fact that Russia and China have made it clear no United Nations Security Council resolutions targeting Syria will be passed.

Repeatedly saying that the Security Council should do something doesn’t change this fact, although far too many individuals seem to not realize this.

In an interview with BBC’s world service recently, I heard a representative of the SNC repeating these same statements while constantly contradicting herself when confronted with the facts.

In a span of about five minutes the representative said that they represent the people demonstrating on the streets then said that they do not represent anyone and thus are not legitimate in the traditional sense because no one voted for them.

It was an incredibly painful interview with the BBC presenter lobbing softballs in the SNC representative’s direction just to have the representative fall on her face trying to swing at it.

The BBC presenter’s most important point, one which was likely made unintentionally, was made when the presenter pointed out that most of the SNC not only doesn’t live in Syria currently but in fact many haven’t lived there for years.

The woman being interviewed had not even been in Syria since she was around 10-years-old, proving that she is no more connected to Syria’s domestic affairs and on-the-ground daily reality that most Westerners.

Sufian Allaw, Syria’s Oil Minister said yesterday that the sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States were in fact having a drastic economic impact on Syria. “We have suffered important losses as a result of our inability to export crude oil and petroleum products,” Allaw said, citing over $2 billion in losses since September 1.

The sanctions have also hurt the Syrian currency, pushing it down to record lows which hurts the average Syrian civilian more than anyone else.

Adib Malayeh, the governor of Syria’s central bank said that they will be introducing a managed float of the currency this coming week, which is essentially devaluing the currency, according to the Financial Times.

MENA quoted Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar, the highest seat of Sunni Muslim learning according to Al Arabiya, urging “Arab rulers to take the necessary measures to halt bloodshed in Syria,” quite clearly hinting at foreign intervention.

In addition to all of the unilateral sanctions currently being leveraged against Syria, the European Union is expected to expand the sanctions against Syria to include individuals, institutions and companies as well.

Before the oil sanctions were imposed back on September 2, the European Union purchased the majority of Syria’s estimated 130,000 barrels of oil exports every day.

As we saw with Iraq, the people who are ultimately hurt the most by the sanctions aren’t the governments and corporations they are supposed to target, but instead everyday people who have absolutely no ability to change their government’s policies.

This led to the deaths of countless Iraqis and likely will lead to the deaths of many Syrian civilians.

The unfortunate reality is that we will likely not see the impact these sanctions have until years after they have already impacted the lives of innocent people.

The push for foreign intervention is only increasing by the day and I sincerely hope that people around the world – but especially in the Western nations that are pushing so hard to oust Assad like the United States and the United Kingdom – start fighting back against the tide of disinformation in order to give a more accurate impression of what is really going on there.

We must also realize that the majority of Syrians do not want Assad to be removed from power right now, and if the West really values democracy as they so often claim to, then this will be respected.

Unfortunately, democracy only counts to them when they say it does and when the democracy aligns itself with Western interests.

However I do think that through raising awareness of the situation in Syria and what is really going on there, we can avoid an all-out conflict which would undoubtedly involve Russia and whatever foreign powers decided to take part in the intervention.

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