Syria gives Tunisia, Libya 72 hours to close their embassies

Global Research
February 12, 2012

Russia Today

Syria’s foreign ministry is giving Tunisia and Libya just 72 hours to close down their embassies in the capital, Damascus. The move comes after the two North African countries announced similar measures against Syria. Libya said earlier this week it had given Syria’s charge d’affaires and his staff in Tripoli three days to leave the country, and Tunisia has also started procedures to expel the Syrian ambassador and withdraw recognition of the Syrian leadership under President Bashar al-Assad.

February 14, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

How the Arab League Has Become a Tool of Western Imperialism

By Finian Cunningham
Global Research
February 9, 2012

It’s an intrigue befitting the machinations of classical colonialism in past centuries, such as the Sykes-Picot carve-up of the Middle Eastern Levant territories, or the betrayal of the Arabs after World War I, or the theft of Mesopotamia’s oil by British capitalists.

Only this time, it is Arabs who are helping the neocolonial powers to deceive and subjugate other Arabs. Enter the Arab League.

Over the past year, the 22-member organization has emerged as a useful deceptive cover for Western powers as they seek to redraw the political contours of the Arab World, and beyond, for their own strategic interests.

The momentous popular upheavals that began in early 2011 across the Arab World have in many ways been co-opted or manipulated by Western imperialist powers to minimize democratic gains and to refashion the political map to their continuing advantage. A feat of achievement considering that these same powers have for decades supported the repressive regimes that have inflicted so much misery and suffering.

The leitmotif for Western intervention is “responsibility to protect” (R2P) – the notion that these powers are motivated by concern for human rights and the protection of civilian lives. But given that the United States, Britain, France and other NATO states have been conducting criminal wars of aggression over the past decade in mainly Muslim lands, with a death toll exceeding one million and casualties amounting to many more millions, these powers found themselves with a huge credibility problem when it came to contriving a pretext to intervene in the Arab upheavals.

What better than to shroud the Western agenda for intervention in Arab affairs with an appearance of Arab support? The League of Arab States has fulfilled this role. Since its inception in 1945, it has only ever suspended two member states. The first of these was Libya in March 2011; the second is Syria, suspended eight months later in November.

Ostensibly, the Arab League has been motivated to take such measures because it purportedly shares the concern of Washington, London, Paris, for the safety of civilians being violently repressed by their rulers. Without the League’s sanction, the intervention of Western powers would ring decidedly hollow and smack of old-fashioned colonialism. This is in fact what it is, but the addition of Arab voices to the Western sanctimonious chorus lends a crucial veneer of international solidarity.

The arrangement works like this: foment violence and instability within the country of choice, arm dissident groups, and direct these same groups with covert special forces; when government forces move to quell the insurrection, then accuse them of violating human rights. The Arab League then suspends the country, marking it out for international pariah status, which in turn provides a pretext for Western powers to mount military strikes, committing atrocities in the name of “responsibility to protect”, and engineering regime change in the interests of the Western powers. It’s neocolonialism in Arab lands – with the help of other Arab states.

Libya can be seen as a dress rehearsal for this routine, which is now being played out feverishly with Syria. Recall that it was the spurning of Libya in March by other League members that immediately presaged the seven-month NATO aerial bombardment of that country, resulting in possibly thousands of civilian deaths, a crime that is not yet fully realized because of a corporate-controlled media blackout, but a despicable crime nevertheless with bloodied Arab hands involved.

It appears that the Arab League is now taking on an even more pronounced role as the routine finesses. Clearly in Syria what is happening is an insurrection that is being fomented and armed by foreign governments, with Turkey and Saudi Arabia taking a lead role in arming the so-called Free Syrian Army against the state forces of President Bashar Al Assad.

And it was the Arab League that brought the motion last week at the UN Security Council aimed at shackling the Assad government and setting it up for Libya-style NATO military intervention. The veto by Russia and China has for the moment derailed that plan. No doubt, Russia and China have learnt the lesson of Libya where a similar Security Council sanction was used by Western powers to launch a blitzkrieg on that country – in the name of the specious R2P.

The insidious role of the Arab League as the West’s hound-dog can be gleaned from the comment by British Foreign Secretary William Hague following the Russian and Chinese veto at the UN.

Hague said: “Russia and China faced a simple choice today: would they support the people of Syria and the Arab League, or not? They decided not to, and instead sided with the Syrian regime and its brutal suppression of the Syrian people in support of their national interests.”

This is British spin on facts and truth at its best. Firstly, Russia and China decided to side with the “Syrian regime” because – despite biased Western media coverage – the government of Assad appears to retain the support of the Syrian people, and therefore it retains sovereign legitimacy. And the “brutal repression” that the solemn Hague speaks of relates to violence that Western and foreign Arab states have assiduously fomented in Syria, as they did in Libya.

Secondly, the position of Russia and China concurs with that of the Arab League’s own observer mission to Syria. The mission actually reported that much of the violence was being conducted by an “armed entity” and “armed opposition groups” involved in the killing of civilians – flatly contradicting the Western corporate media’s portrayal of unilateral state brutality. Indeed, the observer mission was subsequently cancelled by the League’s secretariat because the mission was exposing this Western disinformation [1]. So, far from not supporting the Arab League, as Britain’s William Hague contends, Russia and China have acted more consistently with the League’s observer mission. It is the executive of the League that has not supported their own people on the ground with regard to accurately reporting the situation in Syria.

Thirdly, note the way the British Foreign Secretary emphasizes that Russia and China “did not support the Arab League” in its move to have Syria sanctioned. Those few words blow the cover of the Arab League’s real purpose.

For it is the Arab League that is serving as a stamp of moral and political legitimacy for Western military aggression in Syria in the same way as Libya before. Washington, London and other Western powers are disguising their neocolonial strategy under an Arab cover of humanitarian concern and Arab League states are obliging for their own selfish interests.

The bigger picture here is the Western ploy of manipulating restive Arab populations to engineer regime change where the incumbent government is considered inconvenient to Western strategic interests. Syria is a major prize in that its support for Palestinian rights against Western-backed Israeli aggression is but one of many inconveniences. Its backing for the Hezbollah resistance against American imperialism in the Middle East is another. Of most immediate concern to Washington and allies is beyond Syria itself – its long-time alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The US and its allies are convulsed by the desire for regime change in Tehran. Taking out Assad’s Syria is a long-held Western roadmap on the way to taking out Iran. Syria’s present fate of being in Western crosshairs was probably sealed when it rebuffed Washington’s overtures for a deal against Iran back in February 2010 [2].

But the US and Western military roadmap goes beyond re-carving the Middle East. As Michel Chossudovsky cogently explains in his new book, Towards a World War III Scenario, Washington’s military roadmap is aimed at global dominance in which hegemony over the vast energy-producing Middle East and Central Asian regions is crucial to marginalizing the heavyweight rivals of Russia and China. The alliance between the latter two and both Syria and Iran only gives these current targets added impetus for Western regime change.

Getting back to the treacherous role of the Arab League in serving the Western powers’ agenda, it is surely a bitter irony that one of the founding tenets of the League is to “defend the independence and sovereignty” of its members. Syria, which was one of the original seven founders of the League in 1945, is being stabbed in the back by its fellow members precisely to have its independence and sovereignty attacked. And it is the rump of Persian Gulf Arab states within the organization that has emerged as the most treacherous. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with the other Gulf Cooperation Council states of Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, have been most vocal in lending Arab denunciations of Libya and Syria and creating the pretext for Western aggression.

However, deploying these Arab dupes is where Western pretensions of supporting democracy and human rights become unstuck. The Persian Gulf monarchs have been the most repressive towards any popular stirrings for democracy within their own countries. Described variously as kingdoms, shaikdoms, emirates, or sultanates, these states are invariably ruled with iron rods by family dynasties that control their people as little more than serfs. It is surely ridiculous when the absolute despotic rulers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular exhort the Syrian government to enact greater political reforms when these same countries do not brook any dissent and where it is a crime punishable by law to publicly criticize the royal rulers.

Over the past year, Saudi Arabia has cracked down murderously against peaceful protesters within its own borders. And it was Saudi Arabia – where women are flogged for driving cars unchaperoned and where public executions by beheading are carried every year – that led the invasion force of Gulf Cooperation Council states into Bahrain last Spring to ruthlessly crush peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. In Bahrain, Saudi-led Gulf forces continue with Washington and London’s support to murder women and children in the streets and in their homes [3].

The pay-off for these Arab despots is that they continue to enjoy Western patronage and support in suppressing their own people. Additionally, the Sunni monarchs share the Western agenda to destroy the Syrian-Iranian alliance, which garners much greater regional popular respect and influence than any of the Persian Gulf tyrants.

The illegitimacy of Western powers meddling in Syrian affairs and elsewhere and the risible alliance with repressive Arab states in pushing this agenda is only obscured because of the corporate-controlled media’s deliberate blindness towards the deception. An honest appraisal of the protagonists – the Western criminal governments and their Arab tyrants – is, to put it bluntly, a sick joke.

Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent

cunninghamfinian@gmail.com

NOTES

[1] Syria: Arab League Suspends Observer Mission for Revealing Media Disinformation

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29060

[2] Syria: A Clenched US Fist Behind the Hand of Friendship

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17664

[3] ‘Responsibility to Kill’ (R2K): Washington Gives Green Light to Toxic Terror in Bahrain

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29064

February 13, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | 1 Comment

SYRIA: CIA-MI6 Intel Ops and Sabotage

By Felicity Arbuthnot
Global Research
February 7, 2012

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, …a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. …[to] be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention, …

Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals. …Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus …

Further : a “necessary degree of fear .. frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes”, would “provide a pretext for intervention… the CIA and SIS [MI6 should use … capabilitites in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.” (Joint US-UK leaked Intelligence Document, London and Washington, 1957)

“’The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” (George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950.)

For anyone in two minds about what is really going on in Syria, and whether President Assad, hailed a decade ago as “A Modern Day Attaturk”, has become the latest megalomaniacal despot, to whose people a US-led posse of nations, must deliver “freedom”, with weapons of mass, home, people, nation and livelihood destruction, here is a salutary tale from modern history.

Have the more recent sabre rattlings against Syria* been based on US-UK government papers, only discovered in 2003 – and since air brushed (or erroneously omitted) from even BBC timelines, on that country?(i)

In late 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, Matthew Jones, a Reader in International History, at London’s Royal Holloway College, discovered “frighteningly frank” documents:1957 plans between then UK Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, and then President, Dwight Eisenhower, endorsing: “a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion (of Syria) by Syria’s pro-western neighbours.” (ii)

At the heart of the plan was the assassination of the perceived power behind then President Shukri al-Quwatli. Those targeted were: Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, Head of Military Intelligence; Afif al-Bizri, Chief of Syrian General Staff: and Khalid Bakdash, who headed the Syrian Communist Party.

The document was drawn up in Washington in the September of 1957:

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, reduce the capabilities of the regime to organize and direct its military actions … to bring about the desired results in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals.

“Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention, and in the light of circumstances existing at the time.”

In the light of President Assad’s current allegations of foreign forces and interventions, cross border incursions (as Colonel Qadafi’s before him, so sneered at by Western governments and media – and, of course, ultimately proved so resoundingly correct.) there are some fascinating, salutary phrases:

“Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals.

“Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus … care should be taken to avoid causing key leaders of the Syrian regime to take additional personal protection measures.”

Further : a “necessary degree of fear .. frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes”, would “provide a pretext for intervention”, by Iraq and Jordan – then still under British mandate.

Syria was to be: “made to appear as sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments … the CIA and SIS [Her Majesty’s Secret International Serivce, MI6] should use … capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

Incursions in to Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, would involve: “sabotage, national conspiracies, and various strong arms activities”, were, advised the document, to be blamed on Damascus.

In late December 2011 an opposition “Syria National Council” was announced, to “liberate the country”, representatives met with Hilary Clinton. There now seems to be a US – endorsed “Syrian Revolutionary Council.”

The Eisenhower-Macmillan plan was for funding of the: “Free Syria Committee” and “arming of political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities”, within Syria.

CIA-MI6, planned fomenting internal uprisings and replacing the Ba’ath-Communist-leaning government, with a Western, user-friendly one. Expecting this to be met by public hostility, they planned to: “probably need to rely first on repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power.”

The document was signed off in both London and Washington. It was, wrote Macmillan in his diary: “a most formidable report.” A Report which was: “withheld even from British Chiefs of Staff …”

Washington and Whitehall had become concerned at Syria’s increasingly pro-Soviet, rather than pro-Western sympathies – and the Ba’ath (Pan Arab) and Communist party alliance, also largely allied within the Syrian army.

However, even political concerns, were trumped by Syria then controlling a main pipeline from the Western bonanza of Iraq’s oil fields, in those pre-Saddam Hussein days.

Briefly put: in 1957, Syria allied with Moscow (which included an agreement for military and economic aid) also recognized China – and then as now, the then Soviet Union warned the West against intervening in Syria.

Syria, is unchanged as an independent minded country, and the loyalties remain. It broadly remains the cradle of the Pan Arab ideal of Ba’athism, standing alone, since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

In 1957, this independent mindedness caused Loy Henderson, a Senior State Department official, to say that:“the present regime in Syria had to go …”

Ultimately, the plan was not used, since, British mandate or not, neighbouring countries refused to play. However, the project, overtly, bears striking similarity to the reality of events over the last decade, in Syria – and the region.

In a near 1957 re-run, Britain’s Foreign Minister, William Hague has said President Assad “will feel emboldened” by the UN Russia-China vote in Syria’s favour.

Hilary (“We came, we saw, he died”) Clinton, has called for: “friends of a democratic Syria”, to unite and rally against the Assad government:

“We need to work together to send them a clear message: you cannot hold back the future at the point of a gun”, said the women filmed purportedly watching the extrajudicial, illegal assassination of may be, or may be not, Osma Bin Laden and others – but certainly people were murdered – by US illegal invaders – at the point of lots of guns.

Supremely ironically, she was speaking in Munich (5th February) historically: “The birth place of the Nazi party.”

The Russia-China veto at the UN on actions against Syria, has been condemned by the US, varyingly, as: “Disgusting”, ‘shameful”, “deplorable”, “a travesty.”

Eye opening, is the list of US vetoes to be found at (iii). Jaw dropping double standards can only be wondered at (again.).

Perhaps the bottom line is: in 1957, Iraq’s oil was at the top of the agenda, of which Syria held an important key. Today, it is Iran’s – and as Michel Chossudovsky notes so succinctly: “The road to Tehran is through Damascus.”(iv)

Notes

i. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14703995

ii. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/27/uk.syria1

iii. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4237/us-on-un-veto_disgusting-shameful-deplorable-a-tra

iv. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25955
Felicity Arbuthnot is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Felicity Arbuthnot

February 13, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

SYRIA: Arab League Observer Mission Refutes Mainstream Media Narrative

Global Research
February 1, 2012

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog

The Arab League Observer Mission succeeded in providing a different perspective from that of the mainstream western media about what has been happening on the ground in Syria. After a resolution by the Arab League which was worked out in an agreement with the Syrian government, Observers from the League went to Syria and provided a means of investigating what was happening.

The report of the Observers mission that was concluded on January 19, noted several important observations.(1)

1. The mission noted that there were false reports being made of explosions or violence and when the observers went to the location, they found that the reports were unfounded.

2. The mission found that media accounts were exaggerated about the nature of incidents or numbers of people killed in incidents and protests.

3. There were discrepancies in the lists the Mission received of people in detention. Names were repeated, or information was missing or inaccurate about detainees.

4. The Mission observed armed groups committing acts of violence against Government forces, resulting in the death and injury of the forces being attacked. Some of the armed groups were using flares and armour-piercing projectiles.

5. A French journalist who was killed and a Belgium journalist who was injured were the victims of opposition mortar shells.

6. The mission was the target of a hostile media campaign with media publishing untrue statements, distorting the truth, and attributing statements to the head of the mission which were never made.

7. Such accounts by the media undermined the work of the observer mission and seemed to be aimed toward making the mission fail.

8. The Observer mission was able to fulfill its mandate.

The most important observation was as the Report stated, that it had “determined that there is an armed entity” that had not been mentioned in the protocol setting up the mission.

This armed opposition entity was a force that needed to be taken into account in structuring the mission. The report listed a number of violent incidents, some of which were carried out by the Free Syrian Army and some of the other armed opposition groups, stating that such incidents would widen the gap and increase the bitterness in the situation.

The observers requested the continuation of the mission, but with proper equipment and numbers, for another month. The committee in charge approved the request. The mission was to be extended. But suddenly, a different agenda was put into action, an agenda calling for regime change in Syria. Similarly, armed attacks against the government were stepped up and government forces sought to stem these attacks.

What had been a promising beginning for a contribution to a peaceful settlement of the conflict, was hijacked by forces intent on imposing a military solution of regime change on Syria.

Subsequently, pressure was put on the UN Security Council, pressure from both inside and outside the Council to authorize a proposal for regime change in Syria and for foreign intervention against Syria.The scenario is to play out with a high level meeting at the Security Council on Tuesday, January 31, of Foreign Ministers of some of the nations on the Council.

Also there was a report at Voltaire Network that on Sunday night, January 29, the Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Abdul Al-Zayani, went to Brussels to meet with the Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. (2)

Recent information is that the Arab League Secretary-General decided to freeze the Observer Mission which had been renewed for another month by the League’s Ad Hoc Ministerial Council. The Committee, according to an article at Voltaire Network is “an Arab Plan follow-up organism consisting of 5 States out of 22 (Algeria, Egypt, Oman , Qatar, Sudan). (3) This Ad Hoc Ministerial Committee adopted the observer’s report by a vote of 4 votes in favor (Algeria, Egypt, Oman and Sudan), 1 against(Qatar). Little media coverage was given to this vote.

Voltaire Network also reported that the Secretary General of the Arab League, Nabil Al-Arabi took the view that the observers were jeopardized after “the spiritual leader of the Syrian Salafists, Sheikh Adnan Al-Arouri announced over Al-Arabiya airwaves that it was lawful to kill the Arab observers.” (4)

The decision to support the regime change plan by the Arab League was also made by a vote of the Ad Hoc Ministerial Council. According to the Voltaire Network, this vote was 3 in favor (Egypt, Oman and Qatar), 1 against (Sudan) and 1 abstention (Algeria). On the basis of this vote of 3 members of the Arab League, the Prime Minister of Qatar and the Secretary General of the Arab League were going to the UN to ask the Security Council to back their plan for regime change in Syria.(5)

On Friday, January 27, a new resolution drawn up by some of the members of the council and presented by Morocco, was introduced to the Security Council diverting the discussion from focusing on the positive results of the Arab League Observer Mission and how to support its continuation.

The hijacking of the Security Council Agenda from a discussion on continuing the process begun by the Observer Mission to a regime change resolution against Syria was a process that received little media attention, but much media hype reminiscent of the media pressure on the Security Council which resulted in its resolutions against Libya.

While there has been the claim of great media concern over unverified reports of 5000 casualties in Syria over an 8 month period, there was comparatively no media attention to the estimated 60,000 or more casualties of the NATO bombing and armed rebels attacks in Libya over a comparable period.

The buildup of pressure on the United Nations to undertake support for using the Security Council to provide legitimacy for military and political action against Syria is a challenge to the obligation of the UN Charter to support peaceful solutions to conflict situations and to respect the sovereignty of nations.

Notes:
1. “League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria: Report of the Head of the League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria for the period from 24 December 2011 to 18 January 2012″
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/Report_of_Arab_League_Observer_Mission.pdf

(2)“The GCC and Turkey Turn to NATO”, Voltaire Network, 29 January 2012,
http:// www.voltairenet.org/a172551

(3)“Media confusion around the Arab League meeting”, Voltaire Network, 23 January 2012,
http://www.voltairenet.org/a172476

(4)“The GCC and Turkey Turn to NATO”, Voltaire Network, 29 January 2012,
http://www.voltairenet.org/a172551

(5)“Media confusion around the Arab League meeting”, Voltaire Network, 23 January 2012,
http://www.voltairenet.org/a172476

Ronda Hauben is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Ronda Hauben

February 11, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | 1 Comment