|
Downed Turkish Jet May Not Change Turkish People’s Nonintervention Opinion
This will create some very interesting reactions:
Turkey's military says it has lost contact with one of its military aircraft over the sea close to the border with Syria.
Turkish media said the plane had crashed into Syrian territorial waters.
However, eyewitnesses in the northern Syrian town of Latakia told BBC Arabic that Syrian air defences shot down an unidentified aircraft near the town of Ras al-Baseet.
Ras al-Baseet is in Syria about 10 miles from the Turkish border.
Most interesting will be how the Turkish people will react to that. So far a wide majority of Turks is against any intervention in Syria:
An opinion poll by the Ankara Social Research Center published this month has found that more than two-thirds of those polled opposed any intervention by Turkey in Syria. The poll also revealed that a majority, even those who support the Turkish prime minister's party, believed Ankara should not take sides in the conflict.
Erdogan is facing critic even inside his party for having miscalculated on Syria and having been overly eager to support the Syrian opposition.
I find it unlikely that the downed jet will change that.
I am a supporter of the Assad government and like a great many other supporters I say it was a mistake for the government to have agreed to the Annan plan. The requirement to withdraw the army from civilian areas was the only provision in the Annan plan that made it a bad thing for Syria to sign up to. The plan has enabled the rebels to strengthen on the ground without getting attacked by the army.
The rest of this long post is motivated by the following statement by Sergey Lavrov about Syria on 21 Jun 2012:
“We deem it very important at this stage to make all the conflicting parties withdraw their armed units and military hardware from cities and other communities, but this must be done simultaneously…. It happened earlier that the Syrian government, complying with an Arab League plan, left some cities late last year, and monitors reported that this happened, and then the government entered these cities again because opposition units had occupied them in the absence of government forces. There is a need for a plan of simultaneous withdrawal on both sides for each populated area, under control of UN international monitors [sic? – how do “monitors” enforce “control”?], the number of which we are prepared to increase.” http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?pg=3&id=341628
I believe the Annan plan was essentially a Russian plan. Vladimir Putin said on 1 Mar 2012 about Syria:
“Instead of encouraging parties to the conflict, it’s necessary to force them to sit down for talks and begin political procedures and political reforms that would be acceptable for all participants in the conflict.” http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1139775–russia-s-putin-backs-away-from-syria-s-assad
Likewise Lavrov said on 21 Jun 2012:
“We strongly support a political dialogue and efforts to stop the violence. We suggest for this purpose that all external players should lean on the Syrian party on which they have influence and thus persuade them to withdraw from cities – both the government and opposition – and to sit down to dialogue. But there should be no prejudging from outside what the substance and result of this dialogue might be. It’s for the Syrians to decide.” http://www.rt.com/news/lavrov-syria-exclusive-394/ .
Likewise Lavrov said on 15 Jun 2012:
“What should be done if the showdown between the authorities and the opposition does assume the form of violent, armed confrontation? The answer seems obvious: external actors should do their best to stop the bloodshed and support a compromise involving all parties to the conflict.” http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/brp_4.nsf/0/D54B1EB2726D75F544257A1E003935A8 .
I strongly disagree with that. I strongly agree instead with Syria’s foreign minister Al-Moallem when he said on 24 Jan 2012:
“The security solution is a necessity, the necessity of which is clear with the presence of the so-called Free Syrian Army…. The security solution is a popular public demand.” http://www.sana.sy/eng/21/2012/01/24/396268.htm
Bashar Assad said the same in his speech on 10 Jan 2012 and again in his speech on 3 Jun 2012. He said the only thing that can bring peace and civility to Syria is to bring violent armed confrontation to the rebels and destroy the rebels with the force of arms:
Bashar Assad on 10 Jan 2012: “Our utmost priority now, which is unparalleled by any other priority, is the restoration of the security we have enjoyed for decades, and which has characterized our country, not only in the region but throughout the world. This will only happen by striking these murderous terrorists hard. There is no compromise with terrorism, no compromise with those who use arms to cause chaos and division…. We cannot fight terrorism without fighting chaos, for both of them are linked…. This terrorism cannot appear like that suddenly. There are stages which started from the beginning. There was small-size terrorism using small arms and in small areas. Then it grew to reach this stage and this level.” http://www.sana.sy/eng/21/2012/01/11/393338.htm
The armed rebellion (or terrorism, as Bashar prefers to call it) is now considerably worse than it was when Bashar said the above words in January. That’s due in no small part to the Annan plan, under which the the Syrian army has been severely constrained from suppressing the rebellion.
To my knowledge the Syrian government spokespeople have never explained to the Syrian public why they agreed to the Annan plan. At least they’ve never explained it to me. Reading between the lines of their verbiage, I think they agreed to the plan because (a) they wanted to keep themselves and the Russians on the same page, and the Russians were leaning on them to do the plan; (b) they figured the adverse effects for law and order would wear off in the longer term, i.e. they figured their position was strong enough in Syria that the chaos resulting from the withdrawal of the army from the streets would be reversible after the plan expired; and (c) the hundreds of UN observers under the plan could help the foreign powers to better see the objective reality and offset the falsehoods of the foreign news media outlets.
The UN observer mission has been in Syria for two months now, and has complied many observations and many reports — and has published almost nothing. The UN observers appear to sincerely want to be objective and impartial. But, at the top of the UN organization a decision is being made to not publish these reports. Robert Mood said on 15 Jun 2012:
“Would it be a good idea for the UN mission in Syria to share openly with the news media all our reports and all our findings? Well, for the time being that’s not my choice. That’s very simple. I have a reporting chain. I report to the headquarters in New York and Geneva. It’s their decision…. I think we probably could be more pro-active in information dissemination.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4W0Rq9-_dfc#t=63s
“This terrorism cannot appear like that suddenly. There was small-size terrorism using small arms and in small areas. Then it grew to reach this stage and this level.” We government supporters say Syria would have been better off with a “security solution” uncompromised by the Annan plan. Now there’s no use crying over spilt milk. But the government must not let the Russians lean on them again.
On 7 Nov 2011 the Russian Foreign Ministry said that “it is a natural duty for the Syrian authorities to guarantee security and rights of its citizens and the general stability”. http://www.sana.sy/eng/22/2011/11/07/380434.htm . That is the position that the Russians today and everybody else with goodwill for Syria ought to be upholding.
Bashar Assad said on 3 Jun 2012:
“To cure the homeland we must fight terrorism [i.e.: fight the violent rebellion]. Consequently, there is no tolerance and no leniency towards terrorism or those who support it. There is no tolerance except with those who have abandoned it. We will continue to confront it decisively…. We are always ready to start dialogue without conditions, except with the forces which are dealing with foreign powers and which have turned themselves into agents of these powers and those who have called for foreign intervention, or those who have directly engaged in supporting terrorism.” http://www.sana.sy/eng/21/2012/06/04/423234.htm
Bashar, to remain true to the above words and to prevent the rebellion from growing worse, must not consent again to any plan that leaves the troubled populated areas unsupervised by security forces that can fight armed rebels, i.e. unsupervised by the army. My core position is the same as that of Bashar and Walid Al-Moallem, which is that the violent rebellion can only be stopped by superior violence. It cannot be stopped by civilian processes. Apparently the Russians don’t agree with us. Consequently, Syria must break away from Russia and Lavrov.
On 22 Jun 2012 at a meeting in person with Syrian Foreign Minister Al-Moallem, Lavrov stressed that the Syrian parties must adhere to the Annan Plan, and Al-Moallem assured Lavrov that the Syrian government would adhere to the Annan Plan. http://twitter.com/mfa_russia . Alright, Syria agreed to the Plan and should keep its agreement. Under the agreement, the Plan expires on 20 Jul 2012.
Posted by: Parviziyi | Jun 24 2012 8:50 utc | 82
|
