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Real Or Propaganda? New Weapons To Syrian Mercenaries
I am not sure what to think about this Wall Street Journal piece. Its alternative headline is Saudis Agree to Place Large Holes in El Al Planes at Some Future Date:
AMMAN, Jordan—Washington’s Arab allies, disappointed with Syria peace talks, have agreed to provide rebels there with more sophisticated weaponry, including shoulder-fired missiles that can take down jets, according to Western and Arab diplomats and opposition figures.
Saudi Arabia has offered to give the opposition for the first time Chinese man-portable air defense systems, or Manpads, and antitank guided missiles from Russia, according to an Arab diplomat and several opposition figures with knowledge of the efforts.
I am unsure if this is just scaremongering or real. I doubt that the United States, which largely controls the weapons flow at least to south Syria, as well as its waging tail Israel would ever agree to such. All weapons in Syria can change hands in unpredictable ways.
The U.S. pays and thereby probably believes to control the mercenaries on the ground:
The U.S. for its part has stepped up financial support, handing over millions of dollars in new aid to pay fighters’ salaries, said rebel commanders who received some of the money.
It is dubious that the rather loose string of being a replaceable money source gives much control at all.
The Israeli and U.S. plan is to create a buffer zone in the South to enable a further Israeli land grab in the Golan. That is the reason why Israel is supplying and supporting the fighters there.
There are now new threats from Obama to “apply new pressure” on Syria because the second round of the Geneva II talks ended inconclusive. That “new pressure” will be the new weapon supplies. But the WSJ piece makes clears these new supplies have nothing to do with the Geneva II round but were planned much earlier:
Rebel leaders say they met with U.S. and Saudi intelligence agents, among others, in Jordan on Jan. 30 as the first round of Syrian peace talks in Geneva came to a close. That is when wealthy Gulf States offered the more sophisticated weapons.
The U.S. is not letting up from its “regime change” aim. I have long favored some action in Jordan and Turkey to discourage those countries from their support roles for the mercenaries and insurgents. One wonders why the Syrian services seem unable to provide such. Could Russia help?
Egypt: A People’s Revolution, Not a Crisis or Coup (Nawal El Saadawi)
http://www.juancole.com/2013/07/peoples-revolution-saadawi.html
Every revolution in history has had its counter-revolution. Most recently, internal and external forces allied, as they did in Egypt, to abort the January 2011 revolution.
But the Muslim Brotherhood failed to abort this latest revolution on June 30, 2013, and they will continue to fail because those who have rebelled against them have learned the lessons of the past. Their consciousness has deepened with organization and unity.
Thirty-four million youth, men, and women went out into the streets and squares. They were determined to topple the religious government, under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as stand up to all who supported the Brotherhood them at home and abroad .
They wanted to expel all who would use religion for economic and political gain and to oust Morsi. The will of the people was and is more powerful than the military, the police, and any religious or economic weapons. Here is the lesson of human history: There is no principle higher than truth and sincerity in the quest for freedom, justice and dignity.
During its rule, the Muslim Brotherhood tried to divide the people into believers and heretics, but it failed. There were many believers (in Islam) in the anti-Morsi crowds. The power of the millions was like the sea that protects itself with its own strength, and its tremendous waves swept away the jinn and the ghosts.
Muslim Brotherhood militias killed young men and women, but the multitudes in the streets, in the neighborhoods and in the countryside kept growing. They were not afraid of the bullets, they did not retreat one step, but kept advancing until they toppled the regime.
The revolutionaries turned to the national army and the army responded. The police, also, served the people and not the regime.
The age of jinn, spirits and nonsense has ended. The light of knowledge, truth, love and creativity are increasing day by day.
And yet, there are imperialists and Americans who claim that this was not a revolution that demands a new legitimate regime, but merely a crisis, or a coup against democracy.
On July 5, I watched a group of American men on CNN threatening to cut off aid to the revolutionary Egyptian people. And I laughed out loud. I hope that they cut off this aid! Since the time of Anwar Sadat in the 1970s, this aid has destroyed our political and economic life. This aid helps the U.S. more than anyone else. This aid goes directly into the pockets of the ruling class and corrupts it. This aid has strengthened American-Israeli colonial rule in our lands. All that the Egyptian people have gained from this aid is more poverty and humiliation.
Democracy is about more than elections. Legitimacy means more than the ballot box, it means the power of the people.
We Egyptians need a new constitution that will realize the principles of the revolution: equality for all without distinction of sex, religion or class. This we must do first, not just rush to presidential and parliamentary elections. We should not put the cart before the horse. We must not repeat mistakes.
We need a communal, revolutionary leadership and not a single leader.
This is a historical revolution and not a coup d’etat or protest movement or outraged uprising. It is a revolution that will continue until all of its goals are realized.
—
Nawal El Saadawi is an internationally renowned Egyptian writer who’s writing has influenced five generations of women and men in Egypt and other Arab countries, and paved the way for dissidence, rebellion and revolution. For more than four decades she has suffered under Egyptian political and religious authorities, which has led to imprisonment, exile, death threats and court trials.
Posted by: brian | Feb 15 2014 22:29 utc | 17
Good article in alalam:
Sunday, February 16, 2014 7:28 PM
Rethinking Russia and Iran’s support for Bashar Assad
In the second round of Geneva II talks, the government agreed to a temporary ceasefire in Homs, and a lifting of the blockade, in order to allow citizens to flee if they wish, and to allow some aid and provisions to enter for those who remain. Immediately following this concession on the part of the government, the United States and its allies attempted to push a Chapter 7 resolution through the U.N. Security Council. Under the auspices of enforcing this agreement with the Syrian government, the resolution would have placed nearly the entire blame for the conflict and subsequent atrocities on the…[Syrian Goverment], and could have paved the way for direct military intervention, via R2P, to “change the balance of power on the ground.”
Russia and China declared this proposal dead on arrival, with Lavrov accusing the United States of obstructing the peace process in Syria through their continued insistence that the only acceptable end to the conflict is al-Assad’s departure, and through their continuing to raise the prospects of military intervention.
One cannot help but feel a sense of déjà vu:
In March of 2012 the United Nations became involved in trying to broker a peace deal in Syria. Between March and June, the UN peace envoy Kofi Annan served as an intermediary between the government and the opposition and successfully brokered a number of ceasefires and concessions from the warring sides. These efforts were in part hampered by the [so-called] FSA and [so-called]SNC’s lack of control over the civilian militias, which made ceasefires difficult to enforce.
However, Annan came to see that the primary driver of continued conflict in Syria were outside powers, particularly the United States, insisting that the only acceptable outcome to the conflict was al-Assad’s immediate departure—that this should be a precondition to any negotiated settlement—all the while keeping alive…[militants’]hopes for a military intervention…[through] Libya to ensure a regime change if negotiations failed.
In June of 2012, Annan drafted the Geneva Communique which enshrined the concessions the parties had agreed to in the previous negotiations and laid out a roadmap for a Syria-driven process of reconciliation.
Importantly, while the Communique did obligate the government to transfer executive authority to an interim transitional body, it did not bar President al-Assad from taking part in that body, nor did it bar him from future participation in the government or elections.
Moreover, it was equivocal in assigning blame for the conflict, although it made it clear that the government as the more robust actor has a greater responsibility in helping restore order. Annan then had the primary international stakeholders in the Syrian conflict sign onto this agreement (strangely, absent Iran)—what most fail to understand is that it was they, not the government or the…[militants], who were its intended target. The purpose was to get the international community to stop interfering with negotiations or perpetuating the conflict.
However, the very next day after signing onto the Communique, the United States and its allies attempted to push a Chapter 7 resolution through the UNSC which, in defiance of the Communique placed the blame for the conflict squarely on the al-Assad regime, and could have laid the groundwork for a military intervention if the conditions of the resolution were not sufficiently and expediently met.
… UN peace envoy Kofi Annan was outraged by this move, which he saw to be a betrayal of the agreement Western powers had just signed—and the move which ultimately killed the negotiations process.
Following the failed bid in the UN, and angry Susan Rice proclaimed that the US and…EU and regional allies would have to “work around” the United Nations, henceforth, to get the outcome they wanted (it is worth noting that most of these regional allies are monarchies, often repressive; accordingly, their supposed desire to bring “democracy” to Syria is immediately questionable).
Thereafter, these parties began to fund, arm, provision, and train rebel militias—and as in the case of Libya, most of these resources ended up in the hands of bad actors who flooded Syria precisely in response to this influx of assets and the potential for Libya-style “regime change.”
Buoyed by the renewed prospect of international intervention, and the new influx of resources and fighters which began to tip the tide in the…[militant] favor in certain areas, the [so-called] SNC and FSA outright refused further negotiations or ceasefires unless and until al-Assad resigned—parroting the position of their foreign backers.
Following this surge in foreign aid and fighters, the situation in Syria rapidly deteriorated. The UN was forced to withdraw its observers, and Annan resigned from his position in disgust…
Since then, the United Nations has repeatedly called upon the US and its allies to stop arming and funding the opposition on the grounds that it will only prolong the conflict and make any eventual settlement more difficult to enforce (especially given the opposition’s lack of control over these arms or over the…[militants], as evidenced most dramatically by the civil-war-within-a-civil-war taking place in Northern Syria). These…[urgent calls] have fallen on deaf ears.
It is a false-equivalence to claim, as …[militant] apologists want to suggest, that Russia and Iran are doing the “same thing” in providing weapons, supplies and money to the al-Assad regime. There is an important legal and philosophical difference in supporting a government in quelling a foreign-backed uprising as compared to said foreign powers funding and provisioning non-state actors against a government.
There is another asymmetry insofar as it is critical for the Syrian state to remain viable: its disorderly collapse would be an unmitigated disaster which would radically exacerbate, rather than quell, the conflict.
The US and the opposition have even come to begrudgingly accept this, at least ostensibly. Therefore, it must be acknowledged that aid which keeps the government intact, be it military or otherwise, should be understood as critical for the stability of Syria—as an important component in making any eventual agreement or reforms possible to meaningfully implement.
It also becomes clear that the idea propagated by political “scientists,” to push the government to the brink of collapse in order to get a “better” deal, is lunacy–in no small part because it presupposes that the US-led coalition would be able to successfully pull the situation back from the edge and prevent a collapse. Over the course of the conflict, American policymakers have shown that they do not even have a robust understanding of the dynamics in Syria…The idea that they could somehow control a complex and fluid situation they barely understand with the finesse such a strategy demands is ridiculous.
It is also unclear what a “better” deal would mean in this context: better in what sense? And for whom?
Certainly, they are not seeking a “better deal“ for the Syrian people, who have overwhelmingly sided with the government over the [militants] by all available empirical evidence. All the apologists of the…[militancy] ever offer to the contrary is rhetoric and anecdotes.
Accordingly, the most important asymmetry between Russia and Iran supporting the Syrian government versus the West and the [Persian] Gulf [states] supporting the…[militants] is that, it is unequivocally the former who are promoting the will and interests of the Syrian people.
Regardless of whether or not the Syrian government can reach an agreement with the “opposition,” if the Geneva conference can result in Western powers and their allies at long last complying with the provisions of the Geneva Communique, ceasing their perpetuation and escalation of the conflict—this would be the greatest outcome conceivable in helping to wind down the crisis in Syria. This was the task the Communique was designed to accomplish.
By Musa al-Gharbi
Posted by: okie farmer | Feb 16 2014 20:56 utc | 49
@63
Oh, you so clever AND saucy. Would you like a tissue? Because you sure seem a little hysterical in your need to defend your hero from a lowly MOA poster? Must EVERYONE toe your fanboy line? Must everyone adorate at the foot of your beloved gatekeeper?
It appears so. Because somehow the decades upon decades of wonderful things that NC has done just can’t stand up to the tongue-lashing of single person somewhere in the world.
If there’s one guarantee with you guest77 is your defense of the fake left establishment when push comes to shove. But let’s allow you to cover all your bases first, shall we?
“I don’t agree with everything Chomsky says here…”
But of course, you’re just really in love. We get it. With that disclaimer out of the way, I’d like to address the rest of your post.
Subtlety is clearly not the strong point of fanboys, I understand, so I’ll explain the differences between the two – NC and Escobar – more clearly.
This is not the first time Chomksy has stated that the genocidal apartheid state of Israel is just sitting on the sidelines vis a vis Syria just enjoying the “civil war” show. Here’s an interview he did with fellow gatekeeper Amy Goodman last year in which he rolled out once again that the Syrian conflict was INTERNAL and that Syria is plunging into “suicide”.
Here’s another interview he did where he says the same things:
In your view, what is Israel’s true position regarding the Syrian revolution?
Israel has done nothing to indicatethat it is trying to bring down the Assad regime. There are growing claims that the West intends to supply the opposition with arms. I believe this is quite misleading. The fact of the matter is, that were the United States and Israel interested in bringing down the Syrian regime there is a whole package of measures they could take before they came to the arms-supply option. All these other options remain available, including, for example, America encouraging Israel to mobilize its forces along the northern border, a move that would not produce any objections from the international community and which would compel the regime to withdraw its forces from a number of frontline positions and relieve the pressure on the opposition. But this has not happened, nor will it, so long as America and Israel remain unwilling to bring down Assad regime. They may not like the regime, but it is nevertheless a regime that is well practised in accommodating their demands and any unknown alternative might prove worse in this respect. Much better, then, to watch the Syrians fight and destroy each other.
So, just to recap because us fake-hero-slappers – sorry, iconoclasts – have some problems sticking with scripts at times:
Chomsky is helping create and promulgate a narrative – completely false – that the US and Israel are just passive players in the Syrian conflict. Thus, even though NC does mention the partitioning of Syria along the lines of the Yinon Plan if that did happen it would APPEAR – following NC’s little fairy tale – that it was just another fortuitous circumstance for the Israelis. Yup, just another lucky break for the Israelis. Just sittin’ on the sidelines. Oh well.
Here on the OTOH is Escobar detailing the the Israeli/KSA axis of terror and further interview in which Escobar says more about Israel involvement in Syria.
Gee, that sure sounds like there’s a difference of opinion there, huh? One says Israel is NOT directly involved and the other says that Israel is actively engaged in the Syrian “suicide”.
But us little washed-up-embarrassing-false-narrative-building-gatekeeper-slappers should just toe the line and respect NC’s genius. (NOTE: he also does a nice gatekeeping job on 9/11 saying that the Chilean coup was MUCH MORE important and significant that the US 9/11 attacks and those who question the official 2001 narrative are effing idiots. What an effing hero. No wonder you’re in love.)
BTW, Escobar also differs from your lion-of-the-left on his stance concerning the American 9/11.
And lastly, just as how the pathetic NC is still to this day trotted out to sell fairy-tales to fanboys like you, so is the washed-up, barely cognizant “hero” of the counter-culture, Bob Dylan, trotted out to sell cars to people of a similar level of gullibility.
Both are has-beens but TPTB know people such as yourself will still listen to them no matter what.
Now, the real question is, is why would you be so seemingly butthurt about someone correctly calling a bullshitter like NC a bullshitter, guest77?
Posted by: JSorrentine | Feb 17 2014 21:06 utc | 65
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