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UK Accuses U.S. Of Supporting Terrorists But Sells Out To Saudi Arabia
On October 30 an international conference on Syria agreed on a framework for ending the conflict in Syria. The communiqué states:
While substantial differences remain among the participants, they reached a mutual understanding on the following:
1) Syria’s unity, independence, territorial integrity, and secular character are fundamental.
…
6) Da'esh, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the U.N. Security Council, and further, as agreed by the participants, must be defeated.
…
Ministers will reconvene within two weeks to continue these discussions.”
Secretary of State Kerry had already accepted the "secular" point in earlier talks with his Russian colleague. The next meeting this Friday will mainly be about the question of who is a terrorist and must thereby be defeated. Propagandist for the Jihadis call this a "Russian trap".
So far the U.S. and its allies have supported various fundamentalist groups who's deeds and proclaimed philosophies surely put them into the same category as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
The British Foreign Minister accuses the U.S. of supporting such terrorist groups and said that this needs to change:
The world powers trying to end the civil war in Syria are drawing up a list of "terrorist" groups, Britain said Tuesday, warning that some countries may have to drop support for allies on the ground.
"It will require deep breaths on several sides, including the US side," British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond warned, speaking to reporters in Washington.
Some of the groups that qualify as terrorists, so Hammond, do get support from the U.S. and it will take a "deep breaths" by the U.S. to refrain from further supporting them.
As part of this, Hammond said, the countries backing various factions within the country would have to decide which are moderate enough to be included in the political process and which would be excluded.
"I'm not so sure I would write off the possibility of agreeing on who is a terrorist," he said, in remarks at the British embassy the morning after talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry.
But he warned that there would be horse trading ahead.
Can one "horse trade" who is a terrorist? Is it "moderate enough" to only cut off the heads of prisoners of war instead of burning them alive? How much would that "trade" cost?
Hammond seems to believe that a money-for-values deal is possible and needed. Here is his horse trade: On one side the Saudis want the Jihadists they support to be recognized as non-terrorists:
"The Saudis are never going to sign up to Ansar al-Sham being categorized as terrorists," he said, citing the example of one Sunni armed group reported to receive outside Arab backing.
"So we have to see whether we can reach a pragmatic solution on these areas," Hammond added.
On the other side Hammond wants to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia despite its abysmal human rights record:
In an interview with Newsnight, Mr Hammond was asked if he would like to see the current £5.4billion of weapons trade with Saudi Arabia increase.
He replied: “We’d always like to do more business, more British exports, more British jobs and in this case very high end engineering jobs protected and created by our diplomacy abroad.”
So there is the Hammonds "pragmatic solution" – the UK will support the Saudi position on the terrorist groups Ahrar al Shams, which is related to and closely cooperating with al-Qaeda, and the Saudis will buy more British weapons.
There is only a slight problem. The framework submitted by the October 30 conference, excerpted above, agreed of the fundamental "secular character" for the Syrian state. But even a now revisionist Ahrar al-Shams insists that Islamic law must the constitutional base of Syria. A state build on Islamic law is certainly not "secular". Unless of course one redefines what secular means. And that is exactly what Hammond, hearing the cash register ringing, now proposes:
While Mr. Hammond declined to offer any details on which groups could eventually take part in political negotiations, his comments suggested that the West might be prepared to back Sunni Islamist groups with close ties to allies, including Saudi Arabia. “What we mean by a secular constitution, and what people in the Muslim world will understand by secular will be two different things,” Mr. Hammond said.
British orientalism at its finest: The Salafi jihadists of Ahrar al-Shams are not "terrorists" because the Saudis will buy more British weapons. A Syria based on Islamic law will be "secular" because those [censored] Arabs don't even know what that means.
Maybe the U.S. should also offer to buy more British weapons? Foreign Minister Hammond would than surely recognize that the terrorists the U.S. supports in Syria are "moderate enough" hardline Islamists to fit his deranged definition of "secular".
@Bruno Marz@13
Hasbara trolling is so obvious these days; maybe you guys should hire competent agents for a change.
Our in-house troll has a cartoonish, wing nut, shortsighted worldview, reason he parrots non-sense without any depth of meaning. Describing Syria as “sectarian,” based on the predominance of Alawites in positions of power only shows his tendency to smear and distort, and his utmost ignorance about Syria’s sociopolitical make-up.
During the French colonial period, Alawites, an underclass group in Syria, joined in high numbers what was to become the Syrian army in the post-colonial period, which placed them in a privileged position within the state. Hafez Assad used the Alawites to build a loyal ruling elite around himself, secular and socialist, during the Baathist period. At the same time, he established relations with powerful Sunnis in the main Syrian cities, attracting them to the circles of power with marriages across religious sects, creating a ruling based on class and privilege, not on sectarian predominance.
His son inherited a complex society not free from contradictions, however, Sunnis/Shia/Christians (sundry denominations), have coexisted in Syria for centuries without sectarian conflicts, until the empire exploited internal/external weaknesses, as they did in Iraq, for their own nefarious purposes. True, Alawite Syrians own a disproportionate piece of the Syrian pie vis-a-vis their representation as a percentage of the Syrian population; however, Sunnis are the backbone of the SAA, and they are at the forefront of the struggle against the takfiris.
The widespread lies about Syria promoted by the empire and its MSM stenographers (thanks, Hoarsewhisperer@1), do not hold at all when confronted with the onslaught Syria has suffered, and there it is, still standing and marching forward, Assad a symbol of resistance to the empire and its minions. That would have been impossible without a sense of fatherland, of nationhood, felt beyond sectarian divisions. The sad story behind the confrontation with the takfiris, Sunni in their majority, is that the ones on the other side shooting at them are also Sunnis.
No country would have been able to survive four years of an aggression of the magnitude Syria has withstood, without a deeper sense of meaning to their struggle. No army can be made to fight this long for money, looting or perks of any kind. The @ thousand soldiers that held to the Kweires airbase for 2 1/2 years, knew their destiny was to be beheaded, but fear is a limited motivation for any soldier to struggle and to hold on for that long. When there are no ideals to motivate a soldier, fear easily gives way to exhaustion, the first step before defeatism creeps in closing all options, and surrender follows.
How many of those soldiers at the airbase, alive and dead, are/were Sunnis? We can’t tell for sure, but I can say with utmost certainty a large percentage of them are/were. The battle for the Kweires airbase will enter military history as an epic and glorious deed, not different from the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. No sectarian army can pull a heroic fight against all odds, and come out victorious.
Going back to the hasbara trolls, they have been fed an insultingly Manichean worldview where Assad is evil incarnate and the takfiris are Syria’s saviors, and that’s where WoW comes from, a pathetically nauseating industry of slander and lies.
Syria: Why is Assad still in power?
[…] The Sunni split
The truth, however, is far more nuanced, though there is definitely a sectarian dimension to the Syrian conflict and significant internal polarisation along those lines. The Syrian army is largely made up of Sunni conscripts, while many willing Sunni volunteers in the paramilitary groups that support regular government forces fight alongside foreign Shia militias, like Hezbollah, against a plethora of rebel groups that are all exclusively Sunni Muslim of varying extremes – both local and foreign. It is this Sunni split in Syria that is perhaps the most significant but overlooked factor in shaping the conflict.
In Assad’s Syria, death notices litter the walls – and life goes on
[…} Sunnis are the backbone of the Syrian army – as they are of their enemies – but the Alawites, a minority of course, have paid a bloody cost for their own allegiance […]
In Defence of the Syrian Arab Army
[…] The Syrian state, whatever its other flaws, has certainly represented a strong secular tradition. There are many signs of this. President Bashar al Assad himself is married to a Sunni woman. The Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheikh Ahmad Hassoun, is a strong Sunni supporter of the secular state. Sheikh Mohamad Al Bouti, murdered along with 42 others by an FSA suicide bomber in March 2013, was a senior Sunni Koranic scholar who backed the secular state. The western media tag on these men as being ‘pro-Assad’ rather misses the point.
Syria’s secular tradition is nowhere stronger than in the Syrian Arab Army. Making up about 80% of Syria’s armed forces and with half a million members, half regulars and half conscripts, the army is drawn from all the country’s communities (Sunni, Alawi, Shiia, Christian, Druze, Kurd, Armenian, etc). However they identify as ‘Syrian’ and ‘Arab’ and confront a sectarian enemy which brands itself ‘real Sunnis’ […]
Posted by: Lone Wolf | Nov 12 2015 6:12 utc | 73
Dan at 32 and previous. Agree in part. Just from *one angle*, there are others:
Russia (Putin, R Gvmt..) holds the position of low man on the pole. The Soviet Union was indeed a powerhouse (territory, economy, control, influence, etc.) which was what made the Cold War, well, cold. After the fall of the Wall, the remainder, today’s Russia, was smashed, even if it was not attacked militarily. It rose up again, very quickly, in less than 10 years (if one examines economic stats and the like), which, I’m sure, according to Western dreams, it was not supposed to do. This was accompanied by Western->EU take over of parts of the ex-USSR territories which were not a success (Yugoslavia, Baltics, for ex.) plain for many to see, Ukraine being the final desperado run and an epic disaster.
Russia was changed for ever, and followed an unusual trajectory. It withstood ‘collapse’ of a kind (> Orlov and consorts), with hyper-liberalism and the institution of an oligarchic-cum-state class, to then join, in its functioning, liberal economics of a more policed kind, making it practically identical to many W countries.
Russia is not as strong a ppl make out. Therefore Putin-Lavrov (as reps) are cautious, and always stress ‘the rule of law’, international agreements, the role of the UN SC, etc., which are moves towards collaboration and so on, see ‘our partners’, etc. That stance is also mandatory because they need alllies, others at risk from the Hegemon (China, Iran ..) and commercial partners (BRICS..) and contracts and your commtiment are absolutely vital. In this way they assume the position of the valiant, law-abiding, underdog, strong in diplomacy. Simultaneously, a show of cunning and smart calculation (e.g. Crimea) and military power (e.g. Syria) is projected, the other face, which is essential, one can’t be effective without the other. Very well thought out, no wonder ppl admire it. I do.
If one accepts that Ukraine (+ other) was based on the USA’s primary aim, i.e. to prevent closer ties between Europe and Russia, which were, had one let events run their course, to become integrated, and presenting a dire threat to the Hegemon, all becomes clearer. The US dominates the world through a double prong: military and financial (linked) and so it’s very nature requires new wars, perpetual war. (Aka bombing places from the air, destroying everything and declaring victory.)
The War on Communism is dead, the War on Drugs as a global ‘excuse’ is no longer pertinent globally while it rages on between different Mafia-type entities, particularly in Afgh. The War on Terrorism is shown up to be a sham, so the New War in a switcheroo, framed in Wilsonian terms, against not an ideology, substances, or shoddy attributions of violent acts to a whole ppl (Afgh, 9/11) but against a country, Russia.
Posted by: Noirette | Nov 12 2015 15:26 utc | 94
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