Chemical blame game over Syria disguises the real issues

In the aftermath of parliament’s rebuff to prime minister Cameron’s proposed attack on Syria, Barack Obama has been forced to acknowledge the mass opposition to military action.

The legacy of recent debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan and the intervention in Libya continue to haunt large numbers of people, including top military brass.

It is evident that externally-backed regime change in these countries has achieved no benefits, either for their populations or for ordinary citizens in the United States or Britain.

Obama's hesitation about striking Syria is as much to do with popular distaste for war after more than a decade of body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan as it is to do with the timing of G20 summit that takes place in Moscow later this week.

Of course, Cameron and Obama hope to give their tarnished democratic credentials a polish by subordinating themselves to the decisions of elected bodies – parliament and the US Congress.

But meanwhile, the pro-attack faction in parliament – including the vociferous former Lib-Dem leader, Lord Paddy Ashdown - is marshalling forces for a possible second vote. US secretary of state John Kerry is declaring that Obama has the authority to act without Congressional approval.

Much energy is being spent trying to pin down responsibility for the chemical attack in Damascus. Shocking images are published and the US claims to have proof that the regime is responsible.

But the issue of chemical weapons – the “red line that must not be crossed” as Obama put it – is actually a secondary issue to the fundamental question: do the major powers have the “right” to attack Syria?

The debate over who is using the chemical weapons – the Assad regime or those fighting against it – begs the real question: is military intervention

a solution to the misery of the Syrian people? And is it justified in any case?

And does opposition to bombing Assad’s military installations imply support for him?

Absolutely not in response to every question!

The all-important distinction is between the Assad and the Syrian people who have courageously opposed his noxious regime for decades, even while the US, Britain et al were wheeler dealing with Damascus in their power games.

What about the all-important the right to self-determination of the Syrian people themselves? It is as if they don’t exist except as victims whom we must pity.

But a large part of the disposed and poor Syrian people rose up against Assad in the Arab spring of 2011, which undermined autocratic regimes, from Tunisia to Egypt. (How many people know, for example, that in July 2011, the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page had over 218,000 followers?)

Of course, their hope that the Assad regime would fall quickly was mistaken. It is backed by Russia (which has a naval base in the country). Moscow has been supplied arms to Syria for decades.

Although Tehran would seem to have little in common with the secular Syrian regime, it too has supported Assad, sending him money to pay for Russian hardware, because his opponents are predominantly Sunni Muslims by contrast with the Shia Muslims in Iran.

Underneath the conflict in Syria is a class division in which the state oppresses its people. These divisions are now masked over by the sectarian religious divide, spurred on and armed by Saudi Arabia, the US and Britain and elements of Al Qaeda on the one side, with Iran and Russia on the other. 

The democratic and social aspirations of Syrians, whatever their religious or non-religious allegiances, like those of Egyptians are totally ignored by most media and commentators.

In the meantime, we say an unconditional “No” to any attacks on Syria. This does not mean giving succour to the Assad regime. As Irfan Ahmad has pointed out, in the Arab states, as elsewhere, the urgent need is to encourage and develop a democratic secular alternative.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Use political crisis over Syria to drive out ConDems

The governing parties’ surprise defeat in last night’s vote on Syria is just as much a reflection of the immense distrust of the political class across the board as it is a general desire to prevent another in a long line of military adventures.

Even if the government announced that today was Friday, not everyone would be inclined to accept that, so deep is the scepticism after decades of being lied to on a variety of subjects from Iraq to the financial crisis.

A sketchy, half-baked dossier hurried out before the parliamentary debate, claiming that the Assad regime in Syria was more than likely behind the use of chemical weapons, was never going to win over doubters.

This was especially so after a number of senior military figures, including former head of the army General Dannatt, ridiculed the idea that missile attacks would deter future attacks while they could easily lead to an uncontrollable international conflict.

Prime minister Cameron assumed public opinion would rally behind a bellicose British response. Well, enough Tory MPs got the opposite message from their constituents and went on to wreck his government’s majority.

Cameron should have paid more attention to the right-wing Daily Telegraph. On Wednesday, an online poll was running at over 70% against military intervention in the shape of submarine-launched missiles. With the nationalist Ukip also declaring its opposition, it was clear that opposition to an attack was building across all classes.

That’s why Labour leader Ed Miliband retreated from total support for the government on Tuesday to producing an amendment that, as he put it in the Commons yesterday, offered a “sequential roadmap” that ended up with, er, the same military intervention that Cameron was proposing.  The only difference was that his plan would take a bit longer to arrive at the destination.

That was too much even for the usually loyal Jim Fitzpatrick to stomach. The Poplar and Limehouse MP told the Commons:  "In terms of the Opposition amendment - it's fair to say it's more honest and open and structured. But, from my reading, it essentially endorses the same principle - 'If we can address certain issues, if certain conditions are met, military action can happen'. I don't believe that it should under any circumstances."

Fitzpatrick then promptly resigned from the shadow cabinet before he was sacked. For alleged anti-war MP Diane Abbott, there were no problems for her in backing Labour’s pro-intervention amendment. However, at least another 30 Labour MPs were either absent or did not take part in the vote, including the anti-war MP Jeremy Corbyn.

The refusal to accept at face value what politicians say is one thing; hypocrisy when it comes to selecting enemies is another.  For example, thousands have been killed in Egypt by the army and police over recent weeks. Military rule is re-entrenched. Not a peep from Washington, from Cameron, from Miliband.

The Israeli government has a free hand to build settlements on Palestinian land and to occupy territories in defiance of the United Nations. Regimes like the Saudis can run feudal regimes complete with amputations and beheadings, yet Washington just can’t lend these states enough support.

Assad’s regime is truly a brutal one, but Washington has turned a blind eye to previous massacres, notably at Hama in 1982.  Even now, as it prefers to launch missiles without the UK’s participation, it prefers Assad to the jihadists and others who have hijacked the initial popular uprising against the government.

Yet, with or without the use of chemical weapons, or the sanction of the United Nations, we have to oppose military intervention on principle. The Syrians have the right to self-determine their own future.

Cameron’s credibility and authority is now on the line in a big way. Never before have Tory MPs felt so relaxed in defying their government in the lobbies. The weakness of the ConDem government is there for all to see following the Syria vote debacle.

The emerging political crisis could well drive on the development of movement to bring down the ConDems. That creates an opportunity to discuss what should follow because, as sure as night follows day, bringing Labour back would not constitute an alternative in any meaningful way.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Why we should oppose any attack on Syria

Desperate acts by unpopular regimes have the capacity to spiral out of control. And we’re not talking just talking about the Assad dictatorship in Syria but also the plans by the US and Britain to launch missile attacks on Damascus.

As they build their surveillance states at home, while driving down living conditions of the majority, president Obama and prime minister Cameron are gambling on a diversion which could well backfire.

Polls show the majority of Americans and British citizens opposed to military intervention in a brutal civil war. Iran and Russia are warning that attacks on Syria in response to alleged use of chemical weapons could further destabilise the region.

With Putin’s Russia and Iran heavily committed to backing the Assad regime, any action by the US backed by Britain, France and Germany will have unpredictable consequences. Madness indeed.

While there is talk of re-calling parliament to give military action a democratic veneer, the ConDem government has already indicated that it “has to reserve the right to act immediately”. To that end, the National Security Committee is meeting tomorrow.

The supposed reason is of course the “discovery” of chemical agents. While chemical weapons may well be used by the Syrian regime, how bombing Assad’s forces can really put an end to this is of course not stated. Just as in Iraq in 2001, UN weapons inspectors are still scrambling to investigate the nature and source of chemical weapons.

But US Secretary of State John Kerry claims that the evidence is “screaming at us” as he and the US military with the support of Cameron and Hague feverishly gather together their coalition of the willing.

Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Tony Blair has called on the West to “stop wringing its hands” and intervene against the Syrian government. “Peace envoy” (can there be a greater misnomer?) Blair has been hard at work touring super-yachts in the Mediterranean and private-jetting around St Tropez and Sardinia.

Blair – just like US secretary of state John Kerry - says that the new government in Egypt should be supported “in stabilising the country” by continuing to provide $1.3bn of US military aid. “Stabilising”? “Restoring democracy”? A strange word for the military regime’s murder of some 1,000 Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

Blair notoriously helped to launch the illegal UK-US attack on Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had secret “weapons of mass destruction”. That never-proven pretext turned out to be just that – a psychological operation to blur the issues and provide a “humanitarian” cover for a brutal war that caused hundreds of thousands civilian deaths.

Like the current pretext of chemical weapons, it was a blatant propaganda lie by the Blair, Bush and their allies to bring “democracy”, aka regime change through bombing and make Iraq “safe” for corporate exploitation. Never mind that more a decade later, Iraq has still not recovered from that war and is wracked by internal conflict.

It is well-known that the United States and Saudi Arabia have been supplying the anti-Assad forces in Syria with tanks and weaponry. But the imminent missile and drone attacks, backed up by military aircraft, will be crossing a major line.

So where is Her Majesty’s opposition on this vital question? Even less critical than the Conservatives’ own backbenchers, shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander says: "I'm not ruling out the possibility that Labour could support the government [even without a UN resolution, he made clear], but I'm certainly not prepared to write the government a blank cheque."

So that’s alright then. Just give Labour time and they will write that cheque.  

Obama-Cameron’s race to bomb Syria come what may has nothing to do with protecting the Syrian people, or even their distaste of chemical or weapons of mass destruction. After all, the US is the only country to have used atomic weapons on an undefended population and also defoliated large parts of Vietnam with chemicals, maiming hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process.

So arrange the following in any order you feel like: hypocrisy, double standards, neo-imperialism, military adventurism, warmongering, military-corporate complex. Then you’ll know why we should oppose attacks on Syria.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Turning point in Aleppo

The last time Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, suffered aerial bombardment and heavy guns firing into civilian areas, was in 1925, as the French government set out to crush a rebellion against colonial rule.

Now Assad government troops stationed on the outskirts of the city, Syria’s commercial capital and its biggest urban centre, have unleashed barrages of mortar on the western neighbourhoods of Saladin, al-Sukkari and al-Fardos. Meanwhile, Russian-built MI-25 helicopter gunships struck al-Sakhour in the east with rockets.

Until now Aleppo has remained largely outside of the revolt against the government of Bashir Al Assad.  “Where are you Aleppo?” was a frequent chant on demonstrations.

Aleppo is Syrian’s economic centre, and was one of the cities where support for the Assad father and son dynasty remained strongest. They gave relative independence to the mercantile and capitalist elite in return for their support.

The deepening economic crisis gripping the whole of Syria has brought the largely Sunni working class of Aleppo into the opposition marking an important step forward in the anti-regime movement.

Expecting it to fall sooner rather than later, jockeying for position has already begun amongst the ruling class, some getting ahead of the game by escaping from Syria. Brigadier General Manaf Tlass, formerly one of Assad’s closest friends and aides, is putting himself about round the Arab capitals and western embassies as a figurehead for a transition. 

There are plenty more of the same, including those in the Assad regime who are conspiring with Russian and Chinese diplomacy. But the masses are wise to this tactic. Mohamed El Baradei was being groomed by the US to take over in Egypt and Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq, but their bulging coffers of bribe money got them nowhere.

But framing a radical alternative to such figures – this is the problem facing the Syrian masses, whatever their racial or religious background, just as it was in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Driven to revolt by the absence of any say in how their own country is governed, and by growing unemployment, poverty and rising food prices, they are capable of courageously overthrowing regimes – in fact in this era they seem to be unstoppable!

A greater challenge remains: how to replace the repressive regime with a genuine popular democracy rather than with sham parliaments and fake presidents, where the strong men of the state ensure that the wealth, the land, and natural resources remain where they have always been – in the hands of the rich.

Toppling Assad, but leaving control in the hands of the existing apparatus or the Syrian National Council will lead to counter-revolution and defeat. In 1925, every sector of Syrian society united against French rule – Syrian, Druze, Allawi, Christian, Sunni and Shiites fought together for independence. Such a united front is emerging today amongst the poorest Syrians, but it is not going to be enough unless it is united in a struggle for state power itself.

The Syrian people can only achieve their right to bread, peace and land by dismantling the existing state and replacing it with the rule of the people organised in their local, regional and national assemblies, controlling the common wealth. This is the lesson of Egypt, of Tunisia and of Libya, which needs to be learned in Spain and Greece, and acutely relevant all of us in these tumultuous times.

Relying on either the West or Russia or UN resolutions offers no way out for the Syrian people.  They will need to find a way to determine their own democratic future independent of the plans and strategies of the major powers. The challenge for revolutionary forces is to create a secular Pan-Arab leadership that can unite the  Syrian masses with others throughout the region and build for the next stage of the Arab Revolution, whose aim has to be social revolution.

Penny Cole

http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/hypocrisy-all-round-over-syrias-fate.html

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4065/the-idiots-guide-to-fighting-dictatorship-in-syria

Hypocrisy all round over Syria's fate

Manoeuvres at the United Nations over a resolution on Syria cannot disguise the hypocrisy on the part of the major Western countries and the opportunism on the side of Russia and China.

Always in big power struggles, the victims are ordinary people. The merciless bombardment by Assad’s forces in Homs with heavy weapons today reinforces the fact that the losers in this case are the Syrian people.

Russia’s veto of a resolution calling for a transition to free elections and for president Bashir al-Assad to step aside owed more to its military and commercial concerns than any concern for upholding the international rule of law and non-intervention.

Not much has changed in Russia’s attitude to Syria since the fall of the Soviet Union. Moscow propped up the Damascus regime of Hafez al-Assad from the 1970s, supplying it with arms and gaining a naval base at Tartus in return. In 1982, Soviet arms were used to crush a lengthy revolt centred on the city of Hama, which left up to 25,000 dead.

During the current uprising, which began a year ago inspired by the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, the former Soviet Union has continued to supply weapons to the regime for use against civilians.

For Moscow, Syria is a long-term investment that has to be protected. Concerns about possible Western-led intervention in Syria were apparent. But the “right” to crush “internal opposition” was greater, as Moscow has repeatedly demonstrated in Chechnya.

Like Moscow, the United States, Britain and France have their own strategic interests. Although nominally a secular state, Bashir al-Assad’s regime is politically close to Iran through ties of religion. The Alawite minority in Syria which rules the country are Shia Muslims while 75% of the population excluded from power are Sunnis.

As part of their attempt to isolate Iran in the dispute over nuclear weapons, Washington would like to prise Syria away from its alliance with Tehran. America’s apparent support for democratic change in Syria has this objective in mind. The vetoed UN resolution came out of an Arab League mission that was largely influenced by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These are two Sunni-led absolute monarchies with absolute no concern for democracy or the rights of the Syrian people.

The feigned outrage by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton over the Russia-China veto should be dismissed out of hand. Washington has deployed its veto at the UN some 79 times since 1970, the majority of them on Middle East issues.

In 1972, the veto blocked a resolution condemning Israel for killing hundreds of people in Syria and Lebanon in air raids. A year later, the US stopped a resolution which affirmed
the rights of the Palestinians and called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. Self-determination for the Palestinians was vetoed in 1976 while in 1979 a resolution calling for an end to all military and nuclear collaboration with apartheid South Africa was vetoed.

A bid to end the embargo of Cuba fell by the wayside in 2003 when the US used the veto in the Security Council. Calls for the end of the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2009 were thwarted by Washington. Most recently, resolutions calling for the immediate and complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities were met with a veto. Nothing much changes in Washington, whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in the White House when it comes to the rights of the Palestinians.

Relying on UN resolutions never did anyone any good. The Syrian people will have to find a way to determine their own democratic future independent of the plans and strategies of the major powers.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Assad in the firing line on the road to Damascus

The turmoil that has been sweeping Syria since January, when demonstrators caught the fever of the Arab spring revolutionary movement, is reaching a climax.

On Friday, tens of thousands protested against President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime in Aleppo, Suweida, Deraa and near Damascus on Syrian Independence Day. At least 22 are said to have been killed when security forces opened fire in Deraa.

The anti-government movement has deepened the crisis of the 40-year-old Assad dynasty. It is disrupting the mosaic of national, religious, ethnic, and oil politics together with big power interests. In response to the power of Friday’s Day of Rage, al-Assad promised to lift Syria’s emergency laws which have been in force since 1962.

To add to complexities, yesterday saw the publication of US embassy cables, released by WikiLeaks .They reveal that the US State Department has been promoting various “civil society strengthening initiatives”, such as the Movement for Justice and Development to the tune of $12m between 2005-2010.

The US has had an on-off relationship with Damascus over the decades, partly because of its anti-Zionist stance and partly because it is viewed as a cat’s paw for Iranian interests in the area. At the same time, the Bush administration used Syria to torture people as part of its “extraordinary rendition” programme. The US re-opened relations with Syria in 2010, appointing a ambassador to Damascus for the first time for five years.

In a desperate measure to satisfy protesters, al-Assad promised to lift the emergency laws that have ban gatherings of more than five people by Monday 25 April. Assad took over after his father Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000, continuing the “hereditary dictatorship” that has kept Syria under the grip of state security forces. Amongst other authoritarian measures, the regime banned Facebook in attempts to stop anti-government blogging. In desperate moves to cling on to power he has been firing ministers and making promises and concessions (at least on paper) over the last couple of months.

But even while pledging to lift the state of emergency, al-Assad threatened: “We will not tolerate any attempts at sabotage.” So far over 200 people have been killed during the unrest, including four in the last 24 hours. Many were murdered by pro-regime thugs wielding revolvers, stun guns and batons.

Al-Assad and his brutal secret police will no doubt seek to exploit the WikiLeaks revelations to discredit those seeking reforms and/or to topple his regime. Like his fellow tyrants in the region, Assad seeks to rally support against his opponents by painting them as agents of foreign oppressors.

But rather than revealing the power of US imperialism, WikiLeaks cables actually show the state of disarray within Washington’s ruling circles, the divisions between the presidency and covert operations machinators. The US wants to maintain its cosy relationship with the feudal Saudi monarchy and keep the oil flowing, but at the same time manipulate the rulers of less powerful states like Syria, which they see as unreliable and too close to Iran.

It is not an unwillingness to sacrifice and even risk death that holds back the the hundreds of thousands who have espoused the cause of the Syrian revolution. They include, amongst others, the Youth of 4-5 February movement, the Syrian Days of Rage and the Syrian Revolution Facebook which has nearly 120,000 followers.

US support for the anti-regime movements in Syria as elsewhere in the Middle east and north Africa has produced a sorcerer’s apprentice. No one is truly in control. In Egypt, the army has arrested former president Mubarak in a desperate bid to retain control of the revolution. In Libya, the West’s intervention has helped create a stalemate and tainted the opposition to Gaddafi. The challenge for revolutionary forces is to create a secular Pan-Arab leadership that can unite the masses and build for the next stage of the Arab Revolution, whose aim has to be social revolution.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary