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The Real Nuclear Outlaws

How the US and Israel are Shredding the NPT

By CARL BOGGS | April 4, 2012

While United States and Israeli leaders, duly assisted by a warmongering media, ramp up war talk against Iran, two troublesome pieces of information are ritually ignored.  First, even American intelligence reports conclude that Iran is not close to building a nuclear-weapons program.   Second, it is the U.S. and Israel – not Iran – that stand in flagrant violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  The real nuclear outlaws are located in Washington and Tel Aviv rather than in Tehran.

The consensus of 17 U.S. agencies, as reported by National Intelligence Estimates of 2007 and 2011, finds that Iran has not enriched uranium above 20 percent purity, far short of the nearly 90 percent essential to weapons development.  Further, no viable nuclear delivery system or command structure has been uncovered.  High-powered U.S. surveillance and espionage operations, many inside Iran, have revealed nothing beyond (an entirely legal) civilian energy program.  Recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigations, the latest in November 2011 and February 2012, cite “continuing enrichment processes” but nothing beyond the 20 percent level.  The IAEA merely states what should be obvious – that some Iranian sites “could be” used for a weapons program at some point in the future.

Some Western “experts” of the neocon variety say Iran is just 18 months away from producing a Bomb, but they have echoed the same refrain for many years with no weapons in sight.  In fact there is nothing yet to suggest that Iranian leaders have made the crucial decision to even embark on such a program.

Meanwhile, in the face of crippling economic sanctions, heightened political pressure, cyber sabotage, assassinations of nuclear scientists, and threats of military attack, the Iranians remain steady in their drive toward what from all credible evidence is a peaceful civilian project.  In fact, Iran, a member in good standing of the NPT, is just one of at least 30 nations currently possessing high-level nuclear capacity.

The Iranians have every right within existing international rules to carry out their program – a fact conveniently obscured by the Western media and politicians.  Their Israeli antagonists, on the other hand, not only possess a nuclear arsenal of up to 400 warheads – possibly fifth largest in the world – but breezily dismiss the NPT as a worthless nuisance.  Its nuclear outlawry, along with that of non-NPT state India, has for decades received material aid and diplomatic cover from Washington.  As President Obama and the Republican White House hopefuls boorishly repeat that “all options are on the table” in facing off against Iran, the NPT and kindred global conventions end up as so much camouflage for naked geopolitical ambitions.

Drafted in the late 1960s, the NPT was inspired by efforts to control the spread of doomsday weapons on the world scene.  It came into force in March 1970, signed by 189 states including the U.S. and the four other atomic powers.  While U.S. leaders endorsed the treaty, beneath the surface they approached it with considerable ambivalence, even hostility, since the NPT was created to limit production and deployment of nuclear weapons for all nations.  One inescapable problem was that the U.S. was the only nation to have dropped by Bomb and its nuclear strategy (including first-use doctrine) remained, and still remains, central to its general military outlook.  Nuclearism became an indelible feature of postwar American political and popular culture.  That Washington had also resorted to other WMD – biological in Korea, chemical in Vietnam – would make the Pentagon even more wary of dismantling its mass-destruction arsenals, much less embrace moves toward disarmament, as the NPT stipulated.  Put simply, U.S. rhetorical opposition to WMD never extended to its own policies or its view of the NPT.

The NPT called on all parties to fight proliferation while allowing for peaceful atomic development under international monitoring.  Article I stated that nuclear powers agree not to assist non-nuclear countries in their nuclear programs, while Article IV affirmed the right of all NPT members to develop nuclear energy and Article VI obliged nuclear states to begin dismantling nukes in “good faith”. At present nine countries have nuclear arsenals with the strong likelihood others will follow, as an increasing number of states have adequate research, facilities, materials, and reactors for processing uranium at high levels.  Several countries, aside from Iran, now have the technology and resources to achieve nuclear-weapons status within the next decades, including Japan, Brazil, Australia, Argentina, Turkey, and South Africa.  All of these states, as NPT members, are fully entitled to nuclear sources of energy – though so far only Iran has been singled out for international scrutiny and targeted with economic sanctions and military threats.

As for Article I, the U.S. (along with France) offered substantial aid and protection to the hyper-secret Israeli nuclear-weapons program going back to the 1950s.  Israel has never wanted anything to do with the NPT, fearful of any meddling into its accumulation of between 200 and 400 warheads, thinly concealed behind a façade of “ambiguity”.   Aside from nukes, Tel Aviv reportedly owns an abundant stockpile of chemical and biological weapons while again refusing to join the relevant global conventions.

Make no mistake:  despite the media fiction of a small, weak, relatively defenseless country isolated and surrounded by aggressive foes, Israel currently rivals Britain, France, and China as a world nuclear power, central to its shared goal (with the U.S.) of military supremacy in the Middle East.  Credible sources indicate that Israel possesses not only neutron bombs but an array of tactical nukes, ballistic missiles, atomic land mines, cruise missiles, nuclear-armed subs, and high-explosive artillery shells.   The subs alone are armed with four cruise missiles each, replete with multiple warheads.   The general Israeli military arsenal dwarfs the actual or potential armed forces of all other Middle Eastern nations combined.  Several U.N. resolutions calling for Israel to join the NPT, open up its nuclear facilities to inspection, and agree to a regional nuclear-free zone have been stonewalled by the U.S. and Israel.   After the CIA reported that Israel had the Bomb in 1968 (fully 18 years before Mordecai Vanunu’s insider revelations), no outside visits to Israeli military sites have been allowed.

Meanwhile, India – still a non-NPT state – has long benefited from a massive transfer of atomic resources and technology from the U.S., dating to years before the Indian weapons breakthrough of 1974.   As an imagined counterweight to Chinese military power, India was empowered to build as many as 65 warheads, manufactured and deployed in the absence of external monitoring and made possible by the work of 1100 U.S.-trained scientists.  Like Israel and also Pakistan, India maintains a hostile attitude toward IAEA monitoring.  In July 2005 the U.S. signed an historic deal with New Delhi for nuclear cooperation, just when India was busy modernizing its illegal atomic stockpile and delivery systems.  (The deal was approved by Congress in October 2008.) Those profiting, of course, included dozens of U.S. technical and military corporations.

Non-NPT states naturally fight international pressure to limit their weapons systems, so that reducing nuclear arsenals in the midst of such outlawry, consistent with Article VI, is unthinkable.  Nor has U.S. membership as such meant compliance with Article VI: while lecturing and threatening others about proliferation, Washington unapologetically modernizes its own nuclear research agendas, facilities, weapons, and delivery systems, fueled by the decades-old aim of world atomic supremacy.  Alone among nations, the U.S. retains a first-use doctrine embellished by its unparalleled global nuclear presence across land, sea, and air, bolstered by a fleet-based missile defense system.   The U.S. deploys several dozen tactical nukes in such NATO countries as Germany, Belgium, Italy, Holland, and Turkey, in another violation of the NPT.

As it preaches against the horrors of proliferation, the U.S. spends hundreds of billions to upgrade its own state-of-the-art weapons systems.   Obama’s 2009 plea for a “world without nukes” is best understood as a preposterous deceit.   According to a 2011 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report, Washington now devotes more resources to nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined – that is, roughly equivalent to the general military picture.  The U.S. earmarked $61.3 billion for nukes in 2012, compared to $14.8 billion allocated by Russia, $7.6 billion by China, $6.0 billion by France, and $4.9 billion by India.  The most recent (2010) Nuclear Posture Review restates the long-term U.S. priority of a nuclearized military, a linchpin of Pentagon strategy. The NPR calls for designing, testing, construction, and deployment of a new class of atomic subs to replace the aging Ohio-class fleet, which, armed with eight multiple-warhead missiles apiece, already has enough firepower to incinerate most of the planet.  The Review calls for a “robust SSBN [missile] Security Program” to upgrade Pentagon nuclear capacity.   Among nine distinct U.S. nuclear modernizing schemes, the Air Force has on the drawing boards a new long-range penetrating bomber with enhanced nuclear capacity.  The 2012 Procurement Plan calls for 80 to 100 of these aircraft at an outlandish $550 each – a total of some $50 billion.

The U.S. nuclear establishment has recently fixated on a plutonium bomb-core production facility at Los Alamos, referred to as the Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR), with costs already running into several billions.  The bomb-core project has emerged as the centerpiece of a new generation of modernized warheads even as Washington feigns interest in atomic demobilization and negotiates with Russia to reduce its general stockpile.   The Obama administration favors a “surge” in nuclear development, with CMRR one of the vital programs.  Started in 2006, this project – to be completed in three stages – may not be finished until 2022, with a price tag likely in the tens of billions.  It is expected to triple the plutonium-storage capacity of the Los Alamos lab, expanding infrastructure needed for new weapons systems – surely a violation of the spirit if not letter of the NPT.

While the much-celebrated START agreement with Russia (only with Russia) anticipates a reduction to 1550 American warheads by 2017, the present count is more than 5000 warheads, but even the lower number will carry far more explosive potential than the larger, older arsenals.  It should also be remembered that START places no restrictions on research, testing, production, or deployment of nuclear weapons.

The NPR is hardly timid about its strategic objectives: “The U.S. will modernize the nuclear weapons infrastructure, sustain the science, technology, and engineering base, invest in human capital, and ensure senior leadership focus.”   Pentagon atomic capability remains as much of an obsession today as it was during the height of the Cold War, with its modernizing agenda, first-use doctrine, and multiple “contingency” plans for unleashing nukes against nations deemed in violation of the NPT.   So much for Article VI of the (now thoroughly-bankrupt) NPT.

In 2006 Hans Blix, former chief U.N. weapons inspector, authored a report titled “Weapons of Terror”, sponsored by the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, addressing the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological stockpiles.  It called on major powers to take international laws and treaties more seriously, pointedly urging the U.S. and its closest allies to refrain from blocking arms control, disarmament, and moves to curtail nuclear proliferation.   It states: “All parties to the [NPT] should implement the decision on principles and objectives for nonproliferation and disarmament [embraced in] the resolution of the Middle East as a zone free of nuclear and all other weapons of mass destruction.”  The latter idea had been proposed by Egypt, Iran, and a few other states but was quickly dashed by the U.S. and Israel – two nations deploying a combined several hundred warheads in the region.  The report also recommended that the strongest nuclear states offer security guarantees to weaker non-nuclear states, but neither the U.S. nor its clients were ready to comply.

In his book laying out the WMD Commission recommendations, Why Disarmament Matters (2008), Blix predicted imminent catastrophe in a global setting where the leading nuclear states randomly and brazenly violate the NPT.   A question recurs: how can proliferation be reversed when the nuclear outlaws routinely privilege their own military ambitions over international rules and norms?   By 2008 efforts to induce Israel, India, and Pakistan to submit to NPT protocols had been effectively abandoned, Blix adding: “Convincing states that do not need weapons of mass destruction would be significantly easier if all U.N. members practiced genuine respect for existing [U.N.] restraints on the threat and use of force.”  Aside from NPT considerations, threats like those made by the U.S. and Israel constitute a flagrant violation of the U.N. Charter.

Back to Iran: it turns out the mortal challenge posed by what Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu calls a “nuclearized mullocracy” does nothing so much as threaten Israeli hopes for regional domination.  Iranian “defiance” and “belligerence” is ultimately less a matter of Iran rejecting NPT statutes or IAEA inspections than of resisting (illegitimate) demands for total nuclear shutdown.  The famous Israeli “red line”, or threshold of tolerance, refers not to an actual Iranian military threat but to the “technical capability” of some day reaching weapons status – a “capability” already held, as mentioned, by more than 30 nations.  Further, while Iran is completely encircled by U.S. and Israeli military forces, possessing advanced nuclear arsenals, an Iranian attack on Israel (for which no motive is evident) would be suicidal, as large parts of the country would be quickly reduced to rubble.

Current U.S./Israeli threats against Iran are based much less in fear of a military attack than in prospects for a challenge to regional supremacy it raises.  The “red line” barrier pertains to an eventual Iranian surrender to U.S./Israeli geopolitical interests that, sooner or later, lead to “regime change”.  For the moment, however, it appears that a campaign of atomic sabotage has emerged as the key method for subverting Iranian nuclear objectives.   A military attack, now or later, remains fraught with enormous risk and uncertainty.

In the end, the Iranian “crisis” is symptomatic of a deeper predicament:  nothing will be resolved until every state – not just the targeted villains – is held accountable to the same universal norms.   This means, above all, the U.S., Israel, and other nuclear outlaws.  Blix noted that the NPT “is not a treaty that appoints the nuclear-weapons states individually or jointly to police non-nuclear weapons states and threaten them with punishment.  It is a contract in which all parties commit themselves to the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world.”  There can be no meaningful “contract” without an internationalization of security arrangements that, in the end, will require a dismantling of the American warfare state that underpins its nuclear outlawry and that of its clients.

CARL BOGGS is the author of Ecology and Revolution, Phantom Democracy, and The Crimes of Empire among other recent books.

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April 4, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bad Losers’ Conference: Syrians Pay the Price

By Jeremy Salt | Palestine Chronicle | April 3, 2012

Ankara – The ‘Friends of Syria’ conference in Istanbul ended with a pledge of qualified support for the Annan plan while agreeing on concrete measures to undermine it. Saudi Arabia and other gulf states are going to stump up the money to turn the so-called Free Syrian Army into a fully-fledged mercenary army. Saudi Arabia and Qatar had previously said that they intended to  spend millions of dollars arming the ‘rebels’ and at the ‘Friends of Syria’ conference, the US,  Britain and the gulf states agreed to spend millions more on  providing the armed groups with unspecified ‘humanitarian’ assistance and ‘communications equipment’. The gulf states are also hoping their money will lure Syrian soldiers into defecting.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar operate on the basis of human cupidity and greed.  They must be surprised on those occasions when they discover that not everyone has a price. Late last year the Qatari Prime Minister, Hamad bin Jasim al Thani, was reported to have offered Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al Muallim $100 million and permanent residence in Qatar if he would defect.  The occasion was a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah. Muallim declined, asking in return, rhetorically of course, how much money Qatar had spent so far internationally and regionally to deepen the crisis in Syria. This follows on from the money Qatar spent on the destruction of the Libyan government.

In February eight million Syrians voted for political reform that will usher in a multi-party political system and will remove the Baath party as the central pillar of state and society.   The armed gangs have been chased out of the cities where they had dug themselves in.  Human rights groups and the media are finally drawing attention to what they have wilfully ignored for months, the extreme violence of the FSA and other groups of armed men, directed against soldiers and civilians. Recently Der Spiegel, rightwing and openly hostile to the Assad government, ran an article on the executioners of Homs, the men who were taking the captives of the FSA to a burial ground and cutting their throats. Interesting that none of the correspondents smuggled across the border into Homs seem to have picked this up before.

If there is a role for any outside party surely it should be to help wind down the conflict in Syria, not wind it up, yet this is precisely what the ‘Friends of Syria’ are doing.  Will Ban Ki-Moon or Kofi Annan have anything to say about this?  They have a peace plan which cannot possibly work as long as its ostensible supporters are working to undermine it.  Syria has accepted the Annan plan but has made the obvious point that it cannot pull its soldiers and tanks off the streets unless the armed gangs lay down their weapons. Here we have Saudi Arabia and Qatar shelling out money to ensure they keep fighting, with the backing of the other ‘Friends of Syria’. We can see what this is intended to produce, a situation in which every time the Syrian army is involved in conflict with armed groups it will be blamed for violating the Annan plan. All the ‘rebels’ have to do is keep shooting. This is exactly what their peace-loving supporters meeting in Istanbul want them to do.

If there is a proper name for the group that met in Istanbul it should be the Bad Losers’ Conference. These people have thrown everything into the struggle to bring down the Syrian government. They have plotted and conspired. They have used their media and they have thrown money and weapons at the ‘rebels’ but they have failed. Assad – abused and insulted by them – is still there and more on top of the situation than he was a little while ago. It should be ‘game over’ but Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in particular, are determined to play on irrespective of the cost in human lives and destruction to Syria and its people.

Hillary Clinton or her public relations machine tried to give the impression that she was in Saudi Arabia to talk the Saudis out of doing anything rash. More likely she was there to frame how the next steps would be taken, with Saudi Arabia stepping out in front and the US appearing to follow on behind. There is no point in saying anything about Clinton. She is what she is and no comment is needed.  The Saudis are driven by their own agenda, which is to set up a Sunni Muslim wall against Iran and Shi’ism across the Middle East. Does anyone seriously think they have the best interests of the Syrian people at heart?

As for Turkey, its relationships with near neighbors have been transformed in the space of a year from good to bad. Insofar as Syria is concerned, the Turkish Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister have burnt their bridges. It is either them or Assad from now on. Certainly there can be no resumption of good relations as long as he or they remain in government. Someone has to go and they are determined it is going to be him. Alienating Syria has meant alienating Iran and raising the suspicions of the Shia-dominated government in Iraq, which has strongly opposed Turkey’s line on Syria. In January the two countries exchanged harsh words over the warrant for arrest issued against Iraqi Vice President Tariq al Hashimi, a Sunni Muslim accused of organising death squads used against Shia Muslims. Fleeing to Kurdistan, Mr Hashimi has now turned up as a guest of the ruler of Qatar. He denies being  ‘part of Turkey’s geopolitical project’ but admits to receiving ‘advice’ from Turkey and has stated that he feels ‘indebted’ to the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for ‘making statements on my case’.

These amounted to the view that Mr Hashimi was being pursued because he was a Sunni Muslim. At a party meeting in Ankara, the Turkish Prime Minister, responding to Iraqi accusations of meddling, said that  ‘Mr Maliki [Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki, a Shia] should know very well that if you initiate a period of clashes in Iraq based on sectarian strife it is impossible for us to remain silent’. The refusal of the Kurdish governorate to hand Mr Hashemi over to the government in Baghdad deepens the divide between these two centres of power in Iraq. The warm welcome Mr Hashimi was given in Qatar is further evidence of the broader divide that is taking shape  in the Middle East, with  the US, the EU, the Gulf states and Turkey standing on one side and Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Russia and China on the other.

After the meeting of the ‘Friends of Syria’ in Istanbul, Nuri al Maliki strongly condemned the decision of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to give further support to the armed groups in Syria. ‘We reject any arming [of Syrian rebels] and the process to overthrow the regime because this will leave a greater crisis in the region. The stance of these two states is very strange. They are calling for sending arms instead of working to put out the fire and they will hear our voice, that we are against arming and against foreign interference. We are against the interference of some countries in Syria’s internal affairs and those countries that are interfering in Syria’s internal affairs will interfere in the internal affairs of any country’.

His position is shared by Egypt, whose Foreign Minister, Muhammad Kamal Amr said after the Istanbul meeting that ‘arming the Syrian opposition, as Egypt sees it, will increase the rate of killings and will transform the situation in Syria as a whole to full-scale civil war’. Egypt’s misgivings are certain to be shared by other Arab governments, suggesting that in their single-minded pursuit of the Syrian government and their continued support for armed ‘resistance’ the gulf states and Turkey are very much in a regional minority.

In confronting Syria, Turkey inevitably alienated Iran and further exacerbated relations by agreeing to give the US the right to install an anti-missile radar station on its soil. Its only possible use could be to forestall missile retaliation in the event of an attack on Iran by the US or Israel (or both). Turkey has tried to placate Iran but insofar as Syria is concerned Iran is standing firm. It knows full well that it is next on the chopping block.

A perceptible nervousness about the actions of the government is beginning to appear in the Turkish media. In confronting Syria in such a belligerent manner and giving support to an armed group carrying out attacks in a neighboring state, the government has opened a new chapter in Turkey’s foreign policy. The legal dimensions of this policy are now coming up for scrutiny. Writing in Hurriyet Daily News, Yusuf Kanli made the following observation: ‘In the absence of a declaration of war or authorisation by parliament, it is a crime under Turkish law to allow Turkish territory to be used for hostile purposes against any neighboring country. Turkey is hosting scores of rebel commanders and there are serious claims that the rebel forces are receiving arms through Turkish territory. With almost 50 per cent electoral support, the current Turkish government can escape all kinds of accountability but as electoral support cannot last forever, tomorrow may be bleak, particularly if the effort to change the Syrian regime fails’.

Well, up till now it has failed and the continued attempt to drive Bashar al Assad out of office is going to cost more lives than the thousands who have died so far. As Syria is not just the will of one man, contrary to the image projected by the media, what would this achieve anyway? Rather than back off and throw their weight behind a peaceful solution, the ‘Friends of Syria’ decided to continue their campaign of support for the armed men at the precise moment Kofi Annan is calling on everyone to lay down their arms. The logic is Macbeth’s. They have gone so far in this venture that ‘returning were as tedious as go o’er’ but it is Syria and Syrians who will have to pay the price for their decision to keep going.

– Jeremy Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.

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April 3, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Drone Boom

By VIJAY PRASHAD | CounterPunch | April 2, 2012

In 2010, the UN special representative on extrajudicial executions Philip Alston released a 29 page report on the growing use of deadly drone, or unmanned, aircraft by the United States. In a statement that accompanied the report, Alston described the political problem for the US, “I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe. But this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.”

In the sedate chambers of the UN, such language is rare: it asserted that the continual US use of drones is not only a violation of current norms, but it is a threat to the architecture of conflict resolution and the rules of war. Alston wanted to convene a conference of the “key military powers” to consider new rules for the drones. No-one was interested.

The US response was unsurprising: it was at war, and in war, such attacks are legal. Since the US has claims that its War on Terror has no identifiable battlefield, it feels emboldened to use its drones to attack targets in regions where it is not directly at war, such as Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and so on. It is this inflation that worried the UN. In March 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder dismissed Alston’s commitment to legality. He decreed it constitutional (in US terms) for his government to even kill its own citizens without judicial review in very specific circumstances (in mind was the New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in the deserts of Yemen, in 2011). President Obama signed a law on February 14, 2012 to extend drone use in the United States for commercial purposes (crop dusting, monitoring oil spills) and eventually for law enforcement. More, not less, drones are on the horizon.

The $5.9 billion drone industry looks to double its size. There is a Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus (co-chaired by Henry Cuellar and Buck McKeon). The US used to have fifty drones in the arsenal before 9/11, but the airforce now has 7,500 in use. Northwestern Michigan College has pioneered drone studies to prepare “pilots” for a lucrative career. A recently released Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan, 2009-2047 notes, the drones are essential “to increasing effects while potentially reducing cost, forward footprint and risk.” To reduce the risk to nothing, the Air Force has developed the X-47B which is not only unmanned but is also unpiloted. It is a robot, which will determine on its own where to go and what to strike. The Northwestern Michigan College graduates might face redundancy before they finish their degrees.

Since 2005, the US drones have killed 2175 people in Pakistan. Those killed are always characterized as “suspected militants.” There is little verification about their real identities. Court cases by civilian victims of the drone attacks, helped along by the campaigner Reprieve, have not been able to make much of a dent. In a rare case of flexing its sovereignty, the Pakistani parliament in late March called for an end to drone strikes, with a parliamentary committee asking the US to respect the “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity” of Pakistan. Pakistani noise has little impact on US policy. The drone attacks continue.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) has recent reported that the US has increased its use of drones in Yemen, despite the change of its president (from Saleh to his deputy Hadi). The US has consistently denied that its cruise missile killed forty-four civilians on December 17, 2009 in southern Yemen (eight families were wiped out by the attack). A Wikileaks-released cable tells us otherwise. General David Petraeus rushed to Sanaa, where he met Saleh who told him, “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.”

Subsequent to Saleh’s removal, the Yemeni parliament formed a commission to study that attack. A spokesperson for Sheikh Himir Al-Ahmar, the commission’s chairman and now Yemen’s deputy speaker, told the BIJ, “The families of the victims were indeed paid appropriate compensation by the Yemeni Government (according to the standard of compensations given out to victims in Yemen). The American authorities did not get involved in this process in any way.” The Americans like the “can’t confirm or deny” stance regarding what is taking place in plain sight. This is the reason that the Obama administration has blocked the requests by the ACLU to gain information on the CIA’s use of drones for targeted assassinations.

The US media is forced to report massacres when these are conducted by troops on the ground. The most recent story concerns the killing of sixteen Afghan civilians by Army Staff Sgt Robert Bales. Even here the story was followed with limited depth. As Alexander Cockburn reported this weekend,  it was Australia SBS’s Yalda Hakim who went beneath the surface and produced a remarkable report that suggested that Bales likely did not act alone in the villages of Alkozai and Najiban (a view supported by the investigation conducted by General Karimi for the Afghan president). At least reports of these massacres come to the press. Nothing of the kind happens when drones kill civilians. There is little consideration of drone strikes, and little anger at the murder of ordinary people by drones.

Drones create little global outrage. The drones have no names like Bales (and his confreres). Their pilots are faceless young people who sit in Nevada or upstate New York. They drink a Coke, play with their computers which send kill messages to their drones. They will have nightmares. With drones there are no stories. No narratives to create outrage. Just bodies of dead people. They have no history.

Last week, a US drone killed four people in Miranshah in northern Pakistan. The Pakistani authorities claim that these are Uzbek militants. There is no confirmation. They might have been anyone.

In the 1920s, Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, had a British base, from where RAF planes went out on frequent bombing raids against the Afghans and the Waziris. It was from Miranshah that Arthur “Bomber” Harris ran some of his most vicious sorties. A rather miserable T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) sat in his room on the base bemoaning his fate while Harris went on his celebrated runs. Lawrence had his own views on the bombings. “I have a bird,” he wrote. “It looks like a sparrow. It nests over my shelf of files. A dirty bird: I have brought in varnished fabric cover to shield the files from its droppings. A misanthropic bird; a solitary bird; a silent bird. It comes in at sunset & departs at dawn. Plop, plop. Our bombing machines can only drop six bombs, at full war load. This my sparrow puts the RAF to shame. Since sunset it has made eleven hits.” Lawrence had his eyes on the bird, and on the horizon. “Miranshah is busy,” he wrote as the bombers returned. “A moral operation is being carried out in the hills to the SW.”

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April 2, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The belligerent “friends” of Syria in Istanbul

By Babich Dmitry | Voice of Russia | April 2, 2012

The decision of the United States and several Persian Gulf monarchies to create a fund that would pay “salaries” to opposition fighters in Syria and provide the rebels with Western “communication equipment” removes the last remnants of legality from the foreign involvement in Syria.

At the conference of the so called “Friends of Syria,” held in Istanbul in the beginning of this week and not attended by representatives of Russia, some astounding figures were mentioned. Molham al-Drobi, a member of the Syrian National Council, said his organization had pledges of $100 million in “salaries” for the militants inside Syria, which would help them to prolong the fighting for the next three months. The other motive for handing salaries is to encourage Syrian army soldiers to “defect” (a Syrian legalist worm would say – break his soldier’s oath) leaving the army ranks for greener pastures in the so called Free Syrian Army. Burhan Ghalioun, the head of the Istanbul-based Syrian National Council, promised to organize and keep this army together at the expense of sponsors from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and… the United States.

How very interesting! How would the United States react to a pledge by some “friends of the US” from foreign governments to pay salaries to deserters from the American army in case they join some “liberation struggle” against a bad guy in the White House? Wouldn’t it be a bit too much even for the greatest liberal in Washington D.C.?

There can be a legal basis (albeit a very shaky one) for providing humanitarian aid to the people in Syria’s regions which were devastated by the war. But even on that issue, a pledge of $176 million in humanitarian assistance made in Istanbul is a very arguable one, since the aid will go to Syrians via the hands of the Syrian National Council. An aid to victims of a civil war made via one of the sides in that war is a questionable method of charity activities. One should not forget also that the SNC is just one of many Syrian opposition groups and its source of legitimacy lies outside Syria – it was recognized as a “legitimate representative of the Syrian people” by those same “Friends of Syria” at their meetings in Tunisia and Istanbul.

What is even more stunning is the fact that participants of the conference in Istanbul plan to purchase the weapons for the Syrian rebels on the international “black market” for weapons, as the Washington Post reported. So, what about all the warnings we heard from Washington about the dangers of “black markets” for military equipment and technologies? Weren’t whole countries (such as Iraq) invaded with the official purpose of curbing those black markets?

“The interesting feature of today’s world is that the most unpredictable countries in it are not some God-forsaken Oriental dictatorships, as it was the case earlier, but modern Western states, with their elected governments, modern armed forces and seemingly disparate media,” said Igor Maksimychev, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Europe in the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“Communication equipment,” which US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is planning to provide to the rebels, looks (or, rather, sounds) suspiciously like military equipment, as, in Mrs. Clinton’s own words, it “will help activists organize, evade attacks by the regime, and connect to the outside world.” Obviously, “activists” will need this organization not for Friday night parties. And, since the times of Chinese strategists, “evading attacks” of the enemy is the primary part of warfare, probably an even more important one than actually striking the enemy.

In this situation, Russia seems to be the only heavyweight international player opposed to the trend of arming, wining and dining the anti-government fighters in Syria. A statement issued by the Russian foreign ministry said that the intention of “the friends of Syria” to provide the Syrian opposition military aid goes against the aims of a peaceful settlement of the conflict. “The meeting in Istanbul, unfortunately, retained a unilateral character, its participants did not include the representatives of Syria’s government and many influential groups of Syria’s political opposition,” said Maria Zakharova, deputy head of the department of information and media at the Russian MFA.

Georgy Mirsky, senior research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, does not see a positive logic in the Western actions against the Syrian government. These actions can be explained only by Damascus’s traditionally close ties to Iran, now perceived in Europe and the US as a hostile country. “Assad personally did not take any Western lives and did not inflict on the West any substantial economic damage,” Mirsky explains. “But talking about Assad Americans have in the back of their minds Iran, and that explains a lot in their attitude to Tehran.”

Interestingly, the current Iranian regime is the result of what is usually termed in the US as a “revolution gone wrong.” The toppling of an authoritarian shah (a sort of an “Iranian spring” in 1978-1979) ultimately brought Islamists to power. Now Islamists are slowly moving to complete power in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia (in Egypt the Christian Copts yesterday left the Constitutional Council, where they were hugely outnumbered by Islamists). So, how many more “aborted revolutions” is the West going to correct via arms from the black market, “defensive” communication equipment or outright interventions?

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April 2, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia: “Friends of Syria” Meeting One-Sided, Contradicts Goals of Peace

Al-Manar | April 2, 2012

Moscow said on Monday that the “Friends of Syria” meeting in Istanbul was one-sided, adding it contradicted the goal of a peaceful settlement of the Syrian crisis.

“Unfortunately, the meeting in Istanbul was as one-sided” as previous such gatherings, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

“Its list of participants did not include either the Syrian government or many of the influential groups of the Syrian political opposition”, the statement added.

“The promises and intentions to deliver direct military and logistical support to the armed… opposition that were voiced in Istanbul unquestionably contradict the goals of a peaceful settlement to the civil conflict in Syria”.

As it slammed Istanbul meeting, Russia reaffirmed its support for Annan’s initiative and said it would continue “trying to achieve an immediate ceasefire and an end to violence from all sides”.

The meeting on Sunday recognized the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) as the “legitimate representative” of all Syrians and the “leading interlocutor for the opposition with the international community.”

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April 2, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Hundreds arrested for swarming NATO HQ in Belgium

Press TV – April 1, 2012

Police in Belgium have arrested some 483 peace activists from hundreds of protesters, who tried to break into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels.

The Sunday demonstration organized by the Belgian Association Action for Peace was called to protest NATO intervention in Afghanistan and Libya, and nuclear arming.

The activists crossed fields and sought to climb over fences leading to the NATO compound but were stopped by the five to six hundred police officers who were deployed to counter the protesters.

“We neither want the anti-missile shield, nor intervention by NATO in Libya or Afghanistan, nor nuclear bombs that are illegal in our country,” a spokesman for Action for Peace, Benoit Calvi said.

Demonstrators most of them in their twenties, came from 10 European countries including Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, and Sweden.

“A military alliance that intervenes all over the world and has nuclear weapons is a threat to world peace,” Action for Peace said.

The protest came ahead of next month’s NATO summit in Chicago.

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April 1, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Chicago bans anti-war march during NATO Summit

RT | 30 March, 2012

A judge has rejected the demands of anti-war activists for a march to be held in Chicago during a planned NATO summit.  The activists say the city’s arguments against the march defy logic.

­Anti-war activists filed a request to court after their initial demands for a march to be rescheduled were rejected by the City of Chicago.

Andy Thayer, an activist leader, says he will still be marching on May 20, the day the NATO summit opens.

“I can say definitively we are marching on May 20,” he noted, as quoted by Reuters. “We will hold a peaceful protest.”

The anti-war demonstrators originally planned to hold a march on May 19, the day another meeting of global leaders, the G8 Summit, closes in Chicago. However, when the summit’s venue was changed to Camp David, the activists decided to move their march a day forward to coincide with the start of the NATO summit.

But this request was rejected by the Chicago Transportation Department.

The department wrote back to Thayer, saying there were not enough on-duty police officers or other employees authorized to regulate traffic.

“The commissioner finds that there are not available at the time of the parade a sufficient number of on-duty police officers, or other city employees authorized to regulate traffic, to police and protect lawful participants in the parade and non-participants,” the assistant commissioner of the department wrote to Thayer.

But Thayer says the argument makes no sense – as the police assured the public it had enough personnel to deal with the protests on May 19.

“It defies logic,” Thayer remarked. “Ultimately the city is … pursuing a political agenda of denying meaningful First Amendment expression of anti-war views.”

The city did advise the protesters to change their itinerary, but the alternative route will not pass through Daley Plaza in the city center, and will take much longer.

Thayer argues that the city’s reluctance to allow the peaceful demo is part of Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s efforts to silence dissent.

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March 31, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Mali coup leader seeks foreign help against advancing rebels

Press TV – March 31, 2012

Facing strong international criticism for toppling the legitimate government of Mali, the leader of the recent coup d’état in the African country has called for foreign help.

The plea comes hours after Tuareg separatist rebels entered the strategic town of Kidal, 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the capital.

Speaking to the media outlets at a military barrack, which has now become the junta’s headquarters, the leader of the coup, Amadou Haya Sanogo, claimed, “Our army needs the help of Mali’s friends to save the civilian population and Mali’s territorial integrity.”

The coup junta is likely to face potential risk of being frozen out by the country’s foreign allies as the neighboring countries have threatened to impose possible economic sanctions on the landlocked country.

On March 22, renegade Malian soldiers led by Amadou Haya Sanogo toppled Mali’s President Amadou Toumani Toure in a coup and took control of government institutions.

The coup leaders said they mounted the coup out of anger at the government’s inability to contain the two-month-old Tuareg rebellion in north of the country.

Mali has been scene of rebellion by some separatist elements, namely Tuareg fighters in the north of the country, fighting the government to, in their terms “protect and progressively re-occupy the Azawad territory.”

Azawad is the tuareg name for the northern region of the country, covering the areas of Timbuktu, Kidal and Gao.

The coup drew international condemnation. The African Union, the ECOWAS, the European Union, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the International Crisis Group, and the United Nations have all denounced the military takeover of the government in the West African country.

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March 31, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UNAC: A Real Anti-War Movement in the Belly of the Beast

By Glen Ford | Black Agenda Report | March 28, 2012

With passage of a short and elegant plank in its Action Plan for 2012, the United National Anti-War Coalition is building a peace movement that is finally prepared to confront President Obama’s global military offensive, cloaked in “humanitarian” interventionist rhetoric. The language states: “End all threats of war and intervention against Iran and Syria! No to sanctions, blockades and embargoes!”

It is a simple expression of the singular mission of anti-warriors in the belly of the beast. That mission is to disarm the beast– not to quibble with the war machine about where best to deploy its overwhelming firepower, or to advise corporate warmongers on the most efficient killing-mix of live troops and automated drones, or to pick and choose from a Democratic administration’s menu of regimes that might be changed to make the world more amenable to Wall Street. Our task as Americans – our overarching responsibility, for which we are uniquely positioned and, therefore, solemnly obligated – is to dismantle from within the monstrous apparatus of imperial aggression. Period.

I was privileged to present the coordinating committee’s draft of the Action Plan to UNAC’s national conference in Stamford, Connecticut, this past weekend. “This action plan does not just target some U.S. wars,” said the committee’s statement. “It does not target the currently unpopular wars. It does not shy away from condemning wars that remain acceptable to half the population because the real reasons for them are obscured in the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention. It does not advocate that we avoid putting U.S. boots on the ground by mounting embargoes that bring economic devastation on the peoples of Iran. It does not condone war by other, more sanitized, means. It does not cheer on wars that minimize U.S. combat deaths by the use of robotic unmanned planes or the highly trained murder squads of the Joint Special Operations Command. It does not see war by mercenary as somehow less threatening to the peoples of the world and the U.S. than war by economic draft. It does not give credit to Washington for removing brigades from one country in order to deploy them in the next.”

The document demands an end to “all wars, interventions, targeted assassinations and occupations” and U.S. withdrawal from “NATO and all other interventionist military alliances.”

UNAC’s reasoning is rooted in the principle that all the world’s peoples have the inherent right to self-determination,to pursue their own destinies – the foundation of relations among peoples, enshrined in international law but daily violated by the United States.

American exceptionalism – the belief that rules of international conduct, or even the rules of history and human development, do not apply to the United States – is deeply entrenched in the popular American psyche and has long been the bane of the U.S. anti-war movement. It encourages Americans to think they have a privileged perspective on the world and a consequent right to preach, lecture and ultimately intervene in other people’s affairs – just as their government does. In anti-war movements, this national arrogance (deeply entwined with racism) allows self-styled peaceniks to behave like little imperialists, imposing conditions and caveats on their willingness to confront their own government’s aggressions. They reserve the right to pick and choose which U.S. violations of international law to oppose. Unmoored by principle and crippled by national chauvinism, such “peace” movements inevitably disband at the earliest opportunistic juncture.

UNAC emerged with the disintegration of United for Peace and Justice, which showed itself to be more of an anti-Republican formation than an anti-war movement. UFPJ disintegrated at the first whiff of the new Democratic administration, clearing the way domestically for a new imperial strategy: “humanitarian” intervention. At its founding conference, in July of 2010, UNAC tackled the first taboo of American foreign policy with a plank to “End all U.S. aid to Israel, military, economic and diplomatic!” – a direct confrontation with Israeli “exceptionalism.” Last week, UNAC broke decisively with Obama’s humanitarian “exception” to the rules of international behavior. There now exists a place for genuine anti-imperialists to gather and plot for peace – and that is a beginning. No repeats of Libya, no more equivocations in the face of U.S. carnage.

A luta continua – the struggle continues, in the belly of the beast.

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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March 28, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bibi: First We’ll Take Tehran, Then We’ll Take Istanbul

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | March 28, 2012

Yesterday, brought ominous news regarding yet another aggressive Israeli projection of its military power in the Mideast.  Since 1967, with but a few exceptions (Osirak being one), Israel has mainly satisfied itself by retaining dominance over its frontline neighbors and not attempting to meddle in affairs of more far-flung states.  But with Bibi Netanyahu’s new policy of projecting Israeli power far outside Israel’s immediate sphere and threatening Iran with attack, we have an Israel ready and willing to step far outside its former comfort zone.

To show that Bibi’s aggressive, interventionist approach isn’t a fluke, UPI reports that Israel is negotiating with Greek Cyprus for placement of an Israeli air base on the island, ostensibly to protect the new Israeli-Cypriot joint gas exploration project:

Israel is already preparing to launch a major security operation to protect the offshore fields and the attendant facilities in its waters.

This will involve missile-armed patrol vessels, round-the-clock aerial surveillance by unmanned drones and other naval detachments, primarily to defend the energy zones against attack by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed force in neighboring Lebanon.

This field is in dispute with Lebanon, which also claims title.  Turkey too disputes the area on behalf of Turkish Cyprus.  This certainly is one reason for the Israeli move.

But an even more important one in the long-term, is Israel confronting Turkey with its power.  It’s a rather naked move.  A flagrant invasion of Turkey’s sphere of influence, which can only bring a Turkish response.  The response will likely come within an area under Israel’s sphere of influence.  Oh say, like Gaza.  Someone with a cool head ought to start looking at this developing rivalry and see where it could lead (or end).

There is only one way to resolve territorial disputes of the nature of the one concerning the Cypriot gas field, negotiation.  Israel, however, doesn’t believe it negotiation.  It believes in naked projections of military strength.  An Israeli base on Cyprus would be a forward projection of Israeli power in the same way that the U.S. base in Diego Garcia is our forward projection of power into the Mideast (currently threatening Iran, but previously used to bolster invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan).

It’s bad enough with the U.S. making a pretense of being the cop of the world and getting itself mired in places it should never be.  But do we want Israel, with its history of wars and endless bloodshed, tangling not just with Palestinians or Arab militant groups like Hezbollah, but with full-fledged regional powers like Turkey?  Let’s not forget that country’s age-old rivalry with Greece which has also led to centuries of historic conflict.  Now Israel is playing footsie with the Greeks and becoming best friends with the current economic basket case of Europe.  Greece is only too happy to oblige and take advantage of the power Israel has to offer.

Do we really want Israel playing with fire in this way?  I fear this can only end badly.

Another related matter that concerns me is the economic bonanza that this new-found oil portends for Israel, one of the most economically striated nations in the world.  The new gas and oil deals promise to make the Israeli elite even richer.  It will bring untold billions to Israeli politicians and generals who will flock to consult for the new enterprises (as has Meir Dagan).  One place this wealth will not go, is into the pockets of those who need it most inside Israel: the poor, the disenfranchised, etc.  The Haredi and Israeli Palestinian poor will stay poor.  There will be few, if any programs to share the wealth or provide benefits to those in need.  After all, this is Bibi Netanyahu, a disciple of Milton Friedman, an economic Hobbesian.  It’s dog-eat-dog in the Likud world.  Just as long as Bibi and his party cronies are taken care of, little else matters.

In truth, this would likely happen whoever was in power.  The only thing that would change is the names and faces of those benefitting.  Labor and Kadima would be no better as anyone who knows about Ehud Barak’s wealth-producing consulting jobs while he was out of power, is aware.  So for any who believe in the dreams of liberal Zionism and the Declaration of Independence, that Israel is a nation meant to realize a vision of brotherhood, tolerance and human dignity, the coming oil boom will frustrate you.  But undoubtedly, if you’re a liberal Zionist, you’ll, as Tim Hardin wrote, “still look to find a reason to believe.”

March 28, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US to grant more funds to Israel’s Iron Dome missile system

Press TV – March 28, 2012

The United States is planning to grant more money to Israel’s Iron Dome missile system designed to intercept short-range rockets and mortars.

“Supporting the security of Israel is a top priority of President Obama and Secretary (Leon) Panetta… [The Department of Defense] intends to request an appropriate level of funding from Congress to support such acquisitions based on Israeli requirements and production capacity,” Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Obama administration and the US Congress allocated $205 million to Israel’s Iron Dome system in the 2011 budget. The budget for next year demands $3.1 billion in military aid to Israel, which is more than the current level and the highest for any foreign country.

Although the Pentagon statement provided no specific numbers, congressional sources said the purchase of 10 battery systems at a cost of $50 million each is likely to be requested.

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March 28, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Syria and the Annan Plan: The Devil in the Details

By Nicolas Nassif | Al Akhbar | March 27, 2012

While the Syrian regime was pleased with last week’s UN Security Council Presidential Statement on Syria, the Syrian National Council (SNC) was not. It registered its objections, and saw it as providing another chance to President Bashar Assad. Damascus welcomed both the statement and the plan which the UN and Arab envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, devised after gaining the approval of the international community.

Sources who got to meet high-ranking Syrian officials over the weekend sensed the extent to which the presidential statement was welcomed by Damascus. They also provided some insight into the level of cooperation between Damascus and Moscow on the substance of Annan’s initiative, and their commitment to making a success of it.

While the Syrian leadership supports the general principles of Annan’s plan, it has taken a cautious view of the mechanisms and measures which will need to be taken to implement it.

This stems from a conviction that the devil will lie in details if they are left vague, especially when the time comes for a ceasefire and political dialogue. Accordingly, while Annan completes his talks in Russia and China and prepares to begin implementing his plan, Damascus’ approach will be based on a number of considerations:

1. The initiative must be implemented through the “Syrian state” at all stages: starting with the proposed ceasefire and restoration of calm, extending to the delivery of humanitarian aid, and culminating in a national political dialogue. None of this will occur unless the process for implementing this initiative is approved by the regime and conforms with what it is describes as the “principles of sovereignty.”

Damascus’ position is that it is waiting to see how this initiative will be implemented, while affirming its endorsement of the plan. But the regime insists that any political dialogue about the future of Syria – the end-goal of the initiative – must be held under the auspices of the “Syrian state.”

2. Damascus is greatly satisfied and encouraged by the fact that the presidential statement did not reiterate the demand that the Arab League, France, the US, and Turkey had been insisting on. Namely, that the Syrian president step down and immediately transfer power so a political settlement can be concluded in isolation from him. The regime sees this tacit re-acknowledgement of its authority as a chance to open up dialogue again.

The high-ranking officials insisted to their visitors, however, that Syrian leaders had at no stage been fixated on or alarmed by this demand. They were never under any illusion that, in current international conditions, it was within the capacity of any party, domestic or foreign, to force Assad to step down.

This applies equally to the Syrian opposition, to the many declarations made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her French counterpart Alain Juppe, the Arab League in its second initiative on January 2, and Qatari, Saudi, and Turkish leaders. Damascus never commented on any of their statements. It declined to get into an argument with them about whether Assad should leave office.

The view put forward by Damascus in defense of its position is that the new Syrian constitution furnishes a mechanism for the transfer or rotation of power. But decapitating the regime – the argument Moscow has also been stressing – would be a recipe for chaos. As the regime sees it, the president stands for the integrity and cohesion of the army and the unity of the country. This position was matched by the similar stand taken by Russia and China against any external foreign military intervention to compel Assad to step down or depose him by force. Also this is why they opposed arming the opposition.

As a result, the international picture has changed significantly since the two countries blocked the attempt to issue a Security Council resolution on Syria on February 4. The threat to force Assad out has been practically dropped – though Arab and Western states may still speak of not just the president’s days, but the regime’s, being numbered – and everybody has opted for a political settlement to be brought about under him.

This approach was reinforced at Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s March 10 meeting with the committee of Arab foreign ministers dealing with Syria. It was confirmed in the appointment of Annan as envoy, and again in the proposals he has put forward, and the Security Council’s endorsement of it last Wednesday.

3. Damascus believes that the real gain it made from the presidential statement was the UN’s acknowledgement that there are two sides to the violence in the Syrian crisis.

This dispensed with the pretext with which the Arabs and the West had armed themselves until Lavrov’s visit to Cairo – namely, that the violence was one-sided, indiscriminate, and practised exclusively by the regime. The existence of armed anti-regime groups was either denied outright, or justified as self-defense.

But the presidential statement, by calling for a ceasefire and end to fighting, conceded that there is another party engaged in violence, and that an armed confrontation is underway. While it did not identify that other party – composed of a combination of Salafis, Muslim Brothers, and deserters – it recognized its existence. This reinforced the regime’s rationale for using decisive military force to try to eliminate members of the armed opposition in Homs, Idlib, and Deir al-Zour, so as to pre-empt any attempt to create buffer zones or similar enclaves in border areas.

Damascus is indebted to Russia and China for supporting its viewpoint and steering the Security Council in the opposite direction to which the Arab League had intended. It had insisted, without hesitation, that the violence was from one side only. The Arab League ignored the report by the chief of its own observer mission, General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, and transferred the Syria dossier to the Security Council.

But once there, it did not take long for Moscow’s view to converge with Washington’s over the issue of arming the Syrian opposition. The Americans are wary of Al-Qaeda infiltration of Syrian rebel groups, and fear their weapons could end up reaching the terrorist organization.

4. Damascus believes Annan fully understands the many difficulties involved in his task of bringing about a political settlement. Two sets of these stand out in particular: those connected to convening the proposed national dialogue, and those related to halting the violence on the streets.

Defining the party that will sit opposite the regime at the national dialogue table will be an early obstacle. It is not just that the political opposition, both at home and in exile, is deeply divided. So is the armed component of the opposition, which includes Salafi organizations, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter are part of the SNC, which has set up its own military bureau and is at odds with the FSA. That in turn is divided between followers of Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad and Brigadier Mustafa Ahmad al-Sheikh.

The political dialogue cannot include the non-SNC armed opposition when it has not yet said who speaks for it. Annan does not know who to talk to in this regard, at least not yet. In the meantime, the political dialogue stands to be between a known actor, the regime, and an undetermined interlocutor, half of which is clandestine, and the other half of which is at odds with itself.

A second obstacle lies in the measures to be taken on the ground to bring about an end to fighting, the withdrawal of gunmen and the army, and the delivery of humanitarian aid to residents of affected areas. Syrian leaders see potential problems in the plans that Annan and his aides devised for arranging these measures and deploying international observers to monitor them.

The Syrian authorities are not simply waiting to see what Annan comes up with in this regard. They have been stressing an issue of extreme sensitivity, which the Syrian leadership considers an absolute necessity for the restoration of normal life to the country: there must be no consolidation of dividing lines between army- and rebel-controlled areas, either in towns or the countryside. Also they have stressed that there must be no deployment of international observers on such lines, which would effectively enforce a fait accompli ahead of political talks.

Damascus has informed all concerned parties that it will not agree to measures which recreate the kind of “confrontation lines” that were established during the Lebanese Civil War, which entrenched the positions of the opposing parties and fuelled the conflict.

It has stressed that a ceasefire must not entail the drawing of such lines inside Syria. Rather, it should result in the disappearance of gunmen and their weapons from the streets, an end to all illegal armed activity, and the reconnection of different parts of the country with each other. Only that would justify ordering the army back to barracks.

Similarly, the task of international observers must not be to monitor a ceasefire, police ceasefire lines, or separate two warring parties, but to monitor the restoration of normalcy in the country. Damascus sees this is as a key point in the Annan initiative which all sides must respect.

Nicolas Nassif is a political analyst at Al-Akhbar.

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March 27, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

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