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Suffering ‘from the inept and cruel policies of the powers-that-be’

Jan 28,2015 - Last updated at Jan 28,2015

The depredations of the so-called Islamic State have forced US President Barack Obama and his advisors to rethink their attitude towards President Bashar Assad and his government in Damascus.

When asked late last year if the US still actively discussing ways to remove Assad as part of the political transition, Obama answered with one word: “No.”

But Obama continues to prevaricate and shift uneasily between his firm “no” and the demand for Assad to stand down, put forward in 2011 and officially in the Geneva proposal of June 2012.

Obama is not a man to admit defeat or mistakes. He still speaks of training some 5,000 Syrian “moderates” to enter Syria and fight IS.

This is a fantasy because IS recruits as many as 1,000 new men every month, many of them from Western countries liable to attack from IS “sleepers” recruited and left in place in their home countries.

If the international community is to go to war against IS, the effort must be wholehearted, total war rather than faint hearted, off-and-on aerial engagements without a strategy for the ground campaign.

The only troops capable of countering and ultimately containing IS in Syria belong to the regular army.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere is changing.

The most serious indication of this change was the interview with Assad published in Foreign Affairs last Monday to coincide with the opening of talks in Moscow among opposition groups.

The interviewer put 57 questions which Assad answered comprehensively, confidently and competently.

Foreign Affairs, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, is the premier US establishment mouthpiece on external affairs.

Appearing first in 1922, the magazine became a major testing ground for post-World War II policy when, in 1947, US diplomat and thinker George Kennan, writing anonymously as “X”, published an article on Soviet containment.

Since then, the publication has carried seminal articles by former Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev, senior European figures, US politicians and officials, and a host of regional experts.

In his lengthy interview, Assad made it clear that he was prepared to hold talks with all parties to the Syrian conflict, including “rebels” but not with Al Qaeda.

He favoured this week’s discussions in Moscow as a means to prepare for serious negotiations and called for a Syrian solution rather than a settlement imposed by external powers involved in the Syrian proxy war, even though some of those powers have been, along with the US, changing their stands towards Syria due to the rise of IS.

The Moscow meetings have been attended by individuals from the expatriate opposition National Coalition, as well as members of the domestic National Coordination Board also known as the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change including Haitham Manaa, the NCB’s Paris representative who enjoys a large degree of credibility.

Ousted deputy premier for economic affairs Qadri Jamil, a communist with some backing in Syria, and former expatriate opposition National Coalition chief Ahmed Jarba, Riyad’s man, also travelled to Moscow.

After two days of discussions among the opposition figures, Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Al Jaafari joined the meetings, indicating that the Russian-brokered encounter has not been in vain.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged the two sides to join forces against “terrorism”.

Building the Syrian State, Moaz Khatib (the only former coalition head with a modicum of internal backing) and the crop of coalition leaders may regret boycotting the opportunity to exchange ideas.

Recently elected coalition head Khaled Khoja comes from Syria’s tiny Turkmen minority, was educated in Libya and Turkey, and resides in Turkey where he has served as the coalition’s representative for several years.

His absence in Moscow appears to reflect the fact that Ankara insists that Assad must go and continues to funnel arms, funds and fighters into the country to join IS and its rival, Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra.

It is significant that the coalition delegation that attended the Geneva II talks convened in Switzerland a year ago was made up of individuals, rather than the coalition as a whole, because some of disparate and divided members could not agree whether to attend or which policy to follow.

The government entered the Geneva talks because it believed the opposition delegation operated as a telephone to the US and the other sponsors of the coalition, not because the delegation represented anyone in Syria.

Unfortunately, speaking to these powers on the coalition telephone did not lead to serious negotiations to end the bloody and destructive conflict in Syria.

A great many lives would have been saved and a vast amounts of treasure preserved if this had happened a year ago. And, of course, a peace deal might have preempted and prevented IS’ grab for power and territory in both Syria and Iraq.

While the international community continues to dither over what to do about the IS jihadist crisis in Syria and Iraq, the world’s richest powers have once again let down Palestinians made homeless by Israel’s 50-day blitz on Gaza that killed at east 2,310, the vast majority civilians, and left more than 100,000 homeless.

On Tuesday, the UN Relief and Works Agency announced it has suspended its cash assistance programme designed to enable families to reconstruct destroyed or repair damaged homes and to provide rental payments.

For this $720 million programme, UNRWA has received contributions of only $135 million. Some $3 billion was pledged for Gaza at the Cairo conference held last October. But “none of it has reached Gaza”, stated UNRWA’s Gaza director Robert Turner.

Instead, UNRWA received only the sum mentioned above.

The major donors to the UNRWA fund were Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Germany, which gave a total of $116.8; the rest was provided in single digit donations by the UK, Norway, Holland, Denmark, Spain, Pakistan, South Korea and Malaysia.

The US, which always supports Israel’s wars, has contributed nothing to the reconstruction of Gaza.

This must be compared to pledges made in Cairo which, Turner has made clear, are not connected to the above donations.

Qatar promised $1 billion, the European Union $568 million, Saudi Arabia $500 million, the US $212 million, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Turkey, $200 million each, Germany $63 million, France $38.7 million and Britain $32 million.

Once again the international community has failed to deliver for the people of Gaza.

The same thing happened in 2009 after Israel’s less destructive 22-day war on the narrow coastal strip.

At the time, $4.481 billion was promised over two years, but aid was not delivered and Israel not only blocked reconstruction but also tightened its siege and blockade, making it extremely difficult to rebuild.

Gazans, like Syrians and Iraqis, continue to suffer from the inept and cruel policies of the “powers-that-be”.

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