"Landep News"
Bashar al Assad
Germany has presented on Monday a resolution draft, supported by most of the European countries, in which Syrian government is demanded to stop the assault on its cities, to implement political reforms, and to launch an investigation into the governmental crackdown on the people in Hama and in other cities of the country.
The German proposition comes in the wake of the blood bath in Hama, on Monday morning, when 100 people were gunned down in a demented shootout with automatic machine guns.
The resolution is met with opposition from some of the members of the U.N. Security Council, among which the BRICs, which said that the draft was too strong and a mild version of it should be found.
On Tuesday, however, Russia, a powerful ally of Syria, announced for the first time that it would not oppose a condemnation of the crackdown on demonstrators. Russia has long opposed such action in the U.N. Security Council, where it has a veto vote.
U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton met with Syrian opposition in Washington and told them the United States would continue to support them, and that additional sanctions are being considered against Assad’s regime.
Syrian activists asked the president of the United States to demand the Syrian president to step down.
On Tuesday, Italy called its ambassador from Damascus for consultations about the situation in the country, and demanded that the other European countries do the same.
Syria in the middle East
In fact, situation in Syria is beginning to look a lot worse than the one in Libya, considering that the regime does not show any sign that it would stop the crackdown on people any time soon.
Under the circumstances the question is why is Syria different from Libya, and most of all who’s got Assad’s back? Why is a man so loathed by Western countries still in office, unchallenged by the democratic word? Are the Western powers preparing the terrain for a future descend on al-Assad, or are they playing the very volatile game of power that is usually being played in the Middle East region?
The first answer that comes to mind when underlying differences between Assad and Qaddafi is that Muammar al Qaddafi was alone, while Assad has many friends in the Arab League.
Qaddafi turned away from pan-Arabism to pan-Africanism and even held the office of chairman of the African Union in 2009. It was the reason why the Arab League had no opposition to imposing a no fly zone on his country.
African Union was trying to defend Qaddafi, but it was little they could have done, given the abominations he had committed on the ground. Then, AU’s powers are very limited as compared to the ones of the Arab leaders.
Bashar al-Assad appears to have the support of many members of the leadership of the Arab world, and allowing him to be submitted to military intervention would bring into question their own positions, given that most of the Arab leaders had at least one demonstration against them since the beginning of the year.
Another matter that covers Assad’s back for the time being is the position of Turkey, which is a major player in the region and is asserting its “neo-Ottoman” doctrine more and more in the former empire.
Assad Meets Recep Erdogan
Turkey and Syria had a very good relation soon after Erdogan came to power, cooling the relations with Israel, the arch-foe of Assad’s regime. Erdogan distanced himself, however, from all the dictators in the Arab world, when he said that if faced with the choice between regime and people, he would have no problem choosing the people.
The tensions between Syria and Turkey continued to increase as the situation escalated this year, forcing Erdogan to demand Bashar al-Assad to put a stop to the crackdown.
Turkey opened its borders to receive many refugees coming from the neighboring country, and demanded the government in Damascus to cease oppression. But it did not ask Assad to step down.
Erdogan’s success in convincing the regime to stop killing their own people would definitely place him on the map of the Middle East as the key political figure that cannot be ignored when it comes to politics in the region.
Iran is another player in this game that up until now favors only Bashar al-Assad. Of all the Arab nations in the area, Syria is the closest to Iran, allowing the Persian Shia power access in a space where it is usually received with suspicion.
For that reason, whatever happens in Syria interests Iran very much, especially since the regime in Tehran promised the Syrian counterpart major investments and a close cooperation in the economic field.
Assad Meets Ahmadinejad
Attacking Syria now the way Libya was attacked would bring tension in the entire region beyond any simmering point. Iran could see such an attack as an attack on itself, which, to some extent, it would actually be.
Israel is probably the most important player in the game that has Bashar al-Assad unleashed with a machine gun in his hand shooting at random at his own subjects.
Syria has been one of the strongest opponents to Zionism, and to Israel for that matter, since the days of Hafez al Assad, the father of Bashar. Not only did they war directly, over the Golan Heights for example, but Syria and Israel have warred for decades in Lebanon, which is under Syrian influence, and Iranian military control through Hezbollah, the leading force in Lebanon, the one that stood up against Israel all these years.
Can anyone imagine whom would Hezbollah turn against, if Damascus were bombed by NATO? How could Israel face a war that would be pounding on its door, and could expand to unforeseeable consequences?
A few days ago, an international tribunal mad public the names of those who killed Rafiq Hariri, former Lebanese PM. Three out of four are considered to be Hezbollah-related. The Islamist movement has already stated that these men would not be sacrificed to the international court, and threatened that Lebanon would sink into chaos, if anyone attempted to arrest them.
Last year, the king of Saudi Arabia attempted to talk Assad into convincing the Hezbollah to have a milder stance on Hariri case. Before 2005, Assad had accused on various occasions Rafiq Hariri of poisoning Syria’s relations with the Saudi kingdom.
Assad Meets Saudi King
Since the unrest began in Syria, the another paramilitary organization this country supports against Israel, Hamas, attempted to normalize relations with Fatah, the Palestinian party in the West Bank.
Hamas is considered by Israel a terrorist organization and a blockade was imposed on Gaza since Hamas came to power, in 2007.
When Fatah and Hamas met in Cairo and decided to form one voice that speaks to the Palestinian people, the move was deemed by Benyamin Netanyahu as a sad day for democracy and a victory of terrorism.
From Israel’s angle, as long as Bashar al-Assad remains in office in Damascus, Hamas will not seek the friendship of Fatah, and the Palestinians will continue to be divided. Assad is an enemy of Israel, of course, but an enemy Israel can easily deal with, as shown in more than one occasions (one of which was the stopping of a shipment of guns from Iran to Syria and then possibly to Hamas, and the storing of confiscated explosives in the port in Cyprus, where they went ablaze a few weeks ago, causing the little island economic catastrophe).
The United States could be called the major mising player in this game, because they showed no interest whatsoever in al-Assad’s Syria. Since Syria has no significant natural resources, like Libya and Iraq, for instance, the U.S. are not willing to go to great lengths to defend democracy in this country.
U.S. army is pulling out of two wars that did not bring the country almost anything, besides the capture of bin Laden maybe, which could have been accomplished anyway by a single Delta Seals squad, without so many billions of dollars thrown by the window and hundreds of American lives wasted, without counting the immense number of Iraqi or Afghan killed in action or the ocean of tears these wars leave behind.
Afghanistan is about to revert to the situation before the war started, with the Taliban killing the family of the president of the country, while Iraq was by all means a failure for the American troops, considering that they eliminated Saddam Hussein by force, when they could have kept him and deal with him over the oil prices, and left behind a country in ashes, that will probably never get back on its feet, let alone to stand up against an enemy like Iran for instance, as it did in the 1980s.
To pile all up, the military conflicts that brought the country nothing, and the unchecked monetary politics led the U.S. to increase the debt ceiling of the country, thus placing the Union in the position to ask for more loans, and to pay more interests when the time comes.
As economic analysts speak of the possibility that the United States themselves enter insolvency at some point, dragging the whole world economy down with them, the prospect of an invasion in Syria seems very far away.
It would also be suicidal for a president who is expecting to win another round in office next year, and who could, for lack of any serious economic results, present the American public with at least the claim to have ended the ludicrous wars the previous administration had started in different parts of the world.
Sign of Syrian Revolution's Victory
Thank's for link:
0 Response to "Bashar al Assad"
Post a Comment