Syrian Justice

Syria, Syria, Syria… all indications suggest that so much struggle and tragedy for the past two and a half years is about to boil down to some geopolitical wrangling and a reprieve for Assad. The West’s bizarre fixation on the use of chemical weapons has actually probably saved the man from an international onslaught, their surrender deemed sufficient to compensate for those made dead or displaced by conventional arms. Assad’s intent to brutally eradicate any vestige of resistance has taken second place to what the rest of the world deems acceptable means.

A round of applause for Putin, I suppose, he has consummately bitch-slapped his western counterparts in this particular round of diplomatic manoeuvres. His op-ed piece to the New York Times yesterday was like an international victory dance, as the Russian proposal for Syria’s chemical disarmament simultaneously distracted from the core issue of the still raging war and allowed Obama to avoid an embarrassing defeat at the House of Representatives. But everyone gets to look tough and proactive, so yippee-kai-yay.

After the breakneck pace of the last couple of weeks – the clear signs of a chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the regime against a Damascus suburb, followed by rabid pronouncements of imminent action, followed by the decisive gut punch to any such action that was the UK Commons defeat on the motion – it somehow feels like a resolution of sorts is near. I say “of sorts” most generously. Here’s the potential reality we face – Assad loses his chemical weapons but is able to continue prosecuting his war courtesy of Russian and Iranian support, as the fractured movement against his regime is slowly choked out.

Russia maintains its vital Mediterranean ally, replete with warm water ports, while the balance of involvement from other regional nations shifts from military support to the rebels, to sustaining what will surely continue to be a long and painful refugee crisis, bought by Assad, paid for by Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. The international community will basically wash its hands of the scene, job done with regards to our arbitrary concern for chemical weapons, and not feeling too bad about the rest because of some decidedly symptom treating humanitarian support, pointless diplomatic pressure tantamount to screaming through sound-proof glass and because of the noxious proliferation of the narrative that Assad is only fighting terrorist Islamists.

What semblance of truth there is in that statement only exists because we stood back two or so years ago and watched Assad and the once more consolidated and honest rebellion open the doors to a broader sectarian nightmare. Would that the hammer had come down then. It seems to me that the catalyst for the current diplomatic route we’re travelling was the imminent threat of force, however stunningly deluded little Dougie Alexander might be, bleating as he his from within the Labour ranks about how they should take credit for all of this. No, rather Labour just managed to throw the whole process into disarray.

Intervention was justified, and only a consummate Milquetoast like Ed Miliband needed more proof… well, actually he didn’t, he just saw a window to beat Cameron for a change. There were more than enough indications that it could have been effective in crippling Assad’s regime. Putin and Assad were always sure to make the argument that intervention could only deteriorate the situation, it being in their deeply vested interests not to see the regime fail, and the general public of the UK and USA were all too willing to believe this after a decade of deeply controversial and largely unsuccessful actions in the Middle-East.

Oh but what about Hans Blix you say? That adherent to the UN, he warned against military action too. Yes well, the UN… an organisation, a vast organisation, with a mandate for self-preservation borne both out of the altruistic mission to hold the world together by the seams, and also by the self-interest of its employees. Military intervention would never have passed the Security Council and so would be necessarily in direct contravention to the UN. It’s ironic that Putin mentioned the League of Nations in his letter to America, as we could all be wondering how much more impotence and ineffectiveness the UN could actually survive at this point.

If nations like the USA, UK or France were constantly required to act without UN consent because of the permanently embedded impediment that is China and Russia on the Security Council, then what’s the point? Bravo, Putin, bravo.

What else is there to say? I guess this is about as much a measure of justice as those Syrians who wanted to be free of Assad are going to get. The justice of being shot, bombed and burned instead of gassed by a tyrant whose crimes somehow haven’t been deemed by the international community as so awful that his mere presence, let alone his continued rule, is as cruel an insult as one can imagine. How goddamned naïve of me.

Perspectives on Syria

I should really stop visiting the comments sections of major news organisation’s websites, particularly where currently pertaining to Syria. There is a reason that I have an almost negligible respect for the anti-interventionist brigade, which happens to be in the majority, and it can pretty much all be seen under every article on the Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Huffington Post… you name it. A deluge of utter morons has descended onto these forums to fill them with the most rank and misinformed perspectives on this issue. Conspiracy theorists, racists and the plain old idiotic who haven’t tried for a second to filter through the storm of information flowing out of the embattled nation seem to be forming this bulk of public opinion.

Here’s a selection of the standard offerings that have recently caused my blood to boil.

1. “This conflict was engineered by the USA in some sort of regional power play that would benefit Israel.”

This suggestion hardly even warrants attention, as the organic nature of the Arab Spring demonstrably fed into Syria, prompting localized protests against Assad’s regime that were brutally suppressed by Syrian security forces. Assad was already playing the “terrorists” card at this nascent stage of the civil war, causing a backlash of more protests that were also violently suppressed. Large elements of the Syrian army, not to mention the Syrian people, clearly took issue with this murderous tendency of Assad’s, causing desertion and defection to a newly established opposition front. Instead of negotiating, Assad escalated the conflict into a fully fledged civil war.

This all at the same time as US and Israeli relations being as tetchy as ever, and each country having plenty to concern themselves with. Months after the Syrian conflict began, both powers were quite content to ignore what was happening in Syria as Israel once again staged a short war in the Gaza Strip and the USA were deeply involved in Egypt, Libya and ever-so-slightly in trying to unsuccessfully mediate Israeli aggression in Gaza.

Narratively, practically, logically, empirically the first point is total bunk. It likely arises from the fact that the Golan Heights have been of significant strategic important to Israel since they took control of the region following the Six Years War, a conflict that was prompted by repeated antagonisms by Egypt, Jordan and Syria against Israel. Syria used the Golan Heights, which were supposedly demilitarized, to artillery bombard Israeli settlements.

In addition to this, Hamas and Hezbollah have both received extensive support from the Assad government over the course of their lifespans in order to engage in proxy conflict with Israel, a point of no small consternation to successive Israeli governments. There is clearly little love lost between these two nations, and the Syrian conflict is ripe for conspiracy theorists.

2. “The opposition are terrorists and have perpetrated the majority of the crimes in this conflict. Assad is the noble bastion of secular hope for a country that will otherwise be overrun by jihadists.”

This one is particularly offensive. At this deep and intractable stage of the war, there are indeed terrorist elements operating in Syria, but they are still only a small minority of the fighting element, unless of course you count the entire Assad regime. The Al Nusra front are estimated to have less than 10,000 fighters and are the only group with a known affiliation to Al Qaeda. Other groups with Islamist agendas such as the Syrian Islamic Front and Syrian Islamic Liberation Front promote varying degrees of adherence to Sharia principles and yet are still outnumbered by the ostensibly secular Free Syrian Army, by far the largest opposition element in Syria.

The Free Syrian Army was the earliest manifestation of an organised opposition force, back in the days when this conflict was generously still being called an internal security crisis. They formed off the back of Assad’s repeated employment of despotic measures to suppress calls for more democratic controls in a country that has been led by an Assad since 1971. The FSA has largely been comprised of the Syrian people who put down their trades and businesses and were forced to pick up guns because of Assad’s irreconcilable actions. Their numbers and efficacy were swelled by numerous defections from Assad’s own forces.

Assad and his state media machine have been persistently plugging the myth that all the while he has been fighting unlawful dissidents who threaten the regional stability brought by his regime. Many Western observers probably wrote the entire opposition off as a barbaric entity after a certain YouTube video showed one freak incident involving a rebel fighter cutting flesh from a dead Syrian soldier and having a nibble. Atrocious, yes, but wildly misrepresentative. There are actually other more substantive examples of non-individual controversies being attributable to the opposition forces, such as the use of suicide bombings.

But broad culpability for this war in general, and for the greatest share of specific actions that should chill a person to their core, are the responsibility of Bashar al Assad. As mentioned, he kicked the conflict off by using heavy military apparatus in an indiscriminate fashion against his own people, and perpetuated it likewise. The recent evidence of his use of chemical weapons is almost a moot point.

If the international community had taken decisive action at an earlier stage, we might not now be talking about how difficult intervention is because of the convolution caused by the presence of the the Al Nusra Front. I still don’t believe the existing terrorist element is actually significant enough to erode the secular emphasis of the Syrian nation.

Trying to de-legitimise the entire opposition based on the presence of these minority elements is either painfully misinformed or wilfully disgusting.

3. “Intervention is stupid. What, you want to stop Syrians dying by killing more Syrians? Warmonger.”

Shut the f@ck up. The reductive simplicity of this statement might make me want to cause you bodily harm. As if “intervention”, a term with a large variety of potential characteristics, implicitly means the West will indiscriminately carpet-bomb Damascus or that we’ll be dumping troops into another desert to slowly perish in a protracted occupation. People have been so quick to write off the effectiveness of any form of military intervention however, that I’m almost tempted to want precisely that so these types can see exactly how effective a well-executed intervention against a fatigued security force in a morale crisis can be.

Analysts and defectors have been quite clear that an array of military targets are available for Western forces to strike, which would have a devastating impact on Assad’s regime were he to lose them.

Accusations of warmongering could not be more ill-conceived. This conflict has been raging for about two and half years and the international community has more or less sat on its hands, being definitively too pathetic to act. It’s an utter tragedy that it’s taken over 100,000 dead and the blatant use of internationally outlawed chemical weapons to stop the world from dragging its feet over Syria.

As it is, the temperament of intervention is currently that the USA have given Assad a one week ultimatum to yield his chemical weapon stocks or face punitive strikes, an ultimatum actually backed by Putin who seems finally unable to ignore his nuisance regional ally. Yeh, that’s really champing at the bit for some death and mayhem.

4. “But if we do anything at all we’ll upset the delicate regional balance and makes things worse!”

This is the closest thing yet to a respectable anti-interventionist position, as indeed there is a fairly complex network of groups and interests at this point. However, as mentioned the FSA remains the key opposition unit in a country that has largely enjoyed secularism in its recent history, and the notion of an Islamist takeover strikes me as slightly exaggerated.

The main issue I take with this is that it is the same logic that has been applied by other nations from the start. After Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the immediate aftermath of Libya, there has been huge hesitance to do anything about Syria and look where we are now.

So… ok. Let’s keep doing nothing and hope for the best? Yeh. It’ll work itself out. Because the conflict isn’t at all only getting worse under the current conditions.

This one is called a difficult decision, and I put my stock in action at this point. Two and half years of frustration and upset caused by the endless newsreel out of Syria is about as much as I can take. Thus god forbid I was actually a Syrian right now.

Russia, China and Iran, by the way, are about as likely to involve themselves in a war as Ed Miliband is likely to ever possess a shred of moral scruples, or testicles for that matter.

5. “Iraq here we go again!”

No, and I’m not even sure where to start with this one. I’ll keep it simple. For reasons you should be able to research yourself, Iraq and Syria are completely different and must be judged by their own set of facts. Beyond this, the entire suggested character of Western involvement in Syria is SO different to Iraq that even the French are getting involved this time.

Yes, Hollande has shown a bit more international clout over Libya and Mali than his predecessors, but then add Merkel to the coalition, and Putin marginally stepping away from his unconditioned support of Assad, and you should be wondering less as to why I was so mean about Ed Miliband earlier.

6. “Intervention is really only about making Obama and Cameron feel good about themselves. Politicians like to massage their own egos with this sort of pointless action”

Again, hideously reductive. You know how racists often say, “I’m not a racist, but…”? The people who use this argument are almost exclusively saying, “We all care deeply for the Syrian people and want their suffering to stop, but… 6.”

Frankly, given how clear this matter is to me, and despite being in the clear minority, I’m starting to suspect that people pulling these daft arguments out are genuinely apathetic to this prolonged conflict, the many tens of thousands of dead, the millions displaced and a country laid to ruin.

Intervention is about stopping this conflict, and it has been demonstrated that intervention could be effective. If you think otherwise, you’re a cynic or worse.

7. “It’s not our problem, let the Syrians sort it out themselves.”

Well, as heartless as this perspective is, at least it’s honest. I would remind these people to think about their own words the next time they peacefully protest in this country about anything, or better yet, when they go to peacefully vote out this government, or the next, or many to come. Syria might not strictly speaking be our problem but it’s mighty hypocritical not to take into account the joys of living in a country like England.

Let’s just hope we never need any help should our government ever crack down on us Assad style, eh?

I’ve temporarily exhausted myself. But like the thronging crowds at a Victorian grotesquerie who can’t help but look in horror at the Elephant Man, I’ll likely return to these threads to encounter more of the best evidence I’ve seen to date that people can well and truly be utterly deluded.

All Matters Greater Than Us

It’s hard to turn a corner at the moment without bumping into some seminal event or other. Sometimes it can be nigh on impossible to build some enthusiasm for discussing the more banal issues and yet adversely I’m now overwhelmed and intimidated by the sheer quantity of incoming things of import. Where to begin? With an apology perhaps as each issue herein deserves individual attention but who the hell has the time!?

Paid writers, that’s who. But I’m not bitter. I’m still young, haven’t been doing this for that long, so there’s plenty of time to nurture my enmity for those who can pass their time as I would love to. Onto the actual stories of late, and three stand out in my estimations. The election of the new Pope Francis I, one Jorge Borgoglio of Argentina, the agreement on press regulation measures between the UK’s political leaders and the impending fiscal crisis coming out of Cyprus.

What is there to say about the new heartthrob of Catholicism? In a previous article I mentioned that all things Catholic have an almost completely indirect meaning to me, but that isn’t really true. Having hoped that the new Bishop of Rome would be a moderniser, without any substantive reason to believe this would actually happen, what we have in the end is a very austere and traditional figure who will likely only reinforce a lot of damaging values.

Homosexuals, women and the developing world will all have to wait for this rather archaic and hegemonic institution to liberate it’s flock from superstition and baseless propositions of moral authority. Pope Francis is already being lauded for his humility and stated mission of returning the faith to its roots, but it won’t last long. Every sermon denouncing gays and birth control will remind all that Catholicism is ultimately doomed for its anachronisms.

The scene of his coronation was exceptionally telling. A balcony full of old men, ordaining an old man with the powers of a faith system designed to empower, you got it, old men. If I was to say one thing in favour of Pope Francis is that I imagine he will be a fairly vocal critic of international super-wealth and the institutional corruption of the banking system that led the global village into dark economic times. It’s not much, but it is something.

As for the endless saga that has been the Leveson Inquiry, this one hits awfully too close to home for comfort. There are already whispers that this highly curious tripartite agreement between messirs Cameron, Clegg and Miliband spells potential doom for freedom of speech across all media. The papers have come in their droves to criticise the proposed measures and call attention to their dangerous implications.

Indeed, in a month or a year or a decades time, will I be able to write on this blog with absolute freedom, providing I’m not libellous? The calmer disposition says yes, and that the Royal Charter will only hit the true offenders, but I am still nervous. I say more than enough to offend those of certain views and the thought of having ‘exemplary damages’ taken against me is scary. Should I already begin tempering my thoughts out of fear?

Of course not. If I have faith in my critique as an honest expression of my beliefs, devoid of lies and slander then I should have nothing to fear. We’ll see. I always thought the existing law could have been enough to regulate the actions of unscrupulous journalists, if properly enforced, and what I see in the deal now is something of a coup for people like Hugh Grant, Steve Coogan and Max Mosley. As if the super-injunction wasn’t enough, they’re now protected to the hilt. Insult if you dare.

So finally Cyprus, the EU and the ever-gloomy outlook of the international economy. This is the issue that best encapsulates a loose theme I was pondering across these seemingly disassociated things. A great event occurs that I will have utterly no impact on as an individual but will likely, even if by degrees of separation, have a profound impact on me. It’s frustrating, and more so in this case because it’s so difficult to understand.

The bare bones are easy enough I suppose, in exchange for a 10bn euro bailout from the EU, Cyprus needs to produce somewhere over 5bn euros from bank levies. This is hugely controversial, deposit protection having been originally agreed as an internationally safeguarded measure to prevent runs on the banks, and indeed the Cypriot government yesterday voted against any such action being taken.

They had Merkel screaming in one ear to produce the goods and Putin screaming in the other for a different purpose. With 40% of the deposit wealth of Cypriot banks belonging to rich Russians, a bank levy would effectively be stealing Russian money, the provenance of which is broadly being called into question. Destitute Cyprus is now expected to appeal directly to Russia in light of their graciously being a haven for dirty roubles.

It is a desperately serious situation and all I can be is a spectator. I have nothing to offer on this matter, no original thought or bright idea that could serve to fix all of this. I’ll leave you with the thought that it’s possible no one does. All the while we hope there is someone with their finger on the pulse of these issues, working towards solutions, but this is all new territory. Let’s hope the intrepid politicians of the EU can pull something out of their rectums.

While it could be an unavoidable fact of life, I tire very quickly of external forces. All any one of us ever asked for was stability and degree of control over our own lives. I start to feel a little anarchic when confronted with all these concerns, almost entirely the product of the mistakes of others in far flung places. In today’s world the failures of faith and politics come back to visit us all.