It’s a case of swinging earrings on Syria war
PHOTO | FILE Residents pass by buildings destroyed in a regime's bombardment in Ras al-Ain on November 26, 2012.
What you need to know:
- UN investigates a theft, but fails to ascertaining the name of the thief
Without apology, here is a take on Syria, in a week.
Into what is increasingly looking like a diplomatic and political swinging of earrings, Syria late last added a twist: a ceasefire.
Deputy Prime Minister Qarid Jamil said President Bashar al-Assad’s government will announce it when Geneva Two meeting to resolve the country’s conflict convenes. Nobody knows, if ever.
The often postponed Geneva Two was supposed to be a follow-up of an earlier international gathering that attempted to lay a framework for a coalition, national unity, whatever, government in Syria.
Presumably that would end the now 30-month-old conflict. It has claimed more than 100,000, displaced millions internally and as refugees, and left a rubbled country.
The earrings swinging—earrings swing all day but remain stuck—began after the now undisputed bombings with nerve gas sarin occurred August 21 in three Damascus neighbourhood infiltrated by rebels. The number of fatalities range from 1,000 to 1,400, all gender, different ages.
Syria has admitted possessing chemical weapons. When Assad turned, with security forces suppression and killings, of peaceful political demonstrators into a rebellion, U.S. President Obama and allies warned of consequences if Assad crossed the “red line” by using chemical weapons.
Reports of chemical attacks, allegedly by government forces, had circulated earlier. However, Obama, US allies and several other nations insisted on absolute proof. That led to the UN Security Council sending an investigation team.
As an example of earrings swinging, the investigators were mandated to ascertain use, but not apportion blame to user. That’s like investigating a theft, but not ascertaining the thief.
Of course Russia, Assad’s baby-sitter, and like-minded China, wouldn’t have gone along with any mandate that might incriminate Assad. They wield big sticks at the Security Council, vetoes. Additionally, each salivates at being a global Super Power, another story and potential conflict.
WORLD OUTRAGE
The UN investigators were in Damascus when the sarin bombings occurred. Worldwide outrage forced the Security Council to divert the team to probe the attacks, but, again, not to ascertain the perpetrator.
However, the U.S. and France insisted they had evidence Assad’s forces were responsible. Syria insisted the rebels were, and proceeded to show how not to lie intelligently by “discovering” traces of sarin in tunnels previously “occupied” by the rebels.
Russia took Syria’s side, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying the bombings were rebel provocations.
That position hasn’t changed. However, it remains unclear why, if the rebels had such lethal weapons and equipment, heavy and easy to locate, to launch them they didn’t aim at Assad’s palace.
Convinced Syria had used the chemical weapons, the Obama administration, to convince the world of moral and military superiority, moved armadas in eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
Then inadvertently, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave the Russian and his boss, Obama, a way to a win-win: were Syria to give up its biological weapons, it might avoid a US punishment, he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Assad continues to kill more people with conventional weapons provided by Russia.
The next step now is to get a Security Council resolution on what to do with Syria’s chemical weapons and convene a Geneva Two. Watch for more swinging of earrings.
