Syria at a dead end: listen to the Pope
Kofi Annan’s resignation casts a dark shadow over the situation in Syria. The escalation of violence is the responsibility of Assad and the opposition, whose plans for the nation’s future rest on eliminating each other. Divisions mire the Security Council: member states choose sides and sponsor their military and economic support. Annan: We need a comprehensive political process. The Pope: “wisdom of heart ” to reach a political settlement.
by Fr. Bernardo Cervellera
8/30/12
www.asianews.it/news-en/Syria-at-a-dead-end:-listen-to-the-Pope-(and-Kofi-Annan)-25465.html
Rome (AsiaNews) – Kofi Annan’s resignation from the post of UN peace envoy for Syria has cast a dark shadow over the present and future of the Middle Eastern country. The daily reports of massacres on both sides; the deadly bombing of cities by the Syrian army, coupled with the oppositions use of increasingly heavy weapons demonstrate that what has become a civil war is unlikely to have winners or losers: with all involved having decided to eliminate their opponent and plan a future without them, the two sides have unleashed a war to the bitter end.
Even if Assad thinks he will prevail, Syria will never be the country it was before the uprising: he will not only have to battle al Qaeda, the Free Syrian Army, or “terrorists”, but the majority of the population who are now demanding a role in the future of the country.
And if the opposition wins, it’s almost certain that there would be another civil war: so far, in fact, the is opposition frayed with each group pursuing its own path and unable to stitch together a semblance of future unity among themselves.
Kofi Annan’s lucid analysis denounces – openly and explicitly for the first time- both sides for the escalation of the conflict, taking away the aura of “partisan heroes” which the rebels have enjoyed so far.
But Kofi Annan especially accuses the UN Security Council and the international community of being divided of continuing to “point fingers” and “offend” each other.
United States, Britain and France have continued to criticize Russia and China for blocking decisive UN resolutions against the Syrian regime. But they – and especially the U.S. – have made the overthrow of Assad and his government an integral part of the resolution. By demonizing Assad they run the risk of another Iraqi failure, when at the fall of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. eliminated the bureaucracy and the administration of the Baath Party, condemning the country to years of anarchy and violence.
For their part, Russia and China (and Iran) flaunt their patronage over Syria, but they have never once offered any reasonable path for peace, contenting themselves to defend their relationship (even commercial) with Damascus.
The Arab League, and especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, an unlikely pulpit, continue to condemn the Assad dictatorship in defense of the Arab revolution provided that it stays outside their borders. And to combat a feared Iranian hegemony, they prefer to deliver Syria into the hands of al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalists, who have difficult lives in Riyadh and Doha.
The arms trade would deserve a chapter all on its own. In support of its chosen side each nation provides the following: helicopter gunships (Russia), communications and intelligence tools (France, Great Britain, United States); heavy weapons and money (Saudi Arabia and Qatar). The very nations that mandated Kofi Annan to seek a possible peace are all involved in the arms trade!
In an editorial published on the website of the Financial Times, Mr Kofi Annan asks the great and small powers to take the situation seriously. The former UN secretary says Russia, China and Iran “should take joint efforts to persuade the Syrian leadership to change course and embrace a political transition,” even if it means the departure of Assad. The Western powers, the Saudis and Qatar “must put pressure on the opposition to follow an inclusive political process – which must include communities and institutions that are currently associated with the government.”
The profound harmony between Annan’s pleas and those of Benedict XVI during the Angelus on July 29th is striking. The pope, who follows the events in Syria “with apprehension,” said he is praying to “God for wisdom of the heart, particularly for those who have the greatest responsibility, so no effort is spared in the quest for peace, even on the part of the international community, through dialogue and reconciliation, for the proper political settlement of the conflict. ”
The point is that the pope has at heart, “the tragic and escalating episodes of violence in Syria with the sorry sequence of dead and wounded, including civilians, and a large number of displaced and refugees in neighboring countries.” What we don’t know however, is what the Security Council or Arab League members have at heart. Perhaps only the meanest of interests.
Dealing with the Devil in Syria
Posted by Deacon Robert Spencer on Aug 3rd, 2012
frontpagemag.com/2012/robert-spencer/dealing-with-the-devil-in-syria/
A video circulating this week of Syrian rebels shouting “Allahu akbar” and executing four Assad partisans has horrified many in the West, but there have been numerous indications before this that the resistance to the Assad regime is not made up of the democratic pluralists of mainstream media myth.
Not surprisingly, that hasn’t stopped Barack Obama. According to Reuters Wednesday, he “has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government.”
This will meet with bipartisan support. Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly wondered last week in the mainstream Republican Weekly Standard: “Why hasn’t President Obama intervened militarily in Syria? After all, this is a president who issued a directive last year stating that a ‘core’ national security interest of the United States would be to prevent mass atrocities of precisely the kind Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is now unleashing on his own people. And this is a president who, to his credit, helped remove Muammar Qaddafi from power.”
Schmitt and Donnelly appear untroubled by the fact that the new leadership of Libya is made up of Muslim Brotherhood Sharia supremacists who, as they impose the fullness of Islamic law upon Libya, will impose all of Sharia’s legal oppression of women, non-Muslims, ex-Muslims, and others, and are certain to be no friend of the United States. And now they want Barack Obama to enable a similar regime to come to power in Syria. Their call for him to do so didn’t mention the Muslim Brotherhood or al-Qaeda, of course. Instead, they give the impression that they accept the prevailing mainstream media myth, that the anti-Assad forces in Syria are Western-style pluralist democrats, as they were advertised as being in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.
They aren’t any such thing in Syria, any more than they were in those other “Arab Spring” countries. John Cantlie, a British photographer, and his Dutch colleague, Jeroen Oerlemans, were recently kidnapped by Islamic supremacist rebels in Syria who threatened to murder them unless they converted to Islam. Significantly, they noted that where they were held, the rebel fighters were Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Chechens, with nary a Syrian in sight – a clear indication that jihadis from all over the world had traveled to Syria to participate in what they considered to be a jihad there: the uprising against the Assad regime. “As soon as Assad has fallen,” Oerlemans declared, “these fighters want to introduce Islamic law, Sharia, in Syria.”
Another sign of the jihadist character of the Syrian rebels is the rampant persecution of Christians. The Christians in Syrian generally tend to favor the Alawite Assad regime, which despite its repressive character is still a Ba’athist, generally secular regime that accords Christians more rights than they would enjoy in a Sharia state. “We’re too frightened to talk,” one Christian told an inquiring journalist. “Last summer Salafists came to Qusayr, foreigners. They stirred the local rebels against us. They sermonized on Fridays in the mosques that it was a sacred duty to drive us away. We were constantly accused of working for the regime. And Christians had to pay bribes to the jihadists repeatedly in order to avoid getting killed.” Another added: “Anyone who believes in this cross suffers.”
Thousands of Christians have been displaced from their homes, and others have left Syria altogether. Melkite Greek Catholic Bishop Philip Tournyol Clos lamented: “The picture for us is utter desolation. The church of Mar Elian is half destroyed and that of Our Lady of Peace is still occupied by the rebels. Christian homes are severely damaged due to the fighting and completely emptied of their inhabitants, who fled without taking anything.”
They have done so in the face of increasing jihadist assertiveness. In mid-July, a group calling itself the Brigade of Islam claimed responsibility for a bombing that murdered several key Syrian officials, including the nation’s defense minister and Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law. Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, has said that he believes that al-Qaeda was responsible for this bombing – and certainly it is active among the Syrian rebel forces.
The main beneficiary, however, of the toppling of Assad could be the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria Brotherhood chief Mohammad Riad Shakfa has said that after “long years of repression by the regime,” the movement has its best-ever chance to seize power there. The ANSAmed news agency explains: “The biggest force on the Syrian National Council, which is the West’s main opposition interlocutor, and very influential in the Syrian Free Army, the Muslim Brotherhood is supported by Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is also a Sunnite, and whom Assad accuses of fomenting a religious war in his country. If Syria were to follow the Egyptian model post-Assad, the country’s next leader might well be from the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Of course, Barack Obama enabled the new Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt to take power, and has warmly supported it despite increasing signs that it intends to impose Sharia, continue the repression of Christians that has been rampant in Egypt since the beginning of the “Arab Spring,” and even go to war with Israel. So why should Syria be any different? And indeed, it is not: in both cases, the United States is applauding and abetting the installation of regimes that will not show any gratitude toward its patrons in Washington, but which will instead pursue a jihadist course that is almost certainly to mean decades of strife and bloodshed to come.
If Jimmy Carter had any vestigial moral sense, he would deeply regret his active role in enabling the advent of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And if Barack Obama has any, he should likewise one day regret his role in the advent of Islamic supremacist Sharia states in Egypt and Syria. But however those men view their sorry legacy, conservatives of all camps should not make the mistake of supporting U.S. intervention on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies in Syria.
Tom,
Glad to see a solid insight into the horrific situation taking place.
Well written.