The Daily Star
January 29 2013
By Michael Glackin
British Prime Minister David Cameron appears to have the opposite of the Midas touch when it comes to foreign affairs. He has never looked particularly comfortable on the world stage, and these days he appears particularly hapless.
For instance, Cameron isn’t having much luck when it comes to his attempts to influence events in Syria. The growing complexities of the Syrian crisis have intensified Western anxieties about what will follow the anticipated toppling of President Bashar Assad. Government insiders talk about “facing another Iraq,” amid fears of a full blown sectarian civil war emerging from the ruins of the Assad regime.
To assuage such fears and accelerate planning for post-Assad Syria, the Foreign Office hosted a meeting this month with the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces at Wilton Park in Sussex. The meeting, which took place behind closed doors, was a perfect opportunity for the Syrian opposition to finally outline its plans for running Syria in the immediate aftermath of Assad’s removal.
It was hoped the coalition would at long last reveal who will serve in its transitional government and provide some information to representatives from Arab and Western governments at the meeting of what plans are in place to maintain order and ensure that state institutions continue to function once the Baath regime collapses. In a Twitter message about the conference, the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, pithily said: “Assad’s departure from power inevitable. Vital that international community plans ahead for the day after in Syria.”
Unfortunately, the meeting failed to deliver anything resembling a plan for what happens “the day after.”
The Syrian opposition had another stab at forming a government when it met in Turkey two weekends ago, and once again it came up short. It was hoped the meeting would at least nominate a transitional prime minister such as former Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab, who defected and joined the opposition last year. But this was rejected by the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the largest groups within the coalition.
If the Syrian National Coalition cannot agree on who will lead it, what hope is there that it is capable of running a country torn apart by a devastating civil war? Even a hastily arranged $20 million donation from Qatar on Jan. 21, which was seen as a precursor to naming a transitional prime minister and Cabinet in waiting, failed to rally the opposition.
Part of the reluctance stems from fears the West will balk at the number of Islamists in the government, hence the coalition’s desire to get all the foreign aid it can before going public. But is also reveals the deep divisions that still exist within the coalition.
Meanwhile, Walid Safur, the representative of the Syrian opposition in the United Kingdom, confirmed that with the exception of Syria’s pervasive intelligence apparatus, most of the country’s institutions, namely the judiciary, the police and the Syrian army, will remain intact after Assad is ousted. Under this arrangement, Syria’s armed forces will be “sent to their barracks” and remain there unless they are needed to maintain stability during the transitional period.
This is a demand of Western countries, mindful of the chaos that disbanding the army in Iraq helped cause in that country. The success of the armed forces will be largely dependent on Western aid and Gulf petrodollars to guarantee army payrolls and ensure that troops remain content in their bases. But unlike the armed forces of Egypt and Tunisia, the Syrian army has been far from a neutral player in the ongoing conflict. The army has been accused of a number of atrocities against unarmed civilians, and it remains to be seen whether Syrians who found themselves at the sharp end of the war will accept such a cozy arrangement. For them, the opposition coalition is a long way from the reality on the ground and has little credibility.
Despite almost two years of courting, encouraging, organizing and helping fund Syria’s opposition groups, the U.K. has seen only some broad brush strokes with little detail of how the transition from dictatorship to democracy will be implemented. The official line from the British government is that it is “happy with the progress” being made by the opposition and its commitment to democracy. But privately government insiders admit they are losing patience with the continuing failure of the Syrian opposition to form a transitional government or offer practical proposals that will ensure stability in the period right after the fall of the Assad regime.
In a desperate attempt to gloss over the situation, a government official insisted that the opposition was already gaining valuable experience establishing and running administrations in areas lost by the regime. But again, reports on the ground in Syria paint a very different picture. In fact, Free Syrian Army fighters have been accused of wide-scale looting and kidnapping for ransom.
In many areas, stability, and, more importantly for many, food and power supplies, are being provided by Islamic fundamentalists, including the Nusra Front which the United States insists is affiliated with Al-Qaeda and which has been designated a terrorist organization.
War makes strange bedfellows, and the National Coalition has pleaded with Washington to remove the Nusra Front from its terror list. Yet the organization is fighting to establish an Islamic state in Syria governed by Shariah law. This is hardly compatible with the Syrian National Coalition’s aspiration of a Syria where men and women from all the country’s ethnic groups enjoy equal rights.
The stark reality is that as the war enters its second year, the increasingly sectarian character of the opposition, like those of myriad fighters on the ground, is becoming more evident. And the longer the war goes on the greater the risk of increased divisions within the opposition and, more worryingly, of regional overspill.
No one is winning the war. In Libya the tipping point came when the West shifted from establishing a “no-fly zone” to bombing selected government targets. Despite the arrival of NATO arms and Patriot missiles on Turkey’s border with Syria this month, to be followed by the deployment of around 1,000 U.S., German and Dutch troops, it is unlikely that a similar scenario will play out in Syria.
Against this backdrop it is imperative that the Syrian National Coalition proves that it deserves the hopes invested in it before it is too late. It can only show it will govern for all Syrians, regardless of their creed or ethnicity, by revealing who will serve in its transitional government and by providing a blueprint for Syria’s immediate future. The U.K. may be losing patience with the opposition, but Syrians are losing their lives. And the opposition coalition is losing what little credibility it still has left with the West.
Michael Glackin is a UK based journalist and former managing editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Russia Today Cross Talk
Michael Glackin discussing Afghanistan on Russia Today's Cross Talk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTbsrVjCyk8
Friday, 21 September 2012
No more pretending in Afghanistan
The Daily Star,
Friday September 21 2012
The British foreign secretary, William Hague, insisted on Tuesday that NATO’s sudden decision to suspend joint patrols with Afghan forces will have a “minimal” impact on Western actions in Afghanistan. The decision, which followed the latest so-called “green on blue” shootings – where coalition troops have been killed by Afghan soldiers or policemen – has led to cries from all quarters that NATO’s Afghan policy, or “strategy” as the British government has suddenly taken to calling it, is in tatters.
The strategy, such as it is, rests on building up the Afghan army to a force of 370,000 and training the raw recruits through joint patrols with coalition forces. The idea is for the Afghans to gradually take over responsibility for security when NATO’s largely American and British combat force withdraws from the Afghan conflict in 2014.
Yet how can Western forces leave Afghanistan if the replacement forces cannot be trained to take over? The reality is that this week’s announcement finally kills the notion that the withdrawal of Western troops in the next two years hinges on training Afghan forces so that they can adequately fill the security vacuum.
So for once Hague is right. The decision to suspend, or “scale down,” joint patrols won’t affect American or British strategy one jot. And the reason for this is that the only strategy Washington and London are firmly committed to is an exit strategy. They don’t care what shape the Afghan army is in when they leave. Afghanistan will be left to the Afghans, whether their army is capable of policing the country or not.
Earlier this year a British official told me privately that the priority for Her Majesty’s Government was simply to “get out before it gets worse and leave it to the Afghans.” Now, by suspending joint patrols, NATO is effectively stating this publicly. And yet the United States and the United Kingdom have long been aware that the Afghan army is unequal to the task of taking responsibility for security, regardless of how many joint patrols they have organized with coalition troops.
In the limited number of operations they have led against the Taliban – which account for less than a third of all operations – the Afghans have been incapable of operating without the backup of NATO troops and air power. Speaking earlier this year, Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, an American and the second highest ranking soldier in Afghanistan from July 2011 until June 2012, conceded that only 1 percent of Afghan battalions could operate independently.
Short of an unlikely peace deal with the Taliban, the West will exit a country that is, at best, divided between the Taliban, local warlords and the moth-eaten administration of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul; or, at worst, in the throes of civil war. Poverty and death are rife in Afghanistan, and corruption within all branches of government flourishes. As in Iraq, the great beacon of democracy that the West promised would burn bright in Afghanistan will remain unlit as the U.S. and the U.K. scramble toward the exits in the darkness.
Tuesday’s announcement will at least save the lives of some coalition soldiers. The facts speak for themselves. Fifty-one NATO troops have been killed by Afghan forces so far this year – 15 in August alone. Last year there were 35 deaths from green on blue attacks. Yet in 2008, there were just two deaths from insider attacks. Many in the military believe the recruitment drive is to blame for the recent sharp increase.
The desire to build up the Afghan army to a strength of 370,000 has been crucial to providing visible cover for the withdrawal of Western troops. In the last year Afghan national security forces have grown rapidly to around 350,000, from 280,000 a year earlier. However, military insiders believe the race to increase troop numbers before 2014 has led to a sharp decline in the vetting of volunteers. This has allowed so-called rogue elements to get into uniform and kill unsuspecting NATO soldiers. It has even been claimed that one of the gunman in the latest attacks is related to a senior Taliban leader.
In the light of the suspension of joint patrols, and the deaths that led to the decision, there will of course be arguments in the United Kingdom about the continued merit of deploying troops to a war the West is determined to abandon. You can see the critics’ point.
NATO troops aren’t safe from their comrades in arms, the men they are fighting alongside and whom the West is relying on to fight and contain the Taliban once coalition troops leave.
Whether you believe the Taliban are coordinating these insider attacks or accept the official military line that the killings stem from personal grievances among individual Afghan soldiers is irrelevant. NATO has blown the opportunity to make Afghanistan a better place. The West has lost. And when Western countries are not even pretending to train Afghan troops, is there really any point in hanging around until 2014?
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper The Daily Star
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
More blood in an aimless Afghan war
The Daily Star
Tuesday March 27 2012
By Michael Glackin
In a month that saw six British soldiers killed in Kandahar, the worst loss of life suffered by British troops in a single incident since 2006, and the massacre of 17 helpless Afghans – including nine children – at the hands of a U.S. soldier, it was inevitable there would be renewed questions about the course of the war in Afghanistan.
And so there has been, from an increasingly war weary and skeptical public, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom. Unfortunately, there have been few answers from the politicians.
Instead, British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama, the leaders of the countries with the largest contingents in Afghanistan, repeat that stabilizing the country will reduce the risk of terrorist attacks at home. Yet both have set the date when their combat forces will be withdrawn, despite the fact that the efforts of the Taliban to destabilize Afghanistan continue unabated.
Confused?
In between jokes in the White House Rose Garden last month, both leaders insisted that the upsurge in violence had not affected the end of 2014 withdrawal deadline. Cameron even admitted that the U.S. and U.K. would leave Afghanistan without a “perfect democracy” in place, and with “huge developmental problems.” Stable government and improvement of the lives of Afghans have ceased to be priorities in Washington and London. The priority, as one British official told me, is to “get out before it gets worse and leave it to the Afghans.”
Nor does it apparently matter that American and British military sources doubt that the Afghan National Army will be capable of taking full responsibility for security when coalition troops leave in 2014 – let alone next year, as President Hamid Karzai demanded in the wake of the killing spree by the American soldier.
Some insist that this spring’s “fighting season,” when Taliban activity usually increases, will be a “good test” of the Afghan military, which has doubled in size to around 300,000 troops in the last year. But size isn’t everything. The Afghan army was unable to operate without the backup of coalition troops and air power in the limited number of operations (30 percent) that it has led against the Taliban. Speaking in February, Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, an American and the second highest ranking soldier in Afghanistan, conceded that only 1 percent of Afghan battalions were able to operate independently.
Barack Obama insists there is “no rush to the exits.” However, he needs to go into November’s presidential election saying he has ended both wars started under President George W. Bush. Cameron meanwhile is under increasing public pressure to end British involvement in a highly unpopular war. More than 2,000 people lined the streets to greet the coffins carrying the remains of the soldiers killed in Kandahar when they were returned to the U.K. last week.
Many in the U.K. believe it is obscene to continue fighting when Obama and Cameron have decided that the war is over and are not concerned of the condition in which they leave Afghanistan. Small wonder that the Taliban have abandoned the “preliminary peace talks” with the U.S. in Qatar. What have they to gain by them? What do Western negotiators say to the Taliban: “If you keep killing our troops we will leave Afghanistan in 2014”? How does that coerce or encourage the Taliban to scale down their murderous activities?
Despite the fact that the 2014 withdrawal deadline was generally agreed at a NATO summit in 2010, there is still no precise timetable either for the military drawdown or for bringing some elements of the Taliban into the tent of government, surely the ultimate objective in any negotiations with the movement.
Cameron, as a junior partner in the conflict, is waiting for Obama to fill in the details, and the U.S. president won’t do that until May. That is when a scheduled NATO summit will take place in his hometown of Chicago, and when his re-election campaign will begin in earnest.
It all smacks of soldiers’ lives, and those of the Afghan people, being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. The failure to set out a definitive withdrawal strategy has created a deadly vacuum for British and American troops who remain on a front line that their leaderships are now committed to abandoning.
So why are these soldiers still being made to risk their lives?
One of the original remits of the invasion was to “deny Al-Qaeda space in which to train and operate in Afghanistan,” and destroy the Taliban regime that protected them. Part of that has been achieved. Al-Qaeda is now happily ensconced in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. But the Taliban remain undefeated. Western military power and a couple of dodgy elections have kept Karzai in power in Kabul, but the south and east of Afghanistan remain under Taliban control.
The idea that the presence of coalition troops in Afghanistan is essential to the West’s domestic security is, sadly, laughable. And another justification for the war – to establish democracy, complete with rights for women – has also been abandoned. Karzai’s recent endorsement of an Islamic code permitting, among other things, wife beating, has helped undermine that facet of the Afghan campaign.
Then there is the role of troops in stamping out the Afghan heroin trade, which former British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted was a key element in the war on terror. Unfortunately production has increased from a mere 185 tons before the war in 2001, to 5,800 tons last year, according to United Nations figures. The U.N. estimates that 15 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP now comes from drug-related exports, with the trade having a net worth of around $2.5 billion.
As happened in Iraq, the remit for the military operation is being redefined so much that it has now become completely meaningless. There are no winners in this war. And the longer it goes on, directionless and unnecessarily, the more losers there will be.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
Tuesday March 27 2012
By Michael Glackin
In a month that saw six British soldiers killed in Kandahar, the worst loss of life suffered by British troops in a single incident since 2006, and the massacre of 17 helpless Afghans – including nine children – at the hands of a U.S. soldier, it was inevitable there would be renewed questions about the course of the war in Afghanistan.
And so there has been, from an increasingly war weary and skeptical public, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom. Unfortunately, there have been few answers from the politicians.
Instead, British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama, the leaders of the countries with the largest contingents in Afghanistan, repeat that stabilizing the country will reduce the risk of terrorist attacks at home. Yet both have set the date when their combat forces will be withdrawn, despite the fact that the efforts of the Taliban to destabilize Afghanistan continue unabated.
Confused?
In between jokes in the White House Rose Garden last month, both leaders insisted that the upsurge in violence had not affected the end of 2014 withdrawal deadline. Cameron even admitted that the U.S. and U.K. would leave Afghanistan without a “perfect democracy” in place, and with “huge developmental problems.” Stable government and improvement of the lives of Afghans have ceased to be priorities in Washington and London. The priority, as one British official told me, is to “get out before it gets worse and leave it to the Afghans.”
Nor does it apparently matter that American and British military sources doubt that the Afghan National Army will be capable of taking full responsibility for security when coalition troops leave in 2014 – let alone next year, as President Hamid Karzai demanded in the wake of the killing spree by the American soldier.
Some insist that this spring’s “fighting season,” when Taliban activity usually increases, will be a “good test” of the Afghan military, which has doubled in size to around 300,000 troops in the last year. But size isn’t everything. The Afghan army was unable to operate without the backup of coalition troops and air power in the limited number of operations (30 percent) that it has led against the Taliban. Speaking in February, Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, an American and the second highest ranking soldier in Afghanistan, conceded that only 1 percent of Afghan battalions were able to operate independently.
Barack Obama insists there is “no rush to the exits.” However, he needs to go into November’s presidential election saying he has ended both wars started under President George W. Bush. Cameron meanwhile is under increasing public pressure to end British involvement in a highly unpopular war. More than 2,000 people lined the streets to greet the coffins carrying the remains of the soldiers killed in Kandahar when they were returned to the U.K. last week.
Many in the U.K. believe it is obscene to continue fighting when Obama and Cameron have decided that the war is over and are not concerned of the condition in which they leave Afghanistan. Small wonder that the Taliban have abandoned the “preliminary peace talks” with the U.S. in Qatar. What have they to gain by them? What do Western negotiators say to the Taliban: “If you keep killing our troops we will leave Afghanistan in 2014”? How does that coerce or encourage the Taliban to scale down their murderous activities?
Despite the fact that the 2014 withdrawal deadline was generally agreed at a NATO summit in 2010, there is still no precise timetable either for the military drawdown or for bringing some elements of the Taliban into the tent of government, surely the ultimate objective in any negotiations with the movement.
Cameron, as a junior partner in the conflict, is waiting for Obama to fill in the details, and the U.S. president won’t do that until May. That is when a scheduled NATO summit will take place in his hometown of Chicago, and when his re-election campaign will begin in earnest.
It all smacks of soldiers’ lives, and those of the Afghan people, being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. The failure to set out a definitive withdrawal strategy has created a deadly vacuum for British and American troops who remain on a front line that their leaderships are now committed to abandoning.
So why are these soldiers still being made to risk their lives?
One of the original remits of the invasion was to “deny Al-Qaeda space in which to train and operate in Afghanistan,” and destroy the Taliban regime that protected them. Part of that has been achieved. Al-Qaeda is now happily ensconced in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. But the Taliban remain undefeated. Western military power and a couple of dodgy elections have kept Karzai in power in Kabul, but the south and east of Afghanistan remain under Taliban control.
The idea that the presence of coalition troops in Afghanistan is essential to the West’s domestic security is, sadly, laughable. And another justification for the war – to establish democracy, complete with rights for women – has also been abandoned. Karzai’s recent endorsement of an Islamic code permitting, among other things, wife beating, has helped undermine that facet of the Afghan campaign.
Then there is the role of troops in stamping out the Afghan heroin trade, which former British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted was a key element in the war on terror. Unfortunately production has increased from a mere 185 tons before the war in 2001, to 5,800 tons last year, according to United Nations figures. The U.N. estimates that 15 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP now comes from drug-related exports, with the trade having a net worth of around $2.5 billion.
As happened in Iraq, the remit for the military operation is being redefined so much that it has now become completely meaningless. There are no winners in this war. And the longer it goes on, directionless and unnecessarily, the more losers there will be.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
Monday, 13 February 2012
The time for talk on Syria is over
The Daily Star
Tuesday, February 14 2012
By Michael Glackin
Here’s a thought. Imagine that Russia and China had supported the recent diplomatic maneuvers at the U.N. Security Council to further isolate Syria. What difference would it have made to the innocent people currently being gunned down by President Bashar Assad’s troops? Absolutely none.
The limits of diplomacy are laid bare in the daily death toll on the streets of Homs, where more than 400 civilians are understood to have been killed in the government’s offensive against the city. The United Nations estimates that more than 5,000 civilians have been killed by Syrian security forces since the first demonstrations began 11 months ago, with some estimates putting the figure much higher. In Homs, Idlib, Hama and Deraa the British government believes that thousands of Syrians have suffered torture and sexual violence, including possible instances of the rape of children.
Assad is a desperate man who no longer cares that he presides over what is now the most violent country in the Middle East. And the murder, or “some mistakes committed by some officials,” as the Syrian president memorably described the human carnage during an interview with American journalist Barbara Walters, will continue in the absence of decisive action by the rest of the world.
Both the United States and the United Kingdom have firmly ruled out military action and insist that they have no intention of arming the still bitterly divided Syrian opposition. British Foreign Secretary William Hague was at pains in the first week of February to stress that his government has had “no contact” with the Free Syrian Army during its consultations with Syrian opposition groups.
It remains to be seen whether the Arab League has the stomach to fight a war with one of its members, despite increased speculation that Qatar has been supplying military aid to the rebels. At an Arab League meeting on Sunday, however, Arab states said they would seek to provide Syrian opposition groups with political and material support. Turkey has also been more vocal in the past week, but has had to tread carefully amid fears that its outspokenness might drive Syria’s Kurds into Assad’s arms.
Hague said that the U.K. and other nations would look for a resolution at the U.N. General Assembly, though these are non-binding. Saudi Arabia has circulated a draft similar to the one that was vetoed by the Security Council. The foreign secretary also outlined proposals for a “Friends of Syria” group of countries under the aegis of the Arab League, which would increase sanctions against the Assad regime.
In reality the “Friends of Syria” proposal is the outcome of the British government and Western countries in general casting around for a new policy toward Syria and failing to find one. Last year, the Cameron government appointed Frances Mary Guy, a former ambassador to Lebanon, to coordinate relations with Syria’s opposition – or as one official put it more pithily, “to knock their heads together.” A Foreign Office official told me on Feb. 9 that Guy was “getting to grips” with the task. “The Syrian opposition is not at the same stage as the Libyan opposition, it will take time,” the official noted.
In plain English that means the head-knocking has failed. Guy has met with opposition leaders in London, Paris, Ankara and Istanbul, but despite her travels, insiders concede that creating a credible – never mind representative – opposition, is all but impossible.
Many of the groups refuse to even speak to each other. Just one example of the task facing Guy is that the U.K., along with France and the U.S., has urged the main opposition coalition, the Syrian National Council, to “reach out” to the Kurdish National Council, which represents the majority of Syrian Kurds. However, despite tentative negotiations between the two groups, that plea has not led very far. Many Kurds view the SNC as a front for Turkish ambitions in the region. Then there are the stark divisions between the SNC and the rival National Coordination Body.
At the same time, the opposition has no regional foothold in Syria as did the Libyan rebels in Benghazi. Privately, British government officials admit there is no plausible route to the opposition seizing power, even if it were actually capable of forming a government.
Russia and China have defended Assad only partly to protect their business interests. Russia’s navy has access to the Tartous port, however Russian arms sales to Syria, worth between $700 million and $1 billion, account for an estimated 7 percent of Russia’s annual global arms sales, which is not particularly high. Chinese exports to Syria have risen sharply in recent years, but traffic along the so-called “New Silk Road” is decidedly one way these days. China exports around $2.5 billion worth of goods annually to Syria, and has invested in a number of its oil production and exploration projects. Syrian exports to China are worth less than $6 million.
Against this background Russian and Chinese diplomatic moves are nothing short of shameful. But if we accept that arming Syria’s divided opposition is not sensible and that military intervention, even by the Arab League, is a non-starter, what else can be done?
In the absence of meaningful action, the West, Russia, China and the Arab League can do one thing: They can demand that Syria open up Homs and other cities under siege to international aid agencies. Indeed, that is precisely what the Arab League intended to do by proposing on Sunday that the U.N. deploy a peacekeeping force in Syria. The Arab states know the divided Security Council will not to pass such a decision, but are calculating that a compromise resolution will advocate support for a humanitarian mission.
Homs is a humanitarian disaster and it shames the international community to allow it to remain so. That is surely something that everyone can agree on. Providing the means to enable relief agencies to help those who are enduring the unendurable, whether it is done through the offices of Russia and China or some other means, is surely the very least that diplomacy in this day and age can achieve.
The “Friends of Syria” group, when it meets on Feb. 24, will no doubt come up with new words of condemnation and fresh sanctions. But while it deliberates, murder and mayhem reign in Syria. The time for talk should be over.
Tuesday, February 14 2012
By Michael Glackin
Here’s a thought. Imagine that Russia and China had supported the recent diplomatic maneuvers at the U.N. Security Council to further isolate Syria. What difference would it have made to the innocent people currently being gunned down by President Bashar Assad’s troops? Absolutely none.
The limits of diplomacy are laid bare in the daily death toll on the streets of Homs, where more than 400 civilians are understood to have been killed in the government’s offensive against the city. The United Nations estimates that more than 5,000 civilians have been killed by Syrian security forces since the first demonstrations began 11 months ago, with some estimates putting the figure much higher. In Homs, Idlib, Hama and Deraa the British government believes that thousands of Syrians have suffered torture and sexual violence, including possible instances of the rape of children.
Assad is a desperate man who no longer cares that he presides over what is now the most violent country in the Middle East. And the murder, or “some mistakes committed by some officials,” as the Syrian president memorably described the human carnage during an interview with American journalist Barbara Walters, will continue in the absence of decisive action by the rest of the world.
Both the United States and the United Kingdom have firmly ruled out military action and insist that they have no intention of arming the still bitterly divided Syrian opposition. British Foreign Secretary William Hague was at pains in the first week of February to stress that his government has had “no contact” with the Free Syrian Army during its consultations with Syrian opposition groups.
It remains to be seen whether the Arab League has the stomach to fight a war with one of its members, despite increased speculation that Qatar has been supplying military aid to the rebels. At an Arab League meeting on Sunday, however, Arab states said they would seek to provide Syrian opposition groups with political and material support. Turkey has also been more vocal in the past week, but has had to tread carefully amid fears that its outspokenness might drive Syria’s Kurds into Assad’s arms.
Hague said that the U.K. and other nations would look for a resolution at the U.N. General Assembly, though these are non-binding. Saudi Arabia has circulated a draft similar to the one that was vetoed by the Security Council. The foreign secretary also outlined proposals for a “Friends of Syria” group of countries under the aegis of the Arab League, which would increase sanctions against the Assad regime.
In reality the “Friends of Syria” proposal is the outcome of the British government and Western countries in general casting around for a new policy toward Syria and failing to find one. Last year, the Cameron government appointed Frances Mary Guy, a former ambassador to Lebanon, to coordinate relations with Syria’s opposition – or as one official put it more pithily, “to knock their heads together.” A Foreign Office official told me on Feb. 9 that Guy was “getting to grips” with the task. “The Syrian opposition is not at the same stage as the Libyan opposition, it will take time,” the official noted.
In plain English that means the head-knocking has failed. Guy has met with opposition leaders in London, Paris, Ankara and Istanbul, but despite her travels, insiders concede that creating a credible – never mind representative – opposition, is all but impossible.
Many of the groups refuse to even speak to each other. Just one example of the task facing Guy is that the U.K., along with France and the U.S., has urged the main opposition coalition, the Syrian National Council, to “reach out” to the Kurdish National Council, which represents the majority of Syrian Kurds. However, despite tentative negotiations between the two groups, that plea has not led very far. Many Kurds view the SNC as a front for Turkish ambitions in the region. Then there are the stark divisions between the SNC and the rival National Coordination Body.
At the same time, the opposition has no regional foothold in Syria as did the Libyan rebels in Benghazi. Privately, British government officials admit there is no plausible route to the opposition seizing power, even if it were actually capable of forming a government.
Russia and China have defended Assad only partly to protect their business interests. Russia’s navy has access to the Tartous port, however Russian arms sales to Syria, worth between $700 million and $1 billion, account for an estimated 7 percent of Russia’s annual global arms sales, which is not particularly high. Chinese exports to Syria have risen sharply in recent years, but traffic along the so-called “New Silk Road” is decidedly one way these days. China exports around $2.5 billion worth of goods annually to Syria, and has invested in a number of its oil production and exploration projects. Syrian exports to China are worth less than $6 million.
Against this background Russian and Chinese diplomatic moves are nothing short of shameful. But if we accept that arming Syria’s divided opposition is not sensible and that military intervention, even by the Arab League, is a non-starter, what else can be done?
In the absence of meaningful action, the West, Russia, China and the Arab League can do one thing: They can demand that Syria open up Homs and other cities under siege to international aid agencies. Indeed, that is precisely what the Arab League intended to do by proposing on Sunday that the U.N. deploy a peacekeeping force in Syria. The Arab states know the divided Security Council will not to pass such a decision, but are calculating that a compromise resolution will advocate support for a humanitarian mission.
Homs is a humanitarian disaster and it shames the international community to allow it to remain so. That is surely something that everyone can agree on. Providing the means to enable relief agencies to help those who are enduring the unendurable, whether it is done through the offices of Russia and China or some other means, is surely the very least that diplomacy in this day and age can achieve.
The “Friends of Syria” group, when it meets on Feb. 24, will no doubt come up with new words of condemnation and fresh sanctions. But while it deliberates, murder and mayhem reign in Syria. The time for talk should be over.
Friday, 25 November 2011
A British warning to Syria's opposition
The Daily Star
Friday November 25 2011
By Michael Glackin
On a dry, chilly Damascus night in late 2004, I shared a pot of sweet strong coffee with Abdullah Dardari, then Syrian deputy prime minister for economic affairs and the man charged with dragging the country’s moribund economy into the 21st century.
As he outlined his plans for opening up Syria to foreign investment, creating new jobs, and increasing prosperity, I pointed out that economic reform had a habit of being a catalyst for political reform, something that was unlikely to find favor with the ruling Baath Party.
Dardari smiled and assured me that political change was part of President Bashar Assad’s plan for Syria. His exact words were: “The understanding that there is a need for political and judicial reform is there. It’s not a taboo subject. I am not a Baath Party member, but if you look at what’s happening in the party today there is recognition of the need to develop the political system.”
Well that was then. In the event, Syrians got neither political nor economic reform. Dardari, the only reform-minded senior politician within the Syrian regime, was ousted in March when Assad sacked Mohammad Naji al-Otari’s Cabinet. Dardari’s removal came partly because Assad had grown tired of criticism within the Baath of his largely failed attempts to attract foreign investment – a pretty impossible task considering the Kafkaesque bureaucracy underpinning Assad rule. It came also because removing a well-known reformer sent a signal to Syrians that institutional changes of any sort that undermined Assad’s grip on power (Dardari’s tentative reforms increased unemployment, and with that anti-Assad sentiment) would not be part of Syria’s future.
Assad’s new government, unveiled in April, was a retreat to the bunker. Assad is increasingly isolated, with only Russia and China preventing global sanctions from being imposed on Syria, and just Yemen and Lebanon offering lukewarm Arab support. He has now dug in, surrounded by family and cronies. But the forces enveloping his regime – European and American sanctions, international disapproval, and unending street protests verging on civil war – look overwhelming.
It is the realization that the game finally looks over for Assad that is currently exercising the British government. Particularly against the backdrop of current events in Egypt, the United Kingdom is very worried about what will happen next in Syria.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s warning to Syria’s disparate opposition groups to “put aside their differences” was the diplomatic equivalent of a clip around the ear to squabbling children. Hague’s meeting this week with opposition representatives may have, in the words of the government, “intensified the U.K.’s engagement with the opposition.” In reality, it has given London a rude awakening about the caliber of Assad’s opponents.
In contrast to its approach to opponents of Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya, Hague insisted the U.K. would not recognize the Syrian opposition while it remains so fractured and poorly coordinated. When you consider that the Libyan opposition was no paragon of unity, you get a good idea of how highly the British government rates the Syrian opposition.
The problem for the U.K. is, as Hague alluded to after his meetings with members of the Syrian National Council and the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCC), as well as individuals aligned with neither group, is that the Syrian opposition isn’t in any fit state to fill the vacuum if Assad is removed from power. Worse still, privately the government fears such a disunited opposition runs the risk of jeopardizing the goal of overthrowing Assad’s regime.
Unlike the Libyan opposition, which was based in eastern Libya, Syria’s opposition is spread across the Middle East, Turkey, France and the United Kingdom. The SNC includes the Muslim Brotherhood, which backs Turkish military intervention to overthrow Assad. The Brotherhood has a very different vision of a post-Assad Syria than others in the SNC. The NCC still favors talks with the Assad regime. And the hastily formed Free Syrian Army, composed of army deserters whose leader has been given refuge in Turkey, wants to be recognized as the military wing of the opposition, something the SNC won’t countenance.
Meanwhile Syria’s Kurdish population is understandably wary about Turkey’s increasingly high-profile involvement in the current turmoil. Ankara’s denunciations of the Assad regime are growing more bellicose, and there is speculation that Turkey will send troops into Syria to create a buffer zone for those fleeing the continuing violence.
Kurdish groups have also held meetings with representatives of the British government and warned that any military intervention by Turkey is likely to result in Kurds taking up arms to oppose them. Whether Turkey, whose president, Abdullah Gul, visited London this week, wants to become involved in military action is a moot point. But Ankara’s criticism of Assad is getting close to fever pitch. Earlier this week Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared Assad to Adolph Hitler.
Any armed confrontation with Turkey could play into Assad’s hands. However, as the situation grows ever more violent, Arab states, most notably Saudi Arabia, fear that Syria’s continuing instability will spread across the region if decisive action is not taken soon.
It remains to be seen what the Arab League will decide to do after its suspension of Syria’s membership in the organization. The United Nations will not repeat its actions in Libya. Much as the United States, France and the U.K. – not to mention Saudi Arabia – would like a pro-Western Syria to act as a counterweight to Iran, the West has firmly ruled out military action or no-fly zones in a country of much greater global strategic importance and sensitivity than Libya.
As one British government insider succinctly put it: “There is a lot at stake here, but ultimately the opposition needs to get its act together, look beyond their own egos and aims, and consider the needs of the Syrian people.” Like Assad, it appears the West has no Plan B.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star
Friday November 25 2011
By Michael Glackin
On a dry, chilly Damascus night in late 2004, I shared a pot of sweet strong coffee with Abdullah Dardari, then Syrian deputy prime minister for economic affairs and the man charged with dragging the country’s moribund economy into the 21st century.
As he outlined his plans for opening up Syria to foreign investment, creating new jobs, and increasing prosperity, I pointed out that economic reform had a habit of being a catalyst for political reform, something that was unlikely to find favor with the ruling Baath Party.
Dardari smiled and assured me that political change was part of President Bashar Assad’s plan for Syria. His exact words were: “The understanding that there is a need for political and judicial reform is there. It’s not a taboo subject. I am not a Baath Party member, but if you look at what’s happening in the party today there is recognition of the need to develop the political system.”
Well that was then. In the event, Syrians got neither political nor economic reform. Dardari, the only reform-minded senior politician within the Syrian regime, was ousted in March when Assad sacked Mohammad Naji al-Otari’s Cabinet. Dardari’s removal came partly because Assad had grown tired of criticism within the Baath of his largely failed attempts to attract foreign investment – a pretty impossible task considering the Kafkaesque bureaucracy underpinning Assad rule. It came also because removing a well-known reformer sent a signal to Syrians that institutional changes of any sort that undermined Assad’s grip on power (Dardari’s tentative reforms increased unemployment, and with that anti-Assad sentiment) would not be part of Syria’s future.
Assad’s new government, unveiled in April, was a retreat to the bunker. Assad is increasingly isolated, with only Russia and China preventing global sanctions from being imposed on Syria, and just Yemen and Lebanon offering lukewarm Arab support. He has now dug in, surrounded by family and cronies. But the forces enveloping his regime – European and American sanctions, international disapproval, and unending street protests verging on civil war – look overwhelming.
It is the realization that the game finally looks over for Assad that is currently exercising the British government. Particularly against the backdrop of current events in Egypt, the United Kingdom is very worried about what will happen next in Syria.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s warning to Syria’s disparate opposition groups to “put aside their differences” was the diplomatic equivalent of a clip around the ear to squabbling children. Hague’s meeting this week with opposition representatives may have, in the words of the government, “intensified the U.K.’s engagement with the opposition.” In reality, it has given London a rude awakening about the caliber of Assad’s opponents.
In contrast to its approach to opponents of Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya, Hague insisted the U.K. would not recognize the Syrian opposition while it remains so fractured and poorly coordinated. When you consider that the Libyan opposition was no paragon of unity, you get a good idea of how highly the British government rates the Syrian opposition.
The problem for the U.K. is, as Hague alluded to after his meetings with members of the Syrian National Council and the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCC), as well as individuals aligned with neither group, is that the Syrian opposition isn’t in any fit state to fill the vacuum if Assad is removed from power. Worse still, privately the government fears such a disunited opposition runs the risk of jeopardizing the goal of overthrowing Assad’s regime.
Unlike the Libyan opposition, which was based in eastern Libya, Syria’s opposition is spread across the Middle East, Turkey, France and the United Kingdom. The SNC includes the Muslim Brotherhood, which backs Turkish military intervention to overthrow Assad. The Brotherhood has a very different vision of a post-Assad Syria than others in the SNC. The NCC still favors talks with the Assad regime. And the hastily formed Free Syrian Army, composed of army deserters whose leader has been given refuge in Turkey, wants to be recognized as the military wing of the opposition, something the SNC won’t countenance.
Meanwhile Syria’s Kurdish population is understandably wary about Turkey’s increasingly high-profile involvement in the current turmoil. Ankara’s denunciations of the Assad regime are growing more bellicose, and there is speculation that Turkey will send troops into Syria to create a buffer zone for those fleeing the continuing violence.
Kurdish groups have also held meetings with representatives of the British government and warned that any military intervention by Turkey is likely to result in Kurds taking up arms to oppose them. Whether Turkey, whose president, Abdullah Gul, visited London this week, wants to become involved in military action is a moot point. But Ankara’s criticism of Assad is getting close to fever pitch. Earlier this week Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared Assad to Adolph Hitler.
Any armed confrontation with Turkey could play into Assad’s hands. However, as the situation grows ever more violent, Arab states, most notably Saudi Arabia, fear that Syria’s continuing instability will spread across the region if decisive action is not taken soon.
It remains to be seen what the Arab League will decide to do after its suspension of Syria’s membership in the organization. The United Nations will not repeat its actions in Libya. Much as the United States, France and the U.K. – not to mention Saudi Arabia – would like a pro-Western Syria to act as a counterweight to Iran, the West has firmly ruled out military action or no-fly zones in a country of much greater global strategic importance and sensitivity than Libya.
As one British government insider succinctly put it: “There is a lot at stake here, but ultimately the opposition needs to get its act together, look beyond their own egos and aims, and consider the needs of the Syrian people.” Like Assad, it appears the West has no Plan B.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
The West can’t afford to lose in Libya
The Daily Star
Wednesday, August 10 2011
By Michael Glackin
“Of course, you mustn’t call them rebels anymore,” a minor but informed cog in the wheel of the British government told me the other day during a discussion about Libya. “These days we only use the term National Transitional Council – NTC for short. They are essentially the de facto government in waiting.”
I mention this only because, despite almost six months of bombing and bloodshed, insisting on calling the rebels the NTC appears to be the only new idea Her Majesty’s government has had in addressing the stalemated conflict in Libya.
Policy remains wedded to the maxim that it is “just a matter of time” before Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi crumbles and the NTC steps in to fill the vacuum. But in reality, all those six months of nightly airstrikes have achieved is to turn a halfhearted military action into a wholehearted farce. The Foreign Office is worryingly starting to sound like Iraq’s former information minister during the 2003 invasion, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf (mocked as “Comical Ali”), who famously announced the U.S. military was on the verge of surrendering to Iraqi forces the day before coalition tanks rolled into Baghdad.
A Foreign Office spokesperson insisted to me last week that “the tide is moving inexorably against Gadhafi. Pressure is increasing on all sides, politically, economically and militarily. Militarily there is steady progress across the board. Reports suggest that morale amongst the regime’s forces is low. Economic sanctions are restricting Gadhafi’s ability to wage war on his own people. We will sustain our actions for as long as is necessary. Time is on our side, it is not on the side of Gadhafi.”
So just as Vladimir and Estragon waited hopelessly for Godot, in Samuel Becket’s absurdist play “Waiting for Godot,” British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Libyan rebels, sorry the NTC, wait, and wait, for Gadhafi’s fall. But as the days turn to weeks and the weeks turn to months, Gadhafi’s grip on power is as firm or tenuous as it was when the NATO airstrikes began, while the integrity of the rebel forces, and the West, is in tatters.
Cameron, Sarkozy and U.S. President Barack Obama have primarily relied on airstrikes in Libya to avoid Western military casualties on the ground. Instead of having the courage to take decisive action, they have adopted a strategy that has dragged the war out and led to the deaths of increasing numbers of civilians. These are the very people that the United Nations mandate for action in Libya was supposed to protect.
Elsewhere in the Arab world, the West’s lack of resolve in Libya has also emboldened Syrian President Bashar Assad to crush his political opposition. The Syrian dictator has been killing his countrymen without fear of reprisal from Western democracies, whose leaders look increasingly unsure of themselves on the global stage.
Right now there isn’t much left to bomb. That’s why, last week, NATO bombers destroyed three Libyan state TV transmitters and killed three reporters in order to, in the words of the British Defense Ministry, “disrupt the broadcast of Gadhafi’s murderous rhetoric, which has repeatedly sought to incite violence against fellow Libyans”.
There is speculation that a militant Islamist rebel militia, the Al-Nidaa brigade, which is linked to the still-unexplained murder of rebel army commander Abdel-Fattah Younis, had been receiving coded orders via state television. The bombing came as NTC fighters stormed an Al-Nidaa base in Benghazi days after the brigade freed more than 200 prisoners from jail in the city. Many of the prisoners are reportedly linked to militant Islamic groups.
Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, sat for a bizarre interview with The New York Times last week in which he claimed that an alliance now existed between the regime and Islamist cleric Ali Sallabi. This was subsequently dismissed by the Gadhafi regime itself, by the NTC and by the British government. But the fact that the regime had conducted talks with Sallabi, particularly in the wake of Younis’ death, suggests there are splits in the rebel camp, which run deeper than previously thought.
We now have a divided and possibly splintering rebel force, Gadhafi still ruling over half the country, and American and European attention focused on economic woes at home. Intervention lite has reduced the West to a laughingstock. One British government insider joked that the only way out of the stalemate was for Gadhafi to suffer a stroke, as there was “precious little left to bomb now.” Short of mortal illness or assassination, a negotiated settlement with the Libyan leader looks ever more likely.
Last month British Foreign Secretary William Hague and his French counterpart, Alain Juppe, signaled Gadhafi could even stay in Libya if he stood down now. Such an outcome is unlikely, but Seif al-Islam’s talks with Sallabi also appear to have touched on this issue, although Sallabi insists Gadhafi cannot remain in Libya. Increasingly, British officials are saying that what happens to the Libyan leader is up to the Libyan people, not the international community, even though Gadhafi was indicted by the International Criminal Court earlier this year.
You don’t have to be a hard-bitten realist to acknowledge that if you intervene in someone else’s civil war you should choose the side most likely to win, and then make sure that it does. Intervention in Libya remains the right thing, but war is all or nothing. And the longer this war goes on, the less likely are we to see any sort of political outcome that benefits Libya’s long-suffering people or the wider world.
Time may not be on Gadhafi’s side, but it is fast running out for the West as well. Gadhafi only has to survive. The West needs to finish what it started before its inaction totally discredits its leadership and values. Otherwise, the “Arab spring” will face a very bleak winter indeed.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of THE DAILY STAR.
Wednesday, August 10 2011
By Michael Glackin
“Of course, you mustn’t call them rebels anymore,” a minor but informed cog in the wheel of the British government told me the other day during a discussion about Libya. “These days we only use the term National Transitional Council – NTC for short. They are essentially the de facto government in waiting.”
I mention this only because, despite almost six months of bombing and bloodshed, insisting on calling the rebels the NTC appears to be the only new idea Her Majesty’s government has had in addressing the stalemated conflict in Libya.
Policy remains wedded to the maxim that it is “just a matter of time” before Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi crumbles and the NTC steps in to fill the vacuum. But in reality, all those six months of nightly airstrikes have achieved is to turn a halfhearted military action into a wholehearted farce. The Foreign Office is worryingly starting to sound like Iraq’s former information minister during the 2003 invasion, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf (mocked as “Comical Ali”), who famously announced the U.S. military was on the verge of surrendering to Iraqi forces the day before coalition tanks rolled into Baghdad.
A Foreign Office spokesperson insisted to me last week that “the tide is moving inexorably against Gadhafi. Pressure is increasing on all sides, politically, economically and militarily. Militarily there is steady progress across the board. Reports suggest that morale amongst the regime’s forces is low. Economic sanctions are restricting Gadhafi’s ability to wage war on his own people. We will sustain our actions for as long as is necessary. Time is on our side, it is not on the side of Gadhafi.”
So just as Vladimir and Estragon waited hopelessly for Godot, in Samuel Becket’s absurdist play “Waiting for Godot,” British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Libyan rebels, sorry the NTC, wait, and wait, for Gadhafi’s fall. But as the days turn to weeks and the weeks turn to months, Gadhafi’s grip on power is as firm or tenuous as it was when the NATO airstrikes began, while the integrity of the rebel forces, and the West, is in tatters.
Cameron, Sarkozy and U.S. President Barack Obama have primarily relied on airstrikes in Libya to avoid Western military casualties on the ground. Instead of having the courage to take decisive action, they have adopted a strategy that has dragged the war out and led to the deaths of increasing numbers of civilians. These are the very people that the United Nations mandate for action in Libya was supposed to protect.
Elsewhere in the Arab world, the West’s lack of resolve in Libya has also emboldened Syrian President Bashar Assad to crush his political opposition. The Syrian dictator has been killing his countrymen without fear of reprisal from Western democracies, whose leaders look increasingly unsure of themselves on the global stage.
Right now there isn’t much left to bomb. That’s why, last week, NATO bombers destroyed three Libyan state TV transmitters and killed three reporters in order to, in the words of the British Defense Ministry, “disrupt the broadcast of Gadhafi’s murderous rhetoric, which has repeatedly sought to incite violence against fellow Libyans”.
There is speculation that a militant Islamist rebel militia, the Al-Nidaa brigade, which is linked to the still-unexplained murder of rebel army commander Abdel-Fattah Younis, had been receiving coded orders via state television. The bombing came as NTC fighters stormed an Al-Nidaa base in Benghazi days after the brigade freed more than 200 prisoners from jail in the city. Many of the prisoners are reportedly linked to militant Islamic groups.
Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, sat for a bizarre interview with The New York Times last week in which he claimed that an alliance now existed between the regime and Islamist cleric Ali Sallabi. This was subsequently dismissed by the Gadhafi regime itself, by the NTC and by the British government. But the fact that the regime had conducted talks with Sallabi, particularly in the wake of Younis’ death, suggests there are splits in the rebel camp, which run deeper than previously thought.
We now have a divided and possibly splintering rebel force, Gadhafi still ruling over half the country, and American and European attention focused on economic woes at home. Intervention lite has reduced the West to a laughingstock. One British government insider joked that the only way out of the stalemate was for Gadhafi to suffer a stroke, as there was “precious little left to bomb now.” Short of mortal illness or assassination, a negotiated settlement with the Libyan leader looks ever more likely.
Last month British Foreign Secretary William Hague and his French counterpart, Alain Juppe, signaled Gadhafi could even stay in Libya if he stood down now. Such an outcome is unlikely, but Seif al-Islam’s talks with Sallabi also appear to have touched on this issue, although Sallabi insists Gadhafi cannot remain in Libya. Increasingly, British officials are saying that what happens to the Libyan leader is up to the Libyan people, not the international community, even though Gadhafi was indicted by the International Criminal Court earlier this year.
You don’t have to be a hard-bitten realist to acknowledge that if you intervene in someone else’s civil war you should choose the side most likely to win, and then make sure that it does. Intervention in Libya remains the right thing, but war is all or nothing. And the longer this war goes on, the less likely are we to see any sort of political outcome that benefits Libya’s long-suffering people or the wider world.
Time may not be on Gadhafi’s side, but it is fast running out for the West as well. Gadhafi only has to survive. The West needs to finish what it started before its inaction totally discredits its leadership and values. Otherwise, the “Arab spring” will face a very bleak winter indeed.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of THE DAILY STAR.
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