The Daily Star
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
By Michael Glackin
The fake sign language interpreter at Nelson’s Mandela’s memorial service wasn’t the only person indulging in meaningless gestures last week. While the interpreter did what amounted to a four-hour version of the Macarena, British Prime Minister David Cameron decided to send equally confusing and worthless signals himself, on Syria.
The decision by both the United Kingdom and the United States to “suspend” assistance to a moderate Syrian rebel force, in the face of rising Islamist influence, was a bitter blow to the Syrian National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army. It underscores their, and indeed the West’s, increasingly marginal role in Syria’s fate.
The FSA and SNC need Western backing to maintain a semblance of credibility and to stop fighters from joining Al-Qaeda-backed groups and other extremist Islamist groups. The West needs the moderate opposition to be effective. The nonlethal provided aid didn’t amount to much, but the symbolism of its suspension will convince everyone from President Bashar Assad to rebel fighters on the ground that an already muddled Western strategy toward Syria is in total disarray.
It also sends a clear signal to those fighting in Syria that the opposition movement that the West helped create cannot rely on the West for even token support. Recall that Cameron successfully overturned the European Union arms embargo on Syria last May in a move intended to “send a clear message to Assad,” but has failed to send as much as a pea shooter to the FSA. Small wonder the extremists, along with Iran and Russia, are in the ascendant.
The aid suspension indicates that the West believes the moderates in the Syrian opposition cannot hold the ring in Syria any longer. While the British Foreign Office insists the move is temporary, it was unable to say when the support would resume.
The events that led to the decision appear to be pretty straightforward: The takeover of Free Syrian Army bases in northern Syria, including the headquarters of the Syrian Military Council, by fighters from the Islamic Front, which recently broke with the FSA.
The Islamic Front is a union of six major Islamist rebel groups, bankrolled by Saudi Arabia. Only one of the front’s groups appears to be linked to Al-Qaeda, but all of them want to establish an Islamic state based on Shariah law.
While the rebels probably won’t miss supplies of body armor, communications equipment and U.S. armored vehicles, the symbolism of the decision is that the moderates are being sidelined, as what passes for Western strategy in Syria switches to keeping the jihadists out rather than deposing Assad.
Along with the estimated 110,000 killed during the Syrian conflict, and the 2 million refugees scattered around the region, the alarming rise and success of Islamist groups is the most startling consequence of the West’s failure to stand up to Assad. When this conflict started almost three years ago, coordinated Western support might well have toppled the Syrian president and preserved Syria’s sectarian harmony. But the West’s halfhearted support for the moderate Syrian opposition created a vacuum that the likes of the Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria willingly filled. Now rebels and noncombatants alike have fallen headlong into a sectarian conflict, embracing the politics of hate as a means of survival.
The British government insists, not for the first time, that the Geneva II conference – now scheduled for January 22, 2014 – will provide the blueprint to end the war and remove Assad from power. This claim would be laughable were it not for the mounting death toll in Syria
The conflict in Syria is not just a civil war. It has become a regional battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia. As much as Russia and Iran, who have backed Assad with guns and money, need to be behind any peace deal that comes out of Geneva, it is increasingly clear that Saudi Arabia, which along with Qatar bankrolls the rebels, must back it too.
Iran is already a major player in Iraq. The last thing Saudi Arabia wants is for Tehran to end up expanding its regional influence via Syria. This scenario looks increasingly likely for Riyadh, against the backdrop of an apparent thaw between the West and Iran, evidenced by last month’s tentative nuclear deal in Geneva.
The SNC’s representative in the U.K., Walid Safur, said the coalition is committed to Geneva II. He added, however, that its attendance remains conditional on a guarantee that Assad will not be a part of a transitional government that may be created by the conference. “If that changes in the coming weeks we may change our mind and not attend,” Safur told me recently.
But in reality, whether the SNC attends or not is irrelevant. As in other Middle East conflicts, a deal that does not have the backing of those wielding the guns cannot deliver peace. And as events have shown, the Islamic Front, the Nusra Front, and others are the people who count on the ground, not the SNC or the FSA.
“We’re keeping with the same consistent approach,” a Foreign Office official insisted to me last week. “We’re now focused on Geneva II where that approach will continue.”
Unfortunately, it’s a consistent approach that has so far failed to deliver either an end to the war or an end to Assad rule. While the U.K. has pursued its consistent approach, Assad has unleashed chemical weapons on his people on at least five occasions according to the United Nations; rebel fighters summarily execute people; and tens of thousands of refugees are suffering another bitter winter in makeshift tents in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey.
I asked the Foreign Office official how many more Syrians the British government expected to die or become homeless before its consistent approach either paid off or was abandoned. He declined to answer.
This really has become the diplomacy of the deaf.
Michael Glackin, is former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper THE DAILY STAR. A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on December 17, 2013, on page 7.
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
Thursday, 12 December 2013
Too much deference for the spooks?
The Daily Star
Monday, November 18 2013
by Michael Glackin
It was billed as a historic milestone in parliamentary sovereignty and oversight when the United Kingdom’s spy chiefs appeared before a committee of British parliamentarians and peers over a week ago. However, all it revealed was that Parliament hadn’t a clue what the spooks were up to, and if the committee’s appallingly timid questioning of the spymasters was anything to go by, they never will. The Intelligence and Security Committee is the body charged with oversight of the intelligence services. The spooks were called before it following American whistleblower Edward Snowden’s claims that American and British mass surveillance programs included snooping on the emails of millions of ordinary citizens.
During the 90-minute hearing, MI5 boss Andrew Parker, MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, and Sir Iain Lobban, the director of GCHQ, the British signals intelligence agency, dismissed claims that their monitoring of online and telephone data was excessive, and denied long-standing allegations that British intelligence had been complicit in torture. All without a murmur of dissent from the committee tasked with scrutinizing their activities.
It is extraordinary that no one even mentioned GCHQ’s Tempora program, which allows the agency to hoover up vast amounts of data from cables carrying internet traffic in and out of the country. The information is thoroughly analyzed and then shared with GCHQ’s counterpart in the United States, the National Security Agency.
Considering that neither senior ministers nor the government’s National Security Council, which oversees intelligence coordination and is chaired by Prime Minister David Cameron, were aware of Tempora’s existence before Snowden’s leaks, one would have thought the committee would have been curious to find out more.
Someone, probably one of the three people before the committee, decided that the data trawling did not need explicit parliamentary, or it seems government, approval. Surely it would have been worth asking how that happened? At least in Washington after Snowden’s revelations, President Barack Obama and Congress acknowledged that democratic and judicial oversight had broken down.
When the committee gently asked for examples of the 34 terror plots the spymasters said they had thwarted since the July 7, 2005, bombings in London, or for examples of the damage they claimed Snowden’s leaks had caused to their operations, the spooks replied they could only provide examples in private.
Much of what intelligence agencies do cannot be allowed into the public domain. But this insistence on secrecy amid all we know from Snowden had a distinctly hollow sound to it. It highlighted the unaccountable power that GCHQ, with America’s NSA, has accumulated to invade privacy and hide its activities from democratic oversight by claiming this is necessary for national security.
Sawers, who before heading MI6 served as British ambassador to Egypt and briefly as a special envoy to Iraq in 2003, even took a laughable swipe at the newspaper reporting Snowden’s leaks: “It is clear that our adversaries are rubbing their hands with glee and Al-Qaeda is lapping it up.”
One suspects Al-Qaeda is actually lapping up how Sawers and his colleagues allowed a terror suspect under 24-hour surveillance evade his minders last week by slipping into a burka and wandering off in broad daylight through the streets of central London.
Al-Qaeda and other terror groups have already lapped up the failure to find weapons of mass destruction that British intelligence agencies insisted the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed – the reason Parliament supported the Iraq invasion, which arguably has done more to unleash global terrorism than any other.
No doubt terror groups also lapped up what the government called a “serious” security breach a few years ago when an intelligence official lost top-secret documents containing the latest intelligence on Al-Qaeda. The documents were eventually found by a member of the public on a busy commuter train.
There was probably much laughter in the Tora Bora mountains when Sawers’ wife posted details about his personal life on her Facebook page, including photographs of him frolicking around in a pair of skimpy swimming trunks on his holidays. His wife had few restrictions on her Facebook account, which meant that images of the head of the U.K.’s secret service were visible worldwide.
Oddly, Sawers recently gave a rare speech in which he defended the crucial role of secrecy in keeping us all safe. And while the spooks were insisting on privacy again last week, it might have been pertinent to ask why a lowly NSA contractor such as Snowden was among more than 850,000 U.S. staff given access to GCHQ’s secret files. Did GCHQ realize how insecure and open the U.S. system was that it enabled Snowden to leak all the information so easily?
Compare the treatment of the spymasters and the British government’s failure to properly investigate Snowden’s claims with what is going on at London’s Old Bailey, the country’s highest criminal court. A group of journalists and others who worked for Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct newspaper The News of the World are on trial, accused of ordering, or conspiring in, the hacking of the telephone calls of celebrities, politicians and crime victims.
Around $40 million of British taxpayers’ money has been spent on a public inquiry and several police investigations into phone hacking by newspapers culminating in this high-profile trial. Meanwhile the amount the government has spent investigating Snowden’s allegations amounts to a few thousand pounds and some softball questions from a committee that appeared to be in awe of those it is charged with scrutinizing.
Much of what those journalists did is indefensible – the hacking of a 13-year-old murder victim’s phone among them – but which is the bigger crime or threat to civil liberties? Snowden’s revelations dwarf the phone-hacking activities of journalists. Thanks to Snowden we know that the U.S. has been systematically tapping the phones of its allies, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with GCHQ providing a helping hand.
It has even been reported that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s phone was hacked by the NSA ahead of a meeting Obama at the White House this year. How does this protect our security?
The defense of the spymasters for programs such as Tempora is that they only targeted those involved in terrorism and “serious crime.” The hacking of Merkel’s and Ban’s phones, among others, betrays the lie.
The committee should have shown less deference to the spooks. Their demand for less publicity, lest accountability harm British and Western security, is increasingly threadbare. These are, after all, the same people who failed to foresee the end of the Cold War, the 9/11 attacks, and the Arab Spring. They have much to account for.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Lebanese newspaper THE DAILY STAR. This article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on November 18, 2013, on page 7.
Monday, November 18 2013
by Michael Glackin
It was billed as a historic milestone in parliamentary sovereignty and oversight when the United Kingdom’s spy chiefs appeared before a committee of British parliamentarians and peers over a week ago. However, all it revealed was that Parliament hadn’t a clue what the spooks were up to, and if the committee’s appallingly timid questioning of the spymasters was anything to go by, they never will. The Intelligence and Security Committee is the body charged with oversight of the intelligence services. The spooks were called before it following American whistleblower Edward Snowden’s claims that American and British mass surveillance programs included snooping on the emails of millions of ordinary citizens.
During the 90-minute hearing, MI5 boss Andrew Parker, MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, and Sir Iain Lobban, the director of GCHQ, the British signals intelligence agency, dismissed claims that their monitoring of online and telephone data was excessive, and denied long-standing allegations that British intelligence had been complicit in torture. All without a murmur of dissent from the committee tasked with scrutinizing their activities.
It is extraordinary that no one even mentioned GCHQ’s Tempora program, which allows the agency to hoover up vast amounts of data from cables carrying internet traffic in and out of the country. The information is thoroughly analyzed and then shared with GCHQ’s counterpart in the United States, the National Security Agency.
Considering that neither senior ministers nor the government’s National Security Council, which oversees intelligence coordination and is chaired by Prime Minister David Cameron, were aware of Tempora’s existence before Snowden’s leaks, one would have thought the committee would have been curious to find out more.
Someone, probably one of the three people before the committee, decided that the data trawling did not need explicit parliamentary, or it seems government, approval. Surely it would have been worth asking how that happened? At least in Washington after Snowden’s revelations, President Barack Obama and Congress acknowledged that democratic and judicial oversight had broken down.
When the committee gently asked for examples of the 34 terror plots the spymasters said they had thwarted since the July 7, 2005, bombings in London, or for examples of the damage they claimed Snowden’s leaks had caused to their operations, the spooks replied they could only provide examples in private.
Much of what intelligence agencies do cannot be allowed into the public domain. But this insistence on secrecy amid all we know from Snowden had a distinctly hollow sound to it. It highlighted the unaccountable power that GCHQ, with America’s NSA, has accumulated to invade privacy and hide its activities from democratic oversight by claiming this is necessary for national security.
Sawers, who before heading MI6 served as British ambassador to Egypt and briefly as a special envoy to Iraq in 2003, even took a laughable swipe at the newspaper reporting Snowden’s leaks: “It is clear that our adversaries are rubbing their hands with glee and Al-Qaeda is lapping it up.”
One suspects Al-Qaeda is actually lapping up how Sawers and his colleagues allowed a terror suspect under 24-hour surveillance evade his minders last week by slipping into a burka and wandering off in broad daylight through the streets of central London.
Al-Qaeda and other terror groups have already lapped up the failure to find weapons of mass destruction that British intelligence agencies insisted the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed – the reason Parliament supported the Iraq invasion, which arguably has done more to unleash global terrorism than any other.
No doubt terror groups also lapped up what the government called a “serious” security breach a few years ago when an intelligence official lost top-secret documents containing the latest intelligence on Al-Qaeda. The documents were eventually found by a member of the public on a busy commuter train.
There was probably much laughter in the Tora Bora mountains when Sawers’ wife posted details about his personal life on her Facebook page, including photographs of him frolicking around in a pair of skimpy swimming trunks on his holidays. His wife had few restrictions on her Facebook account, which meant that images of the head of the U.K.’s secret service were visible worldwide.
Oddly, Sawers recently gave a rare speech in which he defended the crucial role of secrecy in keeping us all safe. And while the spooks were insisting on privacy again last week, it might have been pertinent to ask why a lowly NSA contractor such as Snowden was among more than 850,000 U.S. staff given access to GCHQ’s secret files. Did GCHQ realize how insecure and open the U.S. system was that it enabled Snowden to leak all the information so easily?
Compare the treatment of the spymasters and the British government’s failure to properly investigate Snowden’s claims with what is going on at London’s Old Bailey, the country’s highest criminal court. A group of journalists and others who worked for Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct newspaper The News of the World are on trial, accused of ordering, or conspiring in, the hacking of the telephone calls of celebrities, politicians and crime victims.
Around $40 million of British taxpayers’ money has been spent on a public inquiry and several police investigations into phone hacking by newspapers culminating in this high-profile trial. Meanwhile the amount the government has spent investigating Snowden’s allegations amounts to a few thousand pounds and some softball questions from a committee that appeared to be in awe of those it is charged with scrutinizing.
Much of what those journalists did is indefensible – the hacking of a 13-year-old murder victim’s phone among them – but which is the bigger crime or threat to civil liberties? Snowden’s revelations dwarf the phone-hacking activities of journalists. Thanks to Snowden we know that the U.S. has been systematically tapping the phones of its allies, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with GCHQ providing a helping hand.
It has even been reported that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s phone was hacked by the NSA ahead of a meeting Obama at the White House this year. How does this protect our security?
The defense of the spymasters for programs such as Tempora is that they only targeted those involved in terrorism and “serious crime.” The hacking of Merkel’s and Ban’s phones, among others, betrays the lie.
The committee should have shown less deference to the spooks. Their demand for less publicity, lest accountability harm British and Western security, is increasingly threadbare. These are, after all, the same people who failed to foresee the end of the Cold War, the 9/11 attacks, and the Arab Spring. They have much to account for.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Lebanese newspaper THE DAILY STAR. This article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on November 18, 2013, on page 7.
The popes and their love of football
The Daily Star
Friday, November 1 2013
by Michael Glackin
Pope Francis has impressed people of all creeds with his humility and modest lifestyle since becoming leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.
Just as important for many though, is the fact that Pope Francis is also a well-known football fan, the sport that is akin to a global religion, one that that cuts across national and sectarian boundaries, and is played and watched by more than 800 million people, around one in eight of the global population.
Pope Francis can even claim credit for a bit of divine intervention last Sunday, when English Premiership strugglers Sunderland scored a late winner against their local rivals Newcastle United that lifted them off the bottom of the League. In case you missed it, the goal was scored in the dying minutes of the game, by a late substitute who hadn’t scored for the club this season.
A few days before the match, a beaming Pope Francis was photographed in St. Peter’s Square holding aloft a Sunderland football shirt emblazoned with “Papa Francisco” and offered to pray for the club before the big game.
Pope Francis is famously a card-carrying fan of San Lorenzo football club in his native Buenos Aires. Despite being domiciled in the Vatican Francis still pays his monthly club membership subs according to the club’s vice president, Marcelo Tinelli.
He also granted Italy’s and Argentina’s national football teams a private audience at the Vatican in August – an event one Italian newspaper headlined “Pope meets God” in a witty, or for some heretical, reference to Francis meeting Argentinian star Lionel Messi, currently the game’s top player.
But Francis isn’t the first pope to carry his love of the beautiful game into the Vatican.
Although unlikely ever to be photographed enthusiastically waving a football shirt, former Pope Benedict XVI is a supporter of current European Champions Bayern Munich. During his reign the Vatican even organized a team of Catholic priests to play a friendly game against the Palestinian national team in the Al-Khader Stadium outside Bethlehem. Palestine predictably won the match 9-1, although bizarrely the priests somehow managed to get to the end of the first half 0-0.
Pope Benedict granted audiences to a number of, mostly Italian, footballers who ensured he was photographed close to a team shirt, if never quite embracing it ala Francis.
But the papal record for audiences with football teams must surely rest with Pope John II.
He gave the Republic of Ireland football team a private audience during the World Cup in Italy in 1990 and famously revealed to Irish goalkeeper Packie Bonner that he had also played as goalkeeper when he was growing up in Poland.
A few days after meeting the pope, Ireland were knocked out of the World Cup by a single goal. Legend has it that after the match team manager Jack Charlton turned to Bonner and said: “By the way, the pope would have saved that.”
More famously, John Paul II also granted a private audience to Italian club Napoli, which in those days included the brilliant but decidedly temperamental superstar Diego Maradona.
Typically, Maradona arrived at Vatican late and things went downhill at a rate of knots after that when the Argentinian proceeded to have an argument with the pope.
In his book, “I Am The Diego,” published in 2000, Maradona wrote:
“Yes, I argued with the pope. I argued with him because I was in the Vatican and I saw all these golden ceilings and afterward I heard the pope say the church was worried about the welfare of poor kids. So? Sell the ceilings, amigo! Do something!”
In what was likely to have been a quieter Vatican audience in 2004, John Paul II also met and blessed his beloved Polish national team.
He also had a lifetime membership of Barcelona, given to him by the Spanish giants after he celebrated Mass at the Nou Camp stadium in 1982.
In 1987 German club Schalke 04 made John Paul II an honorary member, again, after celebrating Mass at Schalke’s Parkstadion in 1987. Not to be outdone, Schalke’s bitter local rivals, Borussia Dortmund, awarded him the same accolade when John Paul II granted two of their players an audience in 2005 for their work in helping to stamp out child prostitution.
John Paul II is also known as the “protector” of Brazil’s Fluminense. The club’s famous chant is the “A Bênç?o, Jo?o de Deus” – “Bless us, John of God,” a tune composed in the pope’s honor during his visit to Brazil in 1980. Legend has it Fluminense fans burst into the song in 1984, during a tense penalty shootout against rivals Vasco da Gama – Fluminense won the shootout and the Brazilian championship. It would be a quarter of a century before Fluminense repeated the feat.
However, the team John Paul II really supported was Krakow based KS Cracovia. This was the team he watched as a young man, and it appears to have been a love that remained with him throughout his life – just a few months before he died he granted KS Cracovia’s team and staff a private audience, his final meeting with a football club and one of his last Vatican audiences.
Then there’s Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the controversial former Vatican secretary of state who, among other things, called on Catholics to boycott Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code.
Bertone, a lifelong Juventus fan, who used to commentate on their matches for local radio while he was Archbishop of Genoa, has long dreamed of establishing a Vatican football team.
In 2006 he famously said – not entirely in jest – that he wanted to create a team that could compete in Italy’s top flight, “with Roma, Inter Milan, Genoa and Sampdoria.”
“If we just take the Brazilian students from our Pontifical universities we could have a magnificent squad,” he said.
However, Bertone had to be content with establishing the Clericus Cup, the annual football tournament between 16 teams from church seminaries in Rome which is now in its seventh year.
The holders for the last two years have been the North American Pontifical College, so the Clericus Cup is one of the rare (association) football competitions that can be said to be dominated by North America.
Incidentally there is also a Vatican City international team, which has been managed in the past by no less a personage than former Italy and Ireland coach Giovanni Trapattoni.
Vatican City is one of eight fully recognized sovereign states that are not members of FIFA. Its players are drawn from the Swiss Guard and other Vatican staffers but the team has only played three full international matches in 11 years, one draw and two defeats to Monaco. Pope Benedict regularly visited the team when it was in training during his papacy.
But lest football fans get too excited about the papacy’s love of the beautiful game, it is probably worth mentioning that earlier this month, Pope Francis officially launched St. Peter’s Cricket Club.
Undeterred by George Bernard Shaw’s belief that the English weren’t very spiritual “so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity,” Francis hopes the club will forge ties with cricket teams of other faiths, particularly in the Muslim world.
But for all Francis’ global ambition for it, the cricket club’s main aspiration at the moment appears to be what amounts to a local derby match against a Church of England 11 at Lord’s next year. If if he wants to really reach the masses, Francis should stick to The People’s Game.
Michael Glackin is a former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper THE DAILY STAR. This article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on November 01, 2013, on page 7.
Friday, November 1 2013
by Michael Glackin
Pope Francis has impressed people of all creeds with his humility and modest lifestyle since becoming leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.
Just as important for many though, is the fact that Pope Francis is also a well-known football fan, the sport that is akin to a global religion, one that that cuts across national and sectarian boundaries, and is played and watched by more than 800 million people, around one in eight of the global population.
Pope Francis can even claim credit for a bit of divine intervention last Sunday, when English Premiership strugglers Sunderland scored a late winner against their local rivals Newcastle United that lifted them off the bottom of the League. In case you missed it, the goal was scored in the dying minutes of the game, by a late substitute who hadn’t scored for the club this season.
A few days before the match, a beaming Pope Francis was photographed in St. Peter’s Square holding aloft a Sunderland football shirt emblazoned with “Papa Francisco” and offered to pray for the club before the big game.
Pope Francis is famously a card-carrying fan of San Lorenzo football club in his native Buenos Aires. Despite being domiciled in the Vatican Francis still pays his monthly club membership subs according to the club’s vice president, Marcelo Tinelli.
He also granted Italy’s and Argentina’s national football teams a private audience at the Vatican in August – an event one Italian newspaper headlined “Pope meets God” in a witty, or for some heretical, reference to Francis meeting Argentinian star Lionel Messi, currently the game’s top player.
But Francis isn’t the first pope to carry his love of the beautiful game into the Vatican.
Although unlikely ever to be photographed enthusiastically waving a football shirt, former Pope Benedict XVI is a supporter of current European Champions Bayern Munich. During his reign the Vatican even organized a team of Catholic priests to play a friendly game against the Palestinian national team in the Al-Khader Stadium outside Bethlehem. Palestine predictably won the match 9-1, although bizarrely the priests somehow managed to get to the end of the first half 0-0.
Pope Benedict granted audiences to a number of, mostly Italian, footballers who ensured he was photographed close to a team shirt, if never quite embracing it ala Francis.
But the papal record for audiences with football teams must surely rest with Pope John II.
He gave the Republic of Ireland football team a private audience during the World Cup in Italy in 1990 and famously revealed to Irish goalkeeper Packie Bonner that he had also played as goalkeeper when he was growing up in Poland.
A few days after meeting the pope, Ireland were knocked out of the World Cup by a single goal. Legend has it that after the match team manager Jack Charlton turned to Bonner and said: “By the way, the pope would have saved that.”
More famously, John Paul II also granted a private audience to Italian club Napoli, which in those days included the brilliant but decidedly temperamental superstar Diego Maradona.
Typically, Maradona arrived at Vatican late and things went downhill at a rate of knots after that when the Argentinian proceeded to have an argument with the pope.
In his book, “I Am The Diego,” published in 2000, Maradona wrote:
“Yes, I argued with the pope. I argued with him because I was in the Vatican and I saw all these golden ceilings and afterward I heard the pope say the church was worried about the welfare of poor kids. So? Sell the ceilings, amigo! Do something!”
In what was likely to have been a quieter Vatican audience in 2004, John Paul II also met and blessed his beloved Polish national team.
He also had a lifetime membership of Barcelona, given to him by the Spanish giants after he celebrated Mass at the Nou Camp stadium in 1982.
In 1987 German club Schalke 04 made John Paul II an honorary member, again, after celebrating Mass at Schalke’s Parkstadion in 1987. Not to be outdone, Schalke’s bitter local rivals, Borussia Dortmund, awarded him the same accolade when John Paul II granted two of their players an audience in 2005 for their work in helping to stamp out child prostitution.
John Paul II is also known as the “protector” of Brazil’s Fluminense. The club’s famous chant is the “A Bênç?o, Jo?o de Deus” – “Bless us, John of God,” a tune composed in the pope’s honor during his visit to Brazil in 1980. Legend has it Fluminense fans burst into the song in 1984, during a tense penalty shootout against rivals Vasco da Gama – Fluminense won the shootout and the Brazilian championship. It would be a quarter of a century before Fluminense repeated the feat.
However, the team John Paul II really supported was Krakow based KS Cracovia. This was the team he watched as a young man, and it appears to have been a love that remained with him throughout his life – just a few months before he died he granted KS Cracovia’s team and staff a private audience, his final meeting with a football club and one of his last Vatican audiences.
Then there’s Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the controversial former Vatican secretary of state who, among other things, called on Catholics to boycott Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code.
Bertone, a lifelong Juventus fan, who used to commentate on their matches for local radio while he was Archbishop of Genoa, has long dreamed of establishing a Vatican football team.
In 2006 he famously said – not entirely in jest – that he wanted to create a team that could compete in Italy’s top flight, “with Roma, Inter Milan, Genoa and Sampdoria.”
“If we just take the Brazilian students from our Pontifical universities we could have a magnificent squad,” he said.
However, Bertone had to be content with establishing the Clericus Cup, the annual football tournament between 16 teams from church seminaries in Rome which is now in its seventh year.
The holders for the last two years have been the North American Pontifical College, so the Clericus Cup is one of the rare (association) football competitions that can be said to be dominated by North America.
Incidentally there is also a Vatican City international team, which has been managed in the past by no less a personage than former Italy and Ireland coach Giovanni Trapattoni.
Vatican City is one of eight fully recognized sovereign states that are not members of FIFA. Its players are drawn from the Swiss Guard and other Vatican staffers but the team has only played three full international matches in 11 years, one draw and two defeats to Monaco. Pope Benedict regularly visited the team when it was in training during his papacy.
But lest football fans get too excited about the papacy’s love of the beautiful game, it is probably worth mentioning that earlier this month, Pope Francis officially launched St. Peter’s Cricket Club.
Undeterred by George Bernard Shaw’s belief that the English weren’t very spiritual “so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity,” Francis hopes the club will forge ties with cricket teams of other faiths, particularly in the Muslim world.
But for all Francis’ global ambition for it, the cricket club’s main aspiration at the moment appears to be what amounts to a local derby match against a Church of England 11 at Lord’s next year. If if he wants to really reach the masses, Francis should stick to The People’s Game.
Michael Glackin is a former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper THE DAILY STAR. This article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on November 01, 2013, on page 7.
Saturday, 19 October 2013
The West deludes itself in Afghanistan
By Michael Glackin
Friday, October 18, 2013.
The Daily Star
Biting the hand that has sustained you for a decade is never a smart idea. So Afghan President Hamid Karzai could hardly be surprised at the criticism leveled against him after he said that NATO’s 12-year operation in Afghanistan had brought death and misery, but very little security.
In an interview with BBC Television Karzai said: “The entire NATO exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering and loss of life and no gains because the country is not secure.” He also accused NATO of ignoring Taliban and Al-Qaeda “sanctuaries and training grounds” in Pakistan in preference for airstrikes on Afghan villages, which he called a “violation” of sovereignty. Karzai even suggested that NATO was colluding with the Taliban to justify a continued Western military presence in the country.
Gen. Lord Richard Dannatt, the former head of the British Army, insisted the mission had not been a failure and accused Karzai of being “extraordinarily insensitive” to British soldiers, and of causing “distress” to the families of dead servicemen. The former NATO secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, echoed Dannatt’s comments, and accused Karzai of being “unfair” to the soldiers who had died while protecting his country.
Faked emotional sincerity, traditionally the preserve of actors, now also appears to be the default position for the likes of Dannatt and de Hoop Scheffer. That’s because Karzai is right. He’s taken a cheap shot of course, and his comments are also connected to still-not-entirely-resolved negotiations over the so-called Bilateral Security Agreement, which will set the terms for American forces remaining in Afghanistan after the 2014 withdrawal deadline.
But the bottom line is Afghanistan is neither safe nor stable. Criticizing someone for stating the glaringly obvious hardly seems fair. Indeed the real shock is that despite all the evidence, Dannatt and de Hoop Scheffer really believe the mission has been a success.
Civilian deaths from the ongoing violence increased almost 25 percent in the first half of this year, according to a United Nations report, while deaths and injuries to women and children jumped 38 percent.
NATO has failed to defeat the Taliban and failed to provide good governance to Afghanistan. Indeed, after next year’s elections and troop withdrawal, it looks increasingly unlikely that much of the centralized political framework established since the invasion will survive.
Dannatt and others can whinge all they want, but Karzai did not criticize the dead; indeed he spoke of the cost to the West in “blood and treasure” in a conflict that has claimed the lives of 444 British servicemen and women and has cost the Treasury, according to the former British government adviser on Afghanistan Frank Ledwidge, more than $59 billion.
Dannatt, who was approached for this article but was unavailable, was the head of the British armed forces for a large part of the war, and before that was responsible for troop deployments to Afghanistan as head of NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. De Hoop Scheffer was head of NATO until 2009. Rather than take the moral low ground by complaining about a lack of respect for dead soldiers and their families, it might help if they opened their eyes and explained why Afghanistan today is still closer to chaos than stability.
In his book, “Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure In Iraq And Afghanistan,” Ledwidge forensically examines the army’s tactical and operational failures, exposing a raft of poor decisions by senior personnel that cost the lives of Afghans and soldiers but added nothing to defeating the enemy.
Of course, the Taliban are responsible for many more Afghan civilian deaths than NATO, and military failings are not the only reason for the West’s failure in Afghanistan, nor perhaps even the salient one. But they are a part of it, and it would have better served all those who have been killed in this conflict if Dannatt and de Hoop Scheffer had addressed Karzai’s criticism, which they avoided doing.
Indeed, Karzai has been a disaster. Putting him in charge of a country that benefited from massive Western aid was thoroughly irresponsible. But if the West thinks Karzai’s bad, who or what replaces him after next April’s presidential elections could be even worse. Along with a couple of regional warlords, the candidates include Abdul-Rasul Sayyaf, the man who invited Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan in 1996 and whom the U.S. 9/11 Commission Report described as a mentor to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It is also understood that some of those convicted for the 2002 Bali bombing, in which 202 people were killed, trained at camps that Sayyaf ran in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Karzai, who appears to have suddenly discovered that previous leaders of his country have suffered for selling out to foreign interests, is belatedly engaged in talks with some Taliban leaders. He has said that he’s open to a power-sharing arrangement with them and it seems clear that the Taliban will enjoy undisturbed control of large parts of the south and east of Afghanistan.
Increasingly, the new Afghanistan that the West set out to build is starting to look worryingly like the old one. If Dannatt and others consider this to be a successful outcome to 12 years of bloodshed and the trillions of dollars spent on Operation Enduring Freedom, then the lunatics really have taken over the asylum.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper THE DAILY STAR.
A version of this article appeared in The Daily Star on October 18, 2013, on page 7.
Friday, October 18, 2013.
The Daily Star
Biting the hand that has sustained you for a decade is never a smart idea. So Afghan President Hamid Karzai could hardly be surprised at the criticism leveled against him after he said that NATO’s 12-year operation in Afghanistan had brought death and misery, but very little security.
In an interview with BBC Television Karzai said: “The entire NATO exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering and loss of life and no gains because the country is not secure.” He also accused NATO of ignoring Taliban and Al-Qaeda “sanctuaries and training grounds” in Pakistan in preference for airstrikes on Afghan villages, which he called a “violation” of sovereignty. Karzai even suggested that NATO was colluding with the Taliban to justify a continued Western military presence in the country.
Gen. Lord Richard Dannatt, the former head of the British Army, insisted the mission had not been a failure and accused Karzai of being “extraordinarily insensitive” to British soldiers, and of causing “distress” to the families of dead servicemen. The former NATO secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, echoed Dannatt’s comments, and accused Karzai of being “unfair” to the soldiers who had died while protecting his country.
Faked emotional sincerity, traditionally the preserve of actors, now also appears to be the default position for the likes of Dannatt and de Hoop Scheffer. That’s because Karzai is right. He’s taken a cheap shot of course, and his comments are also connected to still-not-entirely-resolved negotiations over the so-called Bilateral Security Agreement, which will set the terms for American forces remaining in Afghanistan after the 2014 withdrawal deadline.
But the bottom line is Afghanistan is neither safe nor stable. Criticizing someone for stating the glaringly obvious hardly seems fair. Indeed the real shock is that despite all the evidence, Dannatt and de Hoop Scheffer really believe the mission has been a success.
Civilian deaths from the ongoing violence increased almost 25 percent in the first half of this year, according to a United Nations report, while deaths and injuries to women and children jumped 38 percent.
NATO has failed to defeat the Taliban and failed to provide good governance to Afghanistan. Indeed, after next year’s elections and troop withdrawal, it looks increasingly unlikely that much of the centralized political framework established since the invasion will survive.
Dannatt and others can whinge all they want, but Karzai did not criticize the dead; indeed he spoke of the cost to the West in “blood and treasure” in a conflict that has claimed the lives of 444 British servicemen and women and has cost the Treasury, according to the former British government adviser on Afghanistan Frank Ledwidge, more than $59 billion.
Dannatt, who was approached for this article but was unavailable, was the head of the British armed forces for a large part of the war, and before that was responsible for troop deployments to Afghanistan as head of NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. De Hoop Scheffer was head of NATO until 2009. Rather than take the moral low ground by complaining about a lack of respect for dead soldiers and their families, it might help if they opened their eyes and explained why Afghanistan today is still closer to chaos than stability.
In his book, “Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure In Iraq And Afghanistan,” Ledwidge forensically examines the army’s tactical and operational failures, exposing a raft of poor decisions by senior personnel that cost the lives of Afghans and soldiers but added nothing to defeating the enemy.
Of course, the Taliban are responsible for many more Afghan civilian deaths than NATO, and military failings are not the only reason for the West’s failure in Afghanistan, nor perhaps even the salient one. But they are a part of it, and it would have better served all those who have been killed in this conflict if Dannatt and de Hoop Scheffer had addressed Karzai’s criticism, which they avoided doing.
Indeed, Karzai has been a disaster. Putting him in charge of a country that benefited from massive Western aid was thoroughly irresponsible. But if the West thinks Karzai’s bad, who or what replaces him after next April’s presidential elections could be even worse. Along with a couple of regional warlords, the candidates include Abdul-Rasul Sayyaf, the man who invited Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan in 1996 and whom the U.S. 9/11 Commission Report described as a mentor to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It is also understood that some of those convicted for the 2002 Bali bombing, in which 202 people were killed, trained at camps that Sayyaf ran in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Karzai, who appears to have suddenly discovered that previous leaders of his country have suffered for selling out to foreign interests, is belatedly engaged in talks with some Taliban leaders. He has said that he’s open to a power-sharing arrangement with them and it seems clear that the Taliban will enjoy undisturbed control of large parts of the south and east of Afghanistan.
Increasingly, the new Afghanistan that the West set out to build is starting to look worryingly like the old one. If Dannatt and others consider this to be a successful outcome to 12 years of bloodshed and the trillions of dollars spent on Operation Enduring Freedom, then the lunatics really have taken over the asylum.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper THE DAILY STAR.
A version of this article appeared in The Daily Star on October 18, 2013, on page 7.
Thursday, 12 September 2013
Putin and Assad win by a knockout
Friday September 13, 2013
The Daily Star
By Michael Glackin
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy was summed up in his famous phrase: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” President Barack Obama’s might be summarized as, “Speak loudly and carry a small stick, then impale yourself on it.” The much talked up, talked down, on, off, missile strike against Syria was never more than a futile gesture. But few could have perceived how ineptly it would be pursued. Like a cheap firework, Obama’s and British Prime Minister David Cameron’s call to arms made a bit of a bang and fizzled out like a damp squib.
Instead of using military action to weaken Syrian President Bashar Assad, Obama and Cameron have ended up weakening themselves, and indeed their respective offices. Obama has proven himself to be more ditherer in chief than commander in chief, supporting force, but too weak to use it without first spreading the responsibility. Cameron did the same, yet neither was constitutionally obliged to do so.
There is diplomatic wrangling still to come as United Nations inspectors set about securing and dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons while the civil war rages. But make no mistake: Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin have won this round by a knockout.
On the day Assad agreed to allow his arsenal of chemical weapons to be placed under international control, his warplanes were again busy dropping nonchemical bombs on people in areas surrounding Damascus, including the neighborhood of Moadamieh, where around 100 people perished in last month’s chemical attack.
What went wrong? What about Obama’s “red line” and moral duty?
The U.S. president found himself in a corner with a military option that wasn’t worth defending when scrutinized by the American legislature. The only credible reason for intervening in Syria would be to topple Assad. Whether Obama’s intended missile attack was “limited” or bigger than “pinpricks” it was not about securing an end to Assad rule. Consequently, many in the West asked, What’s the point?
Western politicians were falling over themselves to emphasize the limitations of any U.S.-led missile attack, weeks before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s bizarre promise on Monday that the airstrikes would be “unbelievably small.” Even Obama’s remark that the American military “doesn’t do pinpricks” on Tuesday was made in the same breath in which he announced he was delaying military action.
The red line in the Syrian conflict wasn’t Obama’s. It turned out to be Russia’s, Iran’s and Hezbollah’s. Their red line was Assad’s survival and they have stuck to it like glue. For all its talk of moral duty, the West’s commitment to this pales in comparison. When Western states did stir themselves to do something, it consisted of piecemeal, uncoordinated responses to events as they unfolded.
Like arming the rebels and “unbelievably small” missile strikes, warehousing Syria’s chemical weapons is simply the latest shroud to cover the West’s blushes because there is no will to act in Syria.
Assad, almost by accident, has tested not just the West, but specifically America’s capacity, or willingness to be a global power, and he has won. The West has blinked and retreated. It is the U.S. that is really surrendering its arms, not the Assad regime. Assad was even confident enough to publicly warn Americans of terror attacks if the U.S. dared fire a single missile at Syria.
There will be many ill-informed comparisons with Europe in the 1930s, after Obama inadvisably invoked Nazi Germany in his speech on Tuesday night. But one comparison might just be worth making: This month marks the anniversary of the Munich agreement, when along with France, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in an ill-fated bid to avoid taking military action against Adolph Hitler, allowed Nazi Germany to annex a large part of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain spoke for millions when he said he would not enter into “a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing.”
British and American politicians know voters are war weary from botched military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don’t see the Syrian civil war, or the suffering of the Syrian people at the hands of a brutal dictator, as any of their business. Diplomatic negotiations over the bodies of 100,000 Syrians, and doubtless many more as the war continues, is now all that is left, even if it has been, frankly, fruitless.
Like Europe in the late 1930s, the time when the West could have shaped an outcome favorable to its interests and those of the Syrian people has long passed. The Syrian opposition is even more divided than it was at the outset of the war. The jihadists are fast becoming the major force on the ground and will now gain in strength. And all this has bolstered Iran and Hezbollah as well, which will have serious consequences not just in the Levant, but one suspects further afield too.
It is of course hard to make a case for intervention in a war where both sides are at fault. The latest report on Syria for the United Nations Human Rights Council has said that all sides have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Regime forces have massacred civilians, shelled hospitals and used cluster bombs, while rebel fighters are increasingly guilty of summary executions and torture.
No one wants jihadists running Syria, but can anyone seriously support a Western policy that strengthens Hezbollah? Will the West blink again when Iran stands its ground on its nuclear ambitions?
We have truly lost our moral compass if we believe that standing on the sidelines as the bodies pile up in Syria, or having some chemical weapons decommissioned while allowing Assad to continue to kill his people with impunity, is teaching him or any other tyrant a lesson. The West may well regret not adhering to Roosevelt’s maxim.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper THE DAILY STAR.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on September 13, 2013, on page 7.
The Daily Star
By Michael Glackin
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy was summed up in his famous phrase: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” President Barack Obama’s might be summarized as, “Speak loudly and carry a small stick, then impale yourself on it.” The much talked up, talked down, on, off, missile strike against Syria was never more than a futile gesture. But few could have perceived how ineptly it would be pursued. Like a cheap firework, Obama’s and British Prime Minister David Cameron’s call to arms made a bit of a bang and fizzled out like a damp squib.
Instead of using military action to weaken Syrian President Bashar Assad, Obama and Cameron have ended up weakening themselves, and indeed their respective offices. Obama has proven himself to be more ditherer in chief than commander in chief, supporting force, but too weak to use it without first spreading the responsibility. Cameron did the same, yet neither was constitutionally obliged to do so.
There is diplomatic wrangling still to come as United Nations inspectors set about securing and dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons while the civil war rages. But make no mistake: Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin have won this round by a knockout.
On the day Assad agreed to allow his arsenal of chemical weapons to be placed under international control, his warplanes were again busy dropping nonchemical bombs on people in areas surrounding Damascus, including the neighborhood of Moadamieh, where around 100 people perished in last month’s chemical attack.
What went wrong? What about Obama’s “red line” and moral duty?
The U.S. president found himself in a corner with a military option that wasn’t worth defending when scrutinized by the American legislature. The only credible reason for intervening in Syria would be to topple Assad. Whether Obama’s intended missile attack was “limited” or bigger than “pinpricks” it was not about securing an end to Assad rule. Consequently, many in the West asked, What’s the point?
Western politicians were falling over themselves to emphasize the limitations of any U.S.-led missile attack, weeks before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s bizarre promise on Monday that the airstrikes would be “unbelievably small.” Even Obama’s remark that the American military “doesn’t do pinpricks” on Tuesday was made in the same breath in which he announced he was delaying military action.
The red line in the Syrian conflict wasn’t Obama’s. It turned out to be Russia’s, Iran’s and Hezbollah’s. Their red line was Assad’s survival and they have stuck to it like glue. For all its talk of moral duty, the West’s commitment to this pales in comparison. When Western states did stir themselves to do something, it consisted of piecemeal, uncoordinated responses to events as they unfolded.
Like arming the rebels and “unbelievably small” missile strikes, warehousing Syria’s chemical weapons is simply the latest shroud to cover the West’s blushes because there is no will to act in Syria.
Assad, almost by accident, has tested not just the West, but specifically America’s capacity, or willingness to be a global power, and he has won. The West has blinked and retreated. It is the U.S. that is really surrendering its arms, not the Assad regime. Assad was even confident enough to publicly warn Americans of terror attacks if the U.S. dared fire a single missile at Syria.
There will be many ill-informed comparisons with Europe in the 1930s, after Obama inadvisably invoked Nazi Germany in his speech on Tuesday night. But one comparison might just be worth making: This month marks the anniversary of the Munich agreement, when along with France, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in an ill-fated bid to avoid taking military action against Adolph Hitler, allowed Nazi Germany to annex a large part of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain spoke for millions when he said he would not enter into “a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing.”
British and American politicians know voters are war weary from botched military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don’t see the Syrian civil war, or the suffering of the Syrian people at the hands of a brutal dictator, as any of their business. Diplomatic negotiations over the bodies of 100,000 Syrians, and doubtless many more as the war continues, is now all that is left, even if it has been, frankly, fruitless.
Like Europe in the late 1930s, the time when the West could have shaped an outcome favorable to its interests and those of the Syrian people has long passed. The Syrian opposition is even more divided than it was at the outset of the war. The jihadists are fast becoming the major force on the ground and will now gain in strength. And all this has bolstered Iran and Hezbollah as well, which will have serious consequences not just in the Levant, but one suspects further afield too.
It is of course hard to make a case for intervention in a war where both sides are at fault. The latest report on Syria for the United Nations Human Rights Council has said that all sides have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Regime forces have massacred civilians, shelled hospitals and used cluster bombs, while rebel fighters are increasingly guilty of summary executions and torture.
No one wants jihadists running Syria, but can anyone seriously support a Western policy that strengthens Hezbollah? Will the West blink again when Iran stands its ground on its nuclear ambitions?
We have truly lost our moral compass if we believe that standing on the sidelines as the bodies pile up in Syria, or having some chemical weapons decommissioned while allowing Assad to continue to kill his people with impunity, is teaching him or any other tyrant a lesson. The West may well regret not adhering to Roosevelt’s maxim.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper THE DAILY STAR.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on September 13, 2013, on page 7.
Friday, 30 August 2013
Cameron deserved humiliation on Syria
By Michael Glackin
Friday, August 30, 2013.
The Daily Star
By the time you read this there is a chance that a U.S. Navy warship in the Eastern Mediterranean will have unleashed cruise missiles against Syria. On the other hand, there is also a reasonable chance that no such thing will have happened. What is certain, though, is that the United Kingdom will not be playing a major role if a missile strike is aimed at Syria in the coming days. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempts to strut the international stage have unraveled faster than a cheap suit.
After two years of doing nothing, two years in which an estimated 100,000 people have been murdered by various nonchemical means, Cameron belatedly attempted to show some statesmanship in calling for military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. This came after what is estimated to have been the 14th chemical weapons attack in Syria’s bloody war, according to Britain’s joint intelligence committee.
But the cracks began appearing in Cameron’s war armor almost as soon as he had put it on. The prime minister’s early bellicose calls for attacking Syria were in essence a response to firm assurances that Washington was finally prepared to take immediate action against the Assad regime –a commitment that was toned down somewhat by U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday night.
Earlier this week Cameron insisted that the United Kingdom could, and would, use its military force without support, or a mandate, from the United Nations. However, by Wednesday he had been forced to put a resolution before the U.N. Security Council to satisfy his own parliamentarians, who threatened to revolt over the issue.
Cameron also insisted that the British parliament would not have to be consulted over any potential military action. Within days of that rash statement he was forced to hastily recall parliament, which was in summer recess, to vote on the issue.
The upshot is that the parliamentarians, who returned to parliament Thursday, will now have two separate votes before military action can be taken – the second of which can only be held after United Nations weapons inspectors file their report on the chemical attack. That is at least four to five days away according to the U.N.
This means that Cameron would be unable to involve British military personnel in what would be a U.S. led military strike if, as many are forecasting, it takes place this weekend, or even next week. And it remains far from certain that parliament will support action even then.
Cameron has tried to win over the waverers by stressing how limited British involvement – in what Washington has said will be a very limited missile strike – would be. But far from winning support he has merely focused attention on how little such military action serves the United Kingdom, let alone threatens Assad rule.
In terms of national interest, the war in Syria has already destabilized three of the U.K.’s key allies in the region: Israel, Turkey and Jordan. The sectarian nature of the conflict is starting to cause wider Sunni-Shiite violence throughout the Middle East, which could disrupt the autocratic Gulf monarchies, driving up the price of global oil supplies.
But Cameron, like Obama, has waxed lyrical about the moral case for action following the chemical attacks near Damascus. The problem is that the strong moral case for intervention has been steadfastly ignored by Cameron and the Obama administration for more than two years, while the most barbaric atrocities raged across Syria.
Moreover, the limited nature of military action, which will be planned as a short, sharp, punitive strike, aimed not at toppling Assad – as Cameron and Obama have been at pains to stress this week – but simply to warn him against the further use of chemical weapons, begs the question: What good will it do?
The nature of the strike suggests that the West is happy for Assad to murder Syrians with anything else he has on hand, as long as he stays away from those chemical weapons. It also reveals that the U.K. and the U.S. lack the courage to face Assad down for fear they cannot win.
The attraction of a limited missile strike conducted from the safety of the Eastern Mediterranean is that there is little risk of Western forces being killed or captured. A national newspaper poll earlier this week revealed that 50 percent of Britons opposed attacking Syria with even long-range missiles, while only 25 percent were in favor of action.
Probable targets for the U.S. missiles are likely to include military sites linked closely to the regime, such as army command facilities, missile production sites and some air defense sites. But ironically, Syria’s store of chemical weapons is likely to remain intact, since leakage of toxic chemicals from a missile attack could kill many more people than have already died in the war’s combined chemical outrages.
At the same time limited action will likely embolden Assad and his supporters, such as Russia and Iran, who will quickly re-equip the Syrian armed forces with whatever it loses in the air strikes and declare a moral victory against the West.
The truth that dare not speak its name in all this is that at the heart of Western strategy there is a desire that the Assad regime – not Assad himself, but the institutional structures built by his father – survive this war reasonably intact to keep Syria stable and jihadist free. Having failed to act boldly at the outset of this war, the West now fears the consequences of Syria falling into the wrong hands.
Perhaps that is too cynical. But the West has looked on while barbarism has taken hold in Syria. Thousands of cruise missiles won’t change that, nor will they change the course of Syria’s ugly war. Cameron’s attempt to grab a cheap headline by riding Obama’s coattails has deservedly left him humiliated. The U.S. never needed the U.K. to attack Syria; now it will be left to France to be America’s bag carrier.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper THE DAILY STAR.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on August 30, 2013, on page 7.
Friday, August 30, 2013.
The Daily Star
By the time you read this there is a chance that a U.S. Navy warship in the Eastern Mediterranean will have unleashed cruise missiles against Syria. On the other hand, there is also a reasonable chance that no such thing will have happened. What is certain, though, is that the United Kingdom will not be playing a major role if a missile strike is aimed at Syria in the coming days. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempts to strut the international stage have unraveled faster than a cheap suit.
After two years of doing nothing, two years in which an estimated 100,000 people have been murdered by various nonchemical means, Cameron belatedly attempted to show some statesmanship in calling for military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. This came after what is estimated to have been the 14th chemical weapons attack in Syria’s bloody war, according to Britain’s joint intelligence committee.
But the cracks began appearing in Cameron’s war armor almost as soon as he had put it on. The prime minister’s early bellicose calls for attacking Syria were in essence a response to firm assurances that Washington was finally prepared to take immediate action against the Assad regime –a commitment that was toned down somewhat by U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday night.
Earlier this week Cameron insisted that the United Kingdom could, and would, use its military force without support, or a mandate, from the United Nations. However, by Wednesday he had been forced to put a resolution before the U.N. Security Council to satisfy his own parliamentarians, who threatened to revolt over the issue.
Cameron also insisted that the British parliament would not have to be consulted over any potential military action. Within days of that rash statement he was forced to hastily recall parliament, which was in summer recess, to vote on the issue.
The upshot is that the parliamentarians, who returned to parliament Thursday, will now have two separate votes before military action can be taken – the second of which can only be held after United Nations weapons inspectors file their report on the chemical attack. That is at least four to five days away according to the U.N.
This means that Cameron would be unable to involve British military personnel in what would be a U.S. led military strike if, as many are forecasting, it takes place this weekend, or even next week. And it remains far from certain that parliament will support action even then.
Cameron has tried to win over the waverers by stressing how limited British involvement – in what Washington has said will be a very limited missile strike – would be. But far from winning support he has merely focused attention on how little such military action serves the United Kingdom, let alone threatens Assad rule.
In terms of national interest, the war in Syria has already destabilized three of the U.K.’s key allies in the region: Israel, Turkey and Jordan. The sectarian nature of the conflict is starting to cause wider Sunni-Shiite violence throughout the Middle East, which could disrupt the autocratic Gulf monarchies, driving up the price of global oil supplies.
But Cameron, like Obama, has waxed lyrical about the moral case for action following the chemical attacks near Damascus. The problem is that the strong moral case for intervention has been steadfastly ignored by Cameron and the Obama administration for more than two years, while the most barbaric atrocities raged across Syria.
Moreover, the limited nature of military action, which will be planned as a short, sharp, punitive strike, aimed not at toppling Assad – as Cameron and Obama have been at pains to stress this week – but simply to warn him against the further use of chemical weapons, begs the question: What good will it do?
The nature of the strike suggests that the West is happy for Assad to murder Syrians with anything else he has on hand, as long as he stays away from those chemical weapons. It also reveals that the U.K. and the U.S. lack the courage to face Assad down for fear they cannot win.
The attraction of a limited missile strike conducted from the safety of the Eastern Mediterranean is that there is little risk of Western forces being killed or captured. A national newspaper poll earlier this week revealed that 50 percent of Britons opposed attacking Syria with even long-range missiles, while only 25 percent were in favor of action.
Probable targets for the U.S. missiles are likely to include military sites linked closely to the regime, such as army command facilities, missile production sites and some air defense sites. But ironically, Syria’s store of chemical weapons is likely to remain intact, since leakage of toxic chemicals from a missile attack could kill many more people than have already died in the war’s combined chemical outrages.
At the same time limited action will likely embolden Assad and his supporters, such as Russia and Iran, who will quickly re-equip the Syrian armed forces with whatever it loses in the air strikes and declare a moral victory against the West.
The truth that dare not speak its name in all this is that at the heart of Western strategy there is a desire that the Assad regime – not Assad himself, but the institutional structures built by his father – survive this war reasonably intact to keep Syria stable and jihadist free. Having failed to act boldly at the outset of this war, the West now fears the consequences of Syria falling into the wrong hands.
Perhaps that is too cynical. But the West has looked on while barbarism has taken hold in Syria. Thousands of cruise missiles won’t change that, nor will they change the course of Syria’s ugly war. Cameron’s attempt to grab a cheap headline by riding Obama’s coattails has deservedly left him humiliated. The U.S. never needed the U.K. to attack Syria; now it will be left to France to be America’s bag carrier.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper THE DAILY STAR.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on August 30, 2013, on page 7.
Friday, 23 August 2013
The Egyptian generals get a free ride
By Michael Glackin
The Daily Star
Friday August 23, 2013
The coup (let us at least here call a spade a spade) that ousted Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi in July was quietly cheered by the West and, more loudly, by most Egyptians. But no one is cheering now.
The Egyptian army’s decision to unleash deadly force against its own people was as brutal in its intent, if not its scale, as the actions of Syrian President Bashar Assad. And yet, as in Syria, the West, which sends billions of dollars to Egypt each year, looks on. The United States and the United Kingdom cannot even bring themselves to describe what has happened in a proper way, let alone take measures that could halt the violence. The semantics surrounding whether the overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected government in history was a military coup have reached laughable status.
Both in Washington and London officials have spent the last month squirming through linguistic hoops to avoid using the word “coup.” It has become the dreaded term that must never be uttered in polite political briefings.
The British government cannot even condemn the subsequent actions of the army, despite the bloody backdrop of the events of last week, when two Muslim Brotherhood encampments were violently cleared. Speaking on Monday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague described the bloodshed which has left at least 900 dead as “turbulence” and “very bleak.” Bizarrely, Hague added that although the United Kingdom did not approve of “military interventions in democratic processes,” the army’s ousting of Morsi was not illegal, asserting that it was, in fact, a “gray area.”
Well maybe, but what is going on at the moment in Egypt looks pretty black and white to most observers.
For sure, Mohammad Morsi’s presidency was a disaster. His calamitous handling of the economy ultimately led to the demonstrations calling for him to go. Morsi was also guilty of trampling the aspirations of the people who had forced open the floodgates that put him in power. His decision to rush through laws with only the consent of the Islamist-dominated constitutional committee revealed he and the Muslim Brotherhood were little committed to the principle of democracy.
But the problem for the Egyptian military is that its bloody assault on the Muslim Brotherhood’s supporters boosted sympathy for the group. And if history teaches us anything about modern Egypt, it is that brute force will not crush the Brotherhood. Indeed as the current violence shows, it may push more people toward greater extremism.
The elections scheduled for November would have offered the Egyptian people, not the army, a chance to boot Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood out of office. It must surely be vital for people in the Middle East, and for Western interests in the region, that those voting for Islamic parties believe democracy offers them a route to government. Otherwise, elections will give credence to Al-Qaeda, which believes that only violence can bring change in the Arab world.
The U.K.’s leverage in Egypt, as in Syria, is limited. Consequently, as it has done in Syria, the British government has taken a decision to do nothing in Egypt. Despite “suspending” a handful of arms export licenses, a foreign official confirmed to me this week that the U.K. was still allowing arms to be exported to Egypt.
At a European Union foreign ministers emergency meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, member states agreed to suspend the export of some military equipment. However, that fell short of an outright ban on weapons sales and the EU only agreed to “review” its large aid budget to Egypt. The EU has currently pledged almost $6.5 billion in loans and grants for 2012-2013.
While Egypt benefits from this money and some access to EU markets, the Obama administration remains the key player, the one to which Egypt’s military listens. But once again Washington has been found wanting on the global stage. Add Egypt to the growing list of regional issues that President Barack Obama seems determined to avoid, from Syria’s brutal civil war to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Canceling a joint military exercise, Operation Bright Star, with Egypt was hardly an adequate rebuke for shooting civilians. Canceling the $1.5 billion annual aid Washington hands over to the Egyptian Army would send a clearer message, but unfortunately it is not one that the United States appears willing to send.
Egypt’s military could still receive on billions of dollars from its conservative Gulf allies, notably Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, none of which can be described as lovers of the Muslim Brotherhood and all of which feel obliged to be proactive in the absence of U.S. leadership. The three countries recently unveiled an aid package for Egypt that totaled almost $12 billion.
Against the current backdrop of violence it is difficult to see how the army’s promise of a new constitution and fresh elections can include the Muslim Brotherhood, or indeed any Islamist parties. Yet they must be included, because that promise offers the only route toward ending the current bloodshed.
As such, it should be made it clear to Egypt that all trade, aid and exports from the U.S. and the EU will cease until elections take place and a civilian government takes office. Pressure must be applied to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to do likewise, in spite of their aversion to free elections. That requires American leadership, and to a lesser extent European and British leadership.
Are you listening Barack Obama? Because whatever words you use to describe what has happened, Egypt should not be allowed to continue as normal when civilians are being gunned down and, along with their blood, their basic human rights are being trampled into the dirt.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper THE DAILY STAR.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on August 23, 2013, on page 7.
The Daily Star
Friday August 23, 2013
The coup (let us at least here call a spade a spade) that ousted Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi in July was quietly cheered by the West and, more loudly, by most Egyptians. But no one is cheering now.
The Egyptian army’s decision to unleash deadly force against its own people was as brutal in its intent, if not its scale, as the actions of Syrian President Bashar Assad. And yet, as in Syria, the West, which sends billions of dollars to Egypt each year, looks on. The United States and the United Kingdom cannot even bring themselves to describe what has happened in a proper way, let alone take measures that could halt the violence. The semantics surrounding whether the overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected government in history was a military coup have reached laughable status.
Both in Washington and London officials have spent the last month squirming through linguistic hoops to avoid using the word “coup.” It has become the dreaded term that must never be uttered in polite political briefings.
The British government cannot even condemn the subsequent actions of the army, despite the bloody backdrop of the events of last week, when two Muslim Brotherhood encampments were violently cleared. Speaking on Monday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague described the bloodshed which has left at least 900 dead as “turbulence” and “very bleak.” Bizarrely, Hague added that although the United Kingdom did not approve of “military interventions in democratic processes,” the army’s ousting of Morsi was not illegal, asserting that it was, in fact, a “gray area.”
Well maybe, but what is going on at the moment in Egypt looks pretty black and white to most observers.
For sure, Mohammad Morsi’s presidency was a disaster. His calamitous handling of the economy ultimately led to the demonstrations calling for him to go. Morsi was also guilty of trampling the aspirations of the people who had forced open the floodgates that put him in power. His decision to rush through laws with only the consent of the Islamist-dominated constitutional committee revealed he and the Muslim Brotherhood were little committed to the principle of democracy.
But the problem for the Egyptian military is that its bloody assault on the Muslim Brotherhood’s supporters boosted sympathy for the group. And if history teaches us anything about modern Egypt, it is that brute force will not crush the Brotherhood. Indeed as the current violence shows, it may push more people toward greater extremism.
The elections scheduled for November would have offered the Egyptian people, not the army, a chance to boot Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood out of office. It must surely be vital for people in the Middle East, and for Western interests in the region, that those voting for Islamic parties believe democracy offers them a route to government. Otherwise, elections will give credence to Al-Qaeda, which believes that only violence can bring change in the Arab world.
The U.K.’s leverage in Egypt, as in Syria, is limited. Consequently, as it has done in Syria, the British government has taken a decision to do nothing in Egypt. Despite “suspending” a handful of arms export licenses, a foreign official confirmed to me this week that the U.K. was still allowing arms to be exported to Egypt.
At a European Union foreign ministers emergency meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, member states agreed to suspend the export of some military equipment. However, that fell short of an outright ban on weapons sales and the EU only agreed to “review” its large aid budget to Egypt. The EU has currently pledged almost $6.5 billion in loans and grants for 2012-2013.
While Egypt benefits from this money and some access to EU markets, the Obama administration remains the key player, the one to which Egypt’s military listens. But once again Washington has been found wanting on the global stage. Add Egypt to the growing list of regional issues that President Barack Obama seems determined to avoid, from Syria’s brutal civil war to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Canceling a joint military exercise, Operation Bright Star, with Egypt was hardly an adequate rebuke for shooting civilians. Canceling the $1.5 billion annual aid Washington hands over to the Egyptian Army would send a clearer message, but unfortunately it is not one that the United States appears willing to send.
Egypt’s military could still receive on billions of dollars from its conservative Gulf allies, notably Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, none of which can be described as lovers of the Muslim Brotherhood and all of which feel obliged to be proactive in the absence of U.S. leadership. The three countries recently unveiled an aid package for Egypt that totaled almost $12 billion.
Against the current backdrop of violence it is difficult to see how the army’s promise of a new constitution and fresh elections can include the Muslim Brotherhood, or indeed any Islamist parties. Yet they must be included, because that promise offers the only route toward ending the current bloodshed.
As such, it should be made it clear to Egypt that all trade, aid and exports from the U.S. and the EU will cease until elections take place and a civilian government takes office. Pressure must be applied to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to do likewise, in spite of their aversion to free elections. That requires American leadership, and to a lesser extent European and British leadership.
Are you listening Barack Obama? Because whatever words you use to describe what has happened, Egypt should not be allowed to continue as normal when civilians are being gunned down and, along with their blood, their basic human rights are being trampled into the dirt.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper THE DAILY STAR.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on August 23, 2013, on page 7.
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