On the Palestine tragedy, America ignored Margaret Thatcher

Saturday, April 13, 2013.
The Daily Star
By Michael Glackin

At the height of Lebanon’s Civil War during the early 1980s, British troops, serving with the Multi-National Force in the country, found themselves being shelled by Druze militiamen operating from the surrounding mountains. On hearing the news, during a lunch with her soon to be installed Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered Heseltine to telephone Walid Jumblatt immediately and tell him that she wanted the shelling to stop. Needless to say the shelling stopped.

Such was the appeal of the Iron Lady, or Iron Man as the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat once called her. In terms of the Middle East, Thatcher is principally remembered for urging U.S. President George H. W. Bush not to go “wobbly” in the buildup to the first Gulf War, and her ill-fated attempts to strengthen what she saw as moderate Arab and Israeli factions and politicians in a bid to solve what she called the issue of “abiding importance” in the Middle East.

But it is almost forgotten now that Thatcher, despite her fierce opposition to organizations she deemed to be involved in terrorism, was also responsible for opening up talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the early 1980s.

For most of her premiership she refused formal governmental talks with the PLO over its refusal to recognize Israel and renounce terrorism. But as far back as 1982 she allowed Douglas Hurd, then a junior Foreign Office minister, to meet Farouq Qaddoumi, a senior PLO figure in Tunis. It was the first encounter of its kind, and those discussions later led to formal talks, paving the way for meetings between Arafat and the Reagan White House later in the decade.

In the event this, and more public attempts to forge agreements between moderates on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide, amounted to nothing in the crucible of Middle East politics.

But Thatcher at least attempted to pursue an independent strategy in the region, one aimed at overturning the status quo, rather than slavishly following U.S. policy as her successors had done. Despite her close relationship with President Ronald Reagan she was deeply critical of his intervention in Lebanon and had warned him against retaliatory action in the wake of the suicide truck-bomb attack which killed 242 American troops in Beirut.

Despite her support for Israel she cared little for Likud prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Part of her antipathy toward Begin stemmed from his role in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem during the final years of Britain’s mandate in Palestine in 1946, killing 91 British soldiers. She famously described him as a man who “could kill the whole [peace] process.”

She also continued the policies of previous British governments and refused major arms sales to Israel. This policy in particular annoyed Begin. He wrote to Thatcher demanding to know how Britain could refuse Israel defense equipment when it was happily selling sophisticated arms to Middle Eastern states.

Thatcher ignored the letter, refusing even to allow the Foreign Office to send a formal reply.

Her relationship with Begin cooled further with the outbreak of the Falklands War in April 1982 and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon two months later. Israel was selling arms to Argentina, but Thatcher’s wrath was reserved for Israel’s attack on Lebanon, which she considered a carbon copy of Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands.

Her government introduced a fresh arms embargo on Israel and rescinded an invitation to attend a British Army Equipment Exhibition.

For his part, Begin accused Thatcher of hypocrisy, insisting Israel was simply doing what the United Kingdom was doing in the Falklands, namely defending its citizens.

Thatcher consistently warned that Israel could not gain security by expanding its borders – something then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon later agreed with. She believed instead that embracing the principal of “land for peace” was Israel’s best option, remarking that Palestinians should be “restored in their land and dignity.”

That said, she had a number of reservations about the practicality of an independent Palestinian state. She doubted it would be truly independent and would likely fall under the influence of Syria or factions such as Fatah. Her preference was for Palestinian self-determination as part of a federation with Jordan, a plan that at the time had the support of both King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, with whom she enjoyed good working relationships.

Thatcher had visited Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Syria, along with her husband Dennis, and both were appalled by the conditions. She once remarked that she wished Israeli appreciation of the human rights of Soviet refuseniks was matched by appreciation of the plight of landless and stateless Palestinians.

At the same time, she made the point that the PLO, which effectively ran the Palestinian refugee camps, had a vested interest in maintaining their Spartan conditions, since the ensuing discontent meant the camps could remain a permanent recruiting ground for what Thatcher called the PLO’s “revolutionary struggle.”

It was during her last days in office that she famously urged Bush to drive Saddam Hussein’s invading Iraqi army out of Kuwait, when he appeared to be wavering. As she pointed out in her memoirs, the desire for swift action against Iraq stemmed in part from her experience in the Falklands, but primarily from a desire to protect Saudi Arabia and its oil from a similar fate. Thatcher reasoned that if the Iraqis crossed the border into the kingdom, their troops could annex the Gulf “in a matter of days,” giving Saddam Hussein control of 65 percent of the world’s oil reserves, from which he “could blackmail us all.”

Ultimately Thatcher failed to have a meaningful, long-term impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict or indeed the wider Middle East. While to the wider world she restored Britain’s global presence and pride, the leverage to end the Palestinian tragedy rested entirely with the U.S. While Walid Jumblatt may have heeded Thatcher, Washington did not.

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 April 13, 2013, on page 7.

Syria’s opposition blames the West for extremism in its ranks

The Daily Star
Friday, March 29, 2013
By Michael Glackin


Talk of the opposition Syrian National Coalition being thrown into disarray by the recent resignation of its president, Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, is wide of the mark. The coalition exists in a state off perpetual disarray and division; Khatib’s resignation merely put the chaos in plain view.

Headless chickens have more direction than the National Coalition, and have infinitely more certainty about their fate. Two years on from the start of the uprising against the rule of President Bashar Assad there is still no certainty about how or when Syria’s bloody conflict will end, or what will happen to heal Syria and its long suffering people when it does.

Just to add to the general disarray, the National Coalition’s general assembly announced it would not accept Khatib’s resignation and he remains in place as “caretaker president.” A National Coalition insider said the coalition is due to hold talks with Khatib and indicated he may even withdraw his resignation in the coming days.

Nonetheless, from the perspective of the West, a few things have become clearer. The extremist Islamist tendency is clearly on the rise within the Syrian opposition, and according to Khatib and his supporters the blame for that must be laid at the door of the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union for what he perceives as their failure to offer moderates within the National Coalition meaningful support.

Yet despite this, and Ghassan Hitto’s “election” as interim prime minister, British and Western policy toward the National Coalition will not soon change. Lukewarm support will continue. Syria’s rebels will not be armed by the West. And many more innocent Syrians will die.

The Arab League may well have taken down the Syrian national flag and hoisted the opposition’s colors to the mast, but that doesn’t amount to much if you are one of the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan, or if you are caught in the grip of the relentless killing across Syria.

As for Khatib, he was on borrowed time after he offered talks between the National Coalition and the Syrian government. Despite halfhearted pledges of support for this policy in public, senior opposition figures, many of whom have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, were furious. The sudden elevation of Hitto, a virtually unknown information technology executive who joined the opposition last year after living in the U.S. for 30 years, was clearly intended to undermine Khatib.

Until last week the National Coalition had steadfastly avoided appointing an interim prime minister for fear of exacerbating divisions within the coalition and between its supporters in both the Gulf and the West. But insiders said Khatib’s increasingly “go it alone” policy, primarily his offer to talk to the Assad regime, which took place without consultation with other National Coalition officials, prompted his opponents to act.

It’s also not a coincidence that one of Hitto’s first pronouncements was to firmly rule out any talks with the Assad regime. Hitto is widely seen as a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood and his election was reportedly pushed by Qatar and Turkey, who are increasing their influence in the National Coalition as the Syrian civil war drags on.

But the National Coalition’s representative in the U.K., Walid Safur, insists that the talk of extremists and the Muslim Brotherhood taking control of the opposition is inaccurate. Speaking to me Wednesday, he said: “We’re a democratic movement, one that allows freedom of expression, unlike the Assad regime which kills those with opposing views. There are differences, but we are united on the major issue, which is to free Syria from the murderous regime of Bashar Assad.”

That said, Safur acknowledged the sharp rise in the number of extremist Islamist groups within the opposition’s ranks on the ground. He said: “The spread of elements such as the extremists has happened because the West has taken an ethical decision not to help the Syrian people overthrow Assad. Those elements are helping the Syrian people, if the West wants to prevent this it needs to step in and do more to help.”

But in a classic “Catch 22,” help is not forthcoming because the mistrust and disunity within Syria’s opposition, and the nature of many if the armed factions inside Syria, such as the extremist Nusra Front, have left the West reluctant to intervene more resolutely.

Consequently, despite the U.K.’s much publicized attempts to lift the European Union ban on arming the rebels, the Foreign Office insisted this week that it has not called for the opposition to be armed. An official explained the policy to me in detail. He said: “We haven’t taken a position on arming the opposition. The ability to send arms to the rebels and actually sending arms are not the same thing. If we have the ability to send arms it sends a clear message to Assad, but we haven’t made a decision about actually sending arms.”

Well, one can only hope such a policy is clear to Assad because it’s probably as clear as mud to most other people. But it reflects that the British government is aware that extremist groups are gaining more influence within the opposition and finding room to operate in Syria.

The Foreign Office official told me, “This is why we continue to support moderate opposition to boost their appeal and effectiveness over extremists. There remains a need to build up moderate opposition on the ground to counter extremist influence.”

Yet the events of the last week underline that despite creating the National Coalition to serve its own purposes, the West has, until now, lost the battle to bolster moderate elements within the opposition, and so far appears to be strengthening the extremists instead. Even headless chickens can survive long enough to hatch bad eggs.

Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper THE DAILY STAR.

Blair, still the unrepentant preacher

The Daily Star
Friday, March 8 2013
By Michael Glackin

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has given up trying to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq or persuade people that “it was the right decision.” His weariness is understandable. Blair has changed the reasons for supporting America’s decision to invade so many times, he has probably lost track of what it is he is justifying.

Yet Blair also remains unrepentant and is still preaching. Speaking on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the invasion, Blair admitted that life in Iraq, where sectarian killings continue, was not what he had hoped it would be following the downfall and execution of Saddam Hussein. Yet despite this he insisted the situation for Iraqis would have been terrible had the dictator remained in power, adding that Saddam was “20 times worse” than Syrian President Bashar Assad.

It’s easy to knock Blair. His vanity, his messianic belief in himself and his judgments, his clear deceit in going to war on intelligence he surely realized was flawed. A year before the invasion, he wrote to his chief of staff Jonathan Powell: “the immediate [weapons of mass destruction] problems don’t seem obviously worse than three years ago. So we have to reorder our story and message. Increasingly, I think it should be about the nature of the regime.”

In short Blair wanted a war. And he wanted it because he believed there was a moral case for it. It had nothing to do with WMD and he never cared about gaining United Nations support. In that same memo Blair wrote: “A political philosophy that does care about other nations – e.g. Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and is proud to change regimes on the merits, should be gung-ho on Saddam.”

The crude language displays a distastefully cavalier attitude to the hundreds of thousands of lives that would be lost on Blair’s desire for a “gung-ho” approach to Saddam. But playing devil’s advocate, one could say that his decision-making in the runup to the Iraqi invasion was informed by both the failures and successes of the international community in dealing with what were considered to be “rogue states.”

Wind the clock even further back to 1994 and Rwanda. The United Nations had boots on the ground. It had, by all accounts, been warned in advance that a genocide against the country’s Tutsis was imminent. Yet the U.N. Security Council did nothing. More than half a million men, women and children were massacred, including 2,000 refugees who had taken refuge in the Don Bosco School in the Rwandan capital of Kigali under the protection of Belgian U.N. peacekeepers. The peacekeepers were ordered by the U.N. to abandon the school, leaving it to Hutu militants waiting outside its gates, drinking beer. Once the Belgians left, the militants entered and massacred almost everyone.

The lesson Blair drew from Rwanda was that the U.N. is incapable of preventing human tragedies. Its membership, as we can see today over Syria, cannot speak with one voice and so shrinks from decisive action when it is most needed.

NATO’s belated attack on Serbia over Kosovo in 1999, generally seen as establishing the template for Blair’s “humanitarian interventionism,” stemmed in large part from global guilt over the U.N.’s failure to intervene in Rwanda as much as from disgust with the carnage in the former Yugoslavia and the Western hand-wringing that accompanied the conflict throughout the 1990s.

Blair persuaded then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, who had regretted his own failure to act in Rwanda, to join him. This “humanitarian intervention” was based on a simple premise: If the U.N. does not act to prevent, in Blair’s words during his famous Chicago speech in April 1999, ”a humanitarian crisis or gross oppression of a civilian population,” then individual states might do so themselves.

It was in essence a rebranding of Clinton’s earlier calls for “a coalition of the willing” when the U.S. president sought international support for possible action against North Korea in 1994.

The successful British intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000 stretched the premise further. Acting unilaterally, the troops rescued a failing U.N. operation that was on the point of losing control to the vicious militias, “gangsters” as Blair described them, who had taken hundreds of peacekeepers hostage and were poised to oust the country’s elected government. It was an overwhelming success and Blair has since said that it was one of the things of which he is most proud.

Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. I covered the government’s party conference in 2001, weeks after the attack and listened as Blair gave a speech outlining a world of “humanitarian intervention.” I left the conference thinking he might invade Zimbabwe – which he dearly wished to, North Korea, and probably China too, never mind Afghanistan or Iraq.

But while we ignore the international backdrop to the Iraq invasion at our own peril, none of this excuses what became one of the greatest military follies of modern history. Ten years on Iraq is a long way from being a functioning democracy. In the last week alone dozens of Iraqis have been killed in outbursts of the sectarian violence unleashed by the invasion. The Middle East is more volatile today. The invasion radically altered the region’s balance of power, to the advantage of Iran – a greater threat to the West than Saddam ever was.

The war in Iraq crushed British and more importantly American self-confidence, decidedly curbing Washington’s willingness to become involved in far-flung conflicts. Because of the conflict, the West remains firmly on the sidelines in Syria, effectively acquiescing in the continuing slaughter, just as it did in Kosovo until 1999.

Iraq exposed the limits of Blair’s doctrine. Sierra Leone, Kosovo and other smaller interventions failed to provide a consensual template for “humanitarian intervention.” All they did was give Blair dangerous over-confidence in his instincts and beliefs. The former British prime minister should now acknowledge these facts and take responsibility for them. Sadly, he refuses to do so. Unlike Pope Benedict XVI, Blair really does think he’s infallible.

Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper THE DAILY STAR.

Khatib wows the West, but not his allies

The Daily Star
Friday, February 15 2013
By Michael Glackin

It would be an overstatement to describe it as appeasement. But National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces leader Moaz al-Khatib’s hastily arranged meeting with Russia and Iran in, of all places, Munich, and his sudden volte face about talking with serving members of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has uncomfortable parallels.

Seventy-five years ago, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain traveled to Munich for talks with Adolf Hitler to avert a European war. Chamberlain, whose policy was to work with the dictator and appease his grievances, left the city convinced he had secured “peace in our time.” A year later Europe, and the rest of the world, was engulfed in the bloodiest war in its history, a war that also had far reaching consequences for the Middle East.

Whether Khatib’s meeting with Sergei Lavrov and Ali Akbar Salehi, the foreign ministers of Russia and Iran respectively, and his offer to hold talks with Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa will, as Khatib’s critics insist, embolden Syrian President Bashar Assad, as Chamberlain’s meeting emboldened Hitler, is a moot point. But by the time Khatib had left Munich it was clear his diplomacy had revealed further cracks in the coalition.

The coalition was established, at Western urging, to envelop the Syrian National Council, a grouping effectively dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood but that had also become divided and increasingly marginalized as Syria descended into civil war. The SNC failed to attract cash or support from minorities and rebels at the sharp end of the conflict who saw it as being under Turkey’s influence.

The coalition is more inclusive than the SNC, although it is worth pointing out that it doesn’t include all of Syria’s minorities, most notably Syria’s Kurdish parties. But it was founded on the categorical rejection of any talks with the Assad regime. This was an insistence of those opposed to forming the coalition, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and other militant Islamists, who feared the West was attempting to curb their power and influence and steer the opposition into talks with the regime.

While George Sabra, the coalition’s deputy leader and Syrian National Council president, has backtracked on his initial criticism of Khatib – cries of “stabbing rebels in the back” have died down – and tacitly backed the move, it is clear that many coalition members have deep misgivings about Khatib’s diplomatic efforts, not least because his offer to talk to the regime comes unnervingly hard on the heels of Assad’s own absurd invitation to his opponents to return to Damascus for talks, a move clearly aimed at dividing the opposition.

Indeed, sources within the coalition insist that the reason former Prime Minister Riad Hijab, who defected and joined the opposition last year, hasn’t been appointed prime minister in waiting is because many in the opposition, not just the Muslim Brotherhood, refuse to deal with anyone who has served in the Assad regime.

With that in mind, it’s unlikely that the opposition will agree with one voice to opening a dialogue with someone as senior as Sharaa, who is at the very least supporting the regime’s bloody campaign.

An emergency meeting of the coalition is scheduled to take place to discuss Khatib’s diplomacy – his offer of talks and trip to Munich were entirely his own initiatives – which should clarify the situation either way. But it’s important to note that Khatib’s “go it alone” diplomacy is an honest attempt to break the diplomatic log jam that for over two years has left an estimated 60,000 Syrians dead and tens of thousands more as refugees in neighboring countries. It is a recognition that as the war approaches its second anniversary with no end in sight, the opposition has been powerless to achieve its goals, and the longer it goes on, the greater the risk of further divisions within the opposition and regional overspill.

For the opposition to remain relevant it must deliver something. In the absence of decisive action by the West or agreement with Russia, which has blocked three United Nations Resolutions aimed at ending the war or forcing Assad to stand down, Khatib has few options.

Whatever the discontent with coalition, the West feels it can do business with Khatib, and the rebels on the ground appear to respect him more than many other elements in the opposition, who are seen as “hotel warriors.”

Khatib insists talks are conditional on the regime releasing 160,000 detainees and issuing passports for thousands of Syrians who have fled to neighboring countries. But by his actions he has adopted the so-called Geneva Plan put forward by the U.N. and supported by Russia and the West, that allows Assad to remain in power while talks take place.

A British Foreign Office official firmly backed Khatib’s move. She said: “Mr. Al-Khatib has the full support of the U.K., U.S. and France on his conditional offer to negotiate with the Assad regime. We cannot shift Assad, but Russia can. It goes without saying that Khatib would want to take his argument to the Russians, the Chinese and eventually the Iranians. They hold the key to Assad’s response to the offer.”

It all makes sense to the West then. But that doesn’t mean it makes sense to everyone in the opposition, particularly those who believe the West isn’t doing enough to aid the rebels. Western support is strictly limited and likely to remain so. Although the U.K. has called for a review of the European Union arms embargo on Syria, which expires on March 1, a ban on arming the rebels is likely to remain.

U.S. President Barack Obama has steadfastly refused to put guns in the hands of rebels, overruling advice from former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, as well as former CIA chief and Afghan war commander David Petraeus. There is a chance that now that Obama has been safely re-elected, he may relent, but the smart money says the risk of U.S.-supplied weapons ending up in the hands of rebel forces linked to Al-Qaeda will ensure the current policy remains in place.

But opposition insiders insist the coalition’s increasing unhappiness with Western support isn’t simply about arms. Last week one told me: “The coalition hasn’t enough money to operate the government due to hesitation of the international community and the Friends of Syria.”

He added: “The Syrian people and the opposition are losing hope with the West, and the friends of Syria, who offered very little. The world watches the regime’s carnage and just issues instructions and warnings, spreading cold views to people in the worst conditions.”

The West created the coalition to have a political entity that it could work with and fill the void when Assad is finally toppled. But the fact remains that the coalition has failed to present a united front and offer a convincing blueprint for Syria’s transition to democracy. This past week offered a reminder that it is difficult to see the coalition heading a popularly backed transitional government or maintaining control of myriad armed groups in a war-torn country. Khatib appears to be making the coalition’s policy on a personal or ad-hoc basis because he cannot reach agreement to pursue them otherwise.

No one can accuse Khatib of failing to pursue every available opportunity to end this bloody war. But he may yet find that his trip to Munich offers as little comfort in the long term as Chamberlain’s visit to the same city did 75 years ago, if all he achieves is to divide the opposition and encourage Assad to continue a bloody war.

Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut based newspaper THE DAILY STAR.

London proves to be luckless on Syria

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.

Russia Today Cross Talk

Michael Glackin discussing Afghanistan on Russia Today's Cross Talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTbsrVjCyk8

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