Syrian Crisis...2013

WHAT SYRIA MEANS

Syria stands at the door to the emergence of the Eastern Alliance, the new dominant energy pipelines, a new payment system detached from the USDollar and Anglo banks. Syria stands at the door which controls some incremental European energy supply. Syria stands at the door to Gold Trade Settlement, with a transition step that brings more importance to commodity backed currencies and proper valid systems for trade. Syria means the pipelines strangle the USDollar. Syria means the end of the US system of IOU coupons that pollute the global banking system. Syria means the status quo is coming to an abrupt end. Syria represents a clash of East versus West, which has more commercial and bank significance than anything reported by the lapdog press.

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Syrian government says war has reached stalemate
Exclusive: Deputy PM says neither side is strong enough to win and government may call for ceasefire at Geneva talks


The Syrian conflict has reached a stalemate and President Bashar al-Assad's government will call for a ceasefire at a long-delayed conference in Geneva on the state's future, the country's deputy prime minister has said in an interview with the Guardian.

Qadri Jamil said that neither side was strong enough to win the conflict, which has lasted two years and caused the death of more than 100,000 people. Jamil, who is in charge of country's finances, also said that the Syrian economy had suffered catastrophic losses.

"Neither the armed opposition nor the regime is capable of defeating the other side," he said. "This zero balance of forces will not change for a while."

Meanwhile, he said, the Syrian economy had lost about $100bn (£62bn), equivalent to two years of normal production, during the war.

If accepted by the armed opposition, a ceasefire would have to be kept "under international observation", which could be provided by monitors or UN peace-keepers – as long as they came from neutral or friendly countries, he said.

Leaders of Syria's armed opposition have repeatedly refused to go to what is called Geneva Two unless Assad first resigns. An earlier conference on Syria at Geneva lasted for just one day in June last year and no Syrians attended.

Jamil's comments are the first indication of the proposals that Syria will bring to the table at the summit, which Russia and the US have been trying to convene for months.

Asked what proposals his government would make at Geneva, he said: "An end to external intervention, a ceasefire and the launching of a peaceful political process in a way that the Syrian people can enjoy self-determination without outside intervention and in a democratic way."

Although both Moscow and the Obama administration seem committed to convening Geneva Two, a major split has emerged between Russia and the US over who should take part. The US has been urging the Syrian National Coalition, the western-backed rebel group, to drop its boycott but wants the SNC to be the only opposition delegation.

"The paradox now is that the US is trying to give the SNC the leading role. We're fed up with this monopolistic view," Jamil said.

Jamil is one of two cabinet ministers from small secular parties who were appointed last year to end the monopoly of the Ba'ath party.

By joining the government, he said, "we wanted to give a lesson to both sides to prepare for a government of national unity and break the unilateral aspect of the regime – and break the fear in opposition circles about sitting in front of the regime".

Jamil's comments on why he joined the cabinet were those of his party, but his other comments in the hour-long interview represented the government's position, he said.

He repeatedly stressed Syria was changing but it needed support rather than pressure. "Let nobody have any fear that the regime in its present form will continue. For all practical purposes the regime in its previous form has ended. In order to realise our progressive reforms we need the west and all those who are involved in Syria to get off our shoulders," he said.

Jamil said that last week's UN report on the 21 August chemical weapons attack which killed more than 1,000 people was "not thoroughly objective".

He said Russia had produced evidence showing the rockets that were identified by the UN inspectors as carrying sarin were indeed Soviet-made. But he said they had been exported from Russia to Syria in the 1970s.

"They were loaded with chemicals by Gaddafi and exported to fundamentalists in Syria after Gaddafi fell," he said.

On Friday Vladimir Putin said he could not be sure that Assad would fulfil the US-Russian plan to identify and destroy his chemical weapons stocks, but "all the signs" suggested the Syrian regime was serious.

"Will we be able to accomplish it all? I cannot be 100% sure about it," said Putin, speaking at a discussion forum with western politicians and Russia experts in the north-west of the country. "But everything we have seen so far in recent days gives us confidence that this will happen … I hope so."

Details of Russia's position on who should represent the opposition at Geneva Two have also emerged. Members of the National Co-ordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria, an umbrella group for several internal parties, met Sergei Ryabkov, a Russian deputy foreign minister, in Damascus on Thursday evening.

Safwan Akkash, an NCB leader, told the Guardian afterwards that Ryabkov told them Russia was proposing there should be three opposition teams at Geneva. These should be the NCB, the Syrian National Coalition, and a combined delegation of Kurds.

The SNC, while cautiously accepting Geneva Two as a means of breaking an entrenched stalemate, insists that Assad's resignation remains non-negotiable.

It is also sticking to a position that a transitional government must follow the ousting of Assad.

It has remained insistent that those who carried out the chemical attack must be held to account – a point it has hammered home ever since the Russian-US deal to force Syria to hand over its chemical weapons stockpiles.

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Asked what proposals his government would make at Geneva, he said: "An end to external intervention, a ceasefire and the launching of a peaceful political process in a way that the Syrian people can enjoy self-determination without outside intervention and in a democratic way."

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Erdoğan Is Not Turkey’s Only Problem
Dani Rodrik

PRINCETON – Türkan Saylan was a trailblazing physician, one of Turkey’s first female dermatologists and a leading campaigner against leprosy. She was also a staunch secularist who established a foundation to provide scholarships to young girls so they could attend school. In 2009, police raided her house and confiscated documents in an investigation that linked her to an alleged terrorist group, called “Ergenekon,” supposedly bent on destabilizing Turkey in order to precipitate a military coup.

Saylan was terminally ill with cancer at the time and died shortly thereafter. But the case against her associates continued and became part of a vast wave of trials directed against opponents of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his allies in the powerful Gülen movement, made up of the followers of the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen.
CommentsThe evidence in this case, as in so many others, consists of Microsoft Word documents found on a computer that belonged to Saylan’s foundation. When American experts recently examined the forensic image of the hard drive, they made a startling – but for Turkey all too familiar – discovery. The incriminating files had been placed on the hard drive sometime after the computer’s last use at the foundation. Because the computer had been seized by the police, the finding pointed rather directly to official malfeasance.
CommentsFabricated evidence, secret witnesses, and flights of investigative fancy are the foundation of the show trials that Turkish police and prosecutors have mounted since 2007. In the infamous Sledgehammer case, a military-coup plot was found to contain glaring anachronisms, including the use of Microsoft Office 2007 in documents supposedly last saved in 2003. (My father-in-law is among the more than 300 officers who were locked up, and my wife and I have been active in documenting the case’s fabrications.)
CommentsThe list of revelations and absurdities goes on and on. In one case, a document describing a plot directed against Christian minorities turned out to have been in police possession before the authorities claimed to have recovered it from a suspect. In another, police “discovered” the evidence that they were seeking, despite going to the wrong address and raiding the home of a naval officer whose name sounded similar to that of the target.
CommentsYet none of the trials has yet been derailed. Most have had the support and blessing of Erdoğan, who has exploited them to discredit the old secular guard and cement his rule. Even more important, the trials have had the strong backing of the Gülen movement.
CommentsGülen lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, where he presides over a huge informal network of schools, think tanks, businesses, and media across five continents. His devotees have established roughly 100 charter schools in the United States alone, and the movement has gained traction in Europe since the first Gülen school was founded in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1995.
CommentsBack home, Gülen’s followers have created what is effectively a state within the Turkish state, gaining a strong foothold in the police force, the judiciary, and the bureaucracy. Gülenists deny that they control the Turkish police, but, as a US ambassador to Turkey put it in 2009, “we have found no one who disputes it.”
CommentsThe movement’s influence within the judiciary ensures that its members’ transgressions remain unchallenged. In one well-documented case, a non-commissioned officer at a military base, acting on behalf of the Gülen movement, was caught planting documents in order to embarrass military officials. The military prosecutor investigating the case soon found himself in jail on trumped-up charges, while the perpetrator was reinstated. A senior police commissioner who had been close to the movement and wrote an exposé about its activities was accused of collaborating with the far-left groups that he had spent much of his career pursuing; he, too, ended up in jail.
CommentsThe Gülen movement uses these trials to lock up critics and replace opponents in important state posts. The ultimate goal seems to be to reshape Turkish society in the movement’s own conservative-religious image. Gülenist media have been particularly active in this cause, spewing a continuous stream of disinformation about defendants in Gülen-mounted trials while covering up police misdeeds.
CommentsBut relations between Erdoğan and the Gülenists have soured. Once their common enemy, the secularists, were out of the way, Erdoğan had less need for the movement. The breaking point came in February 2012, when Gülenists tried to bring down his intelligence chief, a close confidant, reaching perilously close to Erdoğan himself. Erdoğan responded by removing many Gülenists from their positions in the police and judiciary.
CommentsBut Erdoğan’s ability to take on the Gülen movement is limited. Bugging devices were recently found in Erdoğan’s office, planted, his close associates said, by the police. Yet Erdoğan, known for his brash style, responded with remarkable equanimity. If he harbored any doubt that the movement sits on troves of embarrassing – and possibly far worse – intelligence, the bugging revelation must surely have removed it.
CommentsThe foreign media have focused mainly on Erdoğan’s behavior in recent months. But if Turkey has turned into a Kafkaesque quagmire, a republic of dirty tricks and surreal conspiracies, it is Gülenists who must shoulder much of the blame. This is worth remembering in view of the movement’s efforts to dress up its current opposition to Erdoğan in the garb of democracy and pluralism.
CommentsGülenist commentators preach about the rule of law and human rights, even as Gülenist media champion flagrant show trials. The movement showcases Fethullah Gülen as a beacon of moderation and tolerance, while his Turkish-language Web site peddles his anti-Semitic, anti-Western sermons. Such double talk seems to have become second nature to Gülenist leaders.
CommentsThe good news is that the rest of the world has started to see Erdoğan’s republic for what it is: an increasingly authoritarian regime built around a popular but deeply flawed leader. Indeed, his government’s crackdown on dissent may well have cost Istanbul the 2020 Olympics. What has yet to be recognized is the separate, and quite disturbing, role that the Gülen movement has played in bringing Turkey to its current impasse. As Americans and Europeans debate the Gülen movement’s role in their own societies, they should examine Turkey’s experience more closely.

Reprinting material from this Web site without written consent from Project Syndicate is a violation of international copyright law. To secure permission, please contact us.

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delft said:

Turkey is important in this crisis. Here is a view on the current situation in Turkey:

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There are other visions on Turkey, but there is certainly a lot of trouble in that country and that will influence its policies.
Does anyone remember any critical remarks by Western leaders about this NATO country?

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Obama-Rouhani: lights, camera, action
By Pepe Escobar


The stage is set. By now it's established Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has given full authority to the new administration of President Hassan Rouhani to talk directly to Washington about Iran's nuclear program.

This happened only a few days after US President Barack Obama leaked that letters had been exchanged between himself and Rouhani.

Rouhani's empowerment was first confirmed later last week by extremely credible former nuclear negotiator ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian in this op-ed published in Japan. Mousavian was Rouhani's deputy in Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) from 1997 to 2005. Then Rouhani himself expanded on it this Wednesday in an interview with NBC.

It's crucial to consider the Supreme Leader's exact position. This past Tuesday, he addressed the elite of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Tehran. [1] The key quote: "We don't accept nuclear weapons, not for the sake of the US or others, but because of our beliefs, and when we say that no one should have nuclear weapons, certainly we are not after them either."

Khamenei fully endorsed Rouhani's diplomatic offensive, emphasizing - not cryptically - two concepts: "heroic flexibility", as in a wrestler sometimes giving way for tactical reasons but never losing sight of the rival; and "champion's leniency" - which happens to be the subtitle of a book Khamenei himself translated from Arabic about how the second Shi'ite imam, Hasan ibn Ali, managed to prevent a war in the 7th century by showing flexibility towards his enemy.

Does that mean that a historic meeting between Obama and Rouhani next Tuesday on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly in New York is all but certain? No. Predictably, the White House has already exercised plausible deniability - as in Obama "not expected to meet" Rouhani.

What the process implies though, is that Washington and Tehran should be talking, sooner or later, at the highest level.

Watch the spoilers
Crucially, Khamenei also told the IRGC, "It is not necessary for the guards to have activities in the political field." This implies they are out of the new nuclear negotiations, in a further confirmation of how the nuclear dossier has been transferred to the Foreign Ministry. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is the man in charge. He will be traveling to New York with Rouhani. Here is an excellent insight into his frame of mind. As for former foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi, now appointed by Rouhani as the head of Iran's atomic energy agency, he told the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna that it was time to "end the so-called nuclear file".

The whole process, now in dizzying speed, is a radical departure from the Ahmadinejad years, when the IRGC was politicized to the extreme. One day before Khamenei's speech, Rouhani himself asked the IRGC to "stay above and beyond political currents".

So Iran is now advancing pieces in the chessboard. There's no substantial American response, so far. But the spoilers in the game are already on overdrive.

Not by accident Israel has ramped up its moves to stress the great "existential threat" to itself is the "strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut" - as expressed by outgoing Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren. [2]

What is now clear is that Tel Aviv would rather have al-Qaeda-style jihadis of the Jabhat al-Nusra mould in power in Damascus than a secular Arab republic under Bashar al-Assad. That's yet another proof, if needed, of the confluence of interests between Israel and those paragons of democracy, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) petro-monarchies. No wonder all these players are bitterly despised by the Arab street.

Tel Aviv will go no holds barred to bombard the Syrian chemical weapons dossier - pressuring for "conditions" that might include non-existent Iranian weapons and pressuring for everyone to believe Assad - with Hezbollah and Iran's complicity - is not cooperating with chemical weapons inspectors. Syrian "rebel" military leader, General Selim Idriss - an Israeli-GCC puppet - has already started the campaign, saying Damascus has transferred chemical weapons to Lebanon and Iraq.

As for the House of Saud, the monarchy regards Russian diplomacy as worse than poison. They don't want even the possibility of a Geneva II conference - as Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush, head of the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate, told Putin in person. They want regime change, they want it now, and they will keep weaponizing the most lethal "rebel" factions, now on overdrive.

The Obama administration must have registered Moscow's message that Syria is indeed a Russian "red line" - as important to Russia as Israel to the US. And the White House must have registered Khamenei's own message via Sultan Qaboos of Oman; the gist of it was that "whoever intends to destroy Syria should be prepared to lose their oil and gas in the region".

The solution for the Syrian chemical weapons impasse, as reported by Asia Times Online, was worked out by Damascus, Tehran and Moscow - and later supported by Beijing. It did, in fact, save the Obama administration from itself.

Yet, an interview late last week, Obama reverted to the same old (misleading) message, when referring to Iran:
I think what the Iranians understand is that the nuclear issue is a far larger issue for us than the chemical weapons issue, that the threat against ... Israel that a nuclear Iran poses is much closer to our core interests. That a nuclear arms race in the region is something that would be profoundly destabilizing.
There is no "threat" to Israel because there will be no nuclear Iran - as Khamenei, once again, has just stressed. The (undeclared) nuclear power is Israel, not Iran. And chemical weapons were never an issue to begin with; Obama's own, reckless, "red line" turned into an issue as a means to possibly enforce his previous red line, "Assad must go".

Here, I had a shot at drawing the Big Picture. Last week, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Kyrgyzstan, Rouhani met with both Putin and China's President Xi Jinping. They are now working on a concerted strategy not only in Syria but also in terms of Iran's nuclear dossier.

Russia and China firmly support Iran's right for a civilian nuclear program. And first and foremost, the BRICS group (Brazil, India and South Africa being its other members), as well as emerging regional powers such as Indonesia, Argentina and Iran itself, will keep increasing their push towards a multi-polar international order under the rule of law, instead of the usual US hegemon going on a rampage.

Diplomacy is trying to have a shot at solving the Syrian tragedy. And diplomacy should have a shot at solving the 34-year Wall of Mistrust between Washington and Tehran. The question is whether Obama will have the "heroic flexibility" to stare down the spoilers.

Notes:
1. Supreme Leader Reiterates Iran's Opposition to N. Weapons, Fars News Agency, September 17, 2013.
2. Israel wanted Assad gone since start of Syria civil war, Jerusalem Post, September 17, 2013.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at [email protected].

(Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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kwaigonegin said:

Not too anyone's surprise this war just officially became a 3 way flustercluck!

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kwaigonegin said:

Not too anyone's surprise this war just officially became a 3 way flustercluck!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

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