WORLD_ Western reports on Syria only really agree on one thing: the conflict won't end soon

Western reports on Syria only really agree on one thing: the conflict won't end soon

By David Blair World Last updated: August 17th, 2012
74 Comments



The western press doesn't think the tanks will stop rolling any time soon


The Western media's view of the Syrian conflict is not as monolithic at might appear. Nargiza, our foreign desk intern, has been looking for alternative views. Here is what she has found:

By Nargiza Ryskulova

Syria has dominated the news agenda since the uprising against Bashar-al-Assad’s government began almost 17 months ago. Every day we learn news from Damascus and wonder where it all will lead. While many western media outlets share the view that external intervention in Syrian conflict is necessary, not all agree with such arguments.

A Guardian columnist and associate editor, Seumas Milne writes that “intervention is now driving Syria’s descent into darkness”, arguing that it might lead to the Syrian “war spreading outside the country”.

He acknowledges that initially the uprising was “genuinely against an authoritarian regime”, however western and regional intervention “has been driving the escalation of the conflict, boosting the rebels’ fortunes, as well as the death toll”.

Milne highlights that the support of the Obama administration and Gulf countries is not helping the opposition forces in Syria; putting them at risk of becoming “instruments of their sponsors, rather than the people they seek to represent”.

He concludes that there are more factors to consider, while making a decision to intervene in the Syrian conflict than what he describes “as a one-dimensional fight for freedom”. Milne is convinced that the only way to resolve the conflict now is to “give Syrians the chance to determine their own future – and halt the country's descent into darkness”.

Colum Lynch, a columnist for Foreign Policy – an American magazine of politics and economics – has also been questioning how the Obama administration has handled the situation in Syria, referring to it as “Syrian Shadow Boxing” and asking whether “the Obama administration is getting what it wants?”

He writes that the resignation of Kofi Annan marks “the end of UN-led diplomatic efforts to persuade President Bashar al-Assad to leave office peacefully” and sets “the stage for a new and deadlier phase of the Syrian crisis, heightening pressure on the United States and its allies to now step up military support for an armed opposition movement that they don't know well or entirely trust”.

Lynch builds his argument on the assumption that the Obama administration has no interest in getting involved in an armed conflict in Syria. He quotes Richard Gowan, an analyst at New York University's Centre for International Cooperation, saying that “Washington's primary goal has been to avoid getting dragged into a military operation in Syria”. Lynch argues that Obama administration has failed to achieve its initial goal of resolving the Syrian conflict peacefully.

The conflict will not only “harm American and Russian interests in Syria” writes Lynch, but will show the failure of “Obama administration to reset relations with Moscow” and “may condemn Syrians and their neighbours to a long and bloody war”.

“Proletarian Online”, a newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain on the contrary is convinced that the “US and their imperialist allies” are doing everything to start the war in Syria. The latest issue suggests that “US imperialism sows the seeds for the next world war”. The article calls on British workers to unite with “their Syrian brothers and sisters and refuse to cooperate in any way with the imperialist drive to war”. The newspaper reports that the “terrorist bomb” that killed four key security leaders in Damascus on July 18 was a clear evidence of the West trying to start a war in Syria.

As arguments about US and Western intervention in Syria continue to evolve in mainstream and alternative media, one thread of thought seems to be commonly agreed upon: regardless of external intervention, the conflict in Syria is unlikely to end soon.

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