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31 Dec 2013
UN humanitarian chief decries ‘indiscriminate attacks’ in Aleppo
Report
from UN News Service
Published on 31 Dec 2013
Displaced children and women stand in Aleppo, Syria.
© UNICEF/Romenzi
31 December 2013 – The top United Nations humanitarian official today expressed concern about the deteriorating situation in the Syrian city of Aleppo, where hundreds of people have been killed or injured by indiscriminate attacks in recent weeks.
“I join UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in strongly condemning the attacks against civilians in Aleppo and in many other parts of Syria,” said Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos.
Mr. Ban last week voiced grave concern about the continued and indiscriminate use of heavy weapons and mortar shelling in the ongoing conflict, particularly in hard-hit Aleppo which the Government has targeted with “barrel bombs,” or oil drums filled with explosives and shrapnel and dropped by aircraft.
“People have suffered enough,” Ms. Amos said, adding that insecurity continues to have a major impact on efforts to reach people with life-saving assistance.
“I remind all parties to the conflict of their obligation under international humanitarian and human rights law, and their responsibility to ensure the protection of civilians,” she said.
The Security Council adopted a non-binding presidential statement three months ago in which it underscored that humanitarian organizations operate in a neutral and impartial manner, and need unhindered access to safely reach all people.
Over 100,000 people have already been killed in Syria and 8 million driven from their homes, with 2 million of them seeking refuge in neighbouring countries, since the conflict first erupted in March 2011.
There is now an average of 127,000 people pouring out of Syria each month, according to the latest figures from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which added that the number of registered refugees is expected to surpass 4 million at the end of next year.
Across the region, some 400,000 refugees live in formal camps, but nearly 2 million reside outside formal settlements, the UN agency noted.
To keep pace with the exodus, more than 196,000 tents and 809,000 plastic tarpaulins were distributed to refugees residing in camps and informal sites.
Meanwhile, at least five Palestinians trapped inside the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus have reportedly died of malnutrition.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said it has been unable to deliver relief supplies to the besieged camp since September, and reiterated its call on all parties to immediately heed their legal obligations and allow urgent provision of humanitarian assistance there and to other Palestinian refugee camps.
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More than 130,000 dead since start of Syria conflict: NGO
World Jan. 01, 2014 - 06:42AM JST
JAPANTODAY
Syrian mourners pray over the bodies of civilians during their mass burial in the Bustan al-Qasr district of Aleppo, on January 31, 2013 AFP
BEIRUT —
More than 130,000 people have been killed since the beginning of the conflict in Syria nearly three years ago, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.
In a new tally, the group said 130,433 people have been killed since the conflict began in March 2011, among them 46,266 civilians.
They include more than 7,000 children and more than 4,600 women, the Britain-based watchdog said.
The group, which relies on a network of sources on the ground in Syria, said 52,290 pro-government fighters had been killed, among them more than 32,000 regular troops and 262 reinforcements from the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah.
On the rebel side, the group counted 29,083 deaths, including 6,913 fighters from jihadist groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The Observatory said it had also recorded the deaths of 2,794 unidentified individuals.
Syria’s bloody conflict began in March 2011, with peaceful anti-government demonstrations.
The regime of President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on the protests, and the opposition took up arms.
The conflict has spiralled into an increasingly bloody civil war, with human rights groups accusing both sides of suspected war crimes.
© 2014 AFP
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Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
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Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
31 Dec 2013 - 2:16pm
Deadline for Syria chemical arms missed
Disarmaments teams scheduled to destroy Syria's chemical arms have sent their escort ships back to port as they miss a deadline set in September.
Source
AAP
UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO
SBS
Disarmament teams have returned Scandinavian escort vessels to port as they accepted an end-of-year deadline for the removal of Syrian chemical weapons could no longer be met, a Norwegian spokesman says.
Norwegian frigate HNoMS Helge Ingstad was ordered back to port in the nearby island of Cyprus on Monday along with a Danish warship that had been deployed to escort the dangerous cargo to destruction under international supervision, spokesman Lars Hovtun said.
He gave no new date for the planned shipment.
"We are still on high alert to go into Syria," Hovtun said. "We still don't know exactly when the orders will come."
The international disarmament mission in Syria had acknowledged on Saturday that it was "unlikely" the weapons could be transported to the Syrian port of Latakia in time for the December 31 deadline set for the removal of key weapons components.
The year-end deadline was the first key milestone under a UN Security Council-backed deal arranged by Russia and the US that aims to wipe out all of Syria's chemical arms by the middle of 2014.
"Preparations continue in readiness for the transport of most of the critical chemical material from the Syrian Arab Republic for outside destruction. However, at this stage, transportation of the most critical chemical material before 31 December is unlikely," said a joint statement from the UN and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Syria's worsening civil war, logistical problems and bad weather had held up the operation to move chemical agents to the port of Latakia, the two bodies said.
Under an internationally agreed plan, the chemicals will be taken to a port in Italy where they are to be transported to a US Navy ship specially fitted with equipment to destroy the weapons at sea.
Washington said on Monday it was "the Assad regime's responsibility to transport the chemicals to the port safely, to facilitate their removal.
"We expect them to meet that obligation," stressed State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf.
But she also recognised that it was "a complicated process ... as long as we see forward progress that what's most important here."
Harf highlighted how much had been achieved since the chemical arms deal was struck in September, including "the functional disablement of all Syria's declared production, mixing and filling equipment.
"Which basically means they can't take the chemicals they have and weaponise them."
And she stressed the international effort was still operating under an "ambitious timeline" which should see the stockpile completely destroyed by June 30.
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
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Nguyễn Hoài Trang
31122013
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Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
WikiLeaks under fire after delegation travels to Syria to meet Bashar al-Assad
Updated 23 minutes ago
ABC NEWS
The Federal Opposition has accused the WikiLeaks Party of irresponsibility after some of its members travelled to Syria to meet with the country's president Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian president released a Twitter photo on December 23 which appeared to show the meeting.
The delegation reportedly included WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's father John Shipton, who is currently the WikiLeaks Party chairman.
In a statement posted on the Wikileaks Party website in the lead-up to the meeting, a spokesman said the purpose of the trip was to show solidarity with the Syrian people and to voice opposition to Western military intervention.
"While the WikiLeaks Party recognises the needs for political reforms in Syria and to fight against corruption and abuses of human rights, it does not support achieving this by violence, Western military intervention and destruction of the country," the statement said.
"Due to security concerns and because of the high levels of violence in Syria, we cannot give detailed information about the delegation."
Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen says sending a delegation to Syria was not appropriate.
"That is an extraordinary thing for them to do," he said.
"[It] underlines their irresponsible approach.
"The Assad regime has been widely criticised and correctly criticised around the world.
"And for an Australian political party to think it's sensible to go and have discussions and try and provide some legitimacy, is something I think which they have to explain."
The ABC has contacted the WikiLeaks Party for a response.
What do you think of the WikiLeaks Party sending some of its members to meet with Bashar al-Assad? Have your say.
Chemical deadline passes without action as carnage continues
The visit came as Syrian forces were accused of killing civilians in a series of 'barrel-bomb' air strikes in the northern city of Aleppo.
Opposition activists said regime helicopters dropped barrels full of explosives on a vegetable market and next to a hospital in the city, which has become a key battleground in the country's two-year civil war, which has so far killed more than 100,000 people.
On Monday, disarmament teams returned Scandinavian escort vessels to port in Cyprus after they accepted that an end-of-year deadline for the removal of Syrian chemical weapons could no longer be met.
The Norwegian frigate Helge Ingstad was ordered back to port along with a Danish warship that had been deployed to escort the dangerous cargo to destruction under international supervision, Norwegian spokesman Lars Hovtun said.
He gave no new date for the planned shipment.
"We are still on high alert to go into Syria," he said. "We still don't know exactly when the orders will come."
The international disarmament mission in Syria acknowledged on Saturday that it was "unlikely" the weapons could be transported to the Syrian port of Latakia in time for the December 31 deadline set for the removal of key weapons components.
The year-end deadline was the first key milestone under a UN Security Council-backed deal arranged by Russia and the United States that aims to wipe out all of Syria's chemical arms by the middle of 2014.
"Preparations continue in readiness for the transport of most of the critical chemical material from the Syrian Arab Republic for outside destruction," said a joint statement from the UN and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
However, at this stage, transportation of the most critical chemical material before 31 December is unlikely."
ABC/AFP
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REPORT: The CIA Secretly Held Syrian Militants Responsible For The 1988 Lockerbie Bombing
The Telegraph
JON SWAINE , The Telegraph
Dec. 30, 2013, 1:55 PM
Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime was publicly blamed by the US for the attack
The CIA secretly held Syrian militants, rather than Libya, responsible for the Lockerbie bombing, according to newly unearthed testimony from a former US spy in the Middle East.
Dr Richard Fuisz said in a sworn deposition in 2001 that he was told by up to 15 senior Syrian officials that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) had carried out the attack.
He also testified that CIA bosses told him the PFLP-GC was responsible, according to a lawyer's note of a second deposition. Ahmed Jibril, the group's founder leader, who is still alive at 75, was singled out as being to blame for the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988, killing 270 people.
"Numerous high officials in the Syrian government were quite affirmative on Jibril's involvement in Pan Am 103," Dr Fuisz told lawyers, during his deposition in Virginia in 2001.
Dr Fuisz gave his depositions in 2000 and 2001 at the request of Megrahi's defence lawyers. However, the evidence came too late to be used in the trial. They were first published by Channel 4 News. The CIA declined to comment.
Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime was publicly blamed by the US for the attack, and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the bombing in 2001. He was later released and died last year in Libya.
But serious doubts about the conviction have been raised by investigative journalists for several years, centring on forensic evidence, and Libya has strenuously denied involvement.
The PFLP-GC were in fact the first prime suspects in the investigation.
Experts suggested it may have been ordered by the Iranian government as revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet by a US battleship months earlier, killing 290.
They added that blame may have been diverted from Iran in order to protect secret and delicate negotiations by George Bush's US administration over western hostages.
Dr Fuisz, a businessman who is said to have been a senior US intelligence asset in the Middle East in the 1980s and 90s, said that the Syrian officials he spoke to interacted with Jibril "on a constant basis" and that he was widely regarded to be the mastermind behind the bombing.
Asked who the Syrian officials cited as their source for the information, he said: "My recollection is they were direct. They were not hearsay sources on their part." Asked if that he understood that to mean that he was "being told by members of the Syrian government that Jibril, and or members of the PFLGC were taking credit for the bombing," he replied: "Yes".
More from The Telegraph:
* Civilians 'going without food' in South Sudan UN camp
* Michael Bloomberg 'spent $650 million of own money' as New York mayor
* Republican senator Ted Cruz says he wants to give up Canadian citizenship
This post originally appeared at The Telegraph. Copyright 2013. Follow The Telegraph on Twitter.
Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10532134/CIA-held-Syrian-militants-responsible-for-Lockerbie-bombing.html#ixzz2ozeTmqnd
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Monday, December 30, 2013
telegram.com
In Syria, elsewhere, U.S. turns away
As we both look back on 2013 and ahead to 2014, the civil war in Syria — and ongoing unrest and conflict elsewhere in the Middle East and Southwest Asia — remains cause for great concern.
For all the talk about containing and destroying chemical weapons in Syria, the Assad regime has continued to indiscriminately attack civilian populations with conventional weapons. While the world and the United Nations mostly watch and talk, the destruction of a nation continues to unfold before our eyes, largely unchecked.
There are no easy answers to the war in Syria, ongoing violence in Egypt and Iraq, or the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program, But 2013 was marked by weakness in U.S. foreign policy.
We cherish peace and long for a more peaceful world. But our nation's diplomacy must be informed by history, tempered by realism, and backed by credible force when necessary.
In 2014, Washington must resolve to retake its role as a leading force on the world stage. Nothing can guarantee an end to violence and bloodshed overseas, but the chaos in Syria and elsewhere will only grow worse if the U.S. continues to shun responsibilities that no other nation can assume.
____________
What do you think?
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
30122013
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
Syria set to miss weapons deadline
AFP
December 30, 2013 12:00AM
THE AUSTRALIAN
A Syrian man sits in the rubble of buildings following a government airstrike in Aleppo, Syria, in this citizen journalism image. Source: AP
SYRIA is "unlikely" to meet a December 31 deadline to move its most dangerous chemical arms out of the country, the UN acknowledged for the first time yesterday.
The UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said "important progress" had been made on eliminating Syria's banned weapons, but called on Bashar al-Assad's government to "intensify efforts" to meet set deadlines.
The year-end deadline was the first key milestone under a UN Security Council-backed deal arranged by Russia and the US that aims to wipe out all Syria's chemical arms by the middle of next year.
"Preparations continue in readiness for the transport of most of the critical chemical material from the Syrian Arab Republic for outside destruction. However, at this stage, transportation of the most critical chemical material before December 31 is unlikely," said a joint UN-OPCW statement.
Syria's worsening civil war, logistical problems and bad weather had held up the operation to move chemical agents to the port of Latakia, the two bodies said.
Under an internationally agreed plan, the chemicals will be taken to a port in Italy where they are to be transported to a US navy ship fitted with equipment to destroy the weapons at sea, according to the diplomats.
Fighting between Assad's forces and opposition rebels had held up transportation of the chemicals, and some details of the destruction operation had still not been finalised, UN diplomats said.
The US-Russia deal for Syria to surrender more than 1000 tonnes of chemical agents averted US-led military strikes after a chemical weapons attack on August 21 near Damascus that the US says killed 1400 people.
The UN and OPCW are monitoring and helping with the operation, but the Syrian government has prime responsibility for moving the chemicals.
"Since the Syrian Arab Republic disclosed its chemical weapons program three months ago, important progress has been made," the UN-OPCW statement said.
Syria had started the destruction of equipment at facilities it declared and completed the eradication of missiles intended for chemical weapons use ahead of schedule.
The UN and OPCW welcomed "important milestones" already met by Assad's government, but highlighted "the importance of maintaining positive momentum".
They said the Syrian government "needs to intensify its efforts to ensure that its international obligations and commitment are met" under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Security Council resolution that ordered the destruction of its weapons.
UN leader Ban Ki-moon played down the delay in the weapons destruction, insisting in a UN statement that the operation was making "effective progress" as shown by "the steady achievements in meeting all previous milestones in the past three months".
The OPCW executive council is to meet again on January 8 to discuss Syria.
AFP
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
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conbenho
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30122013
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Time for a humanitarian intervention in Syria: Editorial
Syrian-Kurdish refugees stand by a mountain of coats provided by the United Nations in northern Iraq. (Getty Images)
By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
on December 29, 2013 at 7:00 AM, updated December 29, 2013 at 7:06 AM
The Jersey Journal
President Obama took a moment in his recent news conference to congratulate himself for his efforts to rid Syria of chemical weapons. Give him that. Despite the criticism over his red line, it did galvanize international efforts to get those weapons out of the regime’s hands, and that will save many Syrians from a particularly gruesome death.
But what is that worth if the regime continues its campaign of genocide through other means? When a child dies of starvation, the absence of chemical weapons is no consolation. When a family is forced into a squalid refugee camp, it hardly matters which weapon drove it to such desperation.
Syria is today’s answer to Darfur and Rwanda. It is a genocide that the world is watching, paralyzed by reluctance to become entangled in a messy civil war.
Our hope is that in 2014 Obama gets religion on this and launches a humanitarian relief effort that measures up to this historic challenge. That could mean establishing no-fly zones where the regime is bombing civilians, or establishing protected zones for refugees near the borders, or breaking the regime’s barricades by dropping food and medicine by air. It is time, at least, to ask the Pentagon for options and start that debate.
The United States can’t end this civil war. We are a depleted nation after the bitter fights in Afghanistan and Iraq. And with jihadists now playing an outsized role in the opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad, we have few friends on either side.
An international conference planned for late January is unlikely to produce a breakthrough, given that Assad’s grip on power has been reinforced this year by aid from Iran and Hezbollah.
But the carnage in Syria has reached the stage where it’s immoral to turn away. The regime is now using starvation as a weapon of war, blockading city neighborhoods and stopping aid workers as they try to bring in food or medicine. Some of the jihadi rebel groups are accused of similar crimes.
The International Rescue Committee stockpiled 300,000 doses of polio vaccine after learning of fresh outbreaks in Syria, but it has been unable to deliver them.
"We are going back to the dark ages, really, when civilians were targeted — that’s happening — when aid workers are targeted, when there are religious edicts that it’s all right to eat cats and dogs because of the scale of the shortage of food, and now the return of polio," the IRC’s David Miliband told the BBC.
Roughly one in 10 Syrians have fled the country, most of them to squalid refugees camps in Jordan and Turkey. Three times that number are homeless but still living in Syria. In all, the United States estimates that 9.3 million Syrians are in urgent need of humanitarian aid.
This is death and suffering on a horrifying scale, and it is likely to get worse this winter. On behalf of the civilians caught in this barbaric crossfire, the United States needs to urgently step up its efforts.
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517 dead in regime strikes on Aleppo
Nearly 151 children have been killed as government drops ‘barrel bombs’ on city
afp
Published: 14:24 December 29, 2013
gulfnews.com
Beirut: Regime air strikes on the northern Syrian province of Aleppo have killed at least 517 people since December 15, including 151 children, a monitor said on Sunday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a string of regime aerial attacks on the province, including second city Aleppo, with raids using explosives-packed barrels, had also killed 46 women.
At least 46 opposition fighters, including 34 rebels and 12 jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, but the majority of the dead were civilians, the Observatory said.
Recent weeks have seen a relentless aerial campaign targeting towns and villages across Aleppo province. On Saturday, helicopters dropped TNT-packed barrels on a vegetable market and next to a hospital in Aleppo city, killing at least 25 civilians, including children.
The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists, doctors and lawyers on the ground, strongly condemned the raids, and urged the international community to intervene.
“The Observatory considers all those who remain silent in the international community as complicit in the massacres that have been committed and continue to be committed by the Syrian regime,” it said.
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
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SYRIA: GENOCIDE BY INTERNATIONAL CONSENSUS
Features
by Amr Salahi, Middle East Monitor
WORLD WAR 4 REPORT
Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Dec. 29, 2013
Ever since the Syrian regime gassed its own citizens in the Damascus suburbs in a chemical attack on August 21, the issue has rarely been out of the Western news media. However, the debate has been very simplistic. Any observer would be forgiven for thinking that the only crime committed in Syria was this chemical attack, and that the Syrian people had not been subjected to a genocidal war at the hands of a ruthless sectarian dictatorship for two and a half years.
Of course, the original cause of the conflict has been largely forgotten. Outside Syria, not many people remember the peaceful protests calling for freedom and democracy that began the Syrian revolution in March 2011, and how those protests were met by the Assad regime, with unarmed protesters being slaughtered in the streets and children who wrote slogans on walls or took part in the protests tortured, on many occasions to death, in the regime's jails. It was only after many long months of killing and oppression that defecting soldiers from the regime's army formed the Free Syrian Army, to defend peaceful protesters as well as ordinary citizens from government attacks.
An observer of the debate would also be forgiven for thinking that the countries of the world are divided on Syria. The received wisdom on the Syrian conflict is that the United States, its allies in NATO and the Gulf States are offering support to the rebels while Russia, China, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah are supporting the regime. Bashar Al-Assad's regime likes to paint itself as part of an "axis of resistance" against US and Israeli imperialism which includes Iran and Hezbollah and is supported by Russia; this is why it has gained support from the anti-imperialist left in Western countries. A closer look at the support the regime is receiving vis-a-vis the "support" the rebels are receiving from their supposed allies shows that there is in fact little difference between the major powers on the Syrian issue. Russian ships carrying weapons, including aircraft, dock regularly in Latakia and Tartus, ensuring that the regime remains armed to the teeth and able to fight on despite the military setbacks inflicted on it by the rebels. Iran has not only sent weapons to the regime but also troops and advisers. It is believed widely in Syria that these advisers are the real rulers of the country. Hezbollah was instrumental in the regime's ruthless bombardment and capture of Qusair, and its fighters now line up alongside the regime in Deraa and Aleppo.
On the other hand, the United States and the European countries have given rhetorical support to the Syrian opposition while making sure that the Free Syrian Army remains unable to defeat the government's forces by imposing a strict arms embargo. For example, last year the Free Syrian Army managed to acquire anti-aircraft weapons but the United States and NATO refused to allow them to be transported to Syria and they remained in storage in Turkey. In June this year, following a regime chemical attack on the town of Saraqeb, the Obama administration announced that it would arm the Syrian rebels. To-date they have not received a single bullet from the United States or from any of its European allies. The FSA's main source of weapons remains those captured from the regime or those sold to it by corrupt regime officers. It is thought that Gulf countries have supplied weapons but not on a scale that would tip the balance of the conflict. The main factor ensuring that the conflict and genocide continue, and the Assad regime stays in power, is the continuing embargo on weapons to the Free Syrian Army, which lacks the heavy weapons needed to defeat the state's armed forces.
In order to understand the position of the United States and its European allies, it is helpful to look at the statements of Israeli officials. While the main pro-Israel lobby group in the United States, AIPAC, publicly declared its support for strikes against the Syrian regime following the most recent chemical weapons attack, it is much more evident that Israel would in fact prefer Bashar Al-Assad to remain in power. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged US Secretary of State Kerry to reach a deal with Russia that would avoid a military strike on Syria, expressing fears that a US strike would strengthen the Syrian opposition and allow it to gain control of Assad's chemical weapons. Netanyahu's office later issued a denial that any such exchange took place.
In November 2011, relatively early in the Syrian revolution when there was no serious talk of an Islamic extremist presence in Syria, Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defence ministry official, said that Assad's removal from power would be "devastating for Israel"; the Zionist state, he added, would then face an "Islamic Empire" encompassing Syria, Jordan and Egypt run by the Muslim Brotherhood and committed to its destruction. In May 2013, shortly after an Israeli strike on Damascus, Ephraim Halevy, a former director of Israel's Mossad spy agency, went much further in an article in the American journal Foreign Affairs. Calling Assad "Israel's Man in Damascus" he spelt out the reason why: for the past 40 years Assad has kept Israel's "border" with Syria quiet and guaranteed its security. What Halevy means is that Assad has allowed Israel to occupy the Golan Heights, undisturbed by any resistance. Another Israeli intelligence official summed up the Israeli position towards the conflict in Syria thus: "Our ‘best-case scenario' is that they continue to busy themselves fighting each other and don't turn their attention to us."
Israel's attitude to the Syrian conflict allows us to consider the developments that have taken place since the chemical attack in a new light. After President Obama announced that the US would strike Syria, anti-war activists and left-wing "anti-imperialists" were up in arms, as were right-wing pro-Israel Republicans in the United States. There was much comment that the rebels fighting against Assad were sectarian extremists with links to Al-Qaeda, who posed a threat to Syria's minorities, especially its Christian community, and that they were just as brutal as Assad. Conspiracy theories without any evidence which blamed the rebels for the sarin attack received mainstream coverage and were used to argue that the US and its allies were being dragged into an Iraq-style war.
Sadly for the conspiracy theorists, the evidence that the Syrian regime carried out the attack is incontrovertible. The United Nations report on the attack published on Tuesday, which does not assign blame, nevertheless concludes that it was launched from Mount Qassioun, a major government military base outside Damascus from which attacks against the Damascus suburbs are launched regularly. The report also concluded that the attack was launched using M14 rockets, which only the regime possesses, and that the sarin used was of a quality that could only be produced on an industrial scale using the resources of a government. The Assad regime's own reaction to the attack points to its responsibility, and to its sectarian character. First, it denied that any such attack took place; then it conceded that the attack happened but blamed the rebels; then a few days later the world was treated to the bizarre spectacle of Syrian government spokeswoman Buthaina Shaaban appearing on Sky News to claim that the child victims of the attack were in fact brought to the Ghouta area from Latakia province (an Alawite-majority area 300 miles away) by "terrorists" and then killed. The government did not declare any period of mourning for the 1,429 victims of the attack and, in fact, its supporters were seen celebrating and handing out sweets on the streets of Damascus in its immediate aftermath.
The anti-war activists and their new-found allies the Assad supporters and right-wing Republicans need not have worried. Despite a great deal of emotional language from John Kerry about the use of chemical weapons and the 426 children who died as a result, Obama's strike threat dwindled away to nothing. From being a "limited" attack to punish Assad, but not tip the balance in favour of the rebels, it became an "unbelievably small" one, as Kerry called it on his visit to London, to a non-existent one, when Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov agreed to a deal which would allow Assad to keep his conventional weapons and continue using them to kill his own people, but oblige him to give up his chemical weapons. It is doubtful whether the deal will be backed by a binding Security Council resolution, and it is estimated that it will take until the middle of 2014 to destroy the chemical weapons. This is probably the first time in history that a criminal is to be punished simply by taking away one of his weapons.
The deal struck between Kerry and Lavrov makes almost everyone a winner. The United States can continue posing as a supporter of the Syrian people; Israel is satisfied that "their man in Damascus" is still in place; Russia can continue arming Assad and today appears to have stood up to the United States, when in reality there is little difference between the positions of these two nations on the Syrian issue; and Iran can continue to participate actively in Assad's sectarian war while pretending that it is standing up to the United States and Israel. The anti-war campaigners are in ignorant bliss because they believe that they have stopped a war on Syria, not knowing or caring that Syrians are still enduring the most horrific war since the genocide in Rwanda. The only losers are the Syrian people.
For two and a half years, they have been pleading with the world to stop Assad's war against them but to no avail. The chemical attack is only the latest chapter in this genocide. Constant efforts have been made in both the mainstream and alternative media to belittle the suffering in Syria, discredit the casualty figures and assign blame to the opposition for the regime's crimes but what is happening is genocide by any standard. United Nations figures reveal that 110,000 people have been killed since the Syrian revolution broke out in March 2011. Seven million people have been displaced and the death rate is approximately 5,000 people per month. Only the regime has the capacity to kill and displace people on this scale and it has now received a green light to continue killing its own citizens, as long as it doesn't use chemical weapons.
The suffering and the genocide of the Syrian people will be detailed in the part 2 of this article.
———
This interview first appeared Sept. 20 on Middle East Monitor.
Photo of refugee child in the camp at Qab Elias, Lebanon, from the Catholic Agency For Overseas Development (CAFOD) via Flickr.
From our Daily Report:
Syria: massacres and hypocrisy
World War 4 Report, Dec. 27, 2013
See also:
SYRIA: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES
The Grassroots Civil Opposition Survives
by Leila Shrooms, Tahrir-ICN
World War 4 Report, November 2013
Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Dec. 29, 2013
Read more: http://ww4report.com/node/12868
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Syria chemical weapons deadline ‘unlikely’ to be met: UN
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, December 29, 2013 1:15 EST
THE RAW STORY
Syria is “unlikely” to meet a December 31 deadline to move its most dangerous chemical arms out of the country, the United Nations acknowledged for the first time Saturday.
The UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said “important progress” has been made on eliminating Syria’s banned weapons, but called on President Bashar al-Assad’s government to “intensify efforts” to meet internationally-set deadlines.
The year-end deadline was the first key milestone under a UN Security Council-backed deal arranged by Russia and the United States that aims to wipe out all of Syria’s chemical arms by the middle of 2014.
“Preparations continue in readiness for the transport of most of the critical chemical material from the Syrian Arab Republic for outside destruction. However, at this stage, transportation of the most critical chemical material before 31 December is unlikely,” said a joint UN-OPCW statement.
Syria’s worsening civil war, logistical problems and bad weather had held up the operation to move chemical agents to the port of Latakia, the two bodies said.
Under an internationally agreed plan, the chemicals will be taken to a port in Italy where they are to be transported to a US Navy ship specially fitted with equipment to destroy the weapons at sea, according to the diplomats.
Fighting between Assad’s forces and opposition rebels has held up transportation of the chemicals, and some details of the destruction operation have still not been finalized, UN diplomats said.
The US-Russia deal for Syria to surrender more than 1,000 tonnes of chemical agents averted US-led military strikes after a chemical weapons attack on August 21 near Damascus that the United States says killed 1,400 people.
The UN and OPCW are monitoring and helping with the operation but the Syrian government has prime responsibility for moving the chemicals.
“Since the Syrian Arab Republic disclosed its chemical weapons program three months ago, important progress has been made,” said the UN-OPCW statement.
Syria has started the destruction of equipment at facilities it declared and completed the eradication of missiles intended for chemical weapons use ahead of schedule, said the statement.
The UN and OPCW welcomed “important milestones” already met by Assad’s government, but highlighted “the importance of maintaining positive momentum.”
They said the Syrian government “needs to intensify its efforts to ensure that its international obligations and commitment are met” under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Security Council resolution which ordered the destruction of its weapons.
Agence France-Presse
Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/29/syria-chemical-weapons-deadline-unlikely-to-be-met-un/
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Family of British surgeon killed in Syria say he was drugged and hanged by his captors then his body flushed with fluids to ruin a post-mortem
* Dr Abbas Khan's family believe he was sedated with drugs
* CT scan apparently suggests fluids were injected into his body
* Family say Syrian authorities embalmed body against their wishes
Inquest opened into death hears
* Dr Khan died as a result of asphyxiation
By Abul Taher
PUBLISHED: 22:02 GMT, 28 December 2013 | UPDATED: 22:02 GMT, 28 December 2013
The family of a British doctor who was found dead in his prison cell in Syria believe he was sedated with drugs before being hanged by his captors.
They fear Dr Abbas Khan’s body has been flushed with fluids to cover up evidence of anaesthetics in his bloodstream.
Although the results of a British post-mortem examination are not yet ready, a CT scan of Dr Khan’s body has apparently shown a cut in the femoral artery in one of his thighs, suggesting fluids were injected into his body.
His family also told The Mail on Sunday the Syrian authorities embalmed the 32-year-old’s body against their wishes before returning it to them.
Dr Khan’s brother, Dr Shahnawaz Khan, 29, said he fears the embalming was a deliberate attempt by the regime to ruin any future post-mortem examinations as the process involves flushing a dead body with fluids to preserve it.
More...
* 'I love my son': Anguish of mother as she buries the surgeon found hanging in Syrian jail after months of torture
* Family pay tribute to 'perfectionist' army captain who was shot dead in Afghanistan two days before Christmas
* Horrifying final picture of Lebanese teenager taken seconds before he was killed when a car bomb went off
He said: ‘We told the Syrians not to embalm the body, as we wanted to do it in Beirut ourselves, so we can take samples away for toxicology. But they did it against our wish.’ Last week, a post-mortem examination was carried out along with toxicology tests at Queen’s Hospital, Romford, Essex. But his family fear the tests may prove inconclusive.
Dr Khan said his mother Fatima, 57, was contacted by Syrian prison guards on the morning of his brother’s death to tell her that her son was dead and there was ‘foam’ coming out of his mouth and nostrils.
He believes the foam was caused by his brother being injected with anaesthetics before he was hanged. He said: ‘It’s sickening what they have done to him. Even if the results are inconclusive, we have good reason to believe that he was anaesthetised and then hanged.’
Dr Abbas Khan, an orthopaedic surgeon from Streatham, South London, was detained by the Syrians for 13 months and tortured in a series of notorious prisons. The regime agreed to free him a fortnight ago, but he was found hanging in his cell only four days before his release.
David Cameron called his death ‘sickening’ and the Foreign Office said he was ‘in effect murdered’. Dr Khan was buried on Thursday after a funeral at the Regent’s Park mosque, North London, attended by more than 1,000 mourners.
On Friday, an inquest was opened into his death at the coroner’s court in Walthamstow. It was told that a Syrian post-mortem examination found that Dr Khan died of asphyxiation, and that he was due to appear before a terrorism court on the day of his ‘suicide’.
But his family dismissed the Syrian claims as lies, saying it is ‘inconceivable’ he would kill himself days before his release.
* A Syrian government air strike killed 21 people at a vegetable market in Aleppo yesterday, activists said.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530457/Family-British-surgeon-killed-Syria-say-drugged-hanged-captors-body-flushed-fluids-ruin-post-mortem.html#ixzz2ooNeXg2e
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Assad now has a license to kill
Khawaja Umer Farooq, Jeddah
Saudi Gazette
Saturday, 28 December 2013
With the backing of Russia and China and massive support from Iran and Hezbollah, Bashar Al-Assad now has a license to kill innocent people. A British doctor who was on a humanitarian mission in Aleppo and detained by Assad’s forces lost his life after 13 months in detention and brutal torture.
The Syrian regime has dropped barrel bombs in Aleppo and hundreds of civilians have lost their lives. Unfortunately, instead of saving the lives of millions of Syrians, the international community is more interested in the destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons. US Secretary of State John Kerry said that he is pleased with the cooperation of the Syrian government and is now working with Russia to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons. It seem that the Assad regime is using the chemical weapons issue to extend its rule with the help of Russia and Iran. According to the UN’s latest estimates, more than 100,000 people have lost their lives during the last two years in the Syrian conflict. Due to the heavy use of air power, the scale of destruction is very high and in several areas, large buildings have been turned into rubble.
Due to fierce gun battles and the use of heavy weapons, three million people most of them women and children have been forced to leave their homes and flee to neighboring countries. A large number of people are living in refugee camps and are in need of the basic necessities of life.
Due to the division in the UN Security Council, the UN is not able to create a no-fly zone in Syria. Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon have been badly affected. Jordan is hosting 2.5 million Syrian refugees equal to half of its own population. Lebanon is faced with internal division between pro and anti-Assad groups and many people have lost their lives due to fighting in several residential areas.
Khawaja Umer Farooq, Jeddah
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Read more: http://saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20131228190729
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Team Obama’s latest plan to boost Assad
By Amir Taheri
December 27, 2013 | 10:58am
NEW YORK POST
Anxious to keep their diplomatic fudge-orama running, President Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, are pressing ahead with maneuvers for yet another conference on Syria in Geneva next month.
The problem is that the conference — a Russian trick to keep the Ba’athist despot Bashar al-Assad in power — can only prolong the Syrian tragedy, while further damaging the United States’ already diminished standing in the Middle East.
The Obama-Kerry tandem has already made several concessions in exchange for a Russian promise to attend the conference. Last month, the US halted the meager aid, labeled “nonlethal,” it provided for anti-Assad rebels. Washington even exerted pressure on European allies to do the same, so far succeeding with the British, who have also halted their aid to Syrian freedom fighters. Worse still, the Obama administration has provoked a public rift with regional allies such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, whose support is crucial for any settlement of the Syrian conflict.
Thus when Kerry flies to Geneva for another photo-op, he would represent a US that has abandoned all its regional allies. At the same time, the US will not be able to count on any of the three broad camps that together represent the anti-Assad coalition. The truth is that no one in Syria trusts the US these days. It seems increasingly unlikely that any of the major rebel groups will even go to Geneva.
In contrast, Russia would attend Geneva at the head of a united alliance that includes the mullahs of Tehran, Assad and his gang in Damascus and a string of anti-American personalities and groups in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would have the authority to speak on behalf of his camp. Kerry will not be able to make the same claim on behalf of his camp because he has none.
Not surprisingly, Moscow has been trying to dictate the agenda for Geneva. Lavrov says the gathering will work on a “transition formula.” The trouble is that he also insists that the shape of any transition and the identity of those who would lead it depends on “the Syrian government.” Since Assad has already stated that he must lead whatever transition is agreed upon, the Lavrov formula would mean “transition from Assad to Assad.”
In that context, Kerry could prove useful by granting a transition led by Assad a measure of big-power recognition, if not legitimacy. Russia would also need the US to push a resolution through the United Nations Security Council to approve the diplomatic swindle prepared in Geneva.
While the Russians have a very clear idea of what they want in Geneva, the Americans lack a strategy, apart from filling Kerry’s photo albums and nurturing his dream of a Nobel Peace Prize.
It is, of course, too late for the US to develop a policy on Syria before Geneva. Thus, Obama and Kerry are left with two options: play the role scripted for them by Vladimir Putin, or scrap the whole sinister plan.
A third option may also be available, however, provided that Obama and Kerry take their task of shaping the foreign policy of a major democratic power a bit more seriously. In that option, they would insist that the planned Geneva conference focuses on two points:
* Implementing the accords made in the first Geneva conference on Syria, notably an end to indiscriminate bombing of urban areas by Assad’s Russian-made air craft.
* Mobilizing a major international effort, led by the UN, to ferry aid to the Syrian people. The UN has already declared Syria to be the biggest humanitarian challenge the world faces. Almost 10 million people, nearly half the population, are either refugees or displaced inside Syria.
The US could assume leadership in mobilizing the resources needed to cope with this human tragedy, forcing the Russians to decide whether they wish to continue deepening the tragedy or stop it.
Kerry should tell Lavrov that the US will not allow itself to be used as a rubber stamp for a “transition from Assad to Assad” scheme.
A clear American position, not one geared to a Russian scheme, might help restore some of the credibility the US has lost among allies in the region and within the broad coalition of anti-Assad forces inside Syria.
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Scores of rebels killed in Syrian government ambush
BEIRUT Fri Dec 27, 2013 10:35am EST
Forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad are seen in the Qalamoun mountains north of Damascus, in this handout photograph distributed by Syria's national news agency SANA on December 27, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/SANA/Handout via Reuters
(Reuters) - Syria's army ambushed Islamist fighters in the Qalamoun mountains north of the capital Damascus on Friday, leaving as many as 60 people dead, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The attack happened between the Christian town of Maaloula and the town of Yabroud, where government forces and rebels are fighting, said the Observatory, a British-based, pro-opposition monitoring group with sources across Syria.
Syria's civil war between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and mostly Sunni Muslim rebels fighting to topple him has killed more than 100,000 people since March 2011.
Syrian state television showed footage of dozens of bodies lying in a mountainous area, with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades next to them.
"There were about 400 of us including Saudis, Chechens and other nationalities," a badly wounded fighter who was lying on the ground told a state television reporter who was asking him about numbers and nationalities.
The fighter said he belonged to Liwa al-Islam, a Salafist jihadi group that is one of the biggest and best organized rebel units fighting to topple Assad.
The government television reporter said the army tracked the fighters overnight and ambushed them on their way to the town of Jayrud, 20 km (15 miles) southeast of Yabroud.
It was not possible to verify the report independently due to restrictions on the media in Syria.
(Reporting by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Mariam Karouny and Gareth Jones)
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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/27/us-syria-crisis-ambush-idUSBRE9BQ0BX20131227
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John Norris: The myth of American stinginess
By John Norris, Foreign Policy
Posted December 28, 2013 at midnight
THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
WASHINGTON — Between the steady drip of Edward Snowden leaks about the National Security Agency and Syria’s slow burn, it seems pretty easy these days to cast the United States as the villain when it comes to international affairs. That makes this holiday season an ideal one to debunk one of the longest-standing myths about the United States: that it is miserly when it comes to helping other nations through foreign aid.
Much of the myth of America’s stinginess traces its roots back to the 1970 commitment by the United Nations General Assembly that rich countries should dedicate 0.7 percent of their gross national income (GNI) to what is dubbed “official development assistance” (ODA). Although a number of European countries have embraced the target, the United States has never done so, arguing that it is a poor measure of America’s relative commitment to helping the poor in the developed world.
Critics of the United States are quick to point out that the United States, at around 0.02 percent, has one of the lowest rates of official aid to GNI of the major industrialized countries, which is true. But this statistic says a lot more about the ridiculousness of how we currently measure ODA than it does about what the United States brings to the table.
The United States is not only the largest donor of ODA in the world, providing more than $30.5 billion toward that end in 2012, but it makes far and away the largest private contributions to development and poverty alleviation of any nation on Earth — more than 30 percent of all such giving on the planet. Because ODA only measures government spending on development, it totally ignores private giving — whether it be the year-end check you just wrote to the International Committee of the Red Cross or the billions of dollars poured into lifesaving programs by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Those contributions deserve to count, and the United States deserves credit for setting up a tax structure that rather uniquely among nations rewards people for their charitable giving by making it routinely tax deductible.
A wonderfully detailed report by a British nongovernmental organization, Development Initiatives, offers a far richer and more accurate picture of the state of development investments by countries around the globe. In the United States, private spending on international development — at around $30 billion annually — is already as large as government spending (and by some accounts larger.)
That’s not even counting the money sent back to developing countries from the United States. Remittances from the United States to the developing world total more than $100 billion each year, and U.S. remittances make up almost 30 percent of all remittances received by developing countries. Then there’s U.S. foreign direct investment in developing countries — more than $40 billion. All told, more than $200 billion from the United States flows into the developing world each year. When that’s compared to the 2012 global total for ODA of $128 billion — and that’s $128 billion from all the bilateral aid agencies on Earth — you begin to get a sense that we are not really measuring the right things when it comes to accounting for development spending.
More perniciously, ODA also overstates the generosity of some of America’s European allies, because certain categories of loans are also included as development assistance. But many of these loans are on terms that are not highly concessional, and when the loans are repaid they end up representing far less of a transfer of wealth than ODA statistics would lead us to believe.
Now consider that the United States has more than doubled its aid to sub-Saharan Africa over the last decade, made massive U.S. investments in PEPFAR and the Global Fund that have led to a historic turnaround in the HIV/AIDS crisis, and has long been the most generous donor in responding to humanitarian crises around the globe.
For those who remain skeptical that the United States is actually relatively generous, here are the results from the recently released World Giving Index: Proportionally more Americans gave their time and money than citizens of any other country, and they recorded the highest score in the index’s history last year.
But what is perhaps most ironic — and tragic — is the profound gulf in how American aid and charity is seen at home and abroad. Most foreigners think the United States is a heartless cheapskate when it comes to development. In contrast, most Americans think their own country is wildly profligate when it comes to spending on international development. For example, a recent poll found that most Americans estimated about 28 percent of the federal budget goes to spending on foreign aid, when in reality that figure has traditionally hovered around 1 percent.
Perhaps the idea that the United States has been a steady, consistent and largely responsible development investor is something that isn’t easy for anyone to get their head around. But a Grinch it most assuredly is not.
John Norris is executive director of the Sustainable Security Project at the Center for American Progress. He wrote this for Foreign Policy.
Read more: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/dec/28/john-norris-the-myth-of-american-stinginess/
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2013 in review: Syria leads grim global news year
by ROB CORBRIDGE
THE SCOTSMAN
Saturday 28th December 2013
DEADLY conflicts, chemical attacks, suppression of mass protests, political upheavals across the globe and unprecedented natural disasters – Foreign Editor Rob Corbidge looks back at 2013
SYRIA
SYRIA’S terrible ongoing civil war was still the biggest story of 2013. Awful as it is now in length, death toll, barbarity and intractability, the conflict still has the capacity to widen into an out-and-out regional battle between the world’s two major Islamic sects, Sunni and Shia.
It was the sarin gas attack outside Damascus in August that truly grabbed the world’s attention. Many of us will have seen the images of dead children, adults writhing in pain, doctors taken beyond their wits’ end by the scale of what they were dealing with – and wondered if this was the moment the global community would get fully involved.
It didn’t.
Despite much being made of the UN-overseen destruction of Syria’s chemical weapon stockpile that will take place in the early part of 2014, the facts on the ground have not altered. Sarin yields a terrible death, yet the $250 (£152) Cold War- surplus AK-47 takes more lives; the Iranian-manufactured mortar round destroys more property and people; the Chinese sniper rifle denies a whole street to residents of a city. Sarin is from the top drawer of devilry no doubt, but everyday death in Syria is a more kinetic matter.
Syria has also given us a new phenomenon – a whole war filmed and distributed online. What was once a trickle of videos is now a river, with both sides, and all the various rebel groups, producing high-quality footage of their exploits, and the outrages of the enemy.
Set this against the fact that apart from a few reporters allowed into Damascus by the government, some embedded filming by Russians with the government army, and the odd insanely brave journalist who makes into a rebel area and avoids being kidnapped or worse, reporting out of the world’s worst conflict is virtually non-existent.
The question for 2014, sadly, is not the prospect of peace – Syria’s sectarian fissure is also filling with blood in Iraq once again and shows no sign of slowing – it is simply at what point the warring sides realise a stalemate is reached.
And if those hundreds, if not thousands, of European Muslims who have gone to fight, return, will then France, Britain, Belgium and Germany face a new generation of home-grown zealots, who are no strangers to violence?
TURKEY AND BRAZIL
IT WAS also the year of gas elsewhere in the world. Tear gas, not its deadlier relatives.
But tear gas used in such industrial quantities against protesters in both Turkey and Brazil that some of the photographs we saw seemed to be of another, more sulphurous planet.
Those two countries, and their rioters, share some similarities. Arguably at comparable stages of economic and social development, and both having been pulled into those stages by powerful individual leaders – Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil – many of their people now have greater expectations in life.
That the Turkish riots were caused by a redevelopment plan for Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park, and Brazil’s by a rise in public transport fares, can only lead to the conclusion that these issues were a vehicle for wider frustration.
And that may turn out to be a healthy thing, a shouting, chanting, swirling articulation of hope.
EGYPT
LESS hopeful currently is Egypt. As we stand now, those in the West who retain a colonial-era regard of the world may find their prejudices confirmed by what is occurring in Cairo.
If by this time next year we do not see a strongman military – or military-lite – government it will be a remarkable triumph. That may come down to the vanity of one man, General Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi, the bloody vanquisher of the reactionary, but elected, Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi.
The fervency with which some sectors of Egyptian society wish him to become president is truly frightening. So far, he is being coy, but such seeming reluctance is only amplifying their calls for him to take power. And so the wheel turns from former air force officer and president Hosni Mubarak, the biggest victim of the Arab Spring.
ITALY
Another fervency which is hard to understand from the distance of Scotland is that which some Italian voters retain for Silvio Berlusconi. This year has seen what appears to the political end of the charismatic former cruise ship singer turned media magnate. He was finally convicted of tax fraud in August and subsequently barred from holding elected political office for six years. His prostitution travails remain unresolved in the courts – and yet even if found guilty, those who love him will still love him and yearn for his return.
RUSSIA
PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin has this past year solidified still further as the personification of Russia. But it is not a new Russia, it is the old Russia, with the religious elements of Tsarist times added for good measure. The love those who support Mr Putin have is a fear-love. They may fear his omnipotence, but they know those outside Russia fear it more, and it is this which they love.
Quick to take offence, acutely conscious of maintaining its position in the world after the post-1989 humiliations, today’s Moscow can act with surprising alacrity when the West is still putting its diplomatic socks on – witness its recent victory against the EU over whose sphere Ukraine belongs in. And the main reason for this – Putin.
To the question, who is the most powerful person in the world, the answer is: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. He needs to consult with few, if anyone, before acting, or directing his flawlessly obedient government to do so. No leader in the world embodies such power.
2014 is Putin’s year. The Sochi Winter Olympics – costing more than both the Beijing and the London summer games – are meant to showcase the country’s economic and cultural muscle. In reality, they will be a disco above a political abattoir. No country in which the courts annually find 95 per cent of defendants guilty can be considered anything other than renegade.
AFRICA
IN THE Democratic Republic of the Congo, an unusually assertive UN gave us a good news story, with a strongly mandated UN force supporting government troops in putting an end to the M23 rebel movement in the country’s east that had brought so much violence and misery. In a conflict that was essentially an aftershock from its own terrible Hutu-Tutsi ethnic conflict, Rwanda was finally embarrassed by diplomatic efforts into ending its support for the primarily Tutsi fighters.
As the UN has begun deploying drones to monitor the vast areas of the DRC impossible to otherwise patrol adequately, the much-maligned Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – to apply the proper name – seems set to show its worth as a tireless watchman, and save lives.
Less good from Africa was the violence in the Central African Republic at the end of 2013, once again involving the French military – already forced into action in 2012 to prevent a bloodbath in Mali. Once again it was an ethnic-sectarian conflict with Muslim rebels attacking from the north. As with the Cold War, Africa is suffering directly from the ideological conflict between political Islam and the West.
That France moved so rapidly again in a former colony is much to the credit of Paris; that they did so with little or even no support from their European partners – Britain did help with military airlift capacity – leads less to a reflection on matters African, and more to matters EU.
Germany does not have a foreign policy beyond furthering its business interests and some matters to its east, once again leaving Paris with London as its only active friend.
AFGHANISTAN
AFGHAN president Hamid Karzai spent most of 2013 confusing everyone as to who he did regard as a friend. As the year ends, he seems set on a course of inspiring his countrymen’s nationalism by casting the United States as their enemy. Washington wants an agreement to retain forces in Afghanistan, but Karzai is making this as difficult as he can. You may see such a desire as US imperialism rather than any security strategy by Washington, but I would draw attention to the Iraqi minister who recently lamented Baghdad’s unwillingness to draw up such a deal which saw US forces – and the considerable capacity they bring – exit his country. Nato and US forces will largely withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014 and Karzai will relinquish the presidency, constitutionally barred from a third term.
Britain has already begun a process of soul-searching over our involvement in the conflict, and the many lives – British and Afghan – it has cost. There is one hope: a generation of Afghan children has now received a basic education that would have been denied to them under the Taleban, and the future is theirs.
PHILLIPINES
NATURAL disasters often develop a political narrative, usually to do with how the afflicted country’s government responds. Typhoon Haiyan – known locally as Typhoon Yolanda – which devastated the island nations of Philippines in November, packing the highest typhoon winds yet recorded and killing at least 6,109, had a wider regional meaning. As China asserts its authority over the South China Sea and wider Pacific area, it has been flexing its naval muscles.
Yet Typhoon Haiyan gave the US an opportunity to show quickly it could marshal a large fleet of warships, including a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and destroyers, to a specific area.
While survivors of the storm greatly appreciated the huge US effort, such a display of power will not have gone unnoticed in Beijing, and neighbouring capitals. China itself eventually sent a hospital ship to assist, but it arrived many days after even the Israeli military had despatched its search team.
Read more: http://www.scotsman.com/news/2013-in-review-syria-leads-grim-global-news-year-1-3249036
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