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Qatar's Love Affair With Syria By Pepe Escobar by postemail: 7:24am On Jun 30, 2013 |
THE ROVING EYE Qatar's love affair with Syria By Pepe Escobar This is the ultimate "Friend of Syria". But what is Qatar really up to? Word in Doha is that Qatar may have spent as much as a staggering US$3 billion to make sure "Assad must go". Yet he hasn't gone anywhere. Even the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, deposed himself this week, to the benefit of his son, former "heir apparent" Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani (see We are all Qataris now, Asia Times Online, June 26, 2013). But Bashar al-Assad stays put. What gives? Qatar has spent a fortune weaponizing the myriad Syrian "rebel" factions, buying everything from stashes in Libya to new stuff in Croatia, flown as cargo and distributed by Turkish intelligence (there's an alternative weapons flow by Sunni Lebanese connected to the Saudis.) The chief weaponizer is a Qatari general. Doha has dispatched Qatari Special Forces on the ground - just as in Libya - to advise "their" favorite batch of rebels. Crucially, these Special Forces are experienced instructors. They are not Qatari; they are Pakistani - as detailed in this must-read dossier. It goes without saying that these Pakistanis hail from the same tradition of schooling of the mujahideen in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s. We all know what came out of it. Asia Times Online has extensively reported that Syria is the new Afghanistan - but now with extra bonus jihadi gore, developed in the Iraq war, such as suicide bombing, beheading and intestine-eating. It's no secret most of the rebels are mercenaries - usually paid $1,300 a month directly by the Qataris, with an extra $1,000 if they carry out a special ops. Quite a few have also developed a secondary career as YouTube videos uploaders, the weapon of choice in Arab networks (not to mention Western) to prove how "evil" the Assad regime is. Alongside Washington, Doha also perpetuates the myth that CIA operatives help to vet these rebels - with the Supreme Military Council collecting all the weapons and organizing the distribution. Anyone who believes this believes Saddam Hussein's WMDs are on sale on eBay. Moreover, the Syrian embassy in Doha is unique in the world - as it's entirely populated by "rebels". Hardcore Qatari lobbying forced the 22-nation Arab League - which is now, essentially, the Gulf Cooperation Council League - to hand over Syria's seat to the rebels. The Syrian National Coalition (SNC) - the latest, messy, rebel political outfit - was announced in, where else, Doha in November 2012. Depending on the Arab latitude involved, the Qatari agenda is depicted as either uniting or dividing the SNC. The only element that remains stable is Qatar's foreign policy directive of denying nothing to the Muslim Brotherhood - as in, for instance, support for the al-Farouq brigades, who, in theory, control a few suburbs of Aleppo. Caught in a trap With the ascension of Tamim, the new emir, the key question is whether this orgy of weaponizing, truckloads of money, hardcore lobbying and diplomatic cover has translated, or will translate, into any tangible benefits for the emirate. The simplistic official storyline spun by Doha is that the emir and his son advised Assad not to repress the initial Syrian protests in early 2011. But then, just like that, he decided to "kill people" - in the words of former prime minister Hamad bin Jassim, also known as HBJ, conveniently uttered at a Brookings Institution talkfest. What's not admitted is that Doha jumped at the opportunity of Syria becoming the new Libya - when Qatar literally opened the skies for bombing by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. To follow corporate Western and Arab media, one might be excused to think Tamim is the New Messiah. He has been incessantly hailed as "The Arab Spring monarch", so "young" and "modern", a jogger, an auto and sports enthusiast, and proud enabler of two "accomplished" wives already. He's more like the emir of the Muslim Brotherhood Spring - considering his very close ties with extremely sectarian superstar al-Jazeera tele-cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has for all practical purposes called for a jihad against Alawites and Shi'ites in Syria. The sheikh is one of Tamim's top consultants. It's also no secret that Qatar's foreign policy essentially takes its orders from Washington. There are nuances, of course; Qatar may have convinced the Obama administration to align its foreign policy with the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Obama administration may have taken this reckless decision by itself. Tamim may have convinced the Taliban to open an office in Doha by himself, or he may have followed a "suggestion" from the Obama administration. The fact remains that Tamim meets all the time with State Department and Pentagon stalwarts. And he is also in charge of those precious weapons contracts with the US and also France. Then there are the fractioned relations with the House of Saud. Word in Doha is that Tamim was responsible for initiating the 2010 strategic dialogue with the Saudis. He is formally the president of the Qatari-Saudi Higher Council. This means he's always in touch with Saudi intelligence supremo Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz who, apparently, was a big fan of the Qatari handover. It's no secret as well that the true power behind the handover was the awesome Sheikha Mozah, Tamin's mom. The Muqrin connection does make sense because the House of Saud absolutely loathed the relatively flamboyant HBJ - not to mention being extremely suspicious of the previous emir. The HBJ gang has been more or less sidelined in Doha. Tamim appointed Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalifa bin Nasser al- Thani as the new prime minister. From now on HBJ will be engaged in life in the fast lane in London managing the multi-billionaire Qatar Investment Authority. Not a bad deal. It's unclear whether Qatar's influence in Syria will continue to be that prominent. Now everyone knows the CIA is amassing a formidable weapons stockpile in Jordan to be handed - via its "elaborate" vetting system - to hundreds of trained-by-USA "good" Syrian rebels only. Jordan and the Emirates are being propelled to the privileged frontline, with the Saudis supplying loads of portable anti-aircraft weapons. Qatar may be left weaponizing just a handful of inconsequent militias. This remains to be seen in August, with an already much-advertised rebel attack on Damascus. The proxy war is bound to become even more horrific. And there's no guarantee Assad will go. The "young and modern" emir of the Muslim Brotherhood Spring may soon reach the conclusion he is caught in a trap of his, and his father's making. atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-280613.html |
Re: Qatar's Love Affair With Syria By Pepe Escobar by postemail: 10:46pm On Jul 01, 2013 |
The Media and Syria by PATRICK COCKBURN Damascus. Every time I come to Syria I am struck by how different the situation is on the ground from the way it is pictured in the outside world. The foreign media reporting of the Syrian conflict is surely as inaccurate and misleading as anything we have seen since the start of the First World War. I can’t think of any other war or crisis I have covered in which propagandistic, biased or second-hand sources have been so readily accepted by journalists as providers of objective facts. A result of these distortions is that politicians and casual newspaper or television viewers alike have never had a clear idea over the last two yearsof what is happening inside Syria. Worse, long-term plans are based on these misconceptions. A report on Syria published last week by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says that “once confident of swift victory, the opposition’s foreign allies shifted to a paradigm dangerously divorced from reality”. Slogans replace policies: the rebels are pictured as white hats and the government supporters as black hats; given more weapons, the opposition can supposedly win a decisive victory; put under enough military pressure, President Bashar al-Assad will agree to negotiations for which a pre-condition is capitulation by his side in the conflict. One of the many drawbacks of the demonising rhetoric indulged in by the incoming US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and William Hague, is that it rules out serious negotiations and compromise with the powers-that-be in Damascus. And since Assad controls most of Syria, Rice and Hague have devised a recipe for endless war while pretending humanitarian concern for the Syrian people. It is difficult to prove the truth or falsehood of any generalisation about Syria. But, going by my experience this month travelling in central Syria between Damascus, Homs and the Mediterranean coast, it is possible to show how far media reports differ markedly what is really happening. Only by understanding and dealing with the actual balance of forces on the ground can any progress be made towards a cessation of violence. On Tuesday I travelled to Tal Kalakh, a town of 55,000 people just north of the border with Lebanon, which was once an opposition bastion. Three days previously, government troops had taken over the town and 39 Free Syrian Army (FSA) leaders had laid down their weapons. Talking to Syrian army commanders, an FSA defector and local people, it was evident there was no straight switch from war to peace. It was rather that there had been a series of truces and ceasefires arranged by leading citizens of Tal Kalakh over the previous year. But at the very time I was in the town, Al Jazeera Arabic was reporting fighting there between the Syrian army and the opposition. Smoke was supposedly rising from Tal Kalakh as the rebels fought to defend their stronghold. Fortunately, this appears to have been fantasy and, during the several hours I was in the town, there was no shooting, no sign that fighting had taken place and no smoke. Of course, all sides in a war pretend that no position is lost without a heroic defence against overwhelming numbers of the enemy. But obscured in the media’s accounts of what happened in Tal Kalakh was an important point: the opposition in Syria is fluid in its allegiances. The US, Britain and the so-called 11-member “Friends of Syria”, who met in Doha last weekend, are to arm non-Islamic fundamentalist rebels, but there is no great chasm between them and those not linked to al-Qa’ida. One fighter with the al-Qa’ida-affiliated al-Nusra Front was reported to have defected to a more moderate group because he could not do without cigarettes. The fundamentalists pay more and, given the total impoverishment of so many Syrian families, the rebels will always be able to win more recruits. “Money counts for more than ideology,” a diplomat in Damascus told me. While I was in Homs I had an example of why the rebel version of events is so frequently accepted by the foreign media in preference to that of the Syrian government. It may be biased towards the rebels, but often there is no government version of events, leaving a vacuum to be filled by the rebels. For instance, I had asked to go to a military hospital in the al-Waar district of Homs and was granted permission, but when I got there I was refused entrance. Now, soldiers wounded fighting the rebels are likely to be eloquent and convincing advocates for the government side (I had visited a military hospital in Damascus and spoken to injured soldiers there). But the government’s obsessive secrecy means that the opposition will always run rings around it when it comes to making a convincing case. Back in the Christian quarter of the Old City of Damascus, where I am staying, there was an explosion near my hotel on Thursday. I went to the scene and what occurred next shows that there can be no replacement for unbiased eyewitness reporting. State television was claiming that it was a suicide bomb, possibly directed at the Greek Orthodox Church or a Shia hospital that is even closer. Four people had been killed. I could see a small indentation in the pavement which looked to me very much like the impact of a mortar bomb. There was little blood in the immediate vicinity, though there was about 10 yards away. While I was looking around, a second mortar bomb came down on top of a house, killing a woman. The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, so often used as a source by foreign journalists, later said that its own investigations showed the explosion to have been from a bomb left in the street. In fact, for once, it was possible to know definitively what had happened, because the Shia hospital has CCTV that showed the mortar bomb in the air just before it landed – outlined for a split-second against the white shirt of a passer-by who was killed by the blast. What had probably happened was part of the usual random shelling by mortars from rebels in the nearby district of Jobar. In the middle of a ferocious civil war it is self-serving credulity on the part of journalists to assume that either side in the conflict, government or rebel, is not going to concoct or manipulate facts to serve its own interests. Yet much foreign media coverage is based on just such an assumption. The plan of the CIA and the Friends of Syria to somehow seek an end to the war by increasing the flow of weapons is equally absurd. War will only produce more war. John Milton’s sonnet, written during the English civil war in 1648 in praise of the Parliamentary General Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had just stormed Colchester, shows a much deeper understanding of what civil wars are really like than anything said by David Cameron or William Hague. He wrote: For what can war but endless war still breed? Till truth and right from violence be freed, And public faith clear’d from the shameful brand Of public fraud. In vain doth valour bleed While avarice and rapine share the land. PATRICK COCKBURN is the author of “Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. |
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