THE ROVING
EYE What
is the GCC up to in Syria? By
Pepe Escobar
So the Arab League has a new
draft United Nations Security Council resolution
to "solve" the Syrian saga. [ 1]
World
public opinion may be fooled into believing this
is an altruistic Arab solution to an Arab problem.
Not really.
First of all this is a draft
resolution of NATOGCC - that symbiosis between
selected North Atlantic Treaty Organization
members and selected petromonarchies of the Gulf
Cooperation Council. By now, after their "success"
in blasting regime change into Libya, NATOGCC
should be well known as the axis between the
European poodles of the Pentagon and the six
monarchies that
compose the GCC, also
known as Gulf Counter-revolution Club.
This draft UN resolution goes one step
beyond a so-called Arab League transition plan
laid out over a week ago. Now the spin is of a
"political roadmap" that essentially means
President Bashar al-Assad voluntarily stepping
out, his vice president installed in power for a
transition, the formation of a national unity
government, and free and fair elections with
international supervision.
According to
the Foreign Minister of Qatar, Hamad bin Jassim
al-Thani, "The president will delegate his first
vice president the full power to work with the
national unity government to enable it to perform
its task in the transitional period."
Sounds very civilized - except that it
masquerades the real agenda of UN-imposed regime
change. A quick look at the draft resolution also
reveals a two-week deadline for Assad to get out
of Dodge; if not, expect hell, "in consultation"
with the Arab League.
"Arab" League is now
a fiction; what’s really in charge is the Arab
Gulf league, or GCC league; in practice, the House
of Saud. Even aspiring regional superpower Qatar
plays second fiddle. And everyone else, they are
just extras.
So here we have the House of
Saud and its Gulf minions detailing a road map for
regime change followed by full Western
parliamentary democracy, and places like the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait defending
human rights in Arab lands. It's as if this whole
thing was a joint plan concocted by dadaist
Tristan Tzara and surrealist Andre Breton with a
Monty Python twist.
Stuff your Somalia
remix Not surprisingly, the Syrian
government rejected the drat resolution as a
"blatant intervention in its internal affairs",
according to the SANA news agency. The Syrian
ambassador to the UN, Bashar Ja'afari, was even
more graphic; "Syria will not be Libya; Syria will
not be Iraq; Syria will not be Somalia; Syria will
not be a failing state."
BRICS member
Russia - which alongside China had already vetoed
a previous Western-redacted resolution - has
already buried this one. For starters, Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov couldn't understand
why the Arab League suspended its monitoring
mission in Syria this past Saturday. Instead,
Lavrov would "support an increased number of
observers".
Russia - which in no time
learned the lessons of the open-ended UN
resolution on Libya - has its own draft resolution
which, according to Russian UN ambassador Vitaly
Churkin, privileges a "Syrian-led political
process", not "an Arab League-imposed outcome of a
political process that has not yet taken place",
or, worse yet, "regime change" a la Libya.
Russia - unlike the West - ascribes the
now non-stop violence in Syria to both the Assad
regime and the "rebels". Even the GCC League has
somewhat admitted that there are shabbihah
(armed goons) on both sides, those on the "rebel"
side affiliated with the already discredited Free
Syrian Army.
That tray of sweets is all
mine Even though there are no objective
conditions whatsoever for a NATO bombing of Syria,
the NATOGCC + Israel geopolitical axis will pursue
its objectives relentlessly.
The
objectives are vast; exercising total control over
any Arab Spring-related transition (as in the case
of Yemen); preventing any changes to the status
quo (as in pre-emption in Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Morocco); outright repression (as in the case of
Bahrain); and preferably getting their cake and
eating it too (as in the case of Libya).
But Syria is infinitely more complex;
because of the Iranian connection; because BRICS
members Russia and China will block any regime
change scheme; because there have been no
significant cracks among the Syrian military; and
because the Assad regime is expert in navigating
the divisions between a Sunni majority and the
Alawite minority.
So the GCC League was
successful in Yemen - controlling the "transition"
and even having the dictator Ali Abdulla Saleh
sent to the United States. It has been relatively
successful in Egypt; even though the head of the
snake (Hosni Mubarak) was kicked out, the snake is
very much alive and kicking (the military
establishment), and to top it off, the new
parliament boasts a huge Islamist majority (our
heart goes out to the youngsters who actually
started everything in Tahrir Square and are left
with nothing).
Even the venerable stones
in the Umayyad mosque in Damascus know that the
Syrian National Council (conveniently exiled in
NATO members Turkey and France) is being financed
by the House of Saud and Qatar. So expect more
GCC-financed weapons to continue raising hell in
Syria - now even in some Damascus suburbs. No
wonder the GCC League had to pull out its
"monitors"; they would have to roundly denounce
the very people they are arming.
Even the
Playstation King of Jordan - who was the first
Arab potentate on the record to want to topple
Assad (no wonder Jordan was invited to be a GCC
member) - has been forced to admit, "I don't see
Syria going through many changes." King Abdullah
at least had the good sense to observe, "It's a
very complicated puzzle and there is no simple
solution. If you can imagine Iraq being a simple
solution ... and it's different in Libya, so it
has everybody stumped and I don't think anybody
has a clear answer on what to do about Syria."
By the way, there are pro-democracy
protests in GCC-addicted Jordan virtually every
day; but not a peep will be heard about it in
Western corporate media. "Liberated" Libya totally
disappeared from the Western triumphalist
narrative - even as Amnesty International now has
evidence of systematic torture in makeshift
mini-gulags, and Medicines sans Frontiers (MSF)
decided to leave Misrata for good after being
asked by those formerly known as "rebels" to treat
victims of torture, so they could be tortured
again.
Which leads us to the ghastly
equivalence between the "transitional councils" in
both Libya and Syria. Their undisguised masters
were - and are - NATOGCC. Russia may have its own
agenda in Syria, but at least the Russians know
hardcore violence is being served as much by the
Assad regime as by the Syrian National Council and
the Free Syria Army.
King Playstation at
least got one thing right; no one has a clue on
what to do about Syria. So it's Assad on one side
against NATOGCC on the other, with average Syrians
- covering a wide spectrum of opinion - squeezed
in the middle. Rumors swirl about a possible plan
C; a bazaar-style deal, over endless cups of green
tea, between Assad and the House of Saud. That's
unlikely; the GCC League wants the whole tray of
sweets - and to eat them too.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
