THE ROVING
EYE A Hydra in
Damascus By Pepe Escobar
Kofi Annan looks increasingly like Austin
Powers these days, minus the purple suits; an
international man of mystery shuttling between
world capitals trying to prevent a vicious war. Dr
Evil, of course, is played by Syria's Bashar
al-Assad. Swingin', baby!
The United
Nations mediator-in-chief is now convinced that
both Iran and Iraq support his new political
transition plan for Damascus, which is essentially
his remixed April 12 former plan, duly bombed by
the collection of opportunist exiles known as the
Syrian National Council (SNC).
A report here
delightfully details the meeting in Damascus earlier
this week between Annan
and Assad. As in any decent show, the best lines
pop up before the credits roll:
Annan - How long do you think this
crisis will continue? Assad - As long as the
[...] regime funds it. Annan - Do you think
they are behind all the funding? Assad -
They are behind many things that happen in our
region. They believe they will be able to lead
the whole Arab world today and in the future.
Annan - But it seems to me that they lack
the population needed for such an ambition.
[collective laughter]
Kofi
Powers to the rescue? Not only Annan and
Assad, everyone knows that the regime in question
is Qatar. And that's why the SNC refused to abide
by the ceasefire decided by the previous Annan
plan - and will do the same with this one. They
know that Qatar - and Saudi Arabia - will keep
weaponizing the "rebels", be they defectors,
affiliated with the SNC or not, members of
different strands of the Not-so-Free Syrian Army,
or Salafi-jihadi mercenaries once again gleefully
collaborating with the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO).
The SNC has been to
Moscow to talk to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov. [1] The Russians were not impressed. In
the words of the new SNC head, Abdulbaset Sayda,
"We demand the departure of all representatives of
the current regime, and first of all its leader
Assad ... Any attempt at reconciliation with the
current regime will lead nowhere."
So once
again the SNC is torpedoing Kofi "Powers" Annan
and his political transition even before the fact.
Not to mention they have managed to totally
alienate Moscow, whose chief interest is to be the
broker of a Syrian transitional government. Moscow
has drafted a resolution to extend a UN mission in
Syria for three months, shifting from monitoring a
truce nobody respects to working on a political
transition.
Annan's so-called six-point
plan implies an immediate ceasefire (which won't
be respected by the SNC and the FSA); withdrawal
of heavy weapons and military forces from villages
and cities; access for humanitarian aid and
journalists; and the set up of a political
transition mechanism.
Once again, this
"political transition" itself, based on "mutual
consent" - decided in Geneva on June 30 - already
departs from extremely shaky ground. For
Washington, "mutual consent" means Assad should
go. For Moscow, "mutual consent" means the Assad
system is part of the negotiation.
Yet the
Syrian opposition as embodied by the SNC and the
Free Syrian Army (FSA) - duly supported by US
Secretary of State Hillary "We came, we saw, he
died" Clinton and her "Friends of Syria" gang -
keep screaming out loud; damn those negotiations;
we want power and we want it now. How democratic
is that?
You say you want a
revolution By now, Kofi Powers should have
stepped up his game and used some silky
intimidating tactics against these people; after
all his reputation is on the line. It won't
happen.
So no wonder the wishful thinking
crowd - everyone from Pentagon, Central
Intelligence Agency and State Department types to
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan-aligned Turks
and exemplary Persian Gulf "democrats" - has been
salivating over the possibility of, what else, a
coup.
Now that "democraship" is on the
ascendancy (see Welcome
to 'democraship', Asia Times Online, Jul 4,
2012), the menu is indeed tasty. In Egypt, the
Orwellian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces
launched a coup immediately before presidential
elections. In Yemen, the House of Saud installed
its preferred replacement for Abdul Saleh after a
sort of white coup.
Considering that NATO
and the "Friends of Syria" are totally
inept/incapable of mounting such a coup, and
considering the elites at the top have not
splintered, the only way out would be a Hosni
Mubarak-style solution, where the head of the
snake is cut off even as the snake grows new,
Hydra-style mini-heads.
US intelligence
outfits such as the recently hacked-to-death
Stratfor fear this could only profit Iran and
Russia, both with complex networks inside Syria,
and both keen on maintaining the current system,
which suits their geopolitical interests.
It's enlightening to keep checking out
what the Assad clan is up against internally. An
internally led "transition" might lead to more
power to some select Sunnis and perhaps a few
Christians and Kurds - but this won't have
anything to do with the "revolution" the SNC
fantasizes about. Structurally, things will remain
more of less the same.
Among newly
empowered Sunnis in a post-Assad set up, the key
candidates are Interior Minister Mohammad Ibrahim
al-Shaar; Army Chief of Staff Fahd Jasem al-Farij;
the assistant regional secretary of the Baath
Party, Muhammad Said Bukhaytan; and Republican
Guard commander Manaf Tlas (who has indeed
defected and is already in Paris [2]).
So
far, though, defections have been mostly
irrelevant, but one group of people should be
watched closely. If any of them defects, the Assad
clan may be in serious trouble. The group includes
Jamil Hassan; Abdel-Fatah Qudsiyeh; Ali Mamlouk;
and Muhammad Deeb Zaitoon. These are the directors
of Syria's four intelligence agencies (yes, this
is an ultra-hardcore police state). And then
there's Hisham Bakhtiar - the head of the National
Security Council and top Assad intelligence
adviser.
As it stands, Syria's ruling
class still seems monolithic. They won't go down
without extreme fighting. And the "alternative" is
the Muslim Brotherhood and the SNC - whose
"revolutionary", not to say democratic,
credentials are pitiful. Masses of civilians
caught in the crossfire might even be appeased by
a coup. That beats the prospect of being ruled by
those dodgy "Friends of Syria" replacing Dr Evil
with a "democratic" Mini-me.
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