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By Alex Lantier

01 April, 2013

@ WSWS.org

American F-22 stealth warplanes arrived in South Korea yesterday, placing East Asia on hair-trigger alert as Washington escalated its confrontation with North Korea, ostensibly over the country’s nuclear program.

Normally stationed at Kadena Air Force Base in Japan, the jets are being deployed to Osan Air Base in South Korea, amid ongoing Foal Eagle US-South Korean military exercises.

The F-22 deployment came after two weeks of intensifying military tensions and demonstrations of US firepower against North Korea. On March 19, the US sent nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to South Korea, and last week the US sent two B-2 stealth bombers to practice dropping dummy bombs on a South Korean bombing range.

The deployment of US heavy bombers was a blunt threat that, in the event of military conflict in East Asia, Washington is prepared to use nuclear weapons. This threat is directed not only at North Korea, but also at China, the main target of US operations in the region, which provides essential supplies of food and fuel to the North Korean regime in Pyongyang.

As for North Korea, a small and poor country of 25 million people, the B-2 flights were a signal that Washington is prepared to annihilate the country. B-2 bombers carry 16 B83 nuclear bombs, each with a yield of 1.2 megatons—75 times the power of the atomic bombs the United States dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If two B-2 bombers dropped their payloads on North Korea, they would destroy all its large and mid-sized cities.

On Saturday, US military officials told the Wall Street Journal that they were pledged to prepare a series of further demonstrations of force against Pyongyang. They declined to say what these demonstrations would be, citing “operational security concerns.”

The Pentagon has also announced the preparation of a joint “counter-provocation plan” together with South Korea against Pyongyang. This is aimed at ensuring a more aggressive response to any North Korean military action, as in 2010, when North Korea launched artillery bombardments after being accused of sinking the South Korean frigate Cheonan. The current US-South Korean plan poses the risk of a rapid escalation of fighting, were such a clash to occur again.

This risk is heightened by the politics of South Korea’s newly elected conservative president, Park Geun-hye, the daughter of South Korean military dictator Park Chung-hee. With her government collapsing in the polls, she has proposed expanding South Korea’s nuclear program. Were any border fighting to break out, she would be under intense pressure to escalate the clash to prove the toughness of her anti-North Korean position.

In a recent editorial titled “Only Fierce Response Can Deter North Korean Provocations,” South Korea’s conservative Chosun Ilbo denounced the “muddled, ineffectual response” to the 2010 clash. The newspaper also described the “counter-provocation plan,” which involves large-scale fighting led by the United States, with Japanese assistance.

Chosun Ilbo wrote: “The South Korean military will handle the initial response while the US Seventh Fleet, including the aircraft carrier George Washington, will be mobilized along with Japanese F-22 fighter jets, followed by the deployment of US Marines to handle joint missions.”

The tensions provoked by the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” aimed at assembling a coalition of US-allied states to contain China, have now exploded into a full-fledged war crisis.

On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that “we may simply let the situation slip out of our control and it will slide into a spiral of a vicious circle.”

The Western media’s denunciations of North Korea notwithstanding, US imperialism bears central responsibility. Over the last year, Washington has announced plans to build an antiballistic missile shield, aimed at China though justified as a measure against North Korea. It has also encouraged a naval confrontation between Japan and China over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands.

Washington has used North Korea as a means to pressure the regime in Beijing, which has emerged as a major obstacle to US war drives against Syria and Iran, and which is the United States’ largest foreign creditor, to align itself more directly with US foreign policy.

Yesterday, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency published a column titled “Cooler Minds Must Prevail on Korean Peninsula.” It stated: “China, as a strategic stakeholder in the region, has long called for calm on the Korean Peninsula. Now both the DPRK [the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, i.e., North Korea] and the United States should tone down their rhetoric and work with Beijing for an early return to the long-stalled six-party talks.”

While pressing for a return to negotiations, Beijing is also signaling Pyongyang that China may cease to support it against Washington. Earlier this month it voted at the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Pyongyang over its nuclear program. According to dispatches published by WikiLeaks, sections of the Chinese regime view Pyongyang as a troublesome “spoiled child.”

Over the weekend, Pyongyang issued a statement declaring that a “state of war” exists on the Korean peninsula. The statement followed a mass military rally in Pyongyang on Friday.

Beyond Pyongyang’s bellicose rhetoric, however, available reports indicate a peculiar state of calm inside North Korea. US military officials have said that their intelligence on the North Korean military indicates no unusual activity. As for the situation in Pyongyang, AP journalists reported that beyond the military parade, “elsewhere it was business as usual at restaurants, shops, farms, and factories, where the workers have heard it all before.”

As for Pyongyang’s statement regarding a “state of war” in Korea, this is a legal truth: the armistice that ended fighting in the 1950-1953 Korean War never technically ended the state of war in Korea. Pyongyang has long called for a formal peace treaty, which was opposed in 1953 by the United States and particularly by its fascistic South Korean puppet regime, led by Syngman Rhee. Since then, Washington has rebuffed North Korean requests for a peace treaty.

Pyongyang’s statements suggest that sections of the North Korean bureaucracy are attempting to reach some type of accommodation with Washington.

The Central Committee of the North Korea’s ruling Workers Party met yesterday, after having cryptically announced that it would settle an “important issue,” and released a statement before today’s one-day session of the North Korean parliament. While pledging to continue with its nuclear program, the statement said Pyongyang would “make positive efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation.”

The statement signaled Pyongyang’s readiness to open up North Korea as an export economy dependent on foreign capital to exploit North Korean workers’ cheap labor. It called for a shift to a “knowledge-based economy,” for foreign trade to be made “multilateral and diversified,” and for investment to be “widely introduced.” Pyongyang already operates several export zones, notably with South Korea at Kaesong.

Pyongyang’s attempts to settle differences with Washington and integrate itself into the world capitalist economy have repeatedly foundered on US opposition, however. It is unclear what assurances Washington could give leaders in Pyongyang of their own safety after opening up their economy to US and foreign capital—particularly amid rapidly escalating tensions between the United States and Pyongyang’s main regional ally, China.

North Korea was designated a member of the “Axis of Evil” by the Bush administration in 2001 and remains a target of constant vilification in the Western press.

By Chris Hedges

Mar 31, 2013

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_treason_of_the_intellectuals_20130331/

The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among “Bush’s useful idiots” argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks”—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens—did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.

These apologists, however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. Kristof, in The New York Times, attacked the filmmaker Michael Moore as a conspiracy theorist and wrote that anti-war voices were only polarizing what he termed “the political cesspool.” Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq “do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all.” He called the typical anti-war protester a “blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist.” The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the war—shutting down public debate. Those of us who spoke out against the war, faced with the onslaught of right-wing “patriots” and their liberal apologists, became pariahs. In my case it did not matter that I was an Arabic speaker. It did not matter that I had spent seven years in the Middle East, including months in Iraq, as a foreign correspondent. It did not matter that I knew the instrument of war. The critique that I and other opponents of war delivered, no matter how well grounded in fact and experience, turned us into objects of scorn by a liberal elite that cravenly wanted to demonstrate its own “patriotism” and “realism” about national security. The liberal class fueled a rabid, irrational hatred of all war critics. Many of us received death threats and lost our jobs, for me one at The New York Times. These liberal warmongers, 10 years later, remain both clueless about their moral bankruptcy and cloyingly sanctimonious. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents on their hands.

The power elite, especially the liberal elite, has always been willing to sacrifice integrity and truth for power, personal advancement, foundation grants, awards, tenured professorships, columns, book contracts, television appearances, generous lecture fees and social status. They know what they need to say. They know which ideology they have to serve. They know what lies must be told—the biggest being that they take moral stances on issues that aren’t safe and anodyne. They have been at this game a long time. And they will, should their careers require it, happily sell us out again.

 

Leslie Gelb, in the magazine Foreign Affairs, spelled it out after the invasion of Iraq.

“My initial support for the war was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility,” he wrote. “We ‘experts’ have a lot to fix about ourselves, even as we ‘perfect’ the media. We must redouble our commitment to independent thought, and embrace, rather than cast aside, opinions and facts that blow the common—often wrong—wisdom apart. Our democracy requires nothing less.”

The moral cowardice of the power elite is especially evident when it comes to the plight of the Palestinians. The liberal class, in fact, is used to marginalize and discredit those, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, who have the honesty, integrity and courage to denounce Israeli war crimes. And the liberal class is compensated for its dirty role in squelching debate.

“Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position, which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take,” wrote the late Edward Said. “You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship.”

“For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence,” Said went on. “If anything can denature, neutralize, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life it is the internalization of such habits. Personally I have encountered them in one of the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, where fear of speaking out about one of the greatest injustices in modern history has hobbled, blinkered, muzzled many who know the truth and are in a position to serve it. For despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual.”

Julien Benda argued in his 1927 book “The Treason of Intellectuals”—“La Trahison des Clercs”—that it is only when we are not in pursuit of practical aims or material advantages that we can serve as a conscience and a corrective. Those who transfer their allegiance to the practical aims of power and material advantage emasculate themselves intellectually and morally. Benda wrote that intellectuals were once supposed to be indifferent to popular passions. They “set an example of attachment to the purely disinterested activity of the mind and created a belief in the supreme value of this form of existence.” They looked “as moralists upon the conflict of human egotisms.” They “preached, in the name of humanity or justice, the adoption of an abstract principle superior to and directly opposed to these passions.” These intellectuals were not, Benda conceded, very often able to prevent the powerful from “filling all history with the noise of their hatred and their slaughters.” But they did, at least, “prevent the laymen from setting up their actions as a religion, they did prevent them from thinking themselves great men as they carried out these activities.” In short, Benda asserted, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good. This contradiction was an honor to the human species, and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world.” But once the intellectuals began to “play the game of political passions,” those who had “acted as a check on the realism of the people began to act as its stimulators.” And this is why Michael Moore is correct when he blames The New York Times and the liberal establishment, even more than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, for the Iraq War.

“The desire to tell the truth,” wrote Paul Baran, the brilliant Marxist economist and author of “The Political Economy of Growth,” is “only one condition for being an intellectual. The other is courage, readiness to carry on rational inquiry to wherever it may lead … to withstand … comfortable and lucrative conformity.”

Those who doggedly challenge the orthodoxy of belief, who question the reigning political passions, who refuse to sacrifice their integrity to serve the cult of power, are pushed to the margins. They are denounced by the very people who, years later, will often claim these moral battles as their own. It is only the outcasts and the rebels who keep truth and intellectual inquiry alive. They alone name the crimes of the state. They alone give a voice to the victims of oppression. They alone ask the difficult questions. Most important, they expose the powerful, along with their liberal apologists, for what they are.

Illustration by Mr. Fish

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By Ramzy Baroud

31 March, 2013

@ Countercrrents.org

At the precise moment US President Barack Obama’s Air Force One touched down at Ben Gurion Airport on March 20, persisting illusions quickly began to shatter. And as he walked on the red carpet, showered with accolades and warm embraces of top Israeli government and military officials, a new/old reality began to sink in: Obama was no different than his predecessors. He never had been.

On the day of Obama’s arrival, Israeli rights group B’Tselem, released a disturbing video. It was of Israeli soldiers carrying out a ‘mass arrest’ of nearly 30 Palestinian children on their way to school in the Palestinian city of al-Khalil (Hebron). The children plead and cried to no avail. Their terrified shrieks echoed throughout the Palestinian neighborhood as they tried to summon the help of passersby. “‘Amo’ – Uncle,” one begged, “for God sake don’t let them take me.” Nonetheless, several military vehicles were filled with crying children and their school bags. But what made the release of the video truly apt is the fact that it was released on the day president Obama was meeting Israeli children at a welcoming ceremony at the home of Israeli President Shimon Peres.

“Their dreams are much the same as children everywhere,” he said, referring to Israeli children, of course. “In another sense though their lives reflect the difficult reality that Israelis face every single day. They want to be safe, they want to be free from rockets that hit their homes or their schools.”

Many Palestinians immediately pointed out the moral discrepancies in most of Obama’s statements throughout his stay in Israel. Still, his visit was ‘historic’ declared numerous headlines in the US and Israeli media.

However, aside from the fact that it was his first trip to Israel as a president, it was barely momentous. His unconditional support for Israel has been tedious and redundant, predictable even. Those who have followed his unswerving pro-Israel legacy – including his visit to Israel as a presidential candidate in 2008, his talks before the Israeli lobby group AIPAC and many other examples – could barely discern a shift, except perhaps, in the total disinterest in political sensibility and balance.

He truly delivered in Israel. This was to the total satisfaction of the Israeli Prime Minister and his pro-settler government which was assembled shortly before Obama’s arrival. Obama spoke as if he were entirely oblivious to the political shift to the extreme right underway in Israel. Indeed, the new Israeli government is more right-wing than ever before. The extremist Jewish Home party has three important ministries, including Jerusalem and Housing and the ultra-nationalists of Yisraeli Beiteinu have been awarded the tourism ministry. It means that the next few years will be a settlement construction bonanza, ‘ethnic cleaning’ and greater Apartheid.

“It’s good to be back in The Land (Israel),” Obama said in Hebrew, at the Tel Aviv airport. “The United States is proud to stand with you as your strongest ally and your greatest friend.”

It is believed that for four years, Obama has failed to live up to the nearly impossible expectations of Israel. Israel requires a president with good oratory skills – for example, to emphasize the ‘eternal’ bond between his country and Israel, as Obama did – who is able to sign big checks and ask few questions. Obama has of course done that and more. Aside from the 3.1 billion dollars in financial support, he has rerouted hundreds of millions of US funds to bankroll Israel’s air defense system, the Iron Dome, whose efficiency is questionable at best.

Obama’s past transgressions, as far as Israel is concerned, is that he dared ask the right-wing government of Netanyahu to temporarily freeze settlement construction as a pre-condition to restart the stalled – if not dead – peace process. Of course, there is the widely reported matter of Obama’s lack of fondness of Netanyahu, his antics and renowned arrogance. But that matters little, since Israel’s illegal settlements continued to thrive during Obama’s first term in office.

Expectedly, Netanyahu was gloating. He has managed to assemble a government that will cater mostly to extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank and also masterfully managed to humble the US president, or at least quash his ambitions that the US is capable of operating independently in the Middle East, without Israeli consent or interests in mind.

Now that Jewish colonies are flourishing – with occupied East Jerusalem area EI being another major exploit – Netanyahu is once more aspiring for a war against Iran, one that would not be possible without US funding, support and likely direct involvement. “Thank you for standing by Israel at this time of historic change in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said while standing near the mostly US-funded Iron Dome. “Thank you for unequivocally affirming Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself, by itself against any threat.”

Obama did in fact spare a few, although, spurious thoughts for Palestinians. “Put yourself in their shoes — look at the world through their eyes,” he said to an Israeli audience. “It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day.”

One would even applaud the seeming moral fortitude if it were not for the pesky matter that the US had voted against a Palestinian state at the United Nations last November and tried to intimidate those who did. And of course, much of the horror that Palestinian ‘eyes’ have seen throughout the years was funded and defended by US money and action. If Obama is trying to resurrect the myth that the US is a well-intentioned bystander or an ‘’honest broker’ in some distant conflict, then he has utterly failed. His country is fully embroiled in the conflict, and directly so. Many Palestinian children would still be alive today if the US government had conditioned its massive support of Israel by ending the occupation and ceasing the brutality against Palestinians.

In a joint press conference in Ramallah, alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama even demanded Palestinians drop their condition (proposed by Obama himself) of a settlement freeze in order to return to the so-called peace talks. “That’s not to say settlements aren’t important, that’s to say if we resolve the (main) problems, then settlements will be resolved,” he said. “If to begin the conversation we have to get everything right from the outset … then we’re never going to get to the broader issue,” Obama added. The broader issue, according to the US president is “how do you structure a state of Palestine,” which again, Obama voted against last year, and passionately so.

Aside from resounding rhetoric about peace, Obama is finally towing the Israeli line exactly as Netanyahu and the lobby would expect of him, or of any other US president. He has little to offer Palestinians, or Arab nations, but much to expect from them. Arab states must seek normalized relations with Israel, and Palestinians must “recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state, and that Israelis have the right to insist upon their security,” he lectured in Jerusalem on the second day of his trip, reported CNN online. The obvious danger here lies in the fact that Israel oftentimes conflates ‘security’ and its ‘right to defend itself’ by mass arresting children on their way to school in Hebron, or by inflicting or supporting wars against other nations – Lebanon, Iraq and now Iran.

Obama will eventually get back to his Oval Office desk, ready to resume work as usual. This will include the signing of many papers concerning additional funds, loans, military technology transfers and much more for Israel. Palestinians meanwhile will carry on with their long fight for freedom, without his noted oratory skills.

Meanwhile, the families of the 30 children kidnapped by the Israeli army in Hebron will have many days ahead of them in Israeli military court. But that, of course, is a different matter, of no concern to Obama and his many quotable peace antics.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).

By Jordan Flaherty

29 March 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

TUNIS – Tens of thousands of people marched through downtown Tunis on Tuesday in a spirited march celebrating the beginning the 13th World Social Forum – the first to be held in an Arab country. The majority of marchers were from Tunisia and neighboring nations, but there was substantial representation from Europe, as well as from across South America, Asia, and Southern Africa. An enormous annual gathering that bills itself as a “process” rather than a conference, the WSF brings together by far the largest assembly of international social movement organizations, aimed towards developing a more just and egalitarian world.

The WSF was first held in Brazil in 2001, and is billed as an alternative to the wealth and power wielded at the World Economic Forum, an elite annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland.

Tuesday marked the official opening of the WSF, but official sessions start Wednesday and will continue through March 30 at the El Manar University Campus. The theme of this year’s Forum is “dignity,” inspired by the movements collectively known as the Arab Spring, launched here just over two years ago.

As of Tuesday night, the WSF had reported registration by more than 30,000 participants from nearly 5,000 organizations in 127 countries spanning five continents. Since that estimate, thousands more have registered on-site. The officially announced activities include 70 musical performances, 100 films, and 1000 workshops.

Tuesday’s march traveled three miles from downtown Tunis to Menzah stadium, with chanting in multiple languages and representation from a wide variety of movements from the Tunisian Popular Front to Catholic NGOs to ATTAC, a movement challenging global finance. At Menzah stadium, an opening ceremony began at 7:30pm with female social movement leaders from Palestine, South Africa, Tunisia, and the US taking the stage, including Besma Khalfaoui, widow of Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid, who was assassinated last month.

According to Forum organizers, only women were chosen for the opening as a response to the rise of conservative religious governments in the region as well as patriarchal systems around the world. “We decided this because women are the struggle in the region,” said Hamouda Soubhi from Morocco, one of the organizing committee members. “They are struggling for parity, they are struggling for their rights. The new regimes want the constitutions to be more religious, and we want to take our stand against this.”

In short speeches – each about 5 minutes in length – the women projected a vision of a global movement that was inexorably rising, as the audience roared in approval.

“We are trying to hold our government accountable for what it has done and continues to do around the world,” said one of the speakers, Cindy Weisner of Grassroots Global Justice, a US-based coalition of social movement organizations. “Some of the most inspiring movements and people are gathered here in Tunis. Together, we can change the course of history.”

Among the loudest cheers came when speakers mentioned left political leaders and movements, including the jailed Palestinian leaders Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sa’adat, as well as sustained applause for Hugo Chavez and the Occupy movement.

After the opening speeches, legendary musician Gilberto Gil took the stage. Known for his politics and musical innovation, Gil was a leader of Brazil’s tropicália musical movement of the 1960s and more recently served as Minister of Culture in the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. As a sea of people from around the world danced ecstatically, Gil played a set that ranged from his own songs to pieces by Bob Marley and John Lennon.

Among the opening sessions on Wednesday was a press conference led by members of La Via Campesina, an organization representing more than 200 million poor farmers from 150 local and national organizations in 70 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

“The false solutions of the government have been affecting us worse and worse,” Nandini Jayara, a leader of women farmers in India told Al Jazeera. “I feel the WSF is a stage for us to share our problems and work together for solutions.”

Over the past decade, the WSF has been credited with a number of important international collaborations. For example, the global antiwar demonstrations in February 15, 2003, which have been called the largest protests in history, came out of a call from European Social Forum participants. In the US, labor activists who received international attention for a successful factory take-over in 2008 at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors factory said inspiration came from workers in Brazil and Venezuela that they met at the World Social Forum.

Among the many movements seeking to launch new campaigns and coalitions are indigenous activists who are seeking to educate activists from around the world about the problems in the climate change solutions, such as the “cap and trade” strategy put forward by the United Nations and mainstream environmental organizations.

“We have to look at the economic construct that has been created in this world by rich industrialized countries and the profiteers that have created this scenario,” said Tom Goldtooth, director of Indigenous Environmental Network, an international alliance of native peoples organizing against environmental destruction. “We have ecological disaster, and that is capitalism’s doing.”

Goldtooth’s organization is also seeking to raise awareness about REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), a United Nations program promoted as an environmental protection strategy that Goldtooth calls “genocidal” because it promotes solutions like carbon trading that he says will lead to mass deaths of poor people due to environmental catastrophe brought about by climate change. “We’ve come to a time where there has to be a transition to something different,” Goldtooth added. “Our communities are saying we need some action now.”

Every year, some Forum attendees must overcome travel restrictions from various countries, and the WSF is also plagued by infighting from a sometimes fractured left. Among the incidents reported this year, Human Rights Watch reported that Algerian border authorities illegally barred 96 Algerian civil society activists from traveling to Tunisia.

Meanwhile, in Tunis, a group identifying themselves as Tunisian anarchists said that they were boycotting the Forum, and appeared at the opening march, parading in the opposite direction of the rest of the crowd.

“For us the forum is already done. We have succeeded,” declared Hamouda Soubhi in an interview with Al Jazeera at the close of the opening ceremony. “Tomorrow will be problems, as there always are.”

Jordan Flaherty is an award-winning independent journalist and the author of the book Floodlines: Community and Resistance From Katrina to the Jena Six.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

By Chris Marsden

28 February, 2013

@ WSWS.org

In the lead-up to today’s Friends of Syria summit meeting in Rome, the United States has signalled a shift in policy, towards openly arming the Syrian opposition that is fighting a US proxy war to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

This took place via carefully choreographed political theatre between US Secretary of State John F. Kerry, European countries including Britain, France, Germany and Italy, and the Syrian opposition itself.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition threatened to boycott the summit, ostensibly leaving Syria’s friends with no one to claim friendship with. This was Kerry’s cue to make repeated assurances of additional support while touring Europe’s capitals, in the run-up to the Rome summit and his upcoming tour of the Middle East.

Meeting with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague, Kerry promised that new American support for the SNC would “come to maturity by the time we meet in Rome”. Other US measures would be discussed if the opposition attended the Friends of Syria meeting.

Kerry insisted the US was still pursuing a political resolution, suggesting that direct military aid was not on the immediate agenda. But he added: “We are determined that the Syrian opposition is not going to be dangling in the wind, wondering where the support is, if it is coming.” “I want our friends in the Syrian opposition council to know that we are not coming to Rome simply to talk. We are coming to Rome to make a decision on next steps,” he added. Hague also urged the opposition to stay involved in talks, promising that the UK believes “we must significantly increase our support for the Syrian opposition, on top of our large contributions to the humanitarian relief effort, and we are preparing to do just that.”

European diplomats said the leader of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, Moaz al-Khatib, had told the Italian government his delegation would be attending the summit Thursday. Walid al-Bunni, a spokesman for the SNC, said on Monday the move came after a phone call between al-Khatib and Kerry.

The discussion of increased aid came against a background of media reports—most prominently in the New York Times —that arms shipments to the opposition were on the increase, funded by Gulf states and in some cases originating in Croatia and other eastern European states.

The weapons were reportedly shipped via Jordan and Turkey. David Ottaway of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars said, “I think it’s a US-Jordanian-Saudi operation—the same three groups that have worked together in the past trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein. I do not think Jordan would be doing this on its own.”

“Indeed, we procured new anti-aircraft and heavy defensive weapons donated from Arab and non-Arab countries recently,” Louay Almokdad, political and media coordinator for the Free Syrian Army, told CNN Sunday.

Several rebel commanders and fighters told Reuters that a shipment that reached Syria via Turkey last month comprised shoulder-held and other mobile equipment including anti-aircraft and armour-piercing weapons, mortars and rocket launchers. The weapons, along with money to pay fighters, were all being distributed through a new command structure set up to funnel foreign aid in part as a means of controlling the opposition and minimising the influence of Al-Qaeda type groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham.

Reuters reported, “The rebels refused to specify who supplied the new weapons, saying they did not want to embarrass foreign supporters, but said they had arrived openly via Turkey ‘from donor countries’. ‘We have received this shipment legally and normally. It was not delivered through smuggling routes but formally through Bab al-Hawa crossing,’ said a rebel commander.”

A Reuters photographer in Damascus saw western-built rebel firearms including US pattern M4 and Austrian Steyr assault rifles.

One rebel commander said of the money and arms supplied, “So basically it’s like we have paid in advance. It is funded by the countries that will be involved in reconstruction of Syria.”

The chief of staff of the rebel military command, Brigadier Selim Idris, said the presence of foreign fighters was hindering international support for the battle against Assad, while claiming: “We are not receiving weapons from the Europeans, we do not want to embarrass them, we do not want to embarrass anyone with the weapons issue.”

Following Kerry’s declaration in London, the Washington Post and CNN both reported that the Obama administration was moving toward a major policy shift on Syria that could provide rebels with equipment such as body armour and armoured vehicles, and possibly military training.

The Washington Post said the Obama administration is looking to remove restrictions on “dual-use” equipment, involving communications, body armour, flak jackets, night-vision equipment and military vehicles. “They are doing a redefinition of what is lethal,” a source said. “They have been working on this for a while.”

CNN stated that the changes are under discussion with US allies as part of Kerry’s tour and is being done in coordination with the European powers. Each European Union nation would decide on its own what to supply, the official said.

The Post noted, “Kerry has repeatedly made indirect references to a policy shift during his travels. He told a group of German students Tuesday that the United States wants a ‘peaceful resolution’ in Syria, but if its leaders refuse to negotiate and continue to kill citizens, ‘then you need to at least provide some kind of support’ for those fighting for their rights.”

Britain and France have both pushed to lift an EU arms embargo on Syria, but met with opposition in the bloc, which led to it being renewed for three months. The EU inserted a clause, however, allowing member countries “to provide greater non-lethal support and technical assistance for the protection of civilians.”

An EU official spoke candidly to the Washington Post, explaining, “Under the old EU setup, we couldn’t do anything,” whereas the new rule will allow “things that don’t of themselves kill people.”

“We’re talking about things that can be helpful on the ground—bulletproof jackets, binoculars and communications,” another said.

The duplicity of the US and its European allies is made necessary by an attempt to preserve the illusion that they are seeking a diplomatic solution. Kerry even complained to the SNC that its boycott was undermining him on the eve of a meeting with Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, in Berlin Tuesday.

Speaking from Moscow on Monday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem offered talks with the opposition, including those that have taken up arms. Lavrov urged support for the Assad regime’s initiative, warning that further fighting could lead to “the breakup of the Syrian state”.

“The Syrian people should decide their fate without external intervention,” said Lavrov, citing “sensible forces who are increasingly aware of the necessity to begin the talks as soon as possible to reach a political settlement.”

Whatever diplomatic noises are made, Washington is pushing for regime change in Syria, working through its proxies: Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. On Tuesday, delegates from the Friends of Syria International Working Group, meeting in Sofia, called for sanctions to be imposed by “all members of the international community, especially members of the United Nations Security Council”— targeting Russia and China for their opposition to such measures.

By Ramzy Baroud

28 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

An Israeli-Turkish rapprochement is unmistakably underway, but unlike the heyday of their political alignment of the1990’s, the revamped relationship is likely to be more guarded and will pose a greater challenge to Turkey rather than to Israel.

Israeli media referenced a report by Turkish newspaper Radikal with much interest, regarding secret talks between Turkey and Israel that could yield an Israeli apology for its army’s raid against the Turkish aid flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, which was on its way to Gaza in May 2010. The assault resulted in the death of 9 Turkish activists, including a US citizen.

The attack wrought a crisis unseen since the rise of the Turkish-Israeli alliance starting in 1984, followed by a full blown strategic partnership in 1996. But that crisis didn’t necessarily start at the Mavi Marmara deadly attack, or previous Israeli insults of Turkey. Nor did it begin with the Israeli so-called Operation Cast Lead against besieged Gaza in Dec 2008, which resulted in the death and wounding of thousands of Palestinians, mostly civilians.

According to the Radikal report (published in Feb 20 and cited by Israeli Haaretz two days later), Israel is willing to meet two of Turkey’s conditions for the resumption of full ties: an apology, and compensation to the families of the victims. “Turkey has also demanded Israel lift the siege,” on Gaza, Haaretz reported, citing Radikal, “but is prepared to drop that demand.”

The reports of secret talks are not new. Similar reports had surfaced of talks in Geneva and Cairo. Turkish-Israeli reconciliation has, at least for a while, been an important item on the US foreign policy agenda in the Middle East, until few months ago when the US elections pushed everything else to the backseat. But despite fiery rhetoric, the signs of a thawing conflict are obvious. Writing in Al-Ahram Weekly on Jan. 16, Galal Nassar attributed that Tel Aviv is working “its idiosyncratic ways to patch up what it regarded as a passing storm cloud in its relations with its friend, and perhaps strategic ally.” Turkey, responded in kind, in its decision “to lift its veto against Israeli participation in non-military activities in NATO.”

Leaked news of a political settlement are not the only headlines related to this topic. There is also the matter of military and economic cooperation, which are even more common. According to FlightGlobal.com, reporting on Feb. 21, the Israeli government has agreed to the delivery of electronic support measures (ESM) equipment “to be installed on the Turkish air force’s new Boeing 737 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) system aircraft.”

 

Meanwhile, a large Turkish conglomerate Zorlu Group “has been working in recent months to convince the Israeli government and the Leviathan gas field partners to approve energy exports to Turkey,” TheMarker has learned, as reported in Haaretz on Feb 14.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. If these reports are even partially credible, Turkish-Israeli relations are being carefully, but decidedly repaired. This stands in contrast with declared Turkish foreign policy and the many passionate statements by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other leading Turkish politicians.

Following a Nov 16 Friday prayer, The New York Times reported from Istanbul that Erdogan denied any talks between his country and Israel regarding resolving a crisis instigated by another Israeli assault on Gaza. He went even further, “We do not have any connections in terms of dialogue with Israel,” he reportedly said. At a parliamentary meeting few days later, he described Israel’s conduct in Gaza as “ethnic cleansing.”

On Nov 20, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was in Gaza on a solidarity visit, along with an Arab League delegation in an unprecedented show of solidarity. In a strange contrast with the spirit of his mission, however, “Davutoglu suggested to reporters that back-channel discussions had been opened with Israeli authorities,” according to the Times.

But why the contradictions, the apparent Turkish turnabout and if full rapprochement is in fact achieved, will the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) be able to sustain its still successful brand in the Middle East that was largely achieved as a result of its pro-Palestinian policies?

Here, we must get something straight; the strong and growing pro-Palestinian sentiment in Turkey is not the outcome of self-serving political agenda, neither of the AKP nor of any other. The support for Palestinians was most apparent in the June 2011 elections, which was convincingly won by the Erdogan party. “Turks voted on two ‘p’s’ — their pocketbooks and Palestine,” Steven A. Cook wrote in the Atlantic on Jan 28. “Erdogan, who plans to be Turkey’s president one day and who believes that the AKP will be dominant for at least another decade, is unlikely to be receptive to a substantial improvement in Ankara’s ties with Jerusalem.” If the centrality of Palestine is so essential to Turkish political awareness, then no ambitious politician – for example, Erdogan, Davutoglu or President Abdullah Gül – are likely to gamble with a major departure from their current policies.

That might be entirely true if one discounts the Syria factor, which along with the so-called Arab Spring has complicated Turkey’s regional standing that until two years ago was predicated on reaching out to Iran, Syria, Libya and other Middle Eastern partners. For years prior to the current turmoil, Turkey had cautiously yet cogently adopted a new foreign policy that aimed at balancing out its near total reliance on NATO and the West in general. It mended its ties with its immediate neighbors in the East, including Iran, but polarization created by the Syria civil war has ended Turkey’s balancing act, at least for the time being.

Turkey’s request for the deployment of Patriot missile batteries along its border with Syria, its role in supporting the Syria National Council and its attempt at coaxing various Kurdish groups in northern Iraq and Syria are all proving consistent with old Turkish policies. Indeed, Davutoglu’s zero-problems with neighbors doctrine is but a historical footnote.

The Syrian war has placed Turkey back within a Western camp, although not with the same decisiveness of the past, when Turkey’s generals discounted all other alliances in favor of NATO’s. This is representing an opening for Israel, which with the support of US President Barack Obama’s new administration is likely to translate to some measures of normalization. The degree of that normalization will depend largely on which direction the Syrian civil war is heading and the degree of receptiveness on Turkish streets in seeing Israel once more paraded as Turkey’s strategic partner.

Some commentators suggest that Egypt’s own foreign policy towards Israel – Egypt currently being the main country in the Middle East with the ‘leverage’ of talking to both Israel and the Palestinians – is depriving Turkey from a strong bargaining position within NATO. By having no open contacts with Israel, some suggest Turkey is losing favor with the US and other western partners. Interestingly, Israel’s planned apology, according to Radikal, is supposedly timed with Obama’s visit to Israel in March.

Neither Turkey and Israel, nor the US and NATO are able to sustain the status quo – the rift between Israel and Turkey – for much longer. But returning to an old paradigm, where Turkey is no longer an advocate of Palestinian rights and a champion of Arab and Muslim causes, could prove even more costly. There can be no easy answers, especially as the region seems to be changing partly through unpredictable dynamics.

Erdogan and his party may eventually concoct an answer. This could include Israel and a new set of balances that would allow them access to both East and West. But that answer would no longer be the upright, high-minding politics Erdogan constantly advocates, but instead good old self-serving policies and nothing else.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).

By Feroze Mithiborwala

28 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Even as our car approached Damascus enroute from Beirut, we could see black plumes of smoke emerging from the outskirts of the city. The sound of bombardments continued all through the course of the day & night, with little respite. Way back in 2006, when Israel had waged the war on Lebanon, we had to travel from Damascus to Beirut, the twin cities of resistance.

Since the very onset, we were aware that the geopolitical war for Syria will have tremendous ramifications for the very power structure of the world & especially for West Asia, the Middle East & North Africa. Thus there was a strategic imperative for a deeper understanding & a constructive politically informed intervention on the part of the Indian people’s movements.

The Indian delegation comprising Jatin Desai (freelance journalist), Nirja Bhatnagar (Gender & Human Rights), Mubasshiruddin Khurram (Siyasat, Urdu daily) & this author, was there as the first team (February 9-16th) of a series of Indian journalists & political activists, on an invitation from the Syrian Ministry of Information & in coordination with Syrian civil-society.

As is the case with international issues, we are largely dependent on Western news sources, both in the print & the electronic media. Even whilst India is a growing political & economic power, our political leadership, social movements, as well as the media lacks an informed & independent perspective on issues of strategic geopolitical significance. The daily reporting on Syria in our media has been entirely through the prism of Reuters, AFP, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeerah & Al Arabiya. All of these news sources are part of the very Western imperial alliance & their vassal states in the region.

This has led to a vastly distorted perspective in our analysis of the Syrian crisis, which is undergoing a war that has been unleashed upon its very unity & sovereignty. Barring a few journalists from the Left who have both reported & analysed the situation, independent of the Western paradigm, there has been no concerted or serious attempt to debate & discuss this issue in our media, fixated as we are with Islamabad, London & New York, as that comprises our worldview & little beyond.

This war against Syria is being led by an alliance comprising the US-UK-France-Turkey (Nato) & Israel, in alliance with the despotic Gulf Monarchs of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE & Bahrain.

On the other side stands the alliance of Russia-China-Venezuela & Iran, as well as the BRICS nations. Here it needs to be emphasised that India, as part of the alliance, has adopted a position that calls for an adherence to the UN charter, political solution to the Syrian crisis & has opposed foreign intervention & resorting to fomenting terrorism as a strategic option, as well as the imposition of the war on Syria by the nations that are funding, arming & fuelling an insurgency.

The Nato-GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) agenda is definitely not for ‘democracy’. But it certainly is once again a glaring instance of ‘regime change’ in the garb of ‘humanitarian intervention’. The Western led alliance has mobilized militants, mercenaries & terrorists from across 29 nations to infiltrate & destroy Syria, partition & balkanize along religious, sectarian & ethnic lines.

These mercenaries are part of the global network led by the extremists Wahabis, Salafists & Takfiris, who are extremely intolerant in their beliefs & consider all other Muslim sects as kafirs, leave alone the adherents of all other faiths, where the less said the better.

Even the al-Nusra (a Taliban-Al Qaeda-like affiliate) is deeply involved in this insurgency. Thus whilst the US, UK & France claim to be fighting these very forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan & Mali, they have willfully & systematically organized, promoted, funded, armed & mobilized them in Libya & in Syria. The cold-blooded hypocrisy has never been more evident, but has rarely been written about in the Indian media, despite the obvious. ( Syria: A Jihadi Paradise, By Pepe Escobar http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33591.htm ).

It is undoubtedly evident, that Syria requires major democratic reform in all spheres of its socio-religio-cultural, economic & political structures. This has been the message of the ‘Arab Spring’, where the Arab & Muslim masses are taking to the streets demanding their rightful democratic freedoms & aspirations. Thus Syria, which was hitherto ruled by the Baath Party, will have to undergo genuine reform, to ensure a free & vibrant democracy, where the people have the right to protest, freedom of expression, the right to dissent & a free & robust media. There is also a need to recognize the fact that Syria lacks a genuine multi-party system & as well as a reform of electoral laws.

Thus the moot point here to be considered is that, was the Syrian government & the ruling elite, which comprises all the sections, entirely opposed & disconnected from the aspirations on the ground, or where they willing to respond to a process of democratic reform & actively engage the opposition parties & civil society?

In our estimation, the Syrian Government, as well as dominant sections of the national opposition are committed to a political process of dialogue to resolve the national crisis.

Thus we need to analyse the varied complexities of the situation due to which Syria has been subjected to this war.

The Nato-GCC powers had drawn up plans well in advance, for another “Libyan solution”, or even worse – ‘Somalization’!

Syria has been subjected to this geopolitical war for the following reasons:

After the Arab Spring broke out in Tunisia & then onto Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, (which the media entirely neglects) amongst others, peaceful protests also broke in Daraa, a town in the south of Syria. We met protesters who had participated & raised the slogans for democratic reform & the empowerment of the people. As is the case with entrenched one-party ruled states, the initial protests were also met with a degree of state violence, a fact which the government has acknowledged. But at the higher levels of the Syrian leadership, they also began to respond to the demands of the people.

But soon an armed insurgency began to spread across Syria & mercenaries began to pour in from the neighbouring countries, namely Turkey, Jordan (Governments are openly complicit), as well as Lebanon & Iraq, where there are militias funded by the Saudi-Qatari’s. The peaceful democratic protesters were marginalized, even as armed rebels, insurgents, mercenaries & terrorists, with a very regressive & sectarian Islamic agenda began to spread all across the country.

The political opposition & civil society protesters we spoke to, soon began to realize that a larger geopolitical war was being waged by the Imperial-Zionist powers & the Gulf vassal monarchies & surely their agenda was not democracy. Can any serious observer state that Saudi Arabia & Qatar are democracies, or even aspire to be so in the near future? Are the Nato powers here to to create liberal secular democracies, or wage war, change regimes & control the natural resources of nations? The answers have always been clear.

Syria was targeted, as this country has been a bulwark of the resistance & forms a physical arch that includes Iran, Syria, the Turkish people, Lebanon & Palestine. With all their faults, the Syrian leadership did not compromise with the US-Israel, as did Egypt & the other Arab powers after the Camp David Treaty (1978) & the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty (1979). Then with the defeat of Saddam’s Iraq (1991), Syria was the only Arab country with a political system, military & a courageous civil-society that could stand up to Israel.

Syria & the leading Arab & Muslim nations have been targeted for regime change both in the PNAC (Project for the New American Century, a Neo-Conservative Document, 1997)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-neocons-project-for-the-new-american-century-american-world-leadership-syria-next-to-pay-the-price , as well the Zionist document authored by Benjamin Netanyahu & other Neo-Conservatives, also needs to be referred. (A Clean Break, A Strategy for Securing the Realm , 1996 )

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1438.htm ). (A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties, by Oded Yinon, 1982) http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html

The victory of the Lebanese & Palestinian national resistance in their historic victories in 2006 & 2008-09, 2012, was due to the fact that Syria stood by like a rock, whilst other Arab states stood & watched. Israel stood defeated & the myth of Israel’s military invincibility lay shattered forever.

Syria also lies in the pathway of the Oil & Gas Pipelines, with plans to pass from Saudi-Qatar-Syria-Turkey to Europe. Also the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline challenges the hegemony of the Saudi-Qatar-US-Israeli plans to control the routes & the flow of the natural resource. http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/middle-east-business/226296-iraq-greenlights-gas-pipeline-agreement-with-iran-syria.html

 

The recent discoveries of major Oil & Gas deposits in the Mediterranean & Aegean Seas have lead to competing claims between Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Cyprus, Greece & Israel. Thus both the Corporate West & the Gulf Petro-Sheikhs require pliant regimes in Syria, as they now have in Libya. ( ­F. William Engdahl , New Mediterranean oil and gas b onanza http://rt.com/news/reserves-offshore-middle-east-engdahl-855/ )

Also the Syrian Arab Nationalist & liberal secular plural identity, are an anathema to all those forces in the region, who cannot see beyond the narrow confines of religion & sect. It’s simply amazing to witness the rich multi-cultural ethos of this ancient Mediterranean civilization going back to more than 10,000 years, with Damascus being the oldest city in the world, with a continuous human urban settlement.

We would speak with a group of 10 Syrians & at the end would remain completely flummoxed as we could never ascertain as to which identity they belonged to. This is also the reason as to why the Syrian nation, even after 23 months of a massive international war, has been able to stand united. If not, Syria too would have fallen & crumbled like Afghanistan & Iraq, as the societies within were deeply divided along ethno-sectarian fault-lines.

There is also a plan that envisages the vivisection & Bantustanization of Syria along Sunni, Christian, Alawite, Shia & Kurdish lines.

If this nefarious design were to be achieved, then Turkey with its Ottoman pretensions & Israel with its nightmare of Greater Eretz Israel, would once again carve up the Arab lands, as the colonial representatives of the West. Here the minorities & especially the Christian, Alawite, Shia & Druze communities have been targeted as kafirs & heathens & there are horrendous fatwas being brazenly issued.

The majority of the Muslim Sunnis who are liberal as well as the other Muslim & Christian minorities in Syria are truly frightened at the prospect of a Wahabi-Salafist takeover. Many Christians we spoke to, proud of their Syrian-Arab identity will pack their bags & leave the day the ‘Syrian Arab Republic’ is transformed into a ‘Syrian Islamic Republic’. They will be reduced to second-class citizens, as is the case with all theocracies, as well as Atheocracies – though God forbid.

The common basis of their existence is the Syrian civilization & not on Islam they say & rightly so. The Christians do respect Islam, as part of their common Arab heritage. This is a position that all minorities across the world have professed. The imposition of Islamic states, will lead to more tensions in Egypt, as well as in Nigeria. We have already witnessed the partitions of Ethiopia & Eritrea, followed by Sudan & South Sudan-Darfur.

The Imperial-Zionist strategy is to balkanize Asia & Africa along religio-sectarian & ethnic lines. Thus the creation of Islamic states, will exacerbate this very crisis. To again state the obvious – the common identity of the Egyptian people is not only Islamic, but it is the Egyptian civilization & Arabism as well. We also need to recognize the fact that socio-religious groups & ideologies too have a legitimate right to create political parties, as is evident in many western & other secular liberal democracies across the world. This issue too is at the very core of the ongoing struggle in Syria.

Fortunately enough in India, the visionary leadership led by Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru & Maulana Abul Kalam Azad , understood this fact only too well & there were many in Syria who both admired & lauded India’s secular heritage & thus the mutual respect for all religions, cultures & languages.

It must be stated here, that the one of the most remarkable meetings that we had was with Grand Mufti Ahmed Badreddin Hassoun , who represents the Muslim Sunni sect & thus the majority of the population. Mufti Hassoun’s 21 year old son was murdered & he too has been threatened with death. Mufti Hassoun’s first words itself captivated us. He spoke of the ‘sanctity of God & the sanctity of Human life & beyond this nothing was more precious or sacred’. Mufti Hassoun is a true representative of a liberal peaceful Islam & this was the overwhelming sentiment amongst the Muslims that we met. Mufti Hassoun was thankful of the role that India has played, in addition to that of Russia, & China.

The Islam of the Mediterranean civilization will not be overcome by the Islam practiced in the obscurantist Gulf Sheikhdoms or the caves of Tora Bora. Thus Syria must defend its secular liberal ethos & culture.

The religio-sectarian battle being waged against the Syrian Government is based on the innuendo that the President Bashal Al Assad is from the Alawite minority (who are Kafirs, according to the extremists & fanatics who lay claim to Islam) & thus he should go. And go he surely will, if & whenever the majority vote against him.

And coming from India, where our PM comes from the minority Sikh community comprising 2% of the population, it did sound very obnoxious.

There is also valid anger amongst a section of the people about the four decade long rule of the Assad family, but this coming from those backed by the ruling families of the Gulf monarchies sounds very hollow indeed. They are also the same forces that sent in an army to quell the democratic uprising of the majority of the Bahraini population.

Our insistence is that the democratic change in inevitable, only it needs to follow a political process, not a destructive sectarian civil-war backed by international powers.

The solution is a national reconciliation, dialogue & negotiation, leading to a new constitution & elections , which must be monitored by the international community, the true one, I must add. In our discussions with many during our stay in Damascus, the popular mass support for the Government has actually increased after the war has been unleashed on their nation. The President remains popular to the extent of 60% & beyond. This entire debate can only be settled by an election & that will lay all speculation to rest. This is precisely as to why a political process & elections are being opposed by the Nato-GCC combine.

It was the first Arab League Committee, led by General Dhabi (Sudan) that referred to a national dialogue & a political process as the only way to resolve this crisis. He was immediately sacked by the Saudi-Qataris. Then later Kofi Anna’s initiative was similarly sabotaged by the US. Now Lakhdar Brahimi is attempting to play the role of the interlocutor with the backing of the UN. But until the major powers do not arrive at an agreement, the crisis will not be resolved.

We met many sections of Syrian society including the PM Dr. Wael Halaqi & the Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr. Feysal Mekdad, the Minister for Information, Mr. Omran Zoubi & the Minister for Electricity & Power, Mr. Imad Khamis.

Amongst the opposition, we met Mr. Omar Ossy, Kurdish MP, as well as the Chairman of the National Committee for Dialogue & Reconciliation, Mr. Sattam Dandal (a prominent Sunni Tribal Leader), Mr. Fahed Barod, Ali Turkmani & Nabil Fayyad. Amongst the Christians that we met included Mr. Salim al Nassan George, Mother Agnes-Mariam of the Cross, Hassan Arnoq & Heratch Barsikhian (an Armenian Christian).

Amongst them all, we grew very close to Mr. Youssef Alshahab, who is a proud Syrian Christian, a prominent TV personality, but a refugee in his own city as he was unable to return to his flat in a Damascus suburb itself. He was living in a hotel, where many other media channels had also moved for protection from the daily threats of the insurgents & many journalists have been murdered & kidnapped.

The journalists whom we met were also truly remarkable, even as the women were willing to stay on till late at night so that the media war against their nation be countered as effectively as possible. Here we do have to mention Ms. Nawaem Salman (whom we preferred to refer as Salman behen), who was the representative of Syrian TV & had organized our visit with a lot of deep thought & truly sincere & dedicated effort.

We also had a wonderful meeting with a group of Syrian youth who were fighting for the unity & sovereignty of their land by waging a struggle by serving in the refugee camps, by collecting donations & by countering the lies of the global media through a sustained campaign over the social media. Here we need to mention Yazan, Reina, Waseem, Maisa, Ghalia, Feras, Bernard amongst all the rest of the wonderful group that we interacted with. Yazan could not meet us again before we departed, since he was kidnapped by the mercenaries, but since then has been released & is now coordinating with many across the world to get the truth out.

They were all of the similar opinion that the sectarian war could lead to a similar deteriorating crisis in Lebanon, Iraq & with ramifications across many other Arab & Muslim nations. They were all very clear on the steps & the process of the national political initiative & the need for the war to come to an immediate halt. This is only possible, once there is an agreement between the US & Russia, after which the Nato-GCC-Turkey-Israel are pressurized to back-off.

Then the Syrian people are left alone in peace to decide their own future. The process entails a dialogue with all opposition forces, as well as civil-society, the formation of a transition government, negotiations for a new constitution which would be put up for a peoples’ referendum & then a free & fair election, leading to the formation of a new democratic government.

Actually the Syrian government has undertaken a process of reform & a new constitution was passed in a referendum in 2012, where 56% of the people voted. Here the ‘clause 8′ that referred to the Baath party as the sole leader of the revolution was removed, thus paving the way for a multi-party system. This constitution is again up for discussion & a negotiated agreement. Not a word in our media was there?

Earlier in May 2012, general elections had been held & a government constituted, but again, not a word ever appeared in the media. This was very much in contrast to the elections in Yemen, where there was only one candidate for the election & we had headlines stating that Yemen is now a democracy. Such is the manipulation & deceit of the global corporate media, with their legions of embedded journalists.

Thus even whilst the daily killings continue with reprisals & counters from either side, with unconfirmed estimates quoting up to 60,000 dead & a vast number of refugees.

The rebels & mercenaries continue to destroy Syrian infrastructure (with plans to be rebuilt by contracts given to the US companies such as Bechtel & Halliburton, if I may add). From Electric transmission lines, to hospitals, schools, colleges & health centres, bakeries, to factories that have been ripped apart & sold across the border in Turkey, where even entire neighbourhoods have been looted & so have cows & sheep.

The entire Syrian welfare state, which has served the people well, is being systematically destroyed, readied for a neo-liberal takeover. Syria is self-sufficient in both food grains & energy. Remarkably it has ‘zero debt’, despite the subsidies in all the key sectors.

Even Syrian missile sites defending all Arab lands against Israeli aggression are being targeted by the mercenaries. Thus Syrian friends also discussed the infiltration of Israelis (Sephardic-Mizrahi of Semitic origin, as the Ashkenazi majority is non-Semitic), who could blend into the insurgency & attack Syrian strategic-military targets.

Was a political process for a national dialogue possible right at the onset?

Could not the Arab League as well as the OIC, resolved the crisis through a sustained political process? Could not the NAM been involved? The Syrian crisis also exposes the divisions with the Islamic nations, as it is their very failure that has led to this crisis. It is these very Islamic nations that let the US play the role of arbiter in their internal regional issues. An Arab League in deep shameful slumber over Palestine, has gone into a Rambo-like testosterone drive on Syria.

Yes they should have, but then most of the petro-Arab states are vassals & also follow a narrow regressive religio-sectarian agenda.

Also the role of the global corporate media needs to be discussed & exposed. Once again, it was the media, led by the CNN, BBC, Al Jazeerah & Al Arabiya amongst others, that fired the first salvos, even before the mercenaries were mobilized from across the world. Their agenda of the corporate media is to pave the way for foreign intervention by distorting the news, through sheer lies & deception. They were manufacturing consent for a Nato-GCC intervention, but were prevented this time (unlike in Libya) by Russia & China, as well as the BRICS. Here it is important to state that Al Jazeerah has lost all credibility amongst vast sections of the Arab masses & counter channels are now taking root in the Arab nations.

The Syrian crisis is also deepening the political differences between the Islamists led by the Ikhwaanul Muslemeen (Muslim Brotherhood) & the Salafists on the one hand & the secular-left liberal opposition on the other. This is evident in Egypt, Tunisia & even in Turkey.

After sustaining the onslaught for nearly two years, certain powers have understood that now there is no military solution or possibility of regime change, nor can Syrian society be divided along religio-sectarian lines. Thus many Syrians themselves are now taking the initiative & calling for national reconciliation & democratic reform.

Thus now from Mr. Araby of the Arab League, Muhammad Khatib of the Syrian National Congress (SNC backed by the Nato-GCC), as well as other sane voices across the Arab world are calling for a negotiated solution.

Therefore Syria is now very important to the fate of the world itself . It’s about a liberal secular democratic Syria that respects all faiths, that treats all its citizens as equal & not merely as protected dhimmis, veritable second class citizens. It’s about ensuring that the plural culture of Syria triumphs over the regressive forces unleashed against an ancient & advanced civilization.

It’s about ensuring that Churches are not destroyed as was the recent despicable fatwa from the Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the so-called Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (Not a word in the Western media outlets, so as to protect the image of ‘moderate’ Saudi Arabia).

It’s about a democracy that ensures an equal stake to all sections of society & in due course, the majority sections will assume power through the ballot itself. But this does not mean that only a Muslim must lead Syria. The Syrian Christians must have the same right. Currently a Christian is debarred from the top post, even in an avowedly secular socialist Syria. This was shocking & is just unacceptable & the Constitution must delete ‘clause 3′ which was inserted in 1951, as a compromise between the secularists & the Islamists. The majority of the Muslims that we spoke to said that this clause was unjust & must be removed. The Christians certainly find it extremely discriminatory & rightly so. Due to Islamist pressure, Muslims & Christians cannot currently inter-marry & the Christian has to convert to Islam, whilst the Muslim cannot. Apart from religious law, there is a need for the option of civil law as well. Many of the youth also find this law truly absurd & are planning to reform many such discriminatory laws.

Also, for the first time in decades, the Kurdish language has been recognized amongst the national languages & this is indeed a victory for the Kurdish people.

The overwhelming Palestinian population too enjoys a great degree of opportunity for their socio-economic advancement & respect the support that Syria has always given them, especially during their worst years, when most of the Arab regimes had abandoned their cause.

 

It’s thus about defending the arch of the resistance , stretching from Iran, the Turkish people, Syria, Lebanon & Palestine, even as it spreads to liberate more nations & people.

The victory of Syria will restore Russia to its rightful place as a world leader on par with the US. Thus the political, economic & military assertion of Russia-China, in alliance with Brazil, India, Iran, Venezuela & South Africa, will lead to a new political restructuring of international relations, with the economic & strategic balance increasingly moving away from the West.

The people of Syria are undergoing great devastation & death, in a war that has been imposed on a hapless population, who still cannot believe that their nation is being subjected to this tragedy. Yet the Syrian nation possesses the inherent strength, wisdom & courage to withstand the onslaught & emerge far stronger from the ever before. If left to themselves, they will resolve the national crisis in due course of time. The new Syria that will emerge will be very different, far more democratic & a people that after a long & arduous struggle will not only have succeeded in defending their nation, but will have won more rights to ensure the genuine empowerment of the people & committed to the values of social justice & to a plural multi-ethno-religious ethos.

 

The Syrian nation resistance will also have contributed to the further retreat & downfall of the Imperial-Zionist project for global hegemony.

On the very last day, we visited the magnificent & exquisite Omayyad Mosque , whose grandeur is breathtaking. Men & Women both pray together , even as Shia’s have been provided with two rooms, which also houses the ‘Ras-ul-Hussain’ & the shrine dedicated to the martyrdom of Imam Hussain. The Mosque also houses the Shrine of St. John the Baptist. Nearby lay the mausoleum of Saladin the great .

Our attempts to pay our respects at the Shrine of Syeda Zeinab were not facilitated due to security considerations.

We then walked down the cobbled lanes of the Christian quarters of Bab Touma & paid our respects at the Church of Ananias (more than 2000 years old), dedicated to the memory of St. Paul himself.

This was all astounding to witness & provides great hope for the future of the world.

I silently prayed at each of these spiritual centres, for God to protect this ancient nation & to restore peace.

One evening, in a short taxi ride, even as the bombings continued, we discussed the future of Syria with the taxi-driver, who smilingly stated – “Don’t worry, we are a 10,000 year old civilization, we have seen worse & will overcome this crisis”.

He did not need any words of assurance, as he knew within his heart, he knew.

Feroze Mithiborwala is a peace activist in Mumbai. He led the Asia to Gaza peace flotilla.

Statement on the Recent Violence in Myanmar

AMAN is deeply saddened and concerned with the current and ongoing violence in Myanmar.

There are many reports of killing and the destruction of properties and places of worship, particularly in the Meikhtila Township, majority of who are Muslims.  AMAN would like to categorically condemn such acts.

We extend our deepest condolences to the families who have lost family members, friends and property in the violence. We would like to also extend our solidarity with those affected by this violence.

AMAN demands that the Myanmar Government bring those responsible for this tragedy to justice immediately. We also insist that the government take action against the perpetrators of these heinous acts of violence, particularly those who are involved in hate speeches against the minority Muslims.

In recent times, two waves of riots against Rohingya in Rakhine State resulted in many people losing their lives and property. Myanmar, which has one of the worst records of human rights abuses in the world, also has one of the most oppressed and persecuted communities in the world; the Rohingya. Recent violence seems to correlate with the long due democratization and healing process between and among various ethnic communities towards creating opportunities for an accelerated process of development efforts in cooperation with international communities.

In Meikhtila, reports state that approximately 130 Muslims and 30 Buddhists have lost their lives due to fresh violence. Fifteen Mosques, five Islamic Schools and buildings have been damaged which left many families homeless. Reports also say that although it is more controlled in Meikthila, the atrocities have spread to nearby towns and villages throughout the region.

AMAN demands that the Myanmar Government not only stops the ongoing violence but prevents future tension between majority Buddhists and minority Muslims by stopping the hate speeches that are currently being spread by groups such as the “969 gang.” The Myanmar Government must allow all its IDPs to resettle with adequate security provisions. We also urge the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) and UN bodies to call upon the Myanmar Government to stop such violence immediately.

AMAN urges the Myanmar Government to compensate the victims of violence adequately regardless of ethnicity or religion, to rebuild their homes and livelihood community.

We finally appeal to all civil society organizations, both within and outside of Myanmar, to act by strengthening mutual cooperation and dialogue in order to stop and prevent such happenings in the future.

By Richard Falk

27 March, 2013

@ Richard Falk Blog

It was master-crafted as an ingratiating speech by the world’s most important leader and the government that has most consistently championed Israel’s cause over the decades. Enthusiastically received by the audience of Israeli youth, and especially by liberal Jews around the world. Despite the venue, President Obama’s words in Jerusalem on March 21st seemed primarily intended to clear the air somewhat in Washington. Obama may now have a slightly better chance to succeed in his second legacy-building presidential term despite a deeply polarized U.S. Congress, and a struggling American economy if assessed from the perspective of workers’ distress rather than on the basis of robust corporate profits.

As for the speech itself, it did possess several redeeming features. It did acknowledge that alongside Israeli security concerns “Palestinian people’s right of self-determination, their right to justice must also be recognized.” This affirmation was followed by the strongest assertion of all: “..put yourself in their shoes. Look at the world through their eyes.” To consider the realities of the conflict through Palestinian eyes is to confront the ugly realities of prolonged occupation, annexationist settlement projects, an unlawful separation wall, generations confined to the misery of refugee camps and exile, second-class citizenship in Israel, ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, and a myriad of regulations that make the daily life of Palestinians a narrative of humiliation and frustration. Of course, Obama did not dare to do this. None of these realities were specified, being left to the imagination of his audience of Israeli youth, but at least the general injunction to see the conflict through the eyes of the other pointed the way toward empathy and reconciliation.

Obama also encouraged in a helpful way Israeli citizen activism on behalf of a just peace based on two states for two peoples. A bit strangely he urged that “for the moment, put aside the plans and process” by which this goal might be achieved, and “instead..build trust between people.” Is this not an odd bit of advice? It seems a stretch to stress trust when the structures and practice of occupation are for the Palestinians unremittingly cruel, exploitative, and whittle away day after day at the attainability of a viable Palestinian state. But this farfetched entreaty was coupled with a more plausible plea: “I can promise you this: Political leaders will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see. Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things.” There is some genuine hope to be found in these inspirational words, but to what end given the present situation.

In my opinion the speech was deeply flawed in three fundamental respects:

>> by speaking only to Israeli youth, and not arranging a parallel talk in Ramallah to Palestinian youth, the role of the United States as ‘dishonest broker’ was brazenly confirmed; it also signaled that the White House was more interested in appealing to the folks in Washington than to those Palestinians trapped in the West Bank and Gaza, an interpretation reinforced by laying a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl but refusing to do so at the tomb of Yasir Arafat. This disparity of concern was further exhibited when Obama spoke of the children of Sderot in southern Israel, “the same age as my own daughters, who went to bed at night fearful that a rocket would land in their bedroom simply because of who they are and where they live.” To make such an observation without even mentioning the trauma-laden life of children on the other side of the border in Gaza who have been living for years under conditions of blockade, violent incursions, and total vulnerability year after year is to subscribe fully to the one-sided Israeli narrative as to the insecurity being experienced by the two peoples.

>> by speaking about the possibility of peace based on the two state consensus, the old ideas, without mentioning developments that have made more and more people skeptical about Israeli intentions is to lend credence to what seems more and more to be a delusionary approach to resolving the conflict. Coupling this with Obama’s perverse injunction to the leaders of the Middle East that seems willfully oblivious to the present set of circumstances makes the whole appeal seem out of touch: “Now’s the time for the Arab world to take steps towards normalizing relations with Israel.” How can now be the time, when just days earlier Benjamin Netanyahu announced the formation of the most right-wing, pro-settler government in the history of Israel, selecting a cabinet that is deeply dedicated to settlement expansion and resistant to the very idea of a genuine Palestinian state? It should never be forgotten that when the Palestinian Liberation Organization announced back in 1988 that it was prepared to make a sustained peace with Israel on the basis of the 1967 borders. By doing this, the Palestinians were making an extraordinary territorial concession that has never been reciprocated, and operationally repudiated by continuous settlement building. The move meant accepting a state limited to 22% of historic Palestine, or less than half of what the UN had proposed in its 1947 partition plan contained in GA Resolution 181, which at the time was seen as grossly unfair to the Palestinians and a plan put forward without taking account of the wishes of the resident population. To expect the Palestinians to be willing now to accept significantly less land than enclosed by these 1967 borders to reach a resolution of the conflict seems highly unreasonable, and probably not sustainable if it should be imprudently accepted by the Palestinian Authority.

>> by endorsing the formula two states for two peoples was consigning the Palestinian minority in Israel to permanent second-class citizenship without even being worthy of mention as a human rights challenge facing the democratic Israel that Obama was celebrating. As David Bromwich has pointed out [“Tribalism in the Jerusalem speech,”] http://mondoweiss.net/2013/03/tribalism-jerusalem-speech.html Obama was also endorsing a tribalist view of statehood that seem inconsistent with a globalizing world, and with secularist assumptions that a legitimate state should never be exclusivist in either its religious or ethnic character. Obama went out of his to affirm the core Zionist idea of a statist homeland where all Jews can most fully embrace their Jewishness: “Israel is rooted not just in history and tradition, but also in a simple and profound idea: the idea that people deserve to be free in a land of their own.” And with embedded irony no mention was made of the absence of any Palestinian right of return even for those who were coerced into fleeing from homes and villages that had been family residences for countless generations.

 

Such a regressive approach to identity and statehood was also by implication attributed to the Palestinians, also affirmed as a a lesser entitlement. But this is highly misleading, a false symmetry. The Palestinians have no guiding ethno-religious ideology that is comparable to Zionism. Their quest has been to recover rights under international law in the lands of their habitual residence, above all, the exercise of their inalienable right of self-determination in such a manner as to roll back the wider claims of settler colonialism that have been so grandiosely integral to the Greater Israel vision and practice of the Netanyahu government. And what of the 20% of the current population of Israel that lives under a legal regime that discriminates against them and almost by definition is a permanent consignment to second-class citizenship. Indeed, Obama’s speech was also an affront to many Israeli post-Zionists and secularists who do not affirm the idea of living under in a hyper-nationalist state with pretensions of religious endowments.

In my view, there are two conclusions to be drawn. (1) Until the rhetoric of seeing the realities of the situation through Palestinian eyes is matched by a consideration of the specifics, there is created a misleading impression that both sides hold equally the keys to peace, and both being at fault to the same extent for being unwilling to use them. (2) It is a cruel distraction to urge a resumption of negotiations when Israel clearly lacks the political will to establish a viable and independent sovereign Palestinian state within 1967 borders and in circumstances in which the West Bank has been altered by continuous settlement expansion, settler only roads, the separation wall, and all the signs are suggesting that there is more of the same to come. Making matters even worse, Israel is taking many steps to ensure that Jerusalem never becomes the capital of whatever Palestinian entity eventually emerges, which is a severe affront not only to Palestinians and Arabs, but to the 1.4 billion Muslims the world over.

In retrospect, worse than speech was the visit itself. Obama should never have undertaken such the visit without an accompanying willingness to treat the Palestinian reality with at least equal dignity to that of the Israeli reality and without some indication of how to imagine a just peace based on two states for two peoples given the outrageous continuing Israeli encroachments on occupied Palestinian territory that give every indication of permanence, not to mention the non-representation and collective punishment of the Gazan population of 1.5 million. Obama made no mention of the wave of recent Palestinian hunger strikes or the degree to which Palestinians have shifted their tactics of resistance away from a reliance on armed struggle. It is perverse to heap praise on the oppressive occupier, ignore nonviolent tactics of Palestinian resistance and the surge of global solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, and then hypocritically call on both peoples to move forward toward peace by building relations of trust with one another. On what planet has Mr. Obama been living?

Richard Falk is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. An international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years, since 2002 Falk has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

By Alex Lantier

27 March, 2013

@ WSWS.org

US Secretary of State John Kerry left Kabul for Paris yesterday, after a Middle Eastern tour to Jordan and Afghanistan to plan broader wars across the region. In Paris today, he is expected to discuss arming opposition forces fighting Washington’s proxy war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with French officials.

During his unannounced two-day visit in Kabul, Kerry held a joint press conference with President Hamid Karzai, the leader of the American puppet regime in Afghanistan. He announced that US forces will remain in Afghanistan beyond the Obama administration’s 2014 withdrawal deadline.

Kerry and Karzai both called upon the Taliban to open an office in Doha, the capital of the US-allied Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, from which location they could negotiate with Karzai. To encourage the Taliban to accept the offer, Kerry stressed that the Taliban should not count on a US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Currently there are some 100,000 occupation troops in the country, including 66,000 US forces. American officials have reportedly discussed a lasting presence of roughly 12,000 US and European troops in Afghanistan.

Kerry also offered to hand over formal control of Bagram prison to the Karzai regime. This was apparently designed to allow Karzai to posture cynically before the Afghan people, claiming he is restoring Afghan sovereignty over the country. The US-controlled prison, notorious for the killings and torture of Afghan resistance fighters imprisoned there, has become a hated symbol of the NATO occupation.

This action was apparently aimed at smoothing US relations with Karzai, strained after the latter criticized Washington for “colluding” with the Taliban.

The handover of Bagram has nothing to do with ending US rule in Afghanistan, however. Karzai made clear that Washington would continue to effectively control detainees at the prison, promising that an Afghan review board would consider intelligence provided by US authorities before deciding to release prisoners. Afghan officials also reportedly gave “private assurances” that no “enduring security threats” would be released from Bagram.

By threatening to continue the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan, Kerry is pushing the Taliban leadership to negotiate a political settlement with Karzai that would include a lasting US protectorate in Afghanistan. Washington’s control would rest upon US air superiority and a permanent occupation force stationed in the country. It would be based on collaboration between Washington, the warlords backing Karzai and the Islamic fundamentalist leadership of the Taliban to suppress resistance to foreign occupation by the Afghan people.

The American ruling class sees Afghanistan as a launching pad for US operations in Central Asia, such as the hundreds of drone strikes Washington has launched in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. The New York Times commented, “The Obama administration has made a priority of reaching an agreement on an American military presence here after 2014 that will allow the United States to keep tabs on Iran and Pakistan.”

Significantly, Kerry had hoped to visit Pakistan during his tour, but decided against it. There is deep anger in that country over US drone strikes and the collaboration of the Pakistani army and intelligence with Washington. (See also: “UN says US drone war in Pakistan violates international law”)

Instead, Kerry reportedly met privately with Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Sunday, before traveling to Afghanistan.

Washington’s neo-colonial war in Afghanistan—like its proxy war in Syria, Iran’s main Arab ally—aims at establishing US imperialist hegemony over the Middle East and Central Asia. This involves not only controlling and manipulating the conflicts in Pakistan and broadly across Asia unleashed by the Afghan war, but also organizing regime change in Iran, an oil-rich state that Washington sees as the main obstacle to its interests in the Middle East.

Kerry’s visits both to Amman and to Kabul were clearly bound up with Washington’s war drive against Iran and its regional allies. As the Secretary of State left Jordan for Afghanistan, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the US is working in Jordan with Britain and France to train Syrian opposition fighters. These fighters then cross the border into southern Syria to carry out attacks.

The AP wrote that these forces were “secular” forces, apparently in an attempt to distinguish them from Al Qaeda-linked forces that provide the bulk of the Syrian opposition’s fighting forces. The wire service’s description of these forces made clear, however, that they are largely army deserters recruited on a religious or tribal basis.

It wrote, “The training has been conducted for several months now in an unspecified location, concentrating largely on Sunnis and tribal Bedouins who formerly served as members of the Syrian army, officials told the Associated Press. The forces aren’t members of the leading rebel group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which Washington and others fear may be increasingly coming under the saw of extremist militia groups, including some linked to Al Qaeda.”

The AP report came a day after the New York Times published an extensive report detailing how Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia helped finance and arm the Syrian opposition for over a year. This took place under CIA supervision and after General David Petraeus, the CIA director until last November, “prodded various countries” to arm the Syrian opposition. The White House was regularly briefed on these arms shipments. (See also: “The CIA war against Syria”)

On Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest confirmed that the US “has provided some logistical nonlethal support that has also come in handy for the Syrian rebels.”

With Kerry now headed to Paris to discuss stepping up the war in Syria, the Arab League also joined in the campaign against Assad yesterday, formally seating Syrian opposition officials as Syria’s representatives to the Arab League.

Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani officially welcomed Moaz al-Khatib, the former imam of Damascus’ Umayyad Mosque who recently stepped down as the Syrian opposition’s official leader, to represent Syria. Al-Khatib was replaced by Ghassan Hitto, a US-based information technology executive. This move apparently aimed to present the opposition as less Islamist and reliant on Al Qaeda-linked forces from Libya, Iraq and Chechnya.

Al-Khatib’s speech at the Arab League made no secret of the Syrian opposition’s continuing ties to far-right Islamist elements. Denouncing Assad and supporting Hitto, he defended the presence of foreign jihadist fighters among the anti-Assad militias—though he awkwardly tried to downplay this by suggesting that if Islamist fighters’ families needed them at home, they should return to their families.