Having spent a year trying to make their favoured opposition group, the Syrian National Council, into a government in exile, the United States and other western countries have abandoned these attempts and hammered together the unwieldy-sounding National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. It is barely a week old but, with schoolboy enthusiasm and indecent haste, France and, as of Tuesday, Britain, have recognised it as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Syrian people.
So is significant military assistance on the way? The common assumption is that the rebels must already be swimming in high-grade weaponry sent by their wealthy backers in the Gulf states and overseen by the CIA. Yet few journalists and fighters claim to have seen it. When I phoned him in the refugee camp where he's hidden away under Turkish protection, the head of the Free Syrian Army's military council, Mostafa Al-Sheikh, was clear. "The international community need Syria for the stability of the international system. They don't give us any support, and what support they do give us is corrupt or not worth having. What they're giving us isn't big enough to liberate one city, never mind the entire country."
Syria's armed rebels have no time for politics, but their judgment is sometimes sharper than that of their alleged political representatives. On 19 July, the same day the Free Syrian Army moved from the surrounding towns and villages to launch its assault on Aleppo, I met the head of its military council in the province, Abdul Jabbar Ekaidi. Unusually for a man leading an armed onslaught on Syria's biggest city, he was in a border town in northern Syria, desperately trying to source some ammunition. "We simply don't have enough weapons, and I refuse to send my men on a suicide mission," he said, adding that his men hadn't had enough bullets for two months. Then, as Syrians love to, he reached for a metaphor. "It's like delivering oxygen to a patient. They give us enough weapons just to keep us alive and no more; enough to attack the regime, but not to contain the reaction, which can be vicious. They [Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states] want to kill the Syrian state, not the regime. The result is that the regime is only weakened, which gives the politicians more room to negotiate." Over three months later and just as he predicted, Ekaidi and his men are vastly outgunned in a stalemate which is making Aleppo look more and more like devastated Homs.
The result is a puzzle in which some of the pieces are still missing. The military men are a little abrasive, but they have a point. Syria is very far from being Soviet-era Afghanistan and its rebels the new mujahedeen, thriving on foreign munitions. Ever since Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, made Syria a cornerstone of regional stability, America and the west have had their uses for the Ba'athist regime; the early years of the "war on terror" saw Syria's usefulness renewed, as it received al-Qaida suspects from the CIA and arranged for their vigorous interrogation.
There's no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood is using its connections in Turkey and the Gulf states to get weapons and intelligence to its favourite rebel brigades. But despite all the rhetoric from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, what's startling is the lack of heavy, hi-tech weaponry. In the 1980s anti-communist mujahedeen were soon taking delivery of the most advanced equipment that could be bought by the Gulf states and America: ground-to-air Stinger missiles were so plentiful in Afghanistan that the CIA spent decades afterwards trying to get them back. By contrast, some of the rebels I met in northern Syria were still shooting at helicopters with Kalashnikovs – or getting beaten by Turkish border guards for trying to smuggle in night-vision goggles.
The truth is that, with its authority weakened by the war in Iraq and its nervousness about radical Islamism, America really has no clue what to do about Syria – and is leaning more firmly than ever on its regional allies to act on its behalf. Its remaining proxies in the Middle East, the Sunni Gulf states, are keen to give Syria's secular institutions a kicking, but their main concern is control and the avoidance of contagion. In a region that is only at the start of a historic process of change, democratic "blowback" from Syria might destabilise their own autocratic monarchies. Their primary goal isn't to topple the Assad regime but to jockey for regional position – and keep a lid on the Arab spring.
The state department and others are surely right that the Syrian opposition needs a much firmer political platform. But it must come from within the country, and not in return for lukewarm international support. Syrians of all political stripe agree on more than they think – it's striking, for instance, how much of the country's administrative state is still functioning in rebel-held areas. Another thing most Syrians agree on is that their country has tended to become the butt of other countries national interests. If the Syrians now realise they're on their own, that their cheerleaders in the Gulf are merely toying with their indigenous revolt, then their goals might take longer to achieve and have to be less militarily ambitious – but they're more likely to be successful in the long run.
Comments
20 November 2012 10:54PM
It is barely a week old but, France and, as of Tuesday, Britain, have recognised the unwieldy-sounding National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Syrian people,
There is no such thing as the sole representative of the Syrian people. That's the problem with attempting to impose democratic reforms upon warring tribes. It's a bit premature. Usually you wait to see who is actually in a position to govern before bestowing them with recognition.
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Share20 November 2012 11:14PM
"The state department and others are surely right that the Syrian opposition needs a much firmer political platform. But it must come from within the country" - that's all you needed to say. That in itself seems too great a concept for the arms-selling, power-hungry, caliph-loving 'other countries' to understand let alone adopt as policy.
Sadly, there is no hope for Syria. For our own ends, we shall indeed see the destruction of what was a modernising, proud, growing ME country - you're absolutelty right, it was not Afghanistan, nor was it Egypt, Libya or Tunisia. It was Syria. A very different beast entirely and far better than most of the remaining ara dictatorships.
I'm tempted to think that after having misread the previous arab-uprisings, western and western-friendly governments were too enthusiatic in trying not to miss the boat on the embryonic Syrian uprising and in being so enthusiastic they failed utterly to understand the differences between previous arab-spring uprisings and the situation in Syria. At no point will they ever admit their utter failure of the Syrian people.
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Share21 November 2012 12:23AM
I felt when this started that both we and the Syrian people would be better off if we stayed out of it and poured relief funds and support into Jordan, Turkey and Iraq to help the refugees.
The events in Gaza and the vacuum now being felt by the absence of Mubarrak should have taught us something if Libya did not.
Thanks for this article, it helps raise some thoughts.
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Share21 November 2012 12:27AM
Considering the number of different factions that make up Syria, it may not be that easy.
But if they do by some sort of devilish coincidence, eventually they will turn their guns on the Americans to say thank you. Standard procedure in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and anywhere else that the Yanks may have an embassy or anything else called legitimate target.
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Share21 November 2012 12:41AM
All sides seem to regard democracy as something to be avoided
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Share21 November 2012 1:01AM
The puffed-up arrogance of the white empires, dented during the cold war when their world domination was effectively challenged, is back at full strength. Their imperialist bullshit is now so bombastic it attains to absurdity.
Just think of the arrogance of proclaiming a group of puppets you have just created through coercion of exiles the "legitimate representative" of a people who played no part in its formation and who already have a government which is a member of the United Nations. Yet this vicious thug Cameron has no fear of being called out in public for his presumption. Why should he? For sheer arrogant stupidity it's unbeatable, but that is the Orwellian world of official public discourse under the NATO regimes, where black is white and bankster/gangster imperialist rule is "democracy." It's madly normal in that chauvinist ideological climate that foreign diktat is referred to as "legitimacy" and a foreign-appointed puppet is called a "representative of the people".
It's a mark of how deeply the servile "free" western media is embedded in the war machine's rear that the overt criminality of trying to impose a puppet government by force on another state is unmentionable. For the imperial media, aggressive wars, no matter how cynical and blood-thirsty, can't be crimes when committed by the deified Euro-Atlantic regimes, just as for a Christian their god can do no evil even when it engages in genocide by raining fire from the sky onto children.
Instead the corporate media, including the Guardian, simply parrot the risibly infantile official fairy story that this is a popular uprising by the entire "Syrian people" against the demonised dictator, noble rebel "democrats" selflessly supported by those humanitarian idealists, the peace-bemedalled US Assassin-in-Chief and his "democratic" junior partners in crime in NATO and among the Arab hereditary dictators.
If anything the Guardian is even more vociferous than most of the NATO war machine's media wing in promoting the official war propaganda pabulum. It's also more hypocritically moralistic in its hate-mongering for being able to look forward to publishing tut-tutting criticism of the carnage after the fact, a belated post-orgiastic self-consciousness of its complicity in mass murder which always lasts only until the next war propaganda campaign is launched and the Guardian is once again is called to the imperial colours by the UK ruling class of whose liberal-imperialist Oxbridge intellectual wing it is the mouthpiece.
As always, the Syrian people who support the current government, millions of them and probably most of them, are comprehensively excluded from "news" propaganda and opinion in the white empires, a voluntary commitment to disinformation by the "free" corporate media just as unanimous as if it had been imposed by law like the freedom-loving official ban on Syrian media.
The other side must on no account be heard from. The truth must on no account be allowed to spoil the story.
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Share21 November 2012 2:11AM
Gaza must have been a real life saver for Syria. I haven't heard about anyone being killed there for several days.
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Share21 November 2012 3:07AM
A big part of wars after World War II was due to British's policy and action in Middle East and South Asia. And Britain is still the same Britain, except it is smaller and weaker now.
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Share21 November 2012 3:22AM
The New York Times tag line reads, quote, Britain recognizes the Syria rebel group, unquote.
Before that it was the news headlines in similar vain, France and Turkey recognizes Syria rebel group.
Wake me up when Syrian People recognize the Syria rebel group.
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Share21 November 2012 4:11AM
Perhaps Gaza is in reality what matters an expression of democratic yearning of and the real issue is Israeli as the Authoritarian state .
Perhaps Syria was really just a proxy war initiated to attain strategic regional dominance and all that is happening is to role out of the Arab spring.
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Share21 November 2012 4:50AM
Viva la Revolution! Or, something. Nope? Not this time?
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Share21 November 2012 4:51AM
Yes, it is ALL their fault.
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Share21 November 2012 5:11AM
''Syria's increasingly powerful Islamist rebel factions have rejected the country's new Western-backed opposition coalition and unilaterally declared an Islamic state in the key battleground of Aleppo.''
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/syria-rebels-declare-islamic-state-in-aleppo-16239856.html
If these fighters fail in Syria, where will they go next? If they bring down Assad, what sort of Syria will be left for the Syrian people?
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Share21 November 2012 5:44AM
Hopefully President Assad can hold firm against the foreign-backed islamist butchers that are out to murder him.
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Share21 November 2012 7:36AM
Such civil wars are bloody, brutal affairs. I expect this one to have all the chaos and suffering of the Spanish Civil war.
The big question is, here and elsewhere, is how do civilian populations, that are subjected to heavy weapons fire from land, sea and air by professional armies, do anything more than provide a background level of resistance which, in turn, increases the suffering from their civilians as heartless vengeance is sought.
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Share21 November 2012 7:42AM
Looks like those Western politicians are all wimpy and would cave in to difficulties of war crimes on one or the other side only. Yeah, just let those war criminals hijacking Syrians' revolution and see how these wimpy politicians' supports would guarantee the safety and civil rights of those innocent civilians and protesters against religious backed economic frauds and religious oppressions after those right wing religious extremists with war criminals packed organization take over ruling powers. If we don't demand accountability of those war crimes right now, we are insulting ourselves, our human intelligence to support plainly witnessed and recorded unlawful conducts in military level and we are allowing those war selling militarism ruling our world again in this modern age. We are insulting our parents, grand parents, and great grand parents who fought WWI and WWII to stop imperialists and fascists who ruled with wars and atrocities.
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Share21 November 2012 7:45AM
It's not a civil war.
It started with some protesters wanting reforms - as part of the arab spring. "Fair enough" you might say...
We, the "west", then used this as an excuse to start a proxy war with the aim of destabilising one of Irans allies.
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Share21 November 2012 7:48AM
The West has a deplorable record on arming to defend other nations. One of the most significant that has had repercussions to this day was the arming of the Northern Alliance and Al Quaeda in Afghanistan. Assad's regime is secularist, whereas the rebels have some serious Islamic fundamentalist roots according to this article and others.
It seems to me that neither the Assad regime nor the rebels care about the civilian population at all and it is the civilian suffering that makes it a moral imperative that we, meaning all the countries in the world but in particular the region, are involved to alleviate suffering. It is not a moral imperative to arm individuals or groups to increase suffering.
It seems to me that the world needs to give the UN teeth.
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Share21 November 2012 7:56AM
We are witnessing imperial meddling by the lofty democratic republics of the West.
We should have be so lucky to have democracies so we can all impose our interests on others even while they are fighting for their lives.
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Share21 November 2012 8:00AM
Oh,dear!
Dearie,me!
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Share21 November 2012 8:13AM
Well said. We now have Western powers declaring a 'sole representative' (that wasn't democratically elected), while castigating Assad as a dictatorial tyrant.
The stupidity is utterly breath-taking.
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