Syrians
will be left to kill each other as before - only without sarin
Robert Fisk Independent/UK 15 September 2013
What
on earth was going on in Washington and Geneva last week? The Obama administration is still getting
weirder and weirder. Obama last year was
really, terribly, awfully worried that Syria’s chemical weapons would “fall
into the wrong hands”. In other words, into the hands of al-Qa’ida or the
al-Nusra front. Seemingly they were still, at that moment, in the “right hands”
– those of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. But now Obama and
the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, have decided that they are in the wrong
hands after all, since they are now accusing the “right hands” of firing sarin
gas shells at civilians. And that crosses the infamous “red line”.
And
then – wait for it – as the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, suggested an international collection of all
the rusty old chemical shells in Syria, Pentagon “sources” said it would need
up to 75,000 armed troops to protect the chemical inspectors. Seventy-five
thousand! If that isn’t boots on the ground, I don’t know what is.
Of
course, Putin and Lavrov kept clear of references to the Second World War.
Russia suffered too grievously from Hitler for that. I’ve said this before, but
I really do suspect that leaders who have no experience of war – I am excepting
McCain and the indefatigable UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi here – actually thought
they were making a Hollywood movie. Kerry’s preposterous “unbelievably small”
strike is obviously a low budget film for recession-hit America. Obama promises wide-screen drama. Think Steven Spielberg.
And then the Russians, who can spot a dead cat when they see one, zap the whole
project.
None
of the above should cheapen the tragedy of Syria. The world, I suspect, is not
totally convinced that the regime was responsible for using chemical weapons in
Ghouta on 21 August – though I bet the Russians know who did. Now we’ve got
rebels chopping off prisoners’ heads, I’m not sure what scruples they’d have
about using sarin. But it was interesting to see the Syrian government agreeing
to put their chemical weapons in international hands – I couldn’t help noticing
that they didn’t demand the same of the insurgents…
Let’s
have a closer look at the Kerry-Lavrov timetable. The Syrians have to come up
with a list of their nasties within a week. Inspectors are to be on the ground
by mid-November. Then every chemical weapon has got to be destroyed (or
“secured”) by the middle of next year. And this amid a civil war! Peace in our
time.
Of
course, while the inspectors are battering their way through the front lines
the Syrians continue to kill each other, the Syrian government goes on trying
to break the rebels and the Islamist insurgents go on attacking Christian towns and
chopping off the heads of captives. Put bluntly, they can use rifles, shells,
knives and swords to slaughter each other – but absolutely no sarin. There is
something deeply offensive and deeply cynical about all this. Russia re-enters
the Middle East, Obama is off the hook after playing World War 2 – and the
Syrians go on dying.
I
do hope that we will have a “Geneva 2” conference at last, and that America and
Russia will no longer spat over the Syrian bloodbath. But I am not at all sure
the rebels will go along with this, because Assad is clearly not leaving power.
Not now, anyway. And the Saudis? And the Qataris? And any other Gulf Sunnis
who’ve been funding and arming the rebels? The whole timetable seems so
hopelessly optimistic.
However,
there is another story going on here, and that’s Iran. For now, the leader of
Iran appears to be a wise and sane man, Putin can surely resurrect his own
ideas on Iranian nuclear material, and the Iranian-Syrian alliance could be
hooked up together to end the whole miserable failure of politics and perhaps
even the war in Syria. Then Obama can claim a world-shaking political victory
(brought about only by his threat to use force, of course) and Kerry can go
back to making peace between Palestinians and Israelis. [Abridged]
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/there-is-something-deeply-cynical-about-this
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