The games they play with Syria

S P SETH

Syria remains a blighted country. But a recent international conference in Vienna (and its follow up) has created some momentum that might create a framework, over time, for a peaceful resolution. That, at least, is the hope nurtured by some observers. The situation in Syria is such that nobody can predict with any confidence what might happen next. The hope from Vienna conference derives from the fact that it was the most representative meeting of external powers with involvement in the Syrian theatre, some of them at odds with each other pursuing conflicting agendas. For instance, Iran was a participant, for the first time, in any international gathering on Syria. Which is an important recognition of its pivotal role in Syria where it is a major supporter, economically, politically and militarily, of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

The nuclear deal with Iran became a precursor to its possible role as a facilitator in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. It would have been inconceivable, only a short time ago, to see both Saudi Arabia and Iran in an international conference on Syria, as one of Riyadh’s major goal in Middle Eastern politics is to keep Iran out as a pariah. It worked hard, unsuccessfully though, to prevent the nuclear deal between the US and Iran. And it has also not been successful to keep Iran out of the Vienna conference. Which could both be a plus and a minus. It is a plus because it is difficult to envisage any progress in Syria without Iranian engagement. And it could be a minus if Riyadh were to simply play a wrecking role by demanding the removal of Bashar al-Assad regime as a pre-condition, as well as the removal of foreign fighters (from Iran) and the Hezbollah militants.

At another, almost parallel conference, in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, of mostly Western and Arab officials, Saudi Arabia launched a counter offensive of sorts, which might wreck the international dialogue through the Vienna route. At the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain, Saudi foreign minister Adel al Jubeir set forth Riyadh’s position. And, not surprisingly, he reportedly said that the timing of Assad’s departure and withdrawal of foreign fighters (from Iran in Syria) remained the main sticking points to finding a lasting solution to the civil war in Syria. In his way of putting it, the IS and, al Nusra and other militant groups, that are the enemy of both the Assad regime and the US-led coalition against IS, might seem benign. And Saudi weapons and aid for its favoured jihadis/rebels is for a good cause.

It would even appear that the international conference in Vienna and its follow up would be used to put enormous pressure on Iran and Russia to ditch Assad, making it sound like it would be in Moscow’s own interest. Iran, though, is unlikely to waver in support of Assad. Russia might buckle at some point, which seems to be the strategy. And it is because, first, Russia cannot sustain its military intervention because of the heavy costs involved. And, second, it would have to consider at some point that its deeper involvement in a conflict, which has strong sectarian elements (Sunni versus Shia), will put it on the wrong side of the Sunni Muslim world.

Antony Blinken, the US deputy secretary of state, highlighted the problems that Russia might face if it continued its military involvement in Syria. He reportedly told the security conference in Bahrain, “Russia cannot afford to sustain its military onslaught against everyone opposed to Assad’s brutal rule. The costs will mount every day in economic, political and security terms, but at best only to prevent Assad from losing.” And he predicted a “quagmire” that gets Russia deeper alongside Iran, and Hezbollah and, in the process, alienating Sunni Muslims. In other words, it is in Russia’s own best interests to work with the US-led coalition, comprising Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, to get rid of Assad.

The problem though is that Moscow doesn’t see it that way, because the simple removal of Assad will not solve the problem. Moscow, though, has made it clear that its support of Assad is not absolute and not a matter of principle. A spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry recently made it clear that they feared that another regime change in the Middle East “could simply turn the whole region into a large black hole.” In other words, Moscow’s support for the regime in Damascus is pragmatic in terms of the realities of the situation.

The US-supported anti-Assad elements do not have much sway in the country, and those wetted and trained by the US have not mattered much any way. The US has now abandoned that programme. It is now reportedly doling out more cash to the opposition, pledging another $100 million in aid that will take the amount to $500 million since 2012. These funds are supposed to help local and provincial councils, emergency services and so on. How these funds will be disbursed is not clear. At another level, for the first time, the US is making a commitment of a small contingent of about 50 special operations commandos to help the mainly Kurdish fighters in northern Syria against IS. This could be the thin edge of the mission creep, which has happened in other theatres.

The US might be right that Russia’s deepening engagement in Syria would land it into a “quagmire” as it did the United States in other areas. But unless Russia and the United States and its allies come to a common understanding of their mission, which is to push back and eventually defeat IS, they might all end up in a “quagmire”. The recent downing of a Russian civilian plane in Sinai and the terrorist attacks in Paris clearly underline the need for a united international front against IS.

 If the forum of the international conference in Vienna is used to put pressure on Russia to get rid of Assad, this most likely will fail, at least for quite sometime. Russia clearly sees that the Assad regime is the only functional entity in the country. And to dump it in the absence of a clearly discernible and functional alternative is to make things even worse. As for Iran and Hezbollah, they seem to have come to the conclusion for quite some time that Assad’s Syria is their frontline against IS and other militant groups.    

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times. 

Netanyahu rewrites history

S P SETH

It is unbelievable that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has got away with his recent preposterous statement that Hitler’s massacre of Jews was in fact done at the instigation and encouragement of the then Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. The way Netanyahu made his assertion would seem to suggest that he might actually have been present during the conversation on the subject of getting rid of the Jews. Netanyahu said, “Hitler didn’t want to want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews.” Just when Hitler was weighing his options, according to Netanyahu’s telling of the conversation, he met Haj Amin al-Husseini who said to Hitler, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ Hitler then asked the Grand Mufti, ‘So what should I do with them?’ The Mufti said, ‘Burn them.’ And Hitler obviously did what he was told by the Mufti. And the world ‘naively’ believed all this time that Hitler was the ultimate monster. In Netanyahu’s re-telling of the story, the bigger monster was indeed the then Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

The absurdity of it all is all too patent but its dangerous overtones for the Palestinians are not a laughing matter. Its underlying meaning is that the Palestinians and their leadership has been and continues to harbor destruction of the Jews and their state of Israel. And Netanyahu was not slow to own up to his real motive in making such a stupid, but dangerous, assertion. When questioned, he said, “I did not intend to absolve Hitler of responsibility for his diabolical destruction of European Jewry.” Elaborating, he said, “My intention was… rather to show that the forefathers of the Palestinian nation, … without the so-called ‘occupation’… even then aspired to systematic incitement to exterminate the Jews.” 

In other words, the Palestinians are intrinsically an evil people and their hatred of the Jews is not due to ‘occupation’ of their country by Israel but is part of who they are. It is amazing how Netanyahu got away with such dangerously ludicrous distortion in a world so sensitive to Nazi Germany’s Holocaust of the Jews. Indeed, Isaac Herzog, the opposition leader in the Israeli parliament was quite critical of such rewriting of history. He reportedly said, “This is a dangerous historical distortion and I demand Netanyahu correct it immediately as it minimizes the Holocaust, Nazism and… Hitler’s part in our people’s terrible disaster.” (In a subsequent clarification, he did acknowledge Nazi Germany’s role in the mass killing of the Jews, but the Mufti still remained the main inspiration.)

Despite such rewriting of history, the world at large didn’t seem overtly concerned about how Israel’s prime minister twisted history to suit his country’s crusade against the Palestinians. Since the carving out of the Israeli state out of Palestine in 1948, the Israeli leaders have repeatedly emphasized a few themes. The first and the foremost, of course, has been the Holocaust their people suffered under the Nazi Germany. Which is true. But that they deserve a state of their own out of their mythical ‘holy land’, which is today’s Palestine, to feel safe was politically and morally a questionable proposition. At a very basic level, Palestine was not some empty desert land awaiting new Jewish settlers. The Palestinian people had lived there for generations. And there was no reason why they should be penalized for Hitler’s Holocaust of the Jews, or their historical persecution in Europe. Of course, now we are told by Netanyahu that the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was behind it all!

The second point the new state of emphasized was to deny the existence of a Palestinian entity and the Palestinian people, as it started the process of violently expelling them from their own country. The whole idea seemed to be that these ‘homeless’ people will be absorbed in neighbouring Arab countries and this will miraculously resolve the Palestinian question. With Palestine occupied by Israel and Palestinians scattered and settled in other Arab countries, there will be no Palestinian problem. And the process of expulsion continued through wars, like the 1967 war and the 1973 war, with more Palestinians expelled and killed and more Jewish settlements in the occupied territory. And this violence against the Palestinians continues to this day. Despite their ever-increasing misery, Palestinian entity and Palestinian people have refused to vanish, not only in their own country but also in other Arab countries in refugee settlements.

In the midst of it all, Israel still claims to be the victim of Palestinian violence. And they do it by demonizing Palestinians as terrorists, barbarians and whatever else they can throw at them. The fact is that the Palestinians are an occupied people and they are easily suppressed, if and when they rise up, because Israel has all the power, militarily, economically, politically and internationally. Therefore, their occasional bursts of violence, mostly of a local nature and exercised through some stone-throwing and knife wielding, is essentially the rage of an exasperated and frustrated people largely abandoned by the international community, with the world’s most powerful country, the US, always behind Israel. And with that sort of Palestinian impotent rage, Israel uses all its propaganda to demonize them as subhuman or worse.

 With their country under Israeli occupation, they are subjected to the worst kind of apartheid, which is meant to humiliate them by virtual confinement surrounded by military check points, observation towers, searches and the like. And even that kind of humiliation and demonization is not enough for Netanyahu. And now, with Netanyahu citing the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as inspiration behind Hitler’s Holocaust of the Jews, the Palestinians of all generations are implicated. With such ‘antecedents’ and practicing ‘barbarism’ and ‘terrorism’, the Palestinians don’t deserve humanity, as Netanyahu and his ilk would think.

In the midst of its sordid record of occupation, Israel has the temerity to talk of its democracy, including its justice system. About its courts and ‘democracy’ in general, David Shulman had this to say in an article in the New York Review of Books in 2009, “For decades now, the courts have allowed the settlement enterprise to proceed unimpeded by significant legal constraints, despite its evident criminal nature under international law… They have let rampant violence by settlers throughout the territories… go largely unpunished. They have sanctioned the fencing off of Palestinian villages into tiny, discontinuous enclaves cut off from markets, schools, hospitals, and work places…”

And it keeps getting worse as recent events, arising out of increasing restrictions at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem to Muslim worshippers, testifies. For Palestinians, it would seem there is more of the same as long as Israel can get away with murder in daylight.     

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.