http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_Eas ... ed_op#font size="3">Exposed: The Arab agenda in
Syria
By Pepe Escobar
Here's a crash course on the "democratic"
machinations of the Arab League - rather the GCC
League, as real power in this pan-Arab
organization is wielded by two of the six Persian
Gulf monarchies composing the Gulf Cooperation
Council, also known as Gulf Counter-revolution
Club; Qatar and the House of Saud.
Essentially, the GCC created an Arab
League group to monitor what's going on in Syria.
The Syrian National Council - based in North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member
countries Turkey and France - enthusiastically
supported it. It's telling that Syria's neighbor
Lebanon did not.
When the over 160
monitors, after one month of enquiries, issued
their report ... surprise! The report did not
follow the official GCC line - which is that the
"evil" Bashar al-Assad government is indiscriminately, and
unilaterally, killing its own people, and so
regime change is in order.
The Arab
League's Ministerial Committee had approved the
report, with four votes in favor (Algeria, Egypt,
Sudan and GCC member Oman) and only one against;
guess who, Qatar - which is now presiding the Arab
League because the emirate bought their (rotating)
turn from the Palestinian Authority.
So
the report was either ignored (by Western
corporate media) or mercilessly destroyed - by
Arab media, virtually all of it financed by either
the House of Saud or Qatar. It was not even
discussed - because it was prevented by the GCC
from being translated from Arabic into English and
published in the Arab League's website.
Until it was leaked. Here">http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ehauben/Repor ... ed_cl#Here
it is, in full.
The report is adamant.
There was no organized, lethal repression by the
Syrian government against peaceful protesters.
Instead, the report points to shady armed gangs as
responsible for hundreds of deaths among Syrian
civilians, and over one thousand among the Syrian
army, using lethal tactics such as bombing of
civilian buses, bombing of trains carrying diesel
oil, bombing of police buses and bombing of
bridges and pipelines.
Once again, the
official NATOGCC version of Syria is of a popular
uprising smashed by bullets and tanks. Instead,
BRICS members Russia and China, and large swathes
of the developing world see it as the Syrian
government fighting heavily armed foreign
mercenaries. The report largely confirms these
suspicions.
The Syrian National Council is
essentially a Muslim Brotherhood outfit affiliated
with both the House of Saud and Qatar - with an
uneasy Israel quietly supporting it in the
background. Legitimacy is not exactly its cup of
green tea. As for the Free Syrian Army, it does
have its defectors, and well-meaning opponents of
the Assad regime, but most of all is infested with
these foreign mercenaries weaponized by the GCC,
especially Salafist gangs.
Still NATOGCC,
blocked from applying in Syria its
one-size-fits-all model of promoting "democracy"
by bombing a country and getting rid of the
proverbial evil dictator, won't be deterred. GCC
leaders House of Saud and Qatar bluntly dismissed
their own report and went straight to the meat of
the matter; impose a NATOGCC regime change via the
UN Security Council.
So the current
"Arab-led drive to secure a peaceful end to the
10-month crackdown" in Syria at the UN is no less
than a crude regime change drive. Usual suspects
Washington, London and Paris have been forced to
fall over themselves to assure the real
international community this is not another
mandate for NATO bombing - a la Libya. US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it as
"a path for a political transition that would
preserve Syria's unity and institutions".
But BRICS members Russia and China see it
for what it is. Another BRICS member - India -
alongside Pakistan and South Africa, have all
raised serious objections to the NATOGCC-peddled
draft UN resolution.
There won't be
another Libya-style no fly zone; after all the
Assad regime is not exactly deploying Migs against
civilians. A UN regime change resolution will be
blocked - again - by Russia and China. Even
NATOGCC is in disarray, as each block of players -
Washington, Ankara, and the House of Saud-Doha duo
- has a different long-term geopolitical agenda.
Not to mention crucial Syrian neighbor and trading
partner Iraq; Baghdad is on the record against any
regime change scheme.
So here's a
suggestion to the House of Saud and Qatar; since
you're so seduced by the prospect of "democracy"
in Syria, why don't you use all your American
weaponry and invade in the dead of night - like
you did to Bahrain - and execute regime change by
yourselves?
Pepe Escobar is the
author of Globalistan">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... lobalistan:
How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid
War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red">http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-sn ...
Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the
surge. His most recent is Obama">http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Global ... d_cl#Obama
does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
Mark 12:10 The stone which the builders rejected is become the cornerstone.
