An Occasional Commentary by the Blogger
February 2, 2012
Around the horse shoe table of the UN Security Council, a deep cold winter wind blew from the seats of Russia and China in the face of the Western and Arab representatives attempting to have the Council adopt in early February a resolution to slow Al Assad’s killing machine deployed for the past ten months against the Syrian uprising for dignity and democracy. Having closely observed the tumult in Tahrir Square in Cairo since early 2011, there is little doubt in my mind that the winds of the Arab Spring are destined to destroy that family business, the Al-Assad dynasty, which has endured since the early 1970s. The game of the Syrian dictatorship, supported by Iran and politically sustained by strange bed-fellows like Russia and China, is doomed to come to a tragic end. It is only a matter of time.
The fiction openly advanced by Russia at the UN Security Council and elsewhere that “regime change” shall be the result of a resolution demanding that violence against peaceful protesters all over Syria should stop is laughable.
Such a stance ignores several vital facts. Too much blood has already been shed all over Syria, sucking the oxygen out of the lungs of any legitimacy left for the Syrian butcher regime. The regional organization, the League of Arab States, exercising its legitimate role under Chapter 8 of the UN Charter had intervened. It has suspended the offending regime; it has dispatched a monitoring team, though ineffectual, to Syria; it has submitted, through Morocco, a draft resolution for a peaceful transition in Damascus akin to the Yemen model. The Libyan model has very little resemblance, if any, to the Arab League’s plan for Syria as it does not provide for military intervention. The Syrian masses are demanding, at the cost of their blood, that Al-Assad should go.
The hypocrisy of the Russian-Chinese position towards the present Syrian civil war is transparent. In essence, both Moscow and Beijing are trying to protect their fire walls against an Arab Spring-like somersaulting over their backyards. These protective walls are built around their own oppressed minorities and hyper-sensitive monolithic regimes. This is not to mention their considerable economic interests, including the sale of armaments and the purchase of energy from Syria.
A so-called regime change in Damascus could beget a regime disarray inside the Russian-Chinese protective walls. While touring Asia, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov has recently told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that “we are not friends or allies of President Assad.” Really? If so, then who are the beneficiaries of Russia’s blatant obstruction at the UN Security Council?
At this very moment the Syrian National Council, Syria’s government in Turkish exile, is describing the Moroccan draft resolution before the Security Council as “extremely important.” Why? Because as Qatar’s Prime Minister told the Security Council on behalf of the Arab League: “The Syrian government failed to make any serious effort to cooperate with us."
Out of this historic re-alignment of friends and alliances resulting from the Arab Spring, through the Syrian upheaval, the West, especially the US, the UK, France and Germany, are occupying the high ground. Russia and China are fast becoming the enemies of the Arab masses which are searching for the three Ds: Dignity, Democracy, and Development. It was historic to see the US and French flags unfurled by the masses in Libyan squares in recognition of the NATO campaign against Qaddafi.
Both Moscow and Beijing, whose icy winds are blanketing the Arab Spring in Syria, seem to ignore the changes in the concept of sovereignty. Since the tragic Holocaust of the late 1930s and 1940s, human rights have steadily grown through international humanitarian intervention. This recent doctrine provides that when a government is killing its people, who are the real sovereign, domestic jurisdiction must give way to international intervention.
This doctrine has in fact trumped Article 2(7) of the UN Charter which has given the State the right to define what domestic jurisdiction, is except where international peace and security are involved. The main purpose of this international law evolution is to save that sovereign from its insane government. The Assad regime continues unabashedly to manifest its insanity. And the League of Arab States, whose present Secretary-General is the venerable jurist, Dr. Nabil al-Araby, a former Justice of the International Court of Justice, is pleading with Moscow and Beijing to heed the calls for mercy from every corner of Syria, across all sectarian divides.
Appeasing Russia and China through watering down the Moroccan draft resolution before the Security Council is not likely to stop the bloodbath caused by Al-Assad dynasty's iron-fisted dictatorship. Better force Russia and China to veto the original Arab League proposals, on which Morocco's draft is based, than to drop references to the urgency of having the Damascus butcher surrender power. A watered-down resolution by the Council may avoid a Russian and a Chinese possible double veto. But it will end the traditional obfuscation by both Moscow and Beijing that the West, not they, are the enemies of liberal democracy.
The exact opposite is true. It is patently ironic to have the Global Times, a Chinese publication, extol the virtues of Russian and Chinese open opposition to democracy. On December 5, 2011, it editorialized that "The West doesn't really have an interest in promoting democracy to the world... Its scheme is to expand its interest hidden behind that process."
A weakened UN Security Council resolution could not fail to provide Al-Assad, supported by the enemies of the Arab Spring, with a renewed license to go on killing the oppressed Syrian masses.
It behooves free Syria and the rest of the Arab world to remember who stood with them in their darkest hour and who stood with their tormentors.
The fiction openly advanced by Russia at the UN Security Council and elsewhere that “regime change” shall be the result of a resolution demanding that violence against peaceful protesters all over Syria should stop is laughable.
Such a stance ignores several vital facts. Too much blood has already been shed all over Syria, sucking the oxygen out of the lungs of any legitimacy left for the Syrian butcher regime. The regional organization, the League of Arab States, exercising its legitimate role under Chapter 8 of the UN Charter had intervened. It has suspended the offending regime; it has dispatched a monitoring team, though ineffectual, to Syria; it has submitted, through Morocco, a draft resolution for a peaceful transition in Damascus akin to the Yemen model. The Libyan model has very little resemblance, if any, to the Arab League’s plan for Syria as it does not provide for military intervention. The Syrian masses are demanding, at the cost of their blood, that Al-Assad should go.
The hypocrisy of the Russian-Chinese position towards the present Syrian civil war is transparent. In essence, both Moscow and Beijing are trying to protect their fire walls against an Arab Spring-like somersaulting over their backyards. These protective walls are built around their own oppressed minorities and hyper-sensitive monolithic regimes. This is not to mention their considerable economic interests, including the sale of armaments and the purchase of energy from Syria.
A so-called regime change in Damascus could beget a regime disarray inside the Russian-Chinese protective walls. While touring Asia, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov has recently told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that “we are not friends or allies of President Assad.” Really? If so, then who are the beneficiaries of Russia’s blatant obstruction at the UN Security Council?
At this very moment the Syrian National Council, Syria’s government in Turkish exile, is describing the Moroccan draft resolution before the Security Council as “extremely important.” Why? Because as Qatar’s Prime Minister told the Security Council on behalf of the Arab League: “The Syrian government failed to make any serious effort to cooperate with us."
Out of this historic re-alignment of friends and alliances resulting from the Arab Spring, through the Syrian upheaval, the West, especially the US, the UK, France and Germany, are occupying the high ground. Russia and China are fast becoming the enemies of the Arab masses which are searching for the three Ds: Dignity, Democracy, and Development. It was historic to see the US and French flags unfurled by the masses in Libyan squares in recognition of the NATO campaign against Qaddafi.
Both Moscow and Beijing, whose icy winds are blanketing the Arab Spring in Syria, seem to ignore the changes in the concept of sovereignty. Since the tragic Holocaust of the late 1930s and 1940s, human rights have steadily grown through international humanitarian intervention. This recent doctrine provides that when a government is killing its people, who are the real sovereign, domestic jurisdiction must give way to international intervention.
This doctrine has in fact trumped Article 2(7) of the UN Charter which has given the State the right to define what domestic jurisdiction, is except where international peace and security are involved. The main purpose of this international law evolution is to save that sovereign from its insane government. The Assad regime continues unabashedly to manifest its insanity. And the League of Arab States, whose present Secretary-General is the venerable jurist, Dr. Nabil al-Araby, a former Justice of the International Court of Justice, is pleading with Moscow and Beijing to heed the calls for mercy from every corner of Syria, across all sectarian divides.
Appeasing Russia and China through watering down the Moroccan draft resolution before the Security Council is not likely to stop the bloodbath caused by Al-Assad dynasty's iron-fisted dictatorship. Better force Russia and China to veto the original Arab League proposals, on which Morocco's draft is based, than to drop references to the urgency of having the Damascus butcher surrender power. A watered-down resolution by the Council may avoid a Russian and a Chinese possible double veto. But it will end the traditional obfuscation by both Moscow and Beijing that the West, not they, are the enemies of liberal democracy.
The exact opposite is true. It is patently ironic to have the Global Times, a Chinese publication, extol the virtues of Russian and Chinese open opposition to democracy. On December 5, 2011, it editorialized that "The West doesn't really have an interest in promoting democracy to the world... Its scheme is to expand its interest hidden behind that process."
A weakened UN Security Council resolution could not fail to provide Al-Assad, supported by the enemies of the Arab Spring, with a renewed license to go on killing the oppressed Syrian masses.
It behooves free Syria and the rest of the Arab world to remember who stood with them in their darkest hour and who stood with their tormentors.
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