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| Another 20 killed in Idlib by NATO's proxy forces, 31 April 2012 |
The strategy was simple, clear, tried and tested. It had
been used successfully not only against Libya,
but also Kosovo (in 1999), and was rapidly under way in Syria. It was to run as follows:
train proxies to launch armed provocations; label the state’s response to these
provocations as genocide; intimidate the UN Security Council into agreeing that
“something must be done”; incinerate the entire army and any other resistance
with fragmentation bombs and Hellfire missiles; and finally install a weak,
compliant government to sign off new contracts and alliances drawn up in
London, Paris and Washington, whilst the country tears itself apart. Result:
the heart torn out of the ‘axis of resistance’ between Iran, Syria
and Hezbollah, leaving Iran
isolated and the West with a free hand to attack the Islamic republic without
fear of regional repercussions.
This was to be Syria’s fate, drawn up years ago in
the high level planning committees of US, British and French defence
departments and intelligence services. But this time, unlike in Libya,
it has not all gone according to plan.
First, there was Russia
and China’s
veto of the 'regime change' resolution at the UN Security Council in October
2011, followed by a second veto in February of this year. This meant that any
NATO attack on Syria would
be denied the figleaf of UN approval, and seen instead as a unilateral act of
aggression - not just against Syria,
but potentially against China
and Russia
as well. Vicious and reckless as they are, even Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama do
not necessarily have the stomach for that
kind of a fight. That left the burden of destroying the Syrian state to
NATO’s proxy forces on the ground, the ‘Free Syria Army’ – a collection of
domestic and (increasingly) foreign rival armed militias, mostly
ultra-sectarian Salafi extremists, along with a smattering of defectors and
Western special forces.
However, this army was not created to actually defeat the
Syrian state; that was always supposed to be NATO’s job. As in Libya,
the role of the militias was simply to provoke reprisals from the state in
order to justify a NATO blitzkrieg. Left to their own devices, they have no
chance of gaining power militarily, as many in the opposition realise. "We
don't believe the Free Syrian Army is a project that can help the Syrian
revolution," said the leader of the internal peaceful Syrian resistance
movement, Haytham Al-Manna, recently, "we don't have an example where an
armed struggle against a dictatorial regime won." Of course, one could
cite Cuba, South Vietnam, and many others; but what is
certainly true is that internal armed struggle alone has never succeeded when
the government is the only single party in the struggle with any significant
mass support - such as in Syria.
This reality was brutally driven home in early March, in the
decisive battle for the Baba Amr district of Homs. This was supposedly one of
the Free Syrian Army’s strongholds, yet they were roundly defeated, leaving
them facing the prospect of similar defeats in their last few remaining
territories as well. The opposition are increasingly aware that their best
chance of meaningful change is not through a military fight that they will
almost certainly lose – and which will get them killed in the process, along
with their support and credibility – but through negotiations and participation
in the reform process and dialogue which the government has offered.
This prospect – of an end to the civil war, and a negotiated
peace which brings about a reform process without destabilising the country –
has led to desperation amongst the imperial powers. Despite their claims to the
contrary, a stable Syrian-led process is the last thing they want, as it leaves
open the possibility of Syria
remaining a strong, independent, anti-imperialist state – exactly the
possibility they had sought to eliminate.
Hence, within days of Kofi Annan’s peace plan gaining a
positive response from both sides in late March, the imperial powers openly
pledged, for the first time, millions of dollars for the Free Syrian Army: for
military equipment, to provide salaries to its soldiers, and to bribe
government forces to defect. In other words, terrified that the civil war is
starting to die down, they are setting about institutionalising it. If violent
regime change is starting to look unlikely, the hope instead is to keep the
country weak and on its knees by keeping its energy sucked into civil war.
At the risk of making the Syrian National Council appear
even more out of touch with ordinary Syrians than it does already, its Western
backers have increased the pressure for them to fall into line with this
strategy, leading to open calls from the SNC leadership for both the full scale
arming of the rebellion, and for aerial bombardment from the West. This has
caused huge rifts in the organisation, with three leading members defecting
last month, because they did not want to be "accomplices to the massacre
of the Syrian people through delaying, cheating, lies, one-upmanship and
monopolisation of decision-making." The SNC, according to one of the
three, Kamal al-Labwani , was "linked to foreign agendas which aim to
prolong the battle while waiting ... for the country to be dragged into a civil
war."
This month one of the very few SNC leaders actually based in
Syria,
Riad Turk, called on the opposition to accept the Annan peace plan, “stop the
bloodshed” and enter dialogue with the government – a call not echoed by his
fellow SNC colleagues abroad. Likewise, the main peaceful opposition grouping
based within Syria
– the National Co-ordinating Committee – has fallen out with the SNC over the
latters’ increasingly belligerent role as a mouthpiece of foreign powers. NCC
leader Haytham Al-Manna spoke out publicly against the Free Syrian Army
recently, saying, "The militarization of the Syrian revolution signifies
the death of the internal revolution…We know that the Turkish government plays
an important role in the political decisions of the Free Syrian Army. We don't
believe that an armed group can be on Turkish territory and remain independent
of Turkish decisions."
So there is a growing perception, even amongst the Syrian
opposition movement itself, that both the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian
National Council are working in the interests of foreign powers to prolong a
pointless civil war.
Western policy makers are playing a dangerous game. Short of
a NATO attack, their best option for the destabilisation and emasculation of Syria
is to ensure that the ceasefire fails and the fighting continues. To this end,
they are encouraging their proxy militias to step up their provocations; the
purpose of Clinton
and Juppe’s statements about “other measures” still being on the table is to
keep the idea of a NATO attack alive in the heads of the rebels so that they
continue to fight. Indeed, many more foreign fighters have been shipped into
the country in recent weeks according to the Washington
Post, and have been launching devastating bomb attacks in Damascus
and Aleppo. US ambassador to Syria,
Robert Ford is a protégé of John Negroponte, who organised contra death squads
to destabilise Nicaragua in
the 1980s; he will almost certainly have been organising similar groups in Syria
during his time there last year, for similar purposes.
Nevertheless, the destabilisation agenda is not going
according to plan. The internal opposition are becoming increasingly frustrated
with the way things are progressing, and a clear split is emerging between
those based outside the country, happy to see Syria consigned to oblivion in
order to please their paymasters and further their careers, and those who
actually have to live with the consequences. The reckless attacks of the armed
militias are increasingly alienating even those who once had some sympathy for
them, especially as their foreign membership and direction is exposed ever more
clearly. Having been proven decisively unable to win and hold territory, these
militias are turning to hit-and-run guerrilla tactics. But the guerrilla, as
Mao put it, is like a fish, which can only survive in a sea of popular support.
And that sea is rapidly drying up.
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