Who Benefits If The Killing In Syria Goes On?

All The Players Have Their Own Agendas, and None Seems To Involve A Ceasefire... Just Yet

By Patrick Cockburn

The best hope for an end to the killing in Syria is for the United States and Russia to push both sides in the conflict to agree a ceasefire in which each holds the territory it currently controls. In a civil war of such savagery, diplomacy with any ambition to determine who holds power in future will founder because both sides believe they can still win.

The US, Russia and Iran could see themselves being sucked into an ever more violent conflict and one that is rapidly spreading. It is destabilising Syria's neighbours in Jordan and Lebanon as Shia and Sunni support opposing sides. Even Turkey's new-found prosperity is vulnerable as a result of its whole-hearted backing for Syria's rebels.

However, the chance of any talks taking place in Geneva have dimmed in the past few days. The Syrian opposition has rejected the idea, though its intentions are very much determined by its paymasters in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Going by the evidence of their own leaders, the rebels, inside and outside Syria, are so divided and dysfunctional they may not be in the business of talking to anybody.

Even if the opposition were better organised, they might still not want to talk. One of its leaders said: "We have to make the removal of the regime fundamental to any political solution." This may sound obvious, but an unstated part of opposition policy is that they can only win if the West and its allies among the Sunni states of the Middle East decide on massive military involvement to remove President Bashar al-Assad. They want a Libyan-type solution in which Assad would be overthrown, as was Muammar Gaddafi by Nato in 2011, with the rebels conducting a well-publicised mopping up.

However, the truth is that Assad was never as politically or militarily weak as portrayed in the international media or, until a few months ago, by foreign leaders. After two years of war he holds almost all the main cities and towns of Syria and the inner core of his regime has held together. This has become more evident in the past two months, as government forces go on the offensive and make limited but definite gains.

Foreign perceptions have changed. Six months ago, German intelligence was predicting Assad's fall. Now, it has been publicly saying it expects the government to secure its grip on Damascus and all of southern Syria by the end of the year.

The White House has said in the past few days that its top priority in Syria is to impose regime change, but this is a recipe for a very long conflict. Why should Assad and his government surrender when they are more than holding their own on the battlefield? 

Moreover, Washington appears to have shut the door on the idea of Iran, a main player, attending Geneva talks. This again is unrealistic if the aim of negotiations is to end the fighting. 

And Britain and France are playing a small but mischievous role in ensuring the slaughter in Syria continues. By successfully ending the EU embargo on arms for the rebels they will not bring talks nearer, as they pretend, but make them unlikely to take place at all. The type of weapons they will send are not going to tip the military balance. Government forces are too strong for this. The current stalemate is too well rooted in realities on the ground. 

The most significant impact of more arms for the rebels will be to persuade them that, if they refuse to negotiate, they will eventually get full-scale Western military intervention such as a Libya-type no-fly zone, which, in practice, meant Nato air forces joining the war.

It may be that Russia announced that it was selling Syria a sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft missile system precisely in order to block this. By offering more arms, the EU will also be putting off the day when the two sides talk to each other through mutual exhaustion and the knowledge that neither can win.

At this stage, mutual hatred is too great for any long-term deal on sharing power. Everybody is caught up in what we used to call in Belfast "the politics of the last atrocity". Power-sharing would be geographical, with each side holding its own territory.

There may be a more sinister reason why the US has started setting the bar so high for talks. Washington's involvement is greater than appears because so much of it goes through Qatar, with the CIA determining who gets arms and money sent via Turkey. This would also explain why Britain and France are so keen to send the rebels weapons.

The explanation for the actions of the Western states may be that they do not want the war to end except as a victory for their allies. This certainly is the view of many in the Middle East, such as Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the former Iraqi National Security Adviser, who told me:

the civil war "is the best option for the West and Israel because it knocks out Syria as an opponent of their policies and keeps Iran busy. Hezbollah is preoccupied by Syria and not with Israel. Turkey's idea of a new Ottoman empire is gone with the wind."

This is a cynical but probably correct explanation for why the US, Britain, France and the Sunni monarchies do not want the war to end until they can declare victory.

Shifting Truths In Sina

Who Stands To Gain From The Carnage?

Two Toyota Land Cruisers filled with about 15 well-built gunmen in ski masks and all-black outfits appear seemingly out of nowhere. Behind them is vast, open desert. They approach a group of soldiers huddled around a simple meal as they prepare to break their Ramadan fast. The gunmen open fire, leaving the soldiers with no chance of retrieving their weapons.

This is not an opening scene of a Hollywood action movie. The massacre actually took place at an Egyptian military post in northern Sinai on August 5. The description above was conveyed by a witness, Eissa Mohamed Salama, in a statement made to The Associated Press (AP; Aug 8). The gunmen were well trained. Their overt confidence can only be explained by the fact that "one militant got out a camera and filmed the bodies of the soldiers".

One is immediately baffled by this. Why would the masked militants wish to document the killings if they were about to embark on what can be considered a suicide mission in Israel? "The gunmen then approached the Israeli border," with two vehicles, one reportedly a stolen Egyptian armored personnel carrier. The British Broadcasting Corp, citing Israeli officials, reported that one of the vehicles "exploded on the frontier", while the other broke through the Israeli border, "travelled about 2 kilometers into Israel before being disabled by the Israeli air force" (BBC News Online, Aug 7). According to the BBC report, citing Israeli sources, there were about 35 gunmen in total, all clad in traditional Bedouin attire.

Their mission into Israel was suicidal, since, unlike in Sinai, they had nowhere to escape. But who would embark on such a logistically complex mission, document it on camera, and then fail to take responsibility for it? The brazen attack seemed to have little military wisdom, but it did possess a sinister political logic.

Only 48 hours before the attack, the media were awash with reports about the return of electricity in the Gaza Strip. The impoverished Strip's generators have not run at full capacity for about six years, since Hamas was elected. The Israeli siege and subsequent wars killed and wounded thousands, but they failed to bend Gaza's political will. For Gazans, the keyword to their survival in the face of Israel's blockade was "Egypt".

The Egyptian revolution on January 25, 2011, carried a multitude of meanings for all sectors of Egyptian society, and the Middle East at large. For Palestinians in Gaza, it heralded the possibility of a lifeline. The nearly 1,000 tunnels dug to assist in Gaza's survival would amount to nothing compared with a decisive Egyptian decision to end the siege by opening the Rafah border.

In fact, a decision was taking place in stages. Hamas, which governs Gaza, was a branch of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. The latter is now the leading political force in the country and, despite the military's obduracy, it has managed to claim the country's presidency as well.

In late July, a high-level Hamas delegation met in Cairo. All the stress and trepidation of the last 16 months seemed to have come to an end, as Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, his deputy Musa Abu Marzouq and other members of the group's politburo met with President Mohammed Morsi. Egypt's official news agency reported Morsi's declarations of full support "for the Palestinian nation's struggle to achieve its legitimate rights". According to Reuters, Morsi's top priority was achieving unity "between Hamas and Fatah, supplying Gaza with fuel and electricity and easing the restrictions on the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt".

Juxtapose that scene - where a historical milestone has finally been reached - with an Agence France-Presse photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, standing triumphantly next to a burned Egyptian vehicle that was reportedly stolen by the Sinai gunmen. The message here is that only Israel is serious about fighting terror. Israeli newspaper Haaretz' accompanying article started with this revelation: "Israel shared some of the intelligence it received with the Egyptian army prior to the incident, but there is no evidence Egypt acted on the information." This was meant to humiliate Egypt's military further.

Naturally, Israel blamed Gaza, even though there is no material evidence to back such accusations. Some in Egypt's media jumped on the opportunity to blame Gaza for Egypt's security problems in Sinai as well. The loudest among them were completely silent when, on August 18, 2011, Israel killed six Egyptian soldiers in Sinai.

Then, Israel carried out a series of strikes against Gaza, killing and wounding many, while claiming that Gaza was a source of attacks against Israeli civilians. Later the Israeli media dismissed the connection as flawed. No apologies for the Gaza deaths, of course, and AP, Reuters and others are still blaming Palestinians for the attack near Eilat last year. Then, Palestinian factions opted not to escalate to spare Egypt an unwanted conflict with Israel during a most sensitive transition.

None of that seems relevant now. Egypt is busy destroying the tunnels, continuing efforts that were funded by the US a few years ago. It also closed the Gaza-Egypt crossing, and is being "permitted" by Israel to use attack helicopters in Sinai to hunt for elusive terrorists. Within days, Gaza's misfortunes were multiplied and once more Palestinians are pleading their case.

Israeli officials and analysts are, of course, beside themselves with anticipation. The opportunity is simply too great not to be utilized fully. Commenting in Egypt-based OnIslam, Abdelrahman Rashdan wrote that according to the Israeli intelligence scenario, "Iranians, Palestinians, Egyptians, and al-Qaeda operatives all moved from Lebanon to attack Egypt [and] Israel and defend Syria."

In Western mainstream media, few asked who benefits from all of this - from once more isolating Gaza, shutting down the tunnels, severing Egyptian-Palestinian ties, embroiling the Egyptian military in a security nightmare in Sinai, and much more.

The Muslim Brotherhood website had an answer. It suggested that the incident "can be attributed to the Mossad". True, some Western media reported the statement, but not with any degree of seriousness or due analysis. The BBC even offered its own context: "Conspiracy theories are popular across the Arab world," ending the discussion with an Israeli dismissal of the accusation as "nonsense". Case closed. But it shouldn't be.

Before embarking on a wild goose chase in Sinai, urgent questions must be asked and answered. Haphazard action will only make things worse for Egypt, Palestine and Sinai's long-neglected Bedouin population.

Via: "Middle-East-Online"