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By Nick, May 15, 2013 2:11 pm

The worsening violence and repression in Syria has left policymakers scrambling to think of ways the United States could help end the bloodshed and support those seeking to dislodge the Assad regime. The desperate desire to “do something” has led to increasing calls for the United States to provide military aid to armed insurgents or even engage in direct military intervention, especially in light of the possible use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.

The question on the mind of almost everyone who has followed the horror as it has unfolded over the past two years is, “What we can do?”

The short answer, unfortunately, is not much.

This is hard for many Americans to accept. We have a cultural propensity to believe that if the United States puts in enough money, creativity, willpower, or firepower into a problem that we can make things right. However, despite the desires of both the right-wing nationalists and liberal hawks, this isn’t always the case.

Both the right and the far left seem to embrace the idea that United States—either for good or for ill—has the power to determine the outcome of virtually every conflict in the world. However, there are limits to power. The tens of billions of dollars’ worth of arms sent to the Shah and to Mubarak were not enough to keep these dictators in power against the will of their own people. Overwhelming U.S. military force could not prevent a Communist victory in Vietnam or create a peaceful, democratic, pro-American Iraq.

The Baath Party has ruled Syria for most of the past 50 years, from even before the 30-year reign of Bashar al-Assad’s father. Military officers and party apparatchiks have developed their own power base. Dictatorships that rest primarily on the power of just one man – like Libya’s Gaddafi, Egypt’s Mubarak, and Tunisia’s Ben Ali – are generally more vulnerable in the face of popular revolt than are oligarchical systems where a broader network of elite interests has a stake in the system. Just as the oligarchy that ruled El Salvador in the 1980s proved to be far more resistant to overthrow by a popular armed revolution than the singular rule of Anastasia Somoza in neighboring Nicaragua, it is not surprising that Syria’s entrenched ruling group has been more resilient than the personalist dictatorships toppled in the wave of largely nonviolent insurrections in neighboring Arab countries.

A large minority of Syrians—consisting of Alawites, Christians, and members of other minority communities; Baath Party loyalists and government employees; the professional armed forces and security services; and the (largely Sunni) crony capitalist class that the government has nurtured—still cling to the Assad regime. There are certainly dissidents within all of these sectors, but altogether regime supporters number as much as one-third of the population.  

What this means is that even large-scale direct foreign intervention will not lead to a quick collapse of the regime.

The Nature of the Opposition

The initial popular uprising against the Assad regime, which began in March of 2011, was overwhelmingly nonviolent, broad-based, and non-sectarian. Since turning to primarily armed resistance by early the next year, however, an increasing percentage of the armed opposition appears to consist of hardline Salafi Islamists, including some who are affiliated with al-Qaeda. Even the so-called “moderate” Free Syrian Army consists of literally hundreds of separate armed militias, some of which are just as extreme, and operate without a central command. A shoulder-fired missile that could defend a village from a Syrian helicopter gunship could also take down a civilian airliner.

Proponents of arming the rebels claim the United States could somehow differentiate between “moderate” and “extremist” elements of the opposition, but it is hard to imagine how this could be done in practice. It’s important to remember that most of the U.S. arms sent to Afghan rebels in the 1980s ended up in the hands of Hizb-i-Islami, the most hardline of the half dozen or so mujahedeen groups fighting the Soviets and the Soviet-backed Afghan regime. After the Soviets withdrew and Afghanistan’s Communist government was overthrown, Hizb-i-Islami forces killed thousands of Afghan civilians and are now allied with the Taliban fighting American forces. As with the fall of the Communist regime in Afghanistan, there is no guarantee that Assad’s overthrow would actually bring peace. And as Iraq showed us, opposition to an oppressive Baathist regime does not mean support for the United States, nor does military intervention guarantee a peaceful and democratic post-Baathist government.

Syria is very different from Libya, where NATO air power supported an armed rebellion that toppled the Gaddafi regime in a bloody civil war. The Syrian population is more than three times the size of Libya’s, and the terrain far more challenging. The liberated zones controlled by the rebels are tiny and non-contiguous, and the Syrian armed forces—and their anti-aircraft capabilities—are far superior. Another critical difference is that by the time the Libyan uprising began in 2011, Gaddafi had virtually no popular support, although it still took six months of heavy NATO bombardments and fierce fighting by foreign-armed rebel forces to dislodge him.

It is also important to remember that, despite the ouster of Gaddafi and a relatively fair and free vote that elected moderates to lead the new government, Libya has not actually turned out that well. In addition to the summary execution of Gaddafi and many hundreds of his supporters, over 200,000 people in that country of barely 6 million have joined armed militias not controlled by the government, which have been creating havoc throughout the country. Some of these include al-Qaeda-aligned groups, like the one responsible for the deaths of four U.S. officials, including the ambassador, last August. Furthermore, weapons from Libya have proliferated throughout North Africa, playing an important role in the uprising by Tuareg nationalists and Islamist extremists in Mali and the resulting conflict.

Another tragic consequence of the NATO intervention in Libya is that Syrian opposition members may have decided to abandon their impressive nonviolent struggle in the hope that it would prompt Western military intervention.

Problems with “Humanitarian Intervention”

Indeed, as with Libya, there are often serious unintended consequences from foreign intervention. Empirical studies have repeatedly demonstrated that international military interventions in cases of severe repression actually exacerbate violence in the short term and can only reduce violence in the longer term if the intervention is impartial or neutral. For example, the wholesale ethnic cleansing in Kosovo by Serbian forces in 1999 began only after NATO’s decision to launch air strikes. Other studies demonstrate that foreign military interventions actually increase the duration of civil wars, making the conflicts longer and bloodier, and the regional consequences more serious, than if there were no intervention. Military intervention in Syria would likely trigger a “gloves off” mentality that could dramatically escalate the violence on both sides, since the regime would find that it no longer had anything to lose and the opposition would feel no need to negotiate or compromise.

Foreign intervention tends to exacerbate nationalist resistance. The 1999 NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, rather than force Milosevic from power, initially strengthened the regime as people rallied around the flag in the face of more than 11 weeks of bombing by foreign forces. The leaders of Otpor, the youthful pro-democracy movement that would eventually lead the struggle that toppled the regime nonviolently, strongly opposed the bombing and recognized that it set back their cause.

This nationalist reaction is exacerbated by the understandable tendency to question the motivations – sometimes justifiably and sometimes not – of those who advocate the so-called “responsibility to protect.” Indeed, most foreign interventions by the United States which were viewed by most of the international community as acts of imperialism – Vietnam, Iraq, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Panama, among others – were rationalized on humanitarian grounds.

Even when imperialism does not appear to be the primary motivation, there is the problem of perceived double standards. For example, President Clinton justified the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia because “we cannot allow this kind of repression to happen on NATO’s doorstep” when very comparable repression was at that time going on within NATO itself, namely in the Kurdish region of Turkey, using primarily U.S.-supplied weaponry. Similarly, while U.S. officials have cited calls by Amnesty International and other human rights groups in calling on Russia to stop sending helicopter gunships to Syria, the United States has ignored similar calls by Amnesty International and others to stop sending helicopter gunships to Colombia, Turkey, and Israel, which—like the Syrian regime—have also used these weapons to attack civilians.

Some have called for unilateral military intervention in Syria, arguing that the Russian and Chinese vetoes of UN Security Council resolutions have paralyzed the United Nations from exercising its responsibilities, despite the illegality of such intervention without UN authorization. However, the Syrian regime could also observe that since joining the United Nations 42 years ago, China has used its veto power only eight times and, during that same period, Russia (and previously the Soviet Union) has used its veto power only 18 times. By contrast, the United States has used its veto power 83 times, mostly to protect allies like Israel from accountability for violations of international humanitarian law.

It’s rather revealing that the leading intellectual architect of the so-called “responsibility to protect” is none other than Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister who for more than a decade served as head of the International Crisis Group. He was an outspoken supporter of military intervention in Libya following the killing of between 200and 300 civilians by Gaddafi’s forces. However, as Australian foreign minister, he was also an outspoken supporter of Indonesia’s brutal occupation of East Timor, which took the lives of more than 200,000 East Timorese. Indeed, he headed the only foreign ministry in the world that recognized Indonesia’s illegal annexation of the former Portuguese colony. (When I had the temerity to bring this to his attention at an academic conference in Melbourne last year, he started screaming at me, tore off my badge, and threatened to punch me in the face. Apparently, he felt a responsibility to protect his reputation.)

Meanwhile, the U.S. government remains, by far, the world’s primary military, economic, and diplomatic supporter of the world’s remaining authoritarian regimes and occupying armies, openly defending allies engaged in military operations that, like those of the Syrian regime, have resulted in the widespread killing of civilians. For example, during the three-week Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip in early 2009, both the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration—using the same kind of language as apologists for the Syrian regime—insisted that the Israeli attacks on civilian neighborhoods were “legitimate self-defense” against “terrorists” placed responsibility for the civilian deaths solely on armed Islamists, and dismissed reports by the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other reputable groups documenting the atrocities as “biased.”

Until the United States is willing to take a principled stand against all war crimes, regardless of the relationship of the perpetrator with the United States, the Obama administration will have a hard time convincing Syrians and others that its intentions in supporting the armed opposition are actually humanitarian.

Provoking Assad’s Nationalist Card

Indeed, the intentions of Western governments, particularly the United States, are highly suspect in the eyes of many Syrians, even among those opposed to Assad’s dictatorship. U.S. military intervention would simply play into the hands of the regime in Damascus, which has decades of experience manipulating the Syrian people’s strong sense of nationalism to its benefit. The regime can point out that the United States is the world’s primary military supplier to the region’s remaining dictatorships and disingenuously used the “promotion of democracy” and fabricated claims of “weapons of mass destruction” to justify its illegal and disastrous invasion of its neighbor Iraq which, like Syria, happens to oppose Washington’s designs on the region.

The United States has also been the primary military, financial, and diplomatic supporter of the government of Israel, which has occupied much of Syria’s southwestern Golan province since it seized the territory in a military assault in the closing hours of the 1967 war, ethnically cleansing most of its residents. Indeed, in 2007, the United States successfully blocked progress towards Israel-Syria peace out of concern that the return of the Golan Heights could bolster Assad’s standing at home.

Well prior to the popular uprising against the regime, the United States had been seeking the downfall of the Syrian government, with the Bush administration actively considering options for toppling the regime. The United States imposed major unilateral sanctions on the country in 2003. In addition to repeated U.S. attacks against Syrian positions in Lebanon in 1983-84, the United States bombed Syria itself as recently as 2008, killing eight civilians. Syrians know this history and, among the large numbers who support neither the regime nor the armed opposition, further U.S. involvement is more likely to move them closer to the regime.

Indeed, Western intervention could unwittingly trigger the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of Syrians to resist foreign invaders. Hundreds of Syrians have quit the Baath party and government positions in protest of the killings of nonviolent protesters, but few defections could be expected if Americans and Europeans attacked their country.

Opposing U.S. support for the armed resistance in Syria has nothing to do with indifference, isolationism, or pacifism. Nor is it indicative of being any less horrified at the suffering of the Syrian people or any less desirous of the overthrow of Assad’s brutal regime. With so much at stake, however, it is critical not to allow the understandably strong emotional reaction to the ongoing carnage lead to policies that could end up making things even worse.

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By Nick, May 9, 2013 2:47 am

Report: Israel warns U.S. about Russian arms sale to Assad
By: reuters on: 09.05.2013 [05:11 ] (147 reads)

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By Nick, May 9, 2013 12:04 am

Report: Israel warns U.S. about Russian arms sale to Assad
By: reuters on: 09.05.2013 [05:11 ] (70 reads)

www.iraqwar.mirror-world.ru (en) RSS feed for articles and news

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By Nick, May 2, 2013 12:39 pm

The U.S. government stands alone among major world governments in refusing to recognize the results of the recent Venezuelan presidential election. The petulant position of the Obama administration harms U.S. relations across the entire hemisphere and feeds a scenario of violence in that Caribbean country.

Nation after nation–including the last hold-out Spain and the Organization of American States—has recognized Nicolas Maduro, who took office following his narrow win in the April 14 elections. The results ratified by the National Electoral Council show Maduro with 50.78 percent to 48.95 percent for defeated conservative candidate Henrique Capriles—a difference of 1.8 percent, or some 260,000 votes. There were no major anomalies on Election Day, which by all reports went remarkably smoothly.

Following the elections, Capriles contested the results in fiery speeches and called on supporters to demonstrate, but curiously did not file a legal challenge.

The Venezuelan electoral system is highly tamper-proof, as recognized by monitoring organizations like the Carter Center, which before the vote assessed the system as “the best in the world.”  Delegations from the Carter Center, the Union of South American Countries, and other experts observed the elections and proclaimed them clean and fair. Venezuelans vote electronically, then print out and double-check a paper ballot before depositing it as well. The Electoral Council carries out an audit at polls of 54.3 percent of the votes. These reviews are signed by members of the political parties, including Capriles’ Democratic Unity Party.

The Electoral Council has agreed to audit the remaining 46 percent of ballots, although the electronic vote is the legal vote and the process for reviewing the paper backup after the on-site audit is unprecedented and logistically challenging, with almost no possibility of changing the result. Representatives of the conservative coalition announced instead that they plan to gather alleged evidence of fraud to present to the Supreme Court. Capriles said from there he will attempt to take the case to international courts, promising a drawn-out process that will feed sharp divisions with the country. The opposition still has not presented the suit or the proofs for judicial review.

Daniel Kovalik, a U.S. human rights lawyer who was among 170 international election observers from around the world, reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “What we found was a transparent, reliable, well-run and thoroughly audited electoral system.” Voter turnout was reportedly 79 percent—a major achievement that would be the envy of more mature democracies, including the United States.

And still the U.S. State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell stated on April 24, 10 days after the elections, “We do continue to believe that the ongoing CNE recount and a thorough review of alleged voting irregularities will…ensure that the Venezuelan people feel that their democratic aspirations are being met and that they have greater confidence in the election outcome.”

This, coming after recognizing in the same press conference that the Maduro government was making overtures to repair relations with the United States through the appointment of its new charge d’affaires, dashed hopes of more cordial relations between the two trade partners.

The frame of concern for “the Venezuelan people” rings hollow. In a democratic contest, especially in a society as polarized as Venezuela’s, the losing side never feels like its “aspirations are being met” when they lose. And the insistence on a 100-percent recount after the ignominy of the Bush-Gore election of 2000 and the immediate U.S. recognition of the conservative Mexican president Felipe Calderon, despite evidence of voter fraud and a much narrower margin in 2006, is hypocritical at best.

At worst, it is an example of U.S. external pressure that encourages a break with the rule of law and violates the principle of self-determination that President Barack Obama claims to uphold.

This is the first time the U.S. government has refused to recognize a Venezuelan election result, as Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Political Research points out. Weisbrot notes, “Washington’s efforts to de-legitimise the election mark a significant escalation of US efforts at regime change in Venezuela. Not since its involvement in the 2002 military coup has the US government done this much to promote open conflict in Venezuela.”

The Obama administration is bending over backwards to spur on an opposition movement that has no virtually legal leg to stand on in its desire for new presidential elections. There are some indications that the strategy to refuse to accept defeat at the polls was considered even before the close vote. Although Capriles conceded rapidly and gracefully to former President Hugo Chavez in the presidential elections last fall, it was a bad omen when he refused to sign a pre-electoral pact to respect the results prior to this election.

Now violent opposition protests in the streets have led to the deaths of nine people. Maduro has attended the funerals of his supporters killed in the disturbances with vows to defend his victory and prosecute those inciting and participating in violent acts.  Health clinics established by Chavez have been frequent targets.

It is highly unlikely that Capriles would stake his future on rejecting legal electoral institutions if he did not have the support of the U.S. government. It is even more unlikely that he could sustain a movement for non-recognition. Even many members of his own coalition will not go so far as to say they honestly believe he won the April 14^th elections. The other countries of the region recognized Maduro as the new president within hours of the results. Not only did the left-leaning governments provide their diplomatic welcome, but also Colombia, Mexico, and other nations closely allied with the United States.

Capriles’ actions and de facto U.S. support for prolonging post-electoral unrest not only endanger peace and stability in Venezuela, but also potentially the entire region. Venezuela is a geopolitical hub—for its oil, for its role in building south-south integration projects like ALBA and Unasur, for its solidarity trade pacts, and for its defiance of U.S. hegemony.

To illegally disrupt the constitutional order there will not be as easy as it was in Honduras, where even a broad opposition movement couldn’t restore the constitutionally elected president after a right-wing coup in 2009. Inevitably, nations across the hemisphere and the world will react with anger if the Obama administration decides to maintain this course, both in defense of their neighbor Venezuela and also in what they see as a threat to their own sovereignty. Already former Brazilian president Lula da Silva has warned that “Americans should take care of their own business a little and let us decide our own destiny.”

The longer the United States remains globally isolated in its refusal to accept Venezuela’s election results, the longer the instability, uncertainty, and violence will continue. Extending the conflict could very well end up unnecessarily costing more lives.

The Obama administration should consider that its stubbornness about what it considers an adverse election result in a foreign country is a direct cause of bloodshed. It harms relations with our hemispheric neighbors and partners and sows the seeds of distrust and enmity in a region where we have a good chance at building cooperation on issues of vital importance to all of our countries. Venezuela’s elections must be accepted at once to show that the United States will uphold democratic processes and the rule of law, even when its government is not particularly pleased with the results.

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By Nick, May 2, 2013 12:39 pm

The U.S. government stands alone among major world governments in refusing to recognize the results of the recent Venezuelan presidential election. The petulant position of the Obama administration harms U.S. relations across the entire hemisphere and feeds a scenario of violence in that Caribbean country.

Nation after nation–including the last hold-out Spain and the Organization of American States—has recognized Nicolas Maduro, who took office following his narrow win in the April 14 elections. The results ratified by the National Electoral Council show Maduro with 50.78 percent to 48.95 percent for defeated conservative candidate Henrique Capriles—a difference of 1.8 percent, or some 260,000 votes. There were no major anomalies on Election Day, which by all reports went remarkably smoothly.

Following the elections, Capriles contested the results in fiery speeches and called on supporters to demonstrate, but curiously did not file a legal challenge.

The Venezuelan electoral system is highly tamper-proof, as recognized by monitoring organizations like the Carter Center, which before the vote assessed the system as “the best in the world.”  Delegations from the Carter Center, the Union of South American Countries, and other experts observed the elections and proclaimed them clean and fair. Venezuelans vote electronically, then print out and double-check a paper ballot before depositing it as well. The Electoral Council carries out an audit at polls of 54.3 percent of the votes. These reviews are signed by members of the political parties, including Capriles’ Democratic Unity Party.

The Electoral Council has agreed to audit the remaining 46 percent of ballots, although the electronic vote is the legal vote and the process for reviewing the paper backup after the on-site audit is unprecedented and logistically challenging, with almost no possibility of changing the result. Representatives of the conservative coalition announced instead that they plan to gather alleged evidence of fraud to present to the Supreme Court. Capriles said from there he will attempt to take the case to international courts, promising a drawn-out process that will feed sharp divisions with the country. The opposition still has not presented the suit or the proofs for judicial review.

Daniel Kovalik, a U.S. human rights lawyer who was among 170 international election observers from around the world, reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “What we found was a transparent, reliable, well-run and thoroughly audited electoral system.” Voter turnout was reportedly 79 percent—a major achievement that would be the envy of more mature democracies, including the United States.

And still the U.S. State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell stated on April 24, 10 days after the elections, “We do continue to believe that the ongoing CNE recount and a thorough review of alleged voting irregularities will…ensure that the Venezuelan people feel that their democratic aspirations are being met and that they have greater confidence in the election outcome.”

This, coming after recognizing in the same press conference that the Maduro government was making overtures to repair relations with the United States through the appointment of its new charge d’affaires, dashed hopes of more cordial relations between the two trade partners.

The frame of concern for “the Venezuelan people” rings hollow. In a democratic contest, especially in a society as polarized as Venezuela’s, the losing side never feels like its “aspirations are being met” when they lose. And the insistence on a 100-percent recount after the ignominy of the Bush-Gore election of 2000 and the immediate U.S. recognition of the conservative Mexican president Felipe Calderon, despite evidence of voter fraud and a much narrower margin in 2006, is hypocritical at best.

At worst, it is an example of U.S. external pressure that encourages a break with the rule of law and violates the principle of self-determination that President Barack Obama claims to uphold.

This is the first time the U.S. government has refused to recognize a Venezuelan election result, as Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Political Research points out. Weisbrot notes, “Washington’s efforts to de-legitimise the election mark a significant escalation of US efforts at regime change in Venezuela. Not since its involvement in the 2002 military coup has the US government done this much to promote open conflict in Venezuela.”

The Obama administration is bending over backwards to spur on an opposition movement that has no virtually legal leg to stand on in its desire for new presidential elections. There are some indications that the strategy to refuse to accept defeat at the polls was considered even before the close vote. Although Capriles conceded rapidly and gracefully to former President Hugo Chavez in the presidential elections last fall, it was a bad omen when he refused to sign a pre-electoral pact to respect the results prior to this election.

Now violent opposition protests in the streets have led to the deaths of nine people. Maduro has attended the funerals of his supporters killed in the disturbances with vows to defend his victory and prosecute those inciting and participating in violent acts.  Health clinics established by Chavez have been frequent targets.

It is highly unlikely that Capriles would stake his future on rejecting legal electoral institutions if he did not have the support of the U.S. government. It is even more unlikely that he could sustain a movement for non-recognition. Even many members of his own coalition will not go so far as to say they honestly believe he won the April 14^th elections. The other countries of the region recognized Maduro as the new president within hours of the results. Not only did the left-leaning governments provide their diplomatic welcome, but also Colombia, Mexico, and other nations closely allied with the United States.

Capriles’ actions and de facto U.S. support for prolonging post-electoral unrest not only endanger peace and stability in Venezuela, but also potentially the entire region. Venezuela is a geopolitical hub—for its oil, for its role in building south-south integration projects like ALBA and Unasur, for its solidarity trade pacts, and for its defiance of U.S. hegemony.

To illegally disrupt the constitutional order there will not be as easy as it was in Honduras, where even a broad opposition movement couldn’t restore the constitutionally elected president after a right-wing coup in 2009. Inevitably, nations across the hemisphere and the world will react with anger if the Obama administration decides to maintain this course, both in defense of their neighbor Venezuela and also in what they see as a threat to their own sovereignty. Already former Brazilian president Lula da Silva has warned that “Americans should take care of their own business a little and let us decide our own destiny.”

The longer the United States remains globally isolated in its refusal to accept Venezuela’s election results, the longer the instability, uncertainty, and violence will continue. Extending the conflict could very well end up unnecessarily costing more lives.

The Obama administration should consider that its stubbornness about what it considers an adverse election result in a foreign country is a direct cause of bloodshed. It harms relations with our hemispheric neighbors and partners and sows the seeds of distrust and enmity in a region where we have a good chance at building cooperation on issues of vital importance to all of our countries. Venezuela’s elections must be accepted at once to show that the United States will uphold democratic processes and the rule of law, even when its government is not particularly pleased with the results.

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By Nick, May 2, 2013 12:39 pm

If, as alleged, the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons, it would indeed be a serious development, constituting a breach of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, one of the world’s most important disarmament treaties, which banned the use of chemical weapons.

In 1993, the international community came together to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention, a binding international treaty that would also prohibit the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, and transfer or use of chemical weapons. Syria is one of only eight of the world’s 193 countries not party to the convention.

However, U.S. policy regarding chemical weapons has been so inconsistent and politicized that the United States is in no position to take leadership in response to any use of such weaponry by Syria.

The controversy over Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles is not new. Both the Bush administration and Congress, in the 2003 Syria Accountability Act, raised the issue of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, specifically Syria’s refusal to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention. The failure of Syria to end its chemical weapons program was deemed sufficient grounds by a large bipartisan majority of Congress to impose strict sanctions on that country. Syria rejected such calls for unilateral disarmament on the grounds that it was not the only country in the region that had failed to sign the CWC—nor was it the first country in the region to develop chemical weapons, nor did it have the largest chemical weapons arsenal in the region.

Indeed, neither Israel nor Egypt, the world’s two largest recipients of U.S. military aid, is a party to the convention either. Never has Congress or any administration of either party called on Israel or Egypt to disarm their chemical weapons arsenals, much less threatened sanctions for having failed to do so. U.S. policy, therefore, appears to be that while it is legitimate for its allies Israel and Egypt to refuse to ratify this important arms control convention, Syria needed to be singled out for punishment for its refusal.

The first country in the Middle East to obtain and use chemical weapons was Egypt, which used phosgene and mustard gas in the mid-1960s during its intervention in Yemen’s civil war. There is no indication Egypt has ever destroyed any of its chemical agents or weapons. The U.S.-backed Mubarak regime continued its chemical weapons research and development program until its ouster in a popular uprising two years ago, and the program is believed to have continued subsequently.

Israel is widely believed to have produced and stockpiled an extensive range of chemical weapons and is engaged in ongoing research and development of additional chemical weaponry. (Israel is also believed to maintain a sophisticated biological weapons program, which is widely thought to include anthrax and more advanced weaponized agents and other toxins, as well as a sizable nuclear weapons arsenal with sophisticated delivery systems.) For more than 45 years, the Syrians have witnessed successive U.S. administration provide massive amounts of armaments to a neighboring country with a vastly superior military capability which has invaded, occupied, and colonized Syria’s Golan province in the southwest. In 2007, the United States successfully pressured Israel to reject peace overtures from the Syrian government in which the Syrians offered to recognize Israel and agree to strict security guarantees in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied Syrian territory.

The U.S. position that Syria must unilaterally give up its chemical weapons and missiles while allowing a powerful and hostile neighbor to maintain and expand its sizable arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons is simply unreasonable. No country, whether autocratic or democratic, could be expected to accept such conditions.

This is part of a longstanding pattern of hostility by the United States towards international efforts to eliminate chemical weapons through a universal disarmament regime. Instead, Washington uses the alleged threat from chemical weapons as an excuse to target specific countries whose governments are seen as hostile to U.S. political and economic interests.

One of the most effective instruments for international arms control in recent years has been the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which enforces the Chemical Weapons Convention by inspecting laboratories, factories, and arsenals, and oversees the destruction of chemical weapons. The organization’s most successful director general, first elected in 1997, was the Brazilian diplomat Jose Bustani, praised by the Guardian newspaper as a “workaholic” who has “done more in the past five years to promote world peace than anyone.” Under his strong leadership, the number of signatories of the treaty grew from 87 to 145 nations, the fastest growth rate of any international organization in recent decades, and – during this same period – his inspectors oversaw the destruction of 2 million chemical weapons and two-thirds of the world’s chemical weapons facilities. Bustani was re-elected unanimously in May 2000 for a five-year term and was complimented by Secretary of State Colin Powell for his “very impressive” work.

However, by 2002, the United States began raising objections to Bustani’s insistence that the OPCW inspect U.S. chemical weapons facilities with the same vigor it does for other signatories. More critically, the United States was concerned about Bustani’s efforts to get Iraq to sign the convention and open their facilities to surprise inspections as is done with other signatories. If Iraq did so, and the OPCW failed to locate evidence of chemical weapons that Washington claimed Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed, it would severely weaken American claims that Iraq was developing chemical weapons. U.S. efforts to remove Bustani by forcing a recall by the Brazilian government failed, as did a U.S.-sponsored vote of no confidence at the United Nations in March. That April, the United States began putting enormous pressure on some of the UN’s weaker countries to support its campaign to oust Bustani and threatened to withhold the United States’ financial contribution to the OPCW, which constituted more than 20 percent of its entire budget. Figuring it was better to get rid of its leader than risk the viability of the whole organization, a majority of nations, brought together in an unprecedented special session called by the United States, voted to remove Bustani.

The Case of Iraq

The first country to allegedly use chemical weapons in the Middle East was Great Britain in 1920, as part of its efforts to put down a rebellion by Iraqi tribesmen when British forces seized the country following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. According to Winston Churchill, who then held the position of Britain’s Secretary of State for War and Air, “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.”

It was the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, that used chemical weapons on a scale far greater than any country had dared since the weapons were banned nearly 90 years ago. The Iraqis inflicted close to 100,000 casualties among Iranian soldiers using banned chemical agents, resulting in 20,000 deaths and tens of thousands of long-term injuries.

They were unable to do this alone, however. Despite ongoing Iraqi support for Abu Nidal and other terrorist groups during the 1980s, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism in order to provide the regime with thiodiglycol, a key component in the manufacture of mustard gas, and other chemical precursors for their weapons program. Walter Lang, a senior official with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, noted how “the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern” to President Reagan and other administration officials since they “were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose.” Lang noted that the DIA believed Iraq’s use of chemical was “seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival.” In fact, DIA personnel were dispatched to Baghdad during the war to provide Saddam Hussein’s regime with U.S. satellite data on the location of Iranian troop concentrations in the full knowledge that the Iraqis were using chemical weapons against them.

Even the Iraqi regime’s use of chemical weapons against civilians was not seen as particularly problematic. The March 1988 massacre in the northern Iraqi city of Halabja, where Saddam’s forces murdered up to 5,000 Kurdish civilians with chemical weapons, was downplayed by the Reagan administration, with some officials even falsely claiming that Iran was actually responsible. The United States continued sending aid to Iraq even after the regime’s use of poison gas was confirmed. 

When a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations committee staff report brought to light Saddam’s policy of widespread extermination in Iraqi Kurdistan, Senator Claiborne Pell introduced the Prevention

of Genocide Act to put pressure on the Iraqi regime, but the Bush administration successfully moved to have the measure killed. This came despite evidence emerging from UN reports in 1986 and 1987, prior to the Halabja tragedy, documenting Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians—allegations that were confirmed both by investigations from the CIA and from U.S. embassy staff who had visited Iraqi Kurdish refugees in Turkey. However, not only was the United States not particularly concerned about Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, the Reagan administration continued supporting the Iraqi government’s procurement effort of materials necessary for their development.

Given the U.S. culpability in the deaths of tens of thousands of people by Iraqi chemical weapons less than 25 years ago, the growing calls for the United States to go to war with Syria in response to that regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons that killed a few dozen people leads even many of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s fiercest opponents to question U.S. motivations.

This is not the only reason U.S. credibility on the issue of chemical weapons is questionable, however.

After denying and covering up Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the late 1980s, the U.S. government—first under President Bill Clinton and then under President George W. Bush—began insisting that Iraq’s alleged chemical weapons stockpile was a dire threat, even though the country had completely destroyed its stockpile by 1993 and completely dismantled its chemical weapons program.

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel—when they served in the U.S. Senate in 2002—all voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq, insisting that Iraq still had a chemical weapons arsenal that was so extensive it constituted a serious threaten to the national security of the United States, despite the fact that Iraq had rid itself of all such weapons nearly a decade earlier. As a result, it is not unreasonable to question the accuracy of any claims they might make today in regard to Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

It should also be noted that many of today’s most outspoken congressional advocates for U.S. military intervention in Syria in response to the Damascus regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons were among the most strident advocates in 2002-2003 for invading Iraq. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), whom the Democrats have chosen to be their ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was among the right-wing minority of House Democrats who voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction. When no such weapons were found, Engel came up with the bizarre allegation that “it would not surprise me if those weapons of mass destruction that we cannot find in Iraq wound up and are today in Syria.”

Engel is currently the chief sponsor of the Free Syria Act of 2013 (H.R. 1327), which would authorize the United States to provide arms to Syrian rebels.

UN resolutions

Unlike the case of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, there are no UN Security Council resolutions specifically demanding that Syria unilaterally disarm its chemical weapons or dismantle its chemical weapons program. Syria is believed to have developed its chemical weapons program only after Israel first developed its chemical, biological, and nuclear programs, all of which still exist today and by which the Syrians still feel threatened.

However, UN Security Council Resolution 687, the resolution passed at the end of the 1991 Gulf War demanding the destruction of Iraq’s chemical weapons arsenal, also called on member states “to work towards the establishment in the Middle East of a zone free of such weapons.”

Syria has joined virtually all other Arab states in calling for such a “weapons of mass destruction-free zone” for the entire Middle East. In December 2003, Syria introduced a UN Security Council resolution reiterating this clause from 12 years earlier, but the resolution was tabled as a result of a threatened U.S. veto. As I wrote at time, in reference to the Syrian Accountability Act, “By imposing strict sanctions on Syria for failing to disarm unilaterally, the administration and Congress has roundly rejected the concept of a WMD-free zone or any kind of regional arms control regime. Instead, the United States government is asserting that it has the authority to say which country can have what kind of weapons systems, thereby enforcing a kind of WMD apartheid, which will more likely encourage, rather than discourage, the proliferation of such dangerous weapons.”

A case can be made, then, that had the United States pursued a policy that addressed the proliferation of non-conventional weapons through region-wide disarmament rather than trying to single out Syria, the Syrian regime would have rid itself of its chemical weapons some years earlier along with Israel and Egypt, and the government’s alleged use of such ordnance—which is now propelling the United States to increase its involvement in that country’s civil war—would have never become an issue.

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By Nick, May 2, 2013 12:39 pm

If, as alleged, the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons, it would indeed be a serious development, constituting a breach of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, one of the world’s most important disarmament treaties, which banned the use of chemical weapons.

In 1993, the international community came together to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention, a binding international treaty that would also prohibit the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, and transfer or use of chemical weapons. Syria is one of only eight of the world’s 193 countries not party to the convention.

However, U.S. policy regarding chemical weapons has been so inconsistent and politicized that the United States is in no position to take leadership in response to any use of such weaponry by Syria.

The controversy over Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles is not new. Both the Bush administration and Congress, in the 2003 Syria Accountability Act, raised the issue of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, specifically Syria’s refusal to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention. The failure of Syria to end its chemical weapons program was deemed sufficient grounds by a large bipartisan majority of Congress to impose strict sanctions on that country. Syria rejected such calls for unilateral disarmament on the grounds that it was not the only country in the region that had failed to sign the CWC—nor was it the first country in the region to develop chemical weapons, nor did it have the largest chemical weapons arsenal in the region.

Indeed, neither Israel nor Egypt, the world’s two largest recipients of U.S. military aid, is a party to the convention either. Never has Congress or any administration of either party called on Israel or Egypt to disarm their chemical weapons arsenals, much less threatened sanctions for having failed to do so. U.S. policy, therefore, appears to be that while it is legitimate for its allies Israel and Egypt to refuse to ratify this important arms control convention, Syria needed to be singled out for punishment for its refusal.

The first country in the Middle East to obtain and use chemical weapons was Egypt, which used phosgene and mustard gas in the mid-1960s during its intervention in Yemen’s civil war. There is no indication Egypt has ever destroyed any of its chemical agents or weapons. The U.S.-backed Mubarak regime continued its chemical weapons research and development program until its ouster in a popular uprising two years ago, and the program is believed to have continued subsequently.

Israel is widely believed to have produced and stockpiled an extensive range of chemical weapons and is engaged in ongoing research and development of additional chemical weaponry. (Israel is also believed to maintain a sophisticated biological weapons program, which is widely thought to include anthrax and more advanced weaponized agents and other toxins, as well as a sizable nuclear weapons arsenal with sophisticated delivery systems.) For more than 45 years, the Syrians have witnessed successive U.S. administration provide massive amounts of armaments to a neighboring country with a vastly superior military capability which has invaded, occupied, and colonized Syria’s Golan province in the southwest. In 2007, the United States successfully pressured Israel to reject peace overtures from the Syrian government in which the Syrians offered to recognize Israel and agree to strict security guarantees in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied Syrian territory.

The U.S. position that Syria must unilaterally give up its chemical weapons and missiles while allowing a powerful and hostile neighbor to maintain and expand its sizable arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons is simply unreasonable. No country, whether autocratic or democratic, could be expected to accept such conditions.

This is part of a longstanding pattern of hostility by the United States towards international efforts to eliminate chemical weapons through a universal disarmament regime. Instead, Washington uses the alleged threat from chemical weapons as an excuse to target specific countries whose governments are seen as hostile to U.S. political and economic interests.

One of the most effective instruments for international arms control in recent years has been the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which enforces the Chemical Weapons Convention by inspecting laboratories, factories, and arsenals, and oversees the destruction of chemical weapons. The organization’s most successful director general, first elected in 1997, was the Brazilian diplomat Jose Bustani, praised by the Guardian newspaper as a “workaholic” who has “done more in the past five years to promote world peace than anyone.” Under his strong leadership, the number of signatories of the treaty grew from 87 to 145 nations, the fastest growth rate of any international organization in recent decades, and – during this same period – his inspectors oversaw the destruction of 2 million chemical weapons and two-thirds of the world’s chemical weapons facilities. Bustani was re-elected unanimously in May 2000 for a five-year term and was complimented by Secretary of State Colin Powell for his “very impressive” work.

However, by 2002, the United States began raising objections to Bustani’s insistence that the OPCW inspect U.S. chemical weapons facilities with the same vigor it does for other signatories. More critically, the United States was concerned about Bustani’s efforts to get Iraq to sign the convention and open their facilities to surprise inspections as is done with other signatories. If Iraq did so, and the OPCW failed to locate evidence of chemical weapons that Washington claimed Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed, it would severely weaken American claims that Iraq was developing chemical weapons. U.S. efforts to remove Bustani by forcing a recall by the Brazilian government failed, as did a U.S.-sponsored vote of no confidence at the United Nations in March. That April, the United States began putting enormous pressure on some of the UN’s weaker countries to support its campaign to oust Bustani and threatened to withhold the United States’ financial contribution to the OPCW, which constituted more than 20 percent of its entire budget. Figuring it was better to get rid of its leader than risk the viability of the whole organization, a majority of nations, brought together in an unprecedented special session called by the United States, voted to remove Bustani.

The Case of Iraq

The first country to allegedly use chemical weapons in the Middle East was Great Britain in 1920, as part of its efforts to put down a rebellion by Iraqi tribesmen when British forces seized the country following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. According to Winston Churchill, who then held the position of Britain’s Secretary of State for War and Air, “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.”

It was the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, that used chemical weapons on a scale far greater than any country had dared since the weapons were banned nearly 90 years ago. The Iraqis inflicted close to 100,000 casualties among Iranian soldiers using banned chemical agents, resulting in 20,000 deaths and tens of thousands of long-term injuries.

They were unable to do this alone, however. Despite ongoing Iraqi support for Abu Nidal and other terrorist groups during the 1980s, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism in order to provide the regime with thiodiglycol, a key component in the manufacture of mustard gas, and other chemical precursors for their weapons program. Walter Lang, a senior official with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, noted how “the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern” to President Reagan and other administration officials since they “were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose.” Lang noted that the DIA believed Iraq’s use of chemical was “seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival.” In fact, DIA personnel were dispatched to Baghdad during the war to provide Saddam Hussein’s regime with U.S. satellite data on the location of Iranian troop concentrations in the full knowledge that the Iraqis were using chemical weapons against them.

Even the Iraqi regime’s use of chemical weapons against civilians was not seen as particularly problematic. The March 1988 massacre in the northern Iraqi city of Halabja, where Saddam’s forces murdered up to 5,000 Kurdish civilians with chemical weapons, was downplayed by the Reagan administration, with some officials even falsely claiming that Iran was actually responsible. The United States continued sending aid to Iraq even after the regime’s use of poison gas was confirmed. 

When a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations committee staff report brought to light Saddam’s policy of widespread extermination in Iraqi Kurdistan, Senator Claiborne Pell introduced the Prevention

of Genocide Act to put pressure on the Iraqi regime, but the Bush administration successfully moved to have the measure killed. This came despite evidence emerging from UN reports in 1986 and 1987, prior to the Halabja tragedy, documenting Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians—allegations that were confirmed both by investigations from the CIA and from U.S. embassy staff who had visited Iraqi Kurdish refugees in Turkey. However, not only was the United States not particularly concerned about Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, the Reagan administration continued supporting the Iraqi government’s procurement effort of materials necessary for their development.

Given the U.S. culpability in the deaths of tens of thousands of people by Iraqi chemical weapons less than 25 years ago, the growing calls for the United States to go to war with Syria in response to that regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons that killed a few dozen people leads even many of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s fiercest opponents to question U.S. motivations.

This is not the only reason U.S. credibility on the issue of chemical weapons is questionable, however.

After denying and covering up Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the late 1980s, the U.S. government—first under President Bill Clinton and then under President George W. Bush—began insisting that Iraq’s alleged chemical weapons stockpile was a dire threat, even though the country had completely destroyed its stockpile by 1993 and completely dismantled its chemical weapons program.

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel—when they served in the U.S. Senate in 2002—all voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq, insisting that Iraq still had a chemical weapons arsenal that was so extensive it constituted a serious threaten to the national security of the United States, despite the fact that Iraq had rid itself of all such weapons nearly a decade earlier. As a result, it is not unreasonable to question the accuracy of any claims they might make today in regard to Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

It should also be noted that many of today’s most outspoken congressional advocates for U.S. military intervention in Syria in response to the Damascus regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons were among the most strident advocates in 2002-2003 for invading Iraq. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), whom the Democrats have chosen to be their ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was among the right-wing minority of House Democrats who voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction. When no such weapons were found, Engel came up with the bizarre allegation that “it would not surprise me if those weapons of mass destruction that we cannot find in Iraq wound up and are today in Syria.”

Engel is currently the chief sponsor of the Free Syria Act of 2013 (H.R. 1327), which would authorize the United States to provide arms to Syrian rebels.

UN resolutions

Unlike the case of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, there are no UN Security Council resolutions specifically demanding that Syria unilaterally disarm its chemical weapons or dismantle its chemical weapons program. Syria is believed to have developed its chemical weapons program only after Israel first developed its chemical, biological, and nuclear programs, all of which still exist today and by which the Syrians still feel threatened.

However, UN Security Council Resolution 687, the resolution passed at the end of the 1991 Gulf War demanding the destruction of Iraq’s chemical weapons arsenal, also called on member states “to work towards the establishment in the Middle East of a zone free of such weapons.”

Syria has joined virtually all other Arab states in calling for such a “weapons of mass destruction-free zone” for the entire Middle East. In December 2003, Syria introduced a UN Security Council resolution reiterating this clause from 12 years earlier, but the resolution was tabled as a result of a threatened U.S. veto. As I wrote at time, in reference to the Syrian Accountability Act, “By imposing strict sanctions on Syria for failing to disarm unilaterally, the administration and Congress has roundly rejected the concept of a WMD-free zone or any kind of regional arms control regime. Instead, the United States government is asserting that it has the authority to say which country can have what kind of weapons systems, thereby enforcing a kind of WMD apartheid, which will more likely encourage, rather than discourage, the proliferation of such dangerous weapons.”

A case can be made, then, that had the United States pursued a policy that addressed the proliferation of non-conventional weapons through region-wide disarmament rather than trying to single out Syria, the Syrian regime would have rid itself of its chemical weapons some years earlier along with Israel and Egypt, and the government’s alleged use of such ordnance—which is now propelling the United States to increase its involvement in that country’s civil war—would have never become an issue.

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By Nick, April 30, 2013 3:04 pm

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By Nick, April 22, 2013 7:29 am

U.S. Teenager Accused of Seeking to Join Al Qaeda-linked Syrian Group

Assyrian International News Agency

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By Nick, April 19, 2013 4:49 pm

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