Tweet
Syria has helpfully asked the UN for more monitors – but no more than 250 in a country of over 20 million – to observe the cease-fire taking place in the embattled country. They even offered their own air support, so no need for independent aircraft to aid mobility for the observers! I think today’s events will put a damper on the allegedly positive Syrian proposal, however:
Gunfire erupted on Wednesday close to an advance team of U.N. observers who had been swarmed by protesters, giving a taste of the challenge facing a mission to monitor a shaky week-old truce that has so far failed to stop Syria’s violence.
Protesters denouncing President Bashar al-Assad had surrounded their cars near the capital, Damascus. Automatic weapons fire sent the crowds scurrying for safety.
There were no reports of casualties. But scenes of monitors’ vehicles immobilized in a crowd followed by pictures of men running away while automatic weapons fire rattles in the air were an ominous echo of an earlier Arab League monitoring mission that collapsed in failure in January.
Meanwhile, explosions continue in Homs and elsewhere, as both sides accuse the other of violating the cease-fire. Anti-government protesters accused the regime of tank shelling and the use of helicopters to attack rebels in mountain redoubts. Syria said the incidents were responses and not provocations. One protester told the New York Times, “We are not benefiting from even 20 percent of a cease-fire.”
Meanwhile, the relative drop in violence due to the pretend cease-fire has only allowed Bashar al-Assad to consolidate gains.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is strengthening his grip on the country during the relative decrease in violence brought on by U.N. demands, according to several experts.
Although the goal of countries in supporting the cease-fire was to halt the killings and pave the way for peaceful reforms, the reality is just the opposite, the analysts argue [...]
Rather than taking a step toward peace and allowing greater freedom, al-Assad is using this time to send the message to the United Nations that his forces are needed in the streets to prevent mass chaos, the analysts suggested.
Before going too far down this road, keep in mind that one of the “experts” rolled out by CNN here is Bush-era neocon Elliott Abrams. But I do think it’s true that Assad is as disinterested in this cease-fire as he is in a peaceful resolution that doesn’t end with his opponents vanquished.
As long as China and Russia still support Assad, it will be difficult to do much about this. But it’s painful to see the UN mission descend into such a farce.
20 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
Imagine that.
Clearly Assad is terrible. Clearly also, Western interests will be currently funneling guns and money to the various insurgent groups in Syria, along with encouragement to use them.
Clearly, for there to be a truce, *both* sides will have to quit shooting.
Not the first time, and not likely the last time either.
My problem with this whole scene is that I know I’m not getting the straight story from anyone. Who really knows what’s going on in Syria? Whoever that is isn’t reporting in America. The distortions and omissions of the American press are the American press. Americans who aren’t personally connected and/or aren’t literate in other languages don’t have a hope of getting a realistic view.
Which pretty much sums up the state of American reporting generally. Where’s Siun when we need her?
Why wouldn’t Syria want to follow in the footsteps of Libya? After all, we got rid of a bad guy and it’s so much better off now. Not to mention all the good we’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://tarpley.net/2012/04/14/obamas-friday-afternoon-document-dump-for-this-week-us-begins-overt-aid-to-syrian-death-squads-after-13-months-of-covert-support/
Here’s another perspective.
I don’t need perspective, I need facts. Counterpunch and consortiumnews supply plenty of perspective and some facts. FT, tho, had the best article, an analysis, complete with astonishment, of the Afghan insanity by a Russian general who was painfully familiar. Couldn’t quite get his mind around America’s idea that it could do better: didn’t we see how badly it had gone for them?
American exceptionalism writ large.
Clearly more freedom bombs and sanctions that starve millions of civilians are the answer.
I’d add a snark tag, but that seems far too flippant.
U.N.=U.S.
Failed nation; failed intl org.
Except for how other nations are beginning to use the organization as the US empire recedes from the effects of overextension. Watch the Shanghai Cooperation Organization countries and the UNASUR/UNASUL countries especially; their leadership are the BRIC countries. The Security Council is still an institutional stumbling block for dealing with the US, but other bodies of the organization have begun to take unpopular stands. For example, UNESCO’s recognition of Palestine as a separate nation for its programs.
FWIW, from what I’ve seen over the years, Webster Tarpley bases his opinions on facts
Have been watching those developments with interest.
It’s painful to see the UN mission descend into such a farce but that’s because the UN has no authority to involve itself in a civil conflict.
The UN took no action against the U.S. attacking and invading multiple countries, which are illegal under the UN Charter, but with Syria, since it is a U.S. enemy, it has a mandate in a civil conflict? And it’s “faltering?”
Josh Landis at Syria Comment is the go-to guy on things Syrian and he doesn’t exactly know what’s going on.
If you’re not there, in the web of life of a place, you cannot know anything for sure second or third or woodpile relations hand. Even if you are there, there’s much you will not know. Out of your sight and ken. We really need to proceed cautiously with judgments and conclusions.
Of course, you’d never know that listening to the wisest fools in Christendom pronounce.
I got an email asking me to sign a petition to Asma al-Assad, Assad’s wife, praising her as a paragon of Western educated values and virtue and petitioning her to bring peace to Syria. You should have heard the alarm bells! I wonder if this means change.org has been co-opted and the ordinary people who have made good use of it will have to abandon it. I don’t sign onto everything they send, but I”ve signed a few. Now I’m going to have to go all squint eyed at every petition.
Webster Tarpley really grinds an axe. Not that I disagree with what I assume are his premises, tho I’m not even familiar with him, let alone his books, but he has a discernible lean. I was going to write cant, but I thought better of it in this setting.
Point taken.
If the UN is increasing the numbers of the watchers to 250 its mission is succeeding, but its actual goal is to declare peace a failure.
I read this from some Canadian ex Mossad intel dude on twitter.
So we can declare a humanitarian intervention, I assume? You can understand why some people would think so. OTOH, some Canadian ex Mossad intel dude on twitter might be any number of phoney baloney agitators/troublemakers/misdirectors/wack jobs.
You can over think this stuff. The outlines are clear and American intentions long since manifest. Best summarized by another Nobel Peace prize recipient, I don’t see why we should have to stand by and let a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. Thank you, Dr Kissinger. May you reincarnate at the bottom of something like one of the national hells you created.
David, bernard at Moon of Alabama compares the AP report, filed in Lebanon, with a Xinhua report, filed in Damascus. The report of the Syrian government firing on a mob surrounding the UN observers is not corroborated by the head of the observers involved:
In a show of good journalism, the report the goes on to note the Syrian government’s statement, followed by an “activist’s” statement.
The Western MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) seems to be acting as the mouthpiece of the Powers That Be, and, amazingly, will quote “activists” frequently. I say amazingly, because “activists” in Iraq and Afghanistan get precious little press space in the Western MCM, especially the US MCM. Think about the witnesses to the purported lone wolf Boles massacre: It took a long time to get Western media to get to local witnesses.
Bweware the MCM on its coverage of Syria. The US PTB’s, along with EU PTB’s, seem bound and determined to get their Regime Change on in Syria, no matter how many minority groups will be, most likely, ground under the heel of the Salafists and Saudi backed Sunni extremists.
The US, along with Qatar, UAE, and Saudia Arabia, have been sending money and fighters to Syria, along with fighters coming from Libya. And the “activists” have great access to sending out videos, some of which have been proven to be faked.