Syria and Diplomacy 2917


The problem with the Geneva Communique from the first Geneva round on Syria is that the government of Syria never subscribed to it.  It was jointly chaired by the League of Arab States for Syria, whatever that may mean.  Another problem is that it is, as so many diplomatic documents are, highly ambiguous.  It plainly advocates a power sharing executive formed by some of the current government plus the opposition to oversee a transition to democracy.  But it does not state which elements of the current government, and it does not mention which elements of the opposition, nor does it make plain if President Assad himself is eligible to be part of, or to head, the power-sharing executive, and whether he is eligible to be a candidate in future democratic elections.

Doubtless the British, for example, would argue that the term transition implies that he will go.  The Russians will argue there is no such implication and the text does not exclude anybody from the process.  Doubtless also diplomats on all sides were fully aware of these differing interpretations and the ambiguity is quite deliberate to enable an agreed text. I would say that the text tends much more to the “western” side, and that this reflects the apparently weak military position of the Assad regime at that time and the then extant threat of western military intervention.  There has been a radical shift in those factors against the western side in the interim. Expect Russian interpretations now to get more hardline.

Given the extreme ambiguity of the text, Iran has, as it frequently does, shot itself in the foot diplomatically by refusing to accept the communique as the basis of talks and thus getting excluded from Geneva.  Iran should have accepted the communique, and then at Geneva issued its own interpretation of it.

But that is a minor point.  The farcical thing about the Geneva conference is that it is attempting to promote into power-sharing in Syria “opposition” members who have no democratic credentials and represent a scarcely significant portion of those actually fighting the Assad regime in Syria.  What the West are trying to achieve is what the CIA and Mossad have now achieved in Egypt; replacing the head of the Mubarak regime while keeping all its power structures in place. The West don’t really want democracy in Syria, they just want a less pro-Russian leader of the power structures.

The inability of the British left to understand the Middle East is pathetic.  I recall arguing with commenters on this blog who supported the overthrow of the elected President of Egypt Morsi on the grounds that his overthrow was supporting secularism, judicial independence (missing the entirely obvious fact the Egyptian judiciary are almost all puppets of the military) and would lead to a left wing revolutionary outcome.  Similarly the demonstrations against Erdogan in Istanbul, orchestrated by very similar pro-military forces to those now in charge in Egypt, were also hailed by commenters here.  The word “secularist” seems to obviate all sins when it comes to the Middle East.

Qatar will be present at Geneva, and Qatar has just launched a pre-emptive media offensive by launching a dossier on torture and murder of detainees by the Assad regime, which is being given first headline treatment by the BBC all morning

There would be a good dossier to be issued on torture in detention in Qatar, and the lives of slave workers there, but that is another question.

I do not doubt at all that atrocities have been committed and are being committed by the Assad regime.  It is a very unpleasant regime indeed.  The fact that atrocities are also being committed by various rebel groups does not make Syrian government atrocities any better.

But whether 11,000 people really were murdered in a single detainee camp I am unsure.  What I do know is that the BBC presentation of today’s report has been a disgrace.  The report was commissioned by the government of Qatar who commissioned Carter Ruck to do it.  Both those organisations are infamous suppressors of free speech.  What is reprehensible is that the BBC are presenting the report as though it were produced by neutral experts, whereas the opposite is the case.  It is produced not by anti torture campaigners or by human rights activists, but by lawyers who are doing it purely and simply because they are being paid to do it.

The BBC are showing enormous deference to Sir Desmond De Silva, who is introduced as a former UN war crimes prosecutor.  He is indeed that, but it is not the capacity in which he is now acting.  He is acting as a barrister in private practice.  Before he was a UN prosecutor, he was for decades a criminal defence lawyer and has defended many murderers.  He has since acted to suppress the truth being published about many celebrities, including John Terry.

If the Assad regime and not the government of Qatar had instructed him and paid him, he would now be on our screens arguing the opposite case to that he is putting.  That is his job.  He probably regards that as not reprehensible.  What is reprehensible is that the BBC do not make it plain, but introduce him as a UN war crimes prosecutor as though he were acting in that capacity or out of concern for human rights.  I can find no evidence of his having an especial love for human rights in the abstract, when he is not being paid for it.  He produced an official UK government report into the murder of Pat Finucane, a murder organised by British authorities, which Pat Finucane’s widow described as a “sham”.  He was also put in charge of quietly sweeping the Israeli murders on the Gaza flotilla under the carpet at the UN.

The question any decent journalist should be asking him is “Sir Desmond De Silva, how much did the government of Qatar pay you for your part in preparing this report?  How much did it pay the other experts?  Does your fee from the Government of Qatar include this TV interview, or are you charging separately for your time in giving this interview?  In short how much are you being paid to say this?”

That is what any decent journalist would ask.  Which is why you will never hear those questions on the BBC.

 

 

 


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2,917 thoughts on “Syria and Diplomacy

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  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    Mr Goss

    “To many who comment on this blog their purpose is not to debate but to point score, and to one, the one who appears to believe in torture, I would never apologise.”
    ___________________

    It doesn’t matter to whom you apologise, the main thing is that you have recognised your error and have apologised for it.

    Since you keep erecting your straw man, where’s the post or posts which express a belief in torture on my part? I notice, however, that you are careful to say “appears”, thus allowing yourself to interpret anything you like as evidence. In other words, you are in the realm of pure conjuncture.

    PS – “What the sentence could be construed as saying is that that the RAF and USAAF counted more than 260,000 bodies and body parts over raids in Germany following the assault on Dresden.”

    No it couldn’t.

  • Clark

    Sofia Kibo Noh, 8:26 am

    “Why are you trying to be so even-handed?”

    I’m an atheist, but I had a religious upbringing, and in a sense I still have a religious outlook in that I acknowledge something greater than myself, or greater then myself and those I feel myself to be in agreement with, and I’ve made a moral decision to subordinate myself to it. It’s the same reason I argued with a load of New-Agers and New World Order conspiracy theorists. It’s the same reason I suffer from terrible depression. My experience is that most people, nearly everyone, are prepared to bend the truth or conceal facts in order to advance the cause of what they believe in.

    It happened to me just last night at a friend’s house. My friend accused me of being a bully, because I insisted upon certain facts he was unwilling to admit to.

    Sorry, I feel too awful right now to go further.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    Mary

    “I don’t suppose that there’s any chance of an acknowledgement that he persecuted me and caused hurt for many months.”
    _____________________

    Not really, because your basic premiss – that I persecuted you – is erroneous if you mean that in the sense of intention (and arguably even in terms of ‘frequency’) As for feeling hurt, what can I say, except that it’s probably up to you to master your feelings: I ‘ll admit that this is easy to say, especially if you had previously enjoyed a long run on here where no one ever disagreed with you or called you to account, but that’s the luck of the draw, isn’t it?

    Out of interest, why did you call me a “troll” so early on – what was your reasoning for that?

  • A Node

    @ Clark 17 Feb, 2014 – 1:40 am

    ” …… I do not believe that Resident Dissident is Black Jelly – it’s obvious that Black Jelly is the same person who’s been coming here for years trying to decrease the number of victims of the Jewish Holocaust”

    OK, my last word on the subject.

    I felt it important to ensure that everybody was aware in their future dealings with Resident Dissident’s that he’s not necessarily what he seems. It’s one thing to suspect someone is deceiving you but it’s quite another when you know it. He thinks it’s some sort of defence that he only created his sock-puppet to bully Mary because “all that deciduous tree, you are foreigners stuff got up my nose”. I certainly don’t believe that after all the time he’s been around this blog, “deciduous stuff” caused him for the first and only time to sock-puppet.

    He pretends to take the high moral ground, but there’s nothing moral about sneaky bullying. I had a certain respect for him before, but no longer.
    No, I don’t really think it’s likely he’s ‘Black Jelly’, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Don’t forget, he was the one whose threat to call the police about anti-semitic comments caused the blog to close down. I am not convinced Black Jelly/English Knight/Larry is necessarily what he seems either. Co-incidentally, just before any of this Res Diss stuff kicked off, I made an appeal to Black Jelly here:
    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/01/syria-and-diplomacy/comment-page-12/#comment-440934

    OK, what ever else we have learned from Res Diss’s deception, we now know he wants to disrupt this blog and he has caused me to play my part in that.

    So no more.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    Clark

    “Why are you trying to be so even-handed?”
    ___________________

    The above question is probably meant as a joke. If so, it is not funny; if not, it is appalling.

  • glenn_uk

    Clark: Why shouldn’t this friend you mentioned be the bully himself, for insisting on a different set of “facts”? It works both ways, after all.

    My background sounds quite familiar to your own. Why should it cause you depression? I’ve also come across plenty of people who believe all sorts of demonstrable nonsense, and I find it (depending on the situation), irritating, mildly amusing, all the way to outrageous and utterly irresponsible. Most of the time, I’ve learned to ignore it – evangelising on a subject has done me little good in the past.

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    Clark. 11 16am

    Thanks for your reply.

    It was never my intention to cause you upset. If there’s anyone here who strives ceaselessly to speak from their “higher self” then it’s you and I don’t for a moment wish for you to feel under attack for it.

    I asked in good faith if you were not taking even-andedness a bit too far. I sorry if you felt that was an attack.

    When I see your posts I always know that there will be some treasure worth considering from a sound and compassionate man. My heart goes out to you.

    Peace.

  • Clark

    I almost feel like requesting that we suspend political discussion here because we have a deeper underlying problem that is preventing progress in the political argument. I feel that we should move to a discussion of ethics, honesty, psychology ie. human nature and so forth.

    But I’m personally scared of doing that. To participate would cost me a lot of time, and I’d thus lay myself open to criticism of being a non-productive freeloader upon society.

  • John Goss

    A Node, quite right. Who would like to make a list of those to be ignored? I am already ignoring the advocate of torture. Anybody got any to add or take away from this list:

    Habbabkuk
    Black Jelly,
    English Knight
    Larry
    Resident dissident

    Anybody got any to add or subtract from the above list?

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    A Node.

    “damn those italics”

    Come on! Fess up.

    You know italics and stuff upsets the Great One.

    YOU JUST ANOTHER UGLY TROLL!!!

    <<<<>>>>

  • Clark

    Please, no one infer anything too specific from my comments at present. It’s hard work trying to sort it all out in my own mind, let alone on a forum where war has apparently broken out.

    We’ll all help each other think if we can lay off the criticism of each other. I know that my own thinking is imperfect. I have to consider that others suffer from similar difficulties.

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    Go into the woods
    and tell your story
    to the trees.

    They are wise
    standing in their folds of silence
    among white crystals of rock
    and dying limbs.

    And they have time.
    Time for the swaying of leaves,
    the floating down,
    the dust.

    They have time for gathering
    and holding the earth about their feet.

    Do this.

    It is something I have learned.
    How they will bend down to you
    so softly.

    They will bend down to you
    and listen.

    Laura Foley

  • ESLO

    But Craig called it. You didn’t. I think you should acknowledge that.

    Where is your evidence as to why the talks collapsed – everything I have seen suggests that the Syrian regime was pretty intransient and offered nothing – which is perfectly consistent with my view that nothing will change until Russia kicks its torture loving client regime into place, rather than your’s and Craigs view that is the evil US etc that is spoiling for war.

  • John Goss

    Clark “We’ll all help each other think if we can lay off the criticism of each other.” That’s what I’m advocating. But there are decent people who comment here whereas others are here for a single purpose. That is why the trolls should be ignored.

  • John Goss

    ESLO, but from my point of view it is not just the US but its Israeli sponsor, who is the real (banking) power behind US actions. But there are more than one torture-loving leaders in this theatre.

  • glenn_uk

    Clark wrote, “I feel that we should move to a discussion of ethics, honesty, psychology ie. human nature and so forth.

    But surely we already do that? Calling into question one another’s honesty, psychological condition(s), [lack of] ethics and so on is par for the course around here 😉

  • ESLO

    “We’ll all help each other think if we can lay off the criticism of each other.” That’s what I’m advocating.

    Groupthink!

  • Clark

    Sorry, replying to individual comments is proving too demanding for me. Thanks for all and any good wishes, to myself or to others. Yes, here’s to peace.

    We need peace in order to think, and we need to think in order to solve the problems that disrupt peace. Thinking and peace must not become mutually exclusive, or any effort here is doomed from the start.

  • Clark

    I should probably go introspective while I compose a comment recounting my view of what went wrong last night between myself and my friend, as I feel that it is a microcosmic example of what’s been going wrong here.

    Meanwhile, I feel very strongly that any lobbing of salvos accusing others of trolling, groupthink, general bitterness, working for Israel or for “the Russians” or whatever is entirely counter-productive.

  • mark golding

    Enmity lives everywhere and we learn from every contest here. To say war has broken out here is very wrong. War is death and bereavement – period – and every contestant knows it.

  • guano

    Clark
    “Sorry, replying to individual comments is proving too demanding for me. Thanks for all and any good wishes, to myself or to others. Yes, here’s to peace.”

    Under the armour and into the skin.
    Why not go to the Okavango Swamps in Botswana, lie down, take off your mosquito net, expose your bum, and wait to see what happens?

    Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get some Bots as well as trolls.

  • doug scorgie

    Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!
    12 Feb, 2014 – 7:13 pm

    “…tell us why Jordan did not create a state of Palestine on the West Bank territories it was “administering”?

    A brief history lesson Habbabkuk:

    The primary objective of King Abdullah of Transjordan in 1948 was not to prevent the emergence of a Jewish state but to take the Arab part of Palestine as part of a secret pact he had made with Golda Meir in November 1947.

    The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (S Flapan 1987)

    King Abdullah’s objective was not to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state but to concentrate his forces in the West Bank and eliminate once and for all any possibility of an independent Palestinian state.

    Israel and the Arab Coalition 1948 (E Rogan and A Shlaim 2001)

  • ESLO

    ESLO, yes, we’re a group here, and I believe we should examine our collective thinking.

    And I’m the one accused of having no sense of irony!

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