The Syrian People Alone Must Decide Who Stays and Who Goes

Oct 23, 2013, VNN

Even as mercenaries and émigrés used to destroy Syria meet under the auspices of the UK, US and France and insist on regime change despite the on the ground reality in Syria, the US-Iran negotiations have been welcomed by citizens all over the world.  The government of Saudi Arabia has publicly dissented, in a manner unprecedented and immature in diplomatic history, an open admission that the decades of guarantee for the continuance of the House of Saud as the government of Arabia in perpetuity, is coming to an end.

With financial systems both in the USA and UK broken, the House of Saud finds it convenient to jettison the alliance under one pretext or the other, in particular if there is no assistance forthcoming on Syria which it desired to take over.  If Syria falls, Lebanon follows, which was also the Israeli objective.

The United States on the other hand is facing an ongoing serious financial crisis, which it can only cope with in cooperation with the rest of the world and not on the basis of wars or threats of wars.  The financial elite of the US now regards its own restive citizens as the frontline enemy waiting to revolt, seriously impacted as they are by austerity and the bailouts of the “too big to fail” banks and corporations.

The conclusion of the United States policy makers is that if the USA mends its relationship with Iran, its Banks and companies will return to Iran as the economy opens up, and it may be possible in alliance with Iran to manage its commercial and political interests in Iraq and the Arab world, in Afghanistan, Central Asia and beyond, without extensive troop deployment by cooperating with a regional dominant partner.

The Saudi position must be seen as a reaction to the US-Iran negotiations which includes other European powers, and is directly related to financial and geopolitical reality of the world today, just as much as is the decision of the United States and other major European powers, to resolve outstanding issues with Iran. This is another signal of a global shift in diplomatic and power relations based on the new economic and financial realities of the world, as many erstwhile dominant powers are now financially broken, including many in the G7.

When these shifts further the interests of peace, we welcome these changes, if it means that all military and external intervention in the internal developments of countries in the region cease, including the use of hired mercenaries for covert warfare. What we have seen on the ground in Libya (apart from the thousands of bombing sorties) is the operation of armed private militia for regime change; whereas in Syria we have seen the operation of foreign mercenaries financed and paid for by Saudi Arabia and Qatar with military and logistic support from Turkey and Jordan, supported by US, UK, France and others, with a view to secure regime change.

Even in Egypt from the very outset of the revolt, there has been intervention in the internal affairs of Egypt ignoring the demands of the Egyptian people, to position different players.  However all this is backfiring in many parts of the world, and soon some governments will discover that military and political intervention as distinguished from aid, trade and other assistance, is counterproductive in the new Multipolar World Order which has emerged, where there are alternatives available to smaller states and countries, and no one is dependent any more on hegemons, global or regional.

On the ground this means that people in all societies will assert themselves to secure the political system they require, free from the threat of being isolated and suffocated, in the manner in which the former USSR or Cuba or Chile under former President Allende were, among other examples of alternative political systems being denied normal financial, economic and trade relations to secure their political demise.

What passes off as the “Syrian Opposition” are gangs of thugs and mercenaries or émigrés residing in 5-Star hotels paid for and maintained by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey supported by the United States, the UK and France among a few others. These criminalized gangs have nothing in common with the Syrian people, who are not ready to give up their centuries old civilization of respecting all cultures and religious philosophies and the independence of their political and economic decisions and the right of every Syrian to freedom of worship and belief.

President Bashar Al Assad must be supported internationally when he says publicly that it is only the Syrian people who can decide their own political destiny. It is their decision.  As and when normalcy returns in the manner to be determined by the Syrian people, the President of Syria will abide by their decision, and in the meanwhile, he will not desert his country when war and incalculable destruction have been imposed on the Syrian people, with millions displaced, civilian infrastructure bombed, and valuable heritage sites reduced to rubble which constitute not only Syrian heritage but world heritage.

The leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation must understand that if one head of state is coerced even through a so-called Geneva Conference 2 (which actually gives respectability to those who have murdered, pillaged and looted), tomorrow the same will be demanded by global financial oligarchies behind governments desiring regime change in other countries.  We have seen so many alternative methods of regime change, either by colored revolution matched by stepped-up global propaganda or by military or covert criminalized mercenary operations, privatizing war.

To give only two examples of forced regime change when the International Community was too weak to stand up:

One was after the PDP government stepped down in Afghanistan under President Najibullah’s leadership, through a so-called consensus between the major powers brokered in a Geneva accord, even though the Afghan army had successfully resisted a ‘Mujahideen’ onslaught led by War Lords.  Afghanistan, being land-locked, was denied its trade routes from the North by Gobachev after withdrawal of Soviet troops, and from the East and West by its neighbors.

The consequent regime change resulted in continuous brutal wars and aggression against the Afghan people which is still ongoing, using the sectarian card, and Afghanistan has been reduced to a Narco state, with the world’s powerful Intelligence Agencies seeking to control the heroin trade for laundering into the world’s most powerful Banks.

Similarly, Libya has been reduced to medieval barbarism through innumerable private militias as a consequence of an International agreement to impose a “No Fly Zone”, also the result of a consensus between major powers.

Syria cannot be allowed to go the way of Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq, where sectarian and tribal divisions have been used to unleash permanent civil strife to better loot resources by the aggressors feeding off the killings, maiming and forced displacement of millions.

Every political society as represented by a nation state must have autonomy for its own decisions. Political leaders cannot be imposed from outside, nor can they forcibly be asked to step down because outside powers do not want them because they desire to politically and economically devour societies targeted for regime change. It is Syrians alone who must decide who stays and who goes.  Heads of States are not Viceroys of outside powers; they are accountable to their own people.

 

Ed.note:  The US and Saudi Arabia have in the past collaborated in Afghanistan, Pakistan, former Yugoslavia and Yemen among other countries. The reality is that Al Qaeda which is Arabic for the “base”, was a covert operation primarily of the Intelligence Agencies of US,UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan apart from Intelligence Agencies of other countries, to use primarily ‘Islamist  mercenaries’ camouflaged as “salafists” recruited world wide for covert military operations first in Afghanistan against the left wing government which was formed in 1979,and then world wide wherever agent provocateur actions were required or intervention, as a part of NATO covert operations were necessary to create chaos  for regime change or the take over of the resources of a country by overrunning it and securing regime change. 

Israel and Saudi Arabia now join forces against Syria and Iran.