A Respectable Military Man
All will yet be well. Russia to the rescue. That is, a Russian naval fleet has arrived at a Syrian port to assure President Bashar al-Assad that he remains in the good graces of Moscow. The Arab League may be biting their oil-soaked fingernails in frustration over the brutality of one of their own toward his own Arab citizens, but the Kremlin is quite all right with the status quo. Including ten months of bloodshed.
But that's the way it goes. You win some, you lose some. And the Syrian regime is not quite prepared to lose much of anything. It has girded its resolute intent to ensure that none of those foreign interlopers, terrorists, Islamists, American infiltrators, Mossad spies, will come close to success in throwing over the Assad state.
Interestingly enough the Arab League is somewhat bemused and embarrassed. That their collective will imposed upon President Assad has not resulted in anything approaching closure of the ongoing security forces' assaults on the country's determined and growing protests. Army deserters are being shot and alternately are attacking the military.
Cities in Syria are still being encircled by tanks, and sharpshooters are still claiming their victims. Protesters, be they men, women or children, are still being imprisoned, tortured and they die. And the observer mission, now numbering roughly 150, is still being led around by representatives of the Syrian regime, by security forces steering them where they will encounter fewer incidents of bloodshed.
What government snipers? everything seems quite normal, Lieutenant-General Mustafa al-Dabi of Sudan, complacently confides to the Arab Foreign Ministers. All is well. The Syrian Opposition is hysterical with its condition of paranoia, and simply trying to get the upper hand. Mind, the secretary-general of the Arab League has dismissed claims of collusion with the Syrian regime.
Where did that unfair accusation emanate from? Nabil Elaraby points out that at the insistence of the Arab League, President al-Assad has had over three thousand prisoners released. He has pulled back tanks from city centres. Alas, the military, he concedes are still killing protesters. "Yes, there is still shooting and yes, there are still snipers", he grudgingly agrees.
As for claims of criminal bias being led against Sudan's most excellent Lieutenant-General al-Dabi, who just happens to be leading the observer mission on behalf of the Arab League and who sees no evil, hears no evil, speaks no evil, why he has simply been misunderstood, after all he is "a respectable military man". Who did, as it happens, oversee the torture and 'disappearances' of enemies of his own president, Omar al-Bashir.
As former head of Sudan's military intelligence service after all, he knows critical disaster when he sees it. And mass slaughter and rape and dislocation and plunder. And what is taking place in Syria is simply not to be compared with what has taken place in Sudan whose president at the moment, is visiting Libya, to congratulate the new transitional government there, and being heaped with honour on his visit.
This is the Middle East, after all, a far way from the International Criminal Court whose standards and values and morals are completely out of whack with the reality on the ground here.
 | A pro-Syrian regime protester waving a Syrian flag as he stands in front of portrait of Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, Syria, Friday Dec. 2, 2011 |
| Photo by: AP |
But that's the way it goes. You win some, you lose some. And the Syrian regime is not quite prepared to lose much of anything. It has girded its resolute intent to ensure that none of those foreign interlopers, terrorists, Islamists, American infiltrators, Mossad spies, will come close to success in throwing over the Assad state.
Interestingly enough the Arab League is somewhat bemused and embarrassed. That their collective will imposed upon President Assad has not resulted in anything approaching closure of the ongoing security forces' assaults on the country's determined and growing protests. Army deserters are being shot and alternately are attacking the military.
Cities in Syria are still being encircled by tanks, and sharpshooters are still claiming their victims. Protesters, be they men, women or children, are still being imprisoned, tortured and they die. And the observer mission, now numbering roughly 150, is still being led around by representatives of the Syrian regime, by security forces steering them where they will encounter fewer incidents of bloodshed.
What government snipers? everything seems quite normal, Lieutenant-General Mustafa al-Dabi of Sudan, complacently confides to the Arab Foreign Ministers. All is well. The Syrian Opposition is hysterical with its condition of paranoia, and simply trying to get the upper hand. Mind, the secretary-general of the Arab League has dismissed claims of collusion with the Syrian regime.
Where did that unfair accusation emanate from? Nabil Elaraby points out that at the insistence of the Arab League, President al-Assad has had over three thousand prisoners released. He has pulled back tanks from city centres. Alas, the military, he concedes are still killing protesters. "Yes, there is still shooting and yes, there are still snipers", he grudgingly agrees.
As for claims of criminal bias being led against Sudan's most excellent Lieutenant-General al-Dabi, who just happens to be leading the observer mission on behalf of the Arab League and who sees no evil, hears no evil, speaks no evil, why he has simply been misunderstood, after all he is "a respectable military man". Who did, as it happens, oversee the torture and 'disappearances' of enemies of his own president, Omar al-Bashir.
As former head of Sudan's military intelligence service after all, he knows critical disaster when he sees it. And mass slaughter and rape and dislocation and plunder. And what is taking place in Syria is simply not to be compared with what has taken place in Sudan whose president at the moment, is visiting Libya, to congratulate the new transitional government there, and being heaped with honour on his visit.
This is the Middle East, after all, a far way from the International Criminal Court whose standards and values and morals are completely out of whack with the reality on the ground here.
Labels: Arab League, Conflict, Crisis Politics, Culture, Syria
posted by Pieface | 8:26 PM
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