Procrastinating Ruse

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have stated they would like to arm the Syrian Free Army and all those who have formed the opposition to the current Alawite regime in Syria.  Turkey appears to feel likewise.  Yet Turkey has its own agenda.  Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as Sunni-led countries, view Syria as a satellite of Shiite Iran - which, in a sense, it is - and with the downfall of Syria, they know that Iran will experience far more difficulty in its resistance to demands by the UN's IAEA and most members of the Security Council, that it cease its nuclear program.

Turkey, on the other hand, has a special relationship with Iran, one which it hardly advertises, although Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has just visited Iran.  Turkey, on the other hand, vigorously supports Iran's sovereign 'right' to continue with its nuclear ambitions, echoing Iran's insistence that its program is strictly meant for peaceful, domestic means, having no intention whatever to perfect and amass a nuclear arsenal.  Turkey's friendship with Syria has frayed as a result of Bashar al-Assad's brutal crackdown on protesters against his regime.

Yet Turkey's response to Syria's brutal battering of its citizens has no corresponding parallel in its reaction to Iran's crackdown on protesting Iranians during their attempted 'green revolution', after the 2009 presidential vote that had been blemished by corruption and which was deplored by the regime's opponents.  What Syria is doing to its protest movement is viewed by Turkey as immoral and an abuse of human rights, but what Iran did to its protest movement appears to have the complete approval of Turkey.

A conundrum within a puzzle, that Turkey sides with Saudi Arabia against Syria, prepared to put together a safety corridor for protesters, and having taken in Syrian refugees and hosting the Syrian National Council headquarters in Turkey.  Yet, as a member of NATO, a stalwart supporter of the United States, citing itself as committed to battling terror, it nonetheless supports the aspirations of the U.S.'s most dread enemy, Iran.  This convoluted logic simply demonstrates the kind of complicated, Byzantine politics and associations that reflect the Middle East.

Syria has now officially given an adoption date of mid-April for UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's ceasefire plan in a bid to bring a halt to the carnage in Syria.  The protest movement led by the Syrian National Council as the main opposition alliance, and prosecuted by the Free Syrian Army, is already in disarray, government forces having taken back the cities that the protest movement claimed to have rescued from the regime.

The Syrian military is still bombing Homs.  Burhan Ghalloun, leader of the Syrian National Council, urged the gathering of  'friends of Syria' represented by 82 countries and international organizations in Istanbul, to create "safe zones" to aid the rebellious refugee population from military assault.  As for a peaceful settlement with the regime: "The international community should see that there is no political reconciliation with the regime in Syria."

Expressing on behalf of the Syrian opposition movement what the government of Bashar al-Assad itself feels.  For it too is not prepared and never will be, to negotiate and reconcile with the protest movement.  It is busily determined to violently erase the opposition from contention, and to that end its military has been deployed and quite successfully.  The opposition is no longer in a position to claim successes, it has been routed.

And by mid-April, at which time al-Assad has claimed his regime will set aside its military assaults against Syrians, there will be little opposition left to deal with.  And if there is a resurgence of the opposition, it can be fairly well assumed that al-Assad and his supporters will suddenly remember that they weren't serious about negotiating with them for a peaceful settlement to begin with, and re-commence the bombardment.