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Carr Calls For Syria Assassination

http://bit.ly/QfnBXg
Published on newmatilda.com (http://newmatilda.com)
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10 Oct 2012

Carr Calls For Syria Assassination

By calling for the murder of Bashar al-Assad, Foreign Minister Bob Carr has shown both his hypocrisy and his lack of understanding about our “allies” in the Syrian uprising, writes Joseph Wakim

Public figures must think twice before commenting about someone’s death.

Veteran broadcaster Alan Jones has learned this lesson after “cyber democracy” took Australian decency into its own hands. They have inscribed an epitaph for his career: you reap what you sow.

But it appears that Foreign Minister Bob Carr has learnt nothing about the volatility of the “death sentence”. His “brutal and callous” call for the assassination of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on ABC Four Corners on Monday was utterly un-Australian, and warrants immediate sanction by Julia Gillard.

Our foreign minister represents a liberal democracy where murder is a crime and the death sentence has long been outlawed. Assassination should not be part of Australia’s strategy to end the proxy war between Iran and Israel that is fought on Syrian soil.

Carr’s comments are yet another example of the foreign minister is trying to force-fit the Libyan template over Syrian territory.

Carr’s rationale that “an assassination combined with a major defection … is what is required to get, one, a ceasefire, and, two, political negotiations” smacks of dangerous naivety. It ignores the fact that to the president and his supporters, Syria is fighting its own “war on terror” and defending its sovereign territory. This religious war has been proudly sponsored by the US and its Gulf allies — the undemocratic kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Rather than creating a cease fire, an assassination would escalate the war beyond the five volatile Syrian borders. Does Carr seriously think that Iran, Russia and China would sit idly by as yet another regime is militarily toppled?

Carr concludes that “we’ve got nothing to do but trust the spirit of the Arab Spring”. The embers of the Arab Spring were actually extinguished long ago by what he himself calls “religious fanatics … who want another form of dictatorship”. The “jihadists,” who answer to fatwas from Saudi sheiks for a holy war to ethnically cleanse Syria from non-Sunnis, want a Salafist theocracy, not a secular democracy. Ironically, Carr’s call for an assassination aligns him with Sheikh Muhammad al Zughbey — “your jihad against this infidel criminal and his people is a religious duty”.

When asked about the presence of Islamic extremists or al Qaeda in the uprising, Carr insists that “the truth is … nobody knows … outside Damascus, observation doesn’t exist”. His sources are all sworn enemies of the Syrian regime — The Friends of Syria, Gulf leaders and Western leaders — and of course they will not concede that extremists have hijacked the uprising.

Inside Syria, observation and monitoring does exist and the al-Qaeda presence has been repeatedly revealed. Journalist Robert Fisk interviewed so-called Syrian rebels inside a Syrian military prison in August, only to find that most were “recycled” foreign mercenaries. Inconvenient facts and counter-narratives such as this cannot be dismissed as pro-Assad propaganda, although Fisk’s piece in particular has drawn some criticism, including from Syrian political dissident Yassin Al-Haj Saleh.

Moreover, Carr has an immediate opportunity to be enlightened by a visiting Syrian nun who has been at the centre of the violence, tending to the war wounded. Despite repeated requests to meet with him, Mother Agnes-Mariam from St James Catholic monastery in Homs has been shunned. She has been forced to flee to Lebanon after being warned that the rebel forces, our allies and future assassins, plotted to abduct her.

Why? Because she was outspoken about the “aggressive armed gangs … abducting people, beheading, bringing terror even to schools”. Like Fisk, she confirms that only about one in 20 rebels are Syrian. She has witnessed how the uprising “steadily became a violent Islamist expression against a liberal secular society” and testifies to a “hidden will to empty the Middle East of its Christian presence”. This darker truth belies the “spirit of the Arab Spring” in Carr’s fantasy.

Unlike Carr, Mother Agnes has a peaceful solution that is gaining momentum — Mussalaha (reconciliation) — a grass roots movement for dialogue and negotiation among Syrian citizens of all ethnic and religious backgrounds who “reject sectarian violence and are tired of war”.

Unlike Carr, her method not assassination and defection, but disarmament — “freeing them of this massive foreign interference and this media instigation for violence”. As part of her international peace mission to the Vatican and the EU, she will lead a delegation of Nobel Prize laureates to Syria next month.

It is abhorrent that Carr links assassination with “what Kofi Annan said was essential”. Like Mother Agnes, Annan promoted disarmament.
Above the negotiation table, the US-Saudi-Qatar axis talked about a political solution, but under the table they sabotaged his “peace plan” with a lucrative supply chain of arms, while criticising those who vetoed more military solutions.

Why is Carr afraid to meet with Mother Agnes? Because she will disarm him of his “just war” theory, and force him to face the facts that he has put us in bed with the terrorists. She may even enlighten him that it was not Libya that endured 17 years of civil war, as he stated, but Lebanon — for 15 years. Like Alan Jones, he should know better, but chooses not to.
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Source URL: http://newmatilda.com/2012/10/10/carr-calls-syria-assassination
Links:
[1] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/radio-broadcaster-alan-jones-blames-cyber-bullying-for-commercials-being-pulled-from-show/story-e6frg996-1226490322476
[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-04/interview-with-bob-carr/4302980
[3] http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/syria/120814/syria-us-proxy-war-iran-saudi-arabia-qatar-sunni-shiite
[4] http://mideastmedia.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/provocative-sheikhs-views-aired.html
[5] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-syrias-road-from-jihad-to-prison-8100749.html
[6] http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/18/51930/Books/Syrian-writer-Robert-Fisk-is-indoctrinated-by-Syri.aspx
[7] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/christians-emptied-from-middle-east/story-e6frg6so-1226489418086
[8] http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/Syria/press.asp?NewsID=1236&sID=41

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Australia’s Naivety On Syria

New Matilda, 4 June 2012

http://newmatilda.com/2012/06/04/australias-naivety-syria
Australia’s Naivety On Syria

Expelling Syrian diplomats from Australia over the al Houla massacre assumes the Assad regime is to blame. The Syrian situation is too complex to act without evidence, writes Joseph Wakim

Spot the three fundamental flaws in this statement by Foreign Minister Bob Carr after he expelled the two most senior Syrian diplomats from Australia:

“Getting Damascus to move towards a ceasefire and to engage in political dialogue with its opposition is the one game plan we’ve got here.”

First, by blaming the Syrian government for the al-Houla atrocity in the Homs Province, he was at odds with the two other diplomats from the UN: Major General Robert Mood, Head of the UN Observer Mission and Joint Special Envoy for the UN/Arab League and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Mood, in his statements after the al-Houla tragedy that saw 108 civilians killed, including 49 children, exercised caution.

“I should not jump to conclusions” he said, urging both the government and the “armed opposition to refrain from violence in all its forms”.

Likewise, Annan issued a condemnation of this “appalling crime… not only for the government but for everyone with a gun”.

If both diplomats remain unconvinced that this massacre could be attributed totally to the Syrian government while the evidence is still being investigated, why has our foreign minister jumped the gun on our behalf?

After the Syrian National Council “repeatedly called for the arming of the Free Syrian Army” the United States pledged “non-lethal” communications equipment while the oil rich states of Saudi Arabia and Qatar committed US$100 million. The military toys are now in the hands of the boys, many of whom are non-Syrian youth recruited from neighbouring countries.

How can we “move towards a ceasefire” if Annan’s six week old, six point plan is undermined by this foreign funding to militarise the conflict? Similarly, Russia should cease to supply arms to the Syrian government.

Second, after Syrian National Army founder Osama al-Munjid vowed “we will never sit and talk” with “butcher Bashar”, how can our foreign minister seriously advocate the possibility of political dialogue? If the SNA are hell bent on toppling this “murderous regime”, they have no interest in negotiation, and will seek every opportunity to incriminate the government to trigger a Libya-style NATO intervention.

Hence the recent 48-hour ultimatum to abandon the ceasefire by the Free Syrian Army’s Colonel Qassim Saadeddine was a cynical stunt. They have no serious intention to engage in political dialogue, yet demand the government “hand over power to the Syrian people”. This is ironic given the 7 May parliamentary elections in Syria. They threaten civil war if the Syrian army does not honour the ceasefire which they themselves have dishonoured.

The stalemate is compounded when the Syrian president insists that there would be “no dialogue” with opposition groups which “seek foreign intervention”.

Our foreign minister needs to use the word opposition in the plural, for Syria’s rebel forces are far from united in their goals and strategy. The original youth who staged an unarmed protest have had their cause hijacked by everyone from Marxist intellectuals to the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Salafists, foreign mercenaries, and Jihadists linked with al Qaeda — ironically now “in bed” with the USA. Some want democracy, others theocracy. Some want urban guerrilla warfare or a bloody overthrow of Assad and others oppose all violence.

It appears the US prefers a Yemen style revolution, maintaining the established secular regime to control the masses, but replacing the president with a puppet who they can control to suit the agenda of their Saudi-Israeli sponsors.

This undermines the goals of political dialogue is indeed the best outcome; it is naïve and hypocritical to push for discussion while the US and our other allies condone an increasingly militarised and divergent “opposition”.

Third, the “game plan” advocated by our foreign minister appears to have misread the more complex reality on the ground in Syria. Modelled on the Libyan rebels, opposition groups seek to create strongholds by setting up road blocks and consolidating pockets of territory.

Once this is achieved, foreign funding can be funnelled in and anti-government attacks can be launched. The Syrian government then overreacts, moving in to smash the potential pocket.

Although the Syria debate is becoming more polarised, critics of the opposition groups are not, by default, Assad apologists. The government’s predictable propaganda and claims of a “tsunami of lies” from the Western media is useless without offering a tsunami of credible evidence to support its claim to truth.

It is insufficient to say the army has “taken an oath to protect civilians” from a foreign armed invasion, and then respond heavy-handedly, rolling army tanks into residential areas. The Syrian government has created a rod for its own back and cannot continue to blame armed gangs and terrorists every time an atrocity is committed.

For example, it needs to explain what its army was doing during the infanticide from 2pm until 11pm on Friday 25 May when the al-Houla area was “guarded by the government forces at five points”, according to Syrian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi, who also announced a “military judicial committee” to investigate the incident?

President Assad’s speech to the newly elected People’s Assembly on Sunday reiterated his siege mentality as he referred to “a war from abroad, to destroy the country”. Hence he has not pitched the violence as a civil war between his own citizens, but as a foreign invasion of Syria’s sovereignty by terrorists and a conspiracy.

Ironically, this has become a self fulfilling prophecy as the more protracted the conflict, the more foreign forces take root. His speech offered nothing new, and the only circuit breaker to the spiralling violence is unconditional political negotiations, as all armed soldiers in Syria are ultimately supplied by foreign forces.

Like the twin suicide car bombs in Damascus which killed 55 people on 10 May near the Syrian military intelligence building, we may never know the truth about these terrorist acts. The close-range shootings and stabbings are atypical to the Syrian army’s methods. It is probable over time that opposition will not have a monopoly on splinter groups and proxies; vindictive pro-Assad militia will likely emerge and commit atrocities in the government’s name.

During his press conference, our Foreign Minister appeared besieged by journalists who appeared to have a more sophisticated understanding of Syria than he did, as he repeatedly retorted: “I need to get advice on that”.

Indeed, he should have been advised not to copy allies who are enemies of the Syrian government. The only message expelling diplomats sends is that we are pre-empting the emergence of conclusive evidence on the many monsters behind the al Houla massacre. By joining the US-led chorus pushing for regime change regardless of the facts, we become followers, not leaders.