Putin-Assad twosome comes out on top

G8 Superstar Vladimir Putin

The Vladimir Putin-Bashar al-Assad alliance emphatically won yesterday’s G8 summit finals in Northern Ireland, according to Abdelbari Atwan.

The publisher/editor-in-chief of the London-based pan-Arab newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi writes in Arabic this morning:

Proof the Russian president came out on top at the G8 meeting is corroborated by three peculiarities in the summit’s final statement on Syria, namely:

1. Absence of any explicit and unambiguous call on his partner Assad to stand down as the sine qua non of a political solution to the Syria crisis.
2. Strong endorsement of Geneva-2, where the Syrian regime will be represented by Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem. This translates into recognition of the regime’s legitimacy.
3. A commitment by the G8 leaders to fight and destroy Islamic extremist groups affiliated to al-Qaeda or other Muslim Jihadist organizations.

Thus, after a 26-month uprising and over 100,000 chiefly innocent Syrian fatalities, G8 leaders agree with Assad that he is fighting armed gangs.

This conclusion must have shocked and shaken the armed Syrian opposition, its supporters and its sponsors, especially the Gulf Arab states.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, one of the most ardent Western advocates of arming the Syrian opposition, said, “Yes, there are elements of the Syrian opposition that are deeply unsavory, that are very dangerous, very extremist, and I want nothing to do with them.

“I'd like them driven out of Syria; they're linked to al-Qaeda. But there are elements of the Syrian opposition who want to see a free, democratic, pluralistic Syria that respects the rights of minorities, including Christians, and we should be working with them...

“We have to learn the lessons of Iraq by ensuring the key institutions of the state are maintained through the transition and there is no vacuum.”

Cameron used two very indicative expressions – drive out Islamic extremists and avoid a political vacuum.

The question that begs an answer is this: Who would drive out the extremists and how? The Free Syrian Army under the command of Chief of Staff Gen. Salim Idriss, who was picked by the U.S, and the West as sole conduit of arms aid to opposition forces? Given the arms and funds, the man is presumably prepared to do the job. Gulf countries can chip in and provide both.

Cameron’s suggestion of ridding Syria of extremists is easier said than done, if not impossible in the foreseeable future. The Jihadists groups already have a pervasive presence in Syrian opposition ranks.

Assad told the German premier daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview published on the eve of the G8 summit: “My current term ends in 2014. When the country is in a crisis, the president is expected to shoulder the burden of responsibility and resolve the situation, not abandon his duties and leave.

“I often use the analogy of a captain navigating a ship hit by a storm; just imagine the captain jumping ship and escaping in a lifeboat!

“If I decide to leave now, I would be committing treason. If on the other hand, the public decided I should step down, that would be another issue. And this can only be determined through elections or a referendum.”

A Russian president like Putin, who keeps saying he won’t allow a no-fly zone over Syria and he will continue arms shipment to Damascus, backs Assad.

An American president with trembling knees, who was stung by two defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan and half or quarter of a victory in Libya, backs the Syrian opposition.

Isn’t Assad justified to relax and stretch his legs?

For the nth time, their Western and Arab “friends” have duped the Syrian people.

“The Battle for Qusayr is Sidi Bouzid”

Le Monde on use of chemicals in Damascus (top) and Yara Abbas, who was killed near Qusayr

Top Syria news at this writing:

• President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have repeatedly used chemical weapons against rebel fighters in Damascus, according to first-hand accounts in France's Le Monde newspaper.
• EU foreign ministers are set to discuss British and French calls for them to ease sanctions against Syria so weapons can be supplied to the rebels.
• Yara Abbas, a prominent female war reporter for Syria’s state-run Al-Ikhbariyah TV, was killed near Dabaa airbase, a short distance from Qusayr. Rebels held the town of Qusayr in Homs province for a year but came under attack by Damascus government and Lebanese Hezbollah forces last week.

“The Battle for Qusayr is Sidi Bouzid,” according to Dr. Mamoun Fandy, an Egyptian-born American scholar who is a senior fellow at the Baker Institute, the United States Institute of Peace and at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

He writes in his think piece today for Saudi Asharq Alawsat:

The battle for Qusayr raging between Hezbollah and Syrian opposition forces is identical to Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunis, which sparked the Arab Spring uprising in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria.

Qusayr is Bouzid in the sense of sparking off a new conflict in the Arab region the framework of which was set by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in his Saturday speech.

I must say his address was – in terms of its bona fide implications – the most important I heard in the two years since Egypt’s late Vice President Omar Suleiman announced President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.

Nasrallah’s address effectively outlined the nature of the dawning Sunni-Shiite struggle, the opening round of which is the battle for Qusayr that he vowed to win – win against Sunnis, of course.

To think otherwise is to try hiding the sun with one finger.

Fact is we’re into a second wave of the Arab Spring in Qusayr, but in reverse.

Instead of being between oppositions and regimes, the face-off becomes one between Shiites and Sunnis in order to draw the strategic features of the Arab region for years to come.

The Arab region from hereon will be captive to an ideological clash between Iran-led Shiite supremacy and a Sunni axis comprising Turkey and key Gulf Arab states. Egypt, with a massive Sunni majority (of about 77 million), will remain a bystander.

The Syria war between the Assad army and the opposition showed the former to have serious shortcomings. Its combat capabilities are not what Iran and Hezbollah expected as a backup.

Part of the reasons for Hezbollah and Iran’s intervention is to plug loopholes in the Syrian army and restructure it. But more important is the end result of the three-way Iran-Syria-Hezbollah cooperation in terms of military interoperability (or compatibility in computer parlance).

How would this military coordination between Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah forces affect Geneva-2 and Assad’s exit?

Judging from Nasrallah’s speech, the Shiites have won -- through Iran – a seat at the Geneva-2 negotiating table.

As regards the agenda, the Shiites would be speaking as the regime’s regional sponsor, backed by an international patron represented by Russia’s Sergei Lavrov.

Sadly, after Nasrallah’s discourse, Syrian regime loyalists and opponents will have no say in Geneva-2. The negotiations will be between the two principals: Russia and America.

At the same time, there will be indirect talks between Iran, as the regime’s regional sponsor, and the opposition’s regional patron represented by Turkey and key Gulf Arab states. No wonder the opposition is headquartered in Istanbul, offsetting Iran’s overt political and military defense of the regime.

Post Nasrallah’s speech, the Geneva-2 scenarios are three:

1. A roadmap for a transitional government in Syria
2. A replay of the January 1991 talks between James Baker and Tariq Aziz preceding the war to liberate Kuwait. In that case, the U.S.-European-Arab side would announce the failure of diplomacy and recourse to regime change by force, except there is no appetite for this in the West
3. The West regurgitates what it used to say regarding the Palestine Question: “Look, we are trying. We don’t like what we’re seeing.” The means the West adopts a moral but apolitical position.

Geneva-2 will most probably get nowhere or maybe reach half-solutions, allowing the Shiite-Sunni war’s opening tactical and symbolic battle to continue in Qusayr.

The battle for Qusayr is Bouzid in reverse.

Post-Qusayr, the battle will not be over control of state authority, such as in the Arab Spring states, but over regional hegemony.

The Arab Spring is accordingly moving backwards to a primitive Sunni-Shiite millennium-old conflict.