Stephen Lendman

Previous articles stressed Washington's longstanding regime change plans in Syria. Independent sovereign states aren't tolerated. Replacing them with pro-Western ones is policy. All means are used. They include punishing sanctions, color revolutions, violent coups, subversion, cyberwar, targeted assassinations, armed insurgencies, and war if other methods failed.

So far, Syria and Iran withstood hostile Washington assaults. At issue is what's next? On April 12, Syria was largely calm. Both sides halted hostilities. For how long?

Calm and stability defeat Washington's agenda. Advancing it depends on violence blamed on Assad. Expect lull conditions to be temporary.

Insurgent attacks will resume. It's just a matter of time. Alleged or provoked incidents will be used as justification. Perhaps one already occurred.

On April 12, Today's Zaman headlined, "Syrian troops fire on refugees fleeing Turkey," saying:

Hours before the ceasefire deadline, Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency said Syrian troops "reportedly" fired on civilians fleeing to Turkey. "(N)o casualties were reported." Regard the allegation skeptically.

Syrian forces engage armed insurgents. Noncombatant civilians aren't attacked. Why would they fire on men, women and children posing no threat? Reports said they tried to enter Southern Turkey through its Kilis Province Oncupinar border post.

If an attack occurred, blame insurgents, not Assad. Witnesses said they heard "heavy gunfire." It was dark. Attackers weren't visible. It suggests guerilla activity, not an army provoked incident.

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Rosa Moussaoui & Hassane Zerrouky

Les contrecoups de la guerre de Nicolas Sarkozy et de ses alliés de l’OTAN en Libye déstabilisent la zone sahélo-saharienne. Toute une région est menacée de dislocation. Une aubaine pour les djihadistes et les trafiquants.

« Il est exact que la situation en Libye, la circulation des personnes et des armes ont ravivé ce conflit et favorisé l’offensive de la rébellion en janvier. Mais elles ne l’expliquent pas », affirmait le ministre français des Affaires étrangères, Alain Juppé, le 3 avril dernier, dans un entretien à l’AFP, à propos de la situation dans le nord du Mali. « Il est exact que des hommes et des armes sont arrivés au Sahel et cela concerne toute la région », admettait-il encore trois jours plus tard, qualifiant Al-Qaïda au Maghreb islamique (AQMI) de « péril grave pour le Mali » et pour toute la bande sahélo-saharienne. Le même qualifiait en 2011 l’intervention française en Libye d’« opportunité » pour la France et ses « entreprises », écartant tout risque de déstabilisation régionale. Alain Juppé, qui bottait régulièrement en touche dès lors que le risque islamiste était évoqué, n’hésitant pas à démentir tout armement des « rebelles » libyens avant que des avions français ne leur parachutent des armes, fait aujourd’hui mine de s’inquiéter. Or il savait que le pillage des arsenaux du régime de Kadhafi suscitait l’inquiétude des pays voisins, singulièrement du Mali et de l’Algérie. Les autorités françaises étaient parfaitement informées de la présence active en Libye de groupes islamistes armés liés à Al-Qaïda, comme le Groupe islamique combattant libyen (GICL, devenu Mouvement libyen pour le changement) d’Abdelhakim Belhadj, aujourd’hui gouverneur militaire de Tripoli grâce au soutien du Qatar et de l’OTAN. Citons encore le seigneur de guerre de Misrata, Abdelhakim Al Assadi, formé par les Taliban. Il était évident que ces hommes aideraient leurs « frères » du Maghreb et de la zone sahélo-saharienne, impliqués dans des groupes armés comme AQMI, Ansar Eddine (« les partisans de la religion ») de l’ex-chef rebelle touareg Iyad Ag Ghali, ou encore le Mouvement pour l’unicité et le djihad en Afrique de l’Ouest (MUJAO), branche dissidente d’AQMI qui a revendiqué l’enlèvement de trois Européens à l’automne 2011 près de Tindouf et, plus récemment, l’attentat de Tamanrasset, début mars 2012.

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Bill Van Auken

Imam Abu Hamza al-Masri addresses followers during Friday
prayer in near Finsbury Park mosque in north London.

The ECHR’s ruling is an expression of the degradation of democratic sensibilities and the frontal assault on basic rights that is taking place throughout Europe. The social and political impulses within the US that gave rise to Guantanamo, rendition, assassinations and torture are now expressing themselves powerfully on the European continent.

Tuesday’s ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) allowing Britain’s extradition of five alleged terror suspects to face trials in the US speaks volumes about the erosion of basic democratic principles throughout Europe.

In July 2010, the ECHR took the extradition cases under consideration. The most obvious legal problem presented by the American extradition requests was that the European Convention on Human Rights, the international treaty under which the court was founded, sets forward a number of principles wholly at odds with the extradition and the practices of the US government.

The convention states, for example, that anyone detained or arrested “shall be brought promptly before a judge” and “shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial.”

Two foreign nationals covered in the extradition ruling, Adel Abdul Bary, an Egyptian, and Khaled al-Fawwaz, a Saudi, have been held without trial for 12 years.

Babar Ahmad, a British citizen covered by the ruling, has been held without charges or trial for eight years awaiting extradition. His alleged offense is “material support for terrorism” for having managed Islamist web sites between 1997 and 2003 that supported insurgents in Chechnya and Afghanistan.

Syed Talha Ashan, charged with the same offense as Ahmad, has been detained since July 2006, also on the basis of an extradition request from the US.

Aside from Britain’s glaring violations of the rights supposedly upheld by the ECHR, the US itself is infamous for its assertion of the right to hold individuals in military detention indefinitely without charges or trials. It has imprisoned individuals under these conditions for a decade at its Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. President Barack Obama recently signed into law legislation affirming his “right” to condemn US citizens to indefinite military detention.

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Stephen Lendman

Syria is target one, then Iran. The road to Tehran runs through Damascus. Western-backed insurgents can't match Assad's security forces.

In 2011, Libyan killer gangs had air force support. Without NATO, they'd have been routed.

Expect stepped up intervention in Syria. All signs suggest it. The April 10 deadline came and went. Assad began pulling back. Insurgent violence continues. He's obligated to confront it. Responsible leaders can do no less. Their people depend on it. If governments won't protect them, who will?

Nonetheless, Assad's vilified for doing his job. Calls for greater intervention grow. Turkey wants a new Security Council resolution. Ankara says Annan's peace plan failed.

Its designed intention was failure, not success. It's sham cover for Washington's longstanding regime change plans. Kofi Annan's imperial tool credentials got him appointed Arab League Syrian envoy.

He keeps pointing fingers the wrong way. His demands on Assad are relentless. He insists he pull back and leave his people defenseless. His comments about insurgent violence are muted, disingenuous, and intended to solve nothing.

In a letter to the Security Council, he accused Assad of failure to comply with peace plan terms. He said he hasn't withdrawn troops or ceased violence. He claimed Syrian forces keep "conduct(ing) rolling military operations in population centers, characterized by troop movements into towns supported by artillery fire."

"While some troops and heavy weapons have been withdrawn from some localities, this appears to be often limited to a repositioning of heavy weapons that keeps cities within firing range.”

He added that demanding insurgents provide written ceasefire guarantees jeopardizes conflict resolution. He accused Assad of introducing "ex post facto requirements that are not part of the six-point plan that they agreed to implement."

Doing so ignores the obvious. Peace can't happen unless both sides agree and jointly implement terms, not one, then maybe the other later or not at all.

He also turned a blind eye to ongoing heavy weapons and other equipment supplied insurgents, as well as funding, and US/UK, and perhaps other outside Special Forces on the ground providing training and direction for months.

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