IRDIPLOMACY.com

An interview with Hossein Sheikholeslam, a former Deputy Foreign Minister and an expert on Middle East affairs

Mr. Muaz al-Khatib, the head of the Syrian National Opposition Coalition, has declared his readiness to negotiate with the Syrian government. What is your analysis of this position?

We must understand on whose behalf Mr. Muaz al-Khatib is proposing this idea. Is this his personal opinion or the opinion of the general coalition which the Americans and the Qataris and the Turks have established? Therefore, it must be clarified which part of the coalition he is representing .The value of this position is determined when Mr. Muaz al-Khatib is able to stop the violence. If hundreds of such positions are taken but the violence still continues, this would show that he has no power and those who are present in the scene and fight and take terrorist measures do not pay attention to his ideas. Thus, it must be considered that this position is valuable to the extent of its impacts on the scene.

Now let's assume that this was the position of the whole coalition. We must note that Mr. Muaz al-Khatib represents a part of the outside opposition. The coalition is part of the outside opposition which has no authenticity. These are the people who take orders from the West and gain their financial resources from other parties. Therefore, the opinion of the coalition is the opinion of their western and Arab supporters. These have no value. It must be seen whether their masters have the same positions.

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John W. Whitehead

“Much of our foreign policy now depends on the hope of benevolent dictators and philosopher kings. The law can’t help. The law is what the kings say it is.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing for The Atlantic

“If George Bush had done this, it would have been stopped.” — Joe Scarborough, former Republican congressman and current MSNBC pundit

When Barack Obama ascended to the presidency in 2008, there was a sense, at least among those who voted for him, that the country might change for the better. Those who watched in awe as President Bush chipped away at our civil liberties over the course of his two terms as president thought that maybe this young, charismatic Senator from Illinois would reverse course and put an end to some of the Bush administration’s worst transgressions—the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, the torture, the black site prisons, and the never-ending wars that have drained our resources, to name just a few.

A few short years later, that fantasy has proven to be just that: a fantasy. Indeed, Barack Obama has not only carried on the Bush legacy, but has taken it to its logical conclusion. As president, Obama has gone beyond Guantánamo Bay, gone beyond spying on Americans’ emails and phone calls, and gone beyond bombing countries without Congressional authorization. He now claims, as revealed in a leaked Department of Justice memo, the right to murder any American citizen the world over, so long as he has a feeling that they might, at some point in the future, pose a threat to the United States.

Let that sink in. The President of the United States of America believes he has the absolute right to kill you based upon secret “evidence” that you might be a terrorist. Not only does he think he can kill you, but he believes he has the right to do so in secret, without formally charging you of any crime and providing you with an opportunity to defend yourself in a court of law. To top it all off, the memo asserts that these decisions about whom to kill are not subject to any judicial review whatsoever.

This is what one would call Mafia-style justice, when one powerful overlord—in this case, the president—gets to decide whether you live or die based solely on his own peculiar understanding of right and wrong. This is how far we have fallen in the twelve years since 9/11, through our negligence and our failure to hold our leaders in both political parties accountable to the principles enshrined in the Constitution.

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Hervé Bar

Bitter Abu Mahmoud, respected rebel leader, accuses fellow commanders of marring revolt through corruption.

"The real revolution in Syria is over, we have been betrayed," laments a bitter Abu Mahmoud, a respected rebel leader, accusing fellow commanders of marring a "beautiful" revolt through corruption. "Our beautiful revolution has been confiscated by thieves and corruptors," Abu Mahmoud says as he struggles to hide his bitterness at the way the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad's regime is being fought these days. Some rebel leaders have "enriched (themselves) shamefully at the cost of true revolutionaries who die on the front line," he says.

Abu Mahmoud's remarks confirm growing reports of looting and corruption by leading insurgents in rebel-controlled areas of strife-torn Syria. Speaking from his home in the town of Atme — a key rebel rear base on the border with Turkey — Abu Mahmoud says he now watches his back, taking his Kalashnikov with him when he heads out "chopping wood or grazing goats in the mountains".

Rebel fighters who took up arms against Assad's forces in the initial days of the rebellion are increasingly abandoning their fight, frustrated at the level of corruption in their leadership, he says. "These so-called commanders send us to die and they themselves stay behind to make money. They don't come to the front line to fight and yet they are the ones who are heading the rebellion," complains Abu Mahmoud. "Wherever they go, they rob, they steal whatever they can carry and sell it illegally in Turkey — be it cars, electronic goods, machines, fuel, antiques, anything you can imagine!"

Abu Mahmoud cites the names of a dozen commanders from the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) — the main group fighting Assad's forces — who he says are engaging in such practices in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo. One officer, whose unit of around 100 fighters is reputed for "raids" on abandoned apartments in Aleppo, has sold "arms, cars and even his office in the border town of Bab al-Hawa" to build two beautiful homes and marry a third wife.

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