The War Creeps Ever Closer

It was to be expected that the Arab League would bow before the West and openly adopt an interventionist position, to the point where, just like the United States and France, they renounced Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and threatened to take the matter before the United Nations Security Council — the same place where the green light was given for the war against Libya.

The major world powers must have put the mission of deployed observers in Syrian territory under a significant amount of pressure, as the preliminary reports did not find evidence of the sort of war crimes that al-Assad was accused of; however, they did report that the regional body was attempting to hide the actions of armed opposition groups.

On various occasions, the United States and its lobby in the Arab League attempted to steer the mission to their desired goal. So, it was no surprise that when the Ministry Council met last Sunday that they once again made a hostile decision against the government in Damascus.

Now, more than ever, the realization is that a foreign intervention is likely — not only because of the position adopted by the Arab League, but also because of the opposition groups who have appealed to the international community after 10 months of unsuccessfully attempting to overthrow the government. They need external military support.

Al-Assad still possesses popular support and has demonstrated his will to integrate promised democratic transformations, such as a constitutional reform that would eliminate the hegemony of the current governing party (Ba’ath party) and allow for multiparty elections at the legislative and presidential levels.

It is also important to note that the majority of the so-called Syrian National Council (also referred to as the Syrian National Transitional Council) is asking for foreign intervention. This group is comprised of Syrians of the Diaspora — a stateless opposition faction similar to the National Transitional Council of Libya.

A few days ago the head of this group, Burhan Ghalioun, traveled to Cairo, the headquarters of the Arab League, to ask that they push the Syrian case to the Security Council of the United Nations, with the objective to obtain majority support for a resolution to create a no-fly zone. This follows the same pattern of what happened in Libya, which opened the doors of an independent and sovereign nation to bombings from the United States, France, Great Britain and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The Syrian National Transitional Council also has its hand in the Free Syrian Army, a paramilitary group that assassinates and damages vital economic points. The National Council for the Syrian Revolution is quite radical in this sense. The brains behind the operation, Osama Mardini, a businessman with strong connections to Stockholm, defends extreme military action by NATO and has had the nerve to declare that the “the people want weapons.”

Another group backing the sovereignty and independence supported by the majority of the Syrian people is the National Coordinating Committee for Democratic Change, headed by Haytham Manna.

Both groups (the Syrian National Transitional Council and the National Coordinating Committee for Democratic Change) reported reaching an agreement after one month of discussions and clearly stated that an “Arab intervention is not considered foreign.”

It would be naïve to think that a group of mercenaries financed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and trained by U.S., British and Israeli agents, will not respond to the interests of the White House, Paris or the interested regional countries.

Moreover, the intervention is already happening, in a backhanded way. It is not a secret that CIA death squads and British intelligence workers who infiltrated the Libyan Islamists have also penetrated the Free Syrian Army.

The opposition is desperate because al-Assad is still on his feet and the opposition is capable of selling their soul to the devil, or to NATO — which is the same.