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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 2/7/12

Syria and those 'disgusting' BRICS

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This article cross-posted from Asia Times

A Greek choir of the "disgusted" and the "outraged" predictably greeted BRICS members Russia and China double veto to the United Nations Security Council resolution imposing regime change in Syria. The resolution was backed by that haven of democracy, the GCC League, the organization controlled by the six monarchies/emirates of the Gulf Cooperation Council formerly known as the Arab League.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the double veto a "travesty." Then Clinton duly incited "friends of democratic Syria" to keep working for regime change, which was the object of the resolution. The copyright for this idea is held by the liberator of Libya, neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said Paris was already working to create a NATOGCC "Friends of the Syrian People Group" in charge of implementing the Arab League's regime change plan.

Right on cue, Paris puppet Burhan Ghalyun, the head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) -- the opposition umbrella group -- also summoned these countries "friendly to the Syrian people." Everybody knows who they are; the US, Britain, France, Israel and GCC members Qatar and Saudi Arabia. With "friends" like these, the "Syrian people" certainly don't need enemies.

Those 'disgusting' BRICS

United States ambassador to the UN Susan Rice -- a top cheerleader of R2P, also known as humanitarian bombing -- called the double veto "disgusting."

Even the venerable stones of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus know that only Washington has the right to wield veto power at the UN -- overwhelmingly to protect the state of Israel's right to kill Palestinian men, women and children with tanks and shelling without bothering about pesky UN resolutions. [1]

Russia, vocally -- and China, silently -- had been adamant for weeks; forget about a UN resolution for regime change in Syria, or worse yet, opening the doors for a Libya-style NATO humanitarian bombing.

Russia has its own geopolitical reasons to consider Syria a red line; Syria hosts Russia's only naval base in the Mediterranean, in the port of Tartus; and Syria buys Russian weapons. But in fact all the five BRICS -- plus the overwhelmingly majority of the developing world -- are in synch; forget about regime change-enabling UN resolutions, promoted by the usual suspect Western trio US-Britain-France and -- the summit of hypocrisy -- devised by the "democratic" House of Saud and Qatar.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will be in Damascus this Tuesday to meet with President Bashar al-Assad and discuss a serious plan to try to end the bloodshed. Lavrov has calmly explained the reasons for the Russian veto.

He had sent Russian amendments to the draft resolution directly to Clinton; "The rationality and objectivity of these amendments should not cause anyone's doubt." But to no avail; the resolution remained "unilateral" -- demanding nothing from Syrian anti-government armed groups. Lavrov stressed, "No president with self-respect, no matter how treated, will agree to surrender inhabited localities to armed extremists without resistance." Imagine if Homs was in Texas.

Still, the SNC now holds Moscow and Beijing "responsible for the escalating acts of killing and genocide," and facilitators of a "license to kill." Lavrov is imperturbable; "We have repeatedly said that we are not protecting Assad but international law. The prerogative of the UN Security Council does not envision interference in internal processes."

Homs: Who's killing whom?

Syria's UN ambassador Bashar Ja'afari strongly denied the opposition's accusation of regime forces bombing the Khadiliya neighborhood in Homs with tanks and artillery and killing over 200 people -- arguing that "no sensible person" would launch such an attack the night before the UN Security Council was discussing a resolution. Without any preliminary investigation, France called it a "massacre" and a "crime against humanity." Like France's performance during the Algerian war?

To understand what's at stake, it's crucial to keep in mind who's defecting from the Syrian army. Syria's top military -- also members of the Ba'ath Party -- are almost all Alawis, the folk Shi'ite sect (10% of the overall population). They are not defecting. The defectors are overwhelmingly Sunni troops (70% of the overall population); they are forming militias, Libya-style, heavily infiltrated by mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, and fighting government troops. The government's response has been to target the neighborhoods where the families of these defectors live. The center of Homs nowadays is controlled by the rebels.

So what's really happening on the ground in Homs? Here are sections from a crucial e-mail sent by a trusted Syrian Christian source:
"Many Syrians are ecstatic about the double veto but Homs is very worrying. The opposition spread news about a massacre just before the vote and they quoted numbers in the hundreds ... unbelievably quoted by all news channels (all based on 'activists') without any verification, only to bring the number down to something like 33 later. They never showed any bombing or taking people under rubble or any injured people ... just clean-bodied men with their hands and feet tied up and shot mostly once and only in their underwear. Whatever the Syrian government has in its arsenal it seems there are very intelligent bombs that can strip and tie up people then shoot them in the head!!

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia (more...)
 

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