Putin's geopolitical chess with Washington in Syria and Eurasia (“voltairenet.org”, France)
For the fact that Russia has blocked the UN resolution, which could lead to military intervention in Syria, the Orwellian West accused her of putting its national interests ahead of the lives of millions of Syrians. Analyzing the actions of Vladimir Putin after his re-election, William Engdahl shows that Russia actually pursues its national interests, which are best served by promoting a fair and peaceful environment in the world and obstructing the American-Israeli plans of the Greater Middle East.
From the moment Vladimir Putin took over the presidency of Russia again, he did not lose a minute to address the most urgent geopolitical threats to Russia at the international level. Not surprisingly, the explosive situation in the Middle East, especially in Syria, is at the center of its agenda. Here, Putin uses all possible means to prevent further deterioration of the situation and turn it into something that could become another "world war as a result of miscalculation." His activities in recent weeks include active personal diplomacy with the Syrian government, as well as the so-called opposition "Syrian National Council." It also includes intense diplomatic negotiations with the Turkish Erdogan regime. It includes diplomacy behind closed doors with Obama. It includes direct diplomatic efforts with Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu.
Syria itself, in contrast to what most of the Western media portray, is a long-standing multi-ethnic and religiously tolerant secular state with President Bashar al-Assad, an Alawiti Muslim, whose spouse belongs to Sunni Muslims. Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam, they do not force their women to wear headscarves and are liberal by Sunni standards, especially for such fundamentalist countries as Saudi Arabia, where women are even forbidden to have a driver's license. The entire Syrian population is a diverse mix of Alawite, Druze and Kurd, Sunni and Orthodox Armenians. If the al-Assad minority regime collapses, experts believe that, like in Egypt, the muddy Sunni (as in Saudi Arabia) organization the Muslim Brotherhood will become the dominant organized political force, which is certainly not welcome in Tel Aviv and certainly not in Russia or China. [1]
According to a well-informed assessment by Gajendra Singh, a retired Indian diplomat who worked for decades in the Middle East and is well acquainted with the ethnic mix in Syria, if the regime of the Alawite minority of Al-Assad falls, the country will quickly slide into bloodshed that will count the 17000 killed today only a prelude. Singh believes that "the defeat of the regime under the leadership of Assad will lead to a mass slaughter of Alawites, Shiites, Christians, and even Kurds and Druze. Together they make up 20% of the country's population of 20 million people." [2]
This equals roughly 4 to millions of Syrians. This should be information for reflection for those in the West who welcome the muddy and dubious opposition "Syrian National Council", which is dominated by the sinister "Muslim Brotherhood", and the armed opposition "Free Syrian army", about which evenThe New York Times"reported that it is full of splits between armed groups.
Moreover, if the conflict turns into internal bloodshed in the Libyan style, it will go beyond the borders of Syria and spread to Turkey. In the area of the Syrian coast there are a significant number of Alawites, and a large number of Alawite live in the neighboring provinces of Turkey Hatay and Antakya.
The BBC illegally used a picture of Iraqi victims as propaganda against the Syrian government.
Photo: Marco Di Lauro, 2003
Understand where in Syria is a fact, and where fiction is discouraging, because the work of the media is limited, and opposition representatives have been repeatedly caught lying about the events there. [3] One recent example was the story of a British journalist about how opposition fighters deliberately brought him into a potential trap to gain propaganda points against the regime in Damascus. The main correspondent of the British TV channel Channel 4 News Alex Thompson told the Associated Press that the Syrian rebels tried to make him die in the neutral zone near the border with Lebanon, saying that they wanted to use his death at the hands of government troops to score propaganda points. [4] Also an example of shameless political manipulation is story about how the BBC was recently caught publishing a photo that, according to the broadcaster, showed the massacre of 25 in Al-Hula in May on 2012, when 108 people died, including 49 children. It turned out that the photo was taken by Italian photojournalist Marco Di Lauro in Iraq in 2003. [5]
The stakes in this geopolitical chess game are no less than the survival of, above all, Syria as a sovereign state, whatever its flaws and shortcomings. Moreover, this concerns ultimately the survival of Iran, Russia and China as sovereign states along with other BRIC countries - Brazil, India and South Africa. In the longer term, this also concerns the question of the survival of civilization, as we know it, and the prevention of world war, which would destroy the planet’s population not tens of millions, like seventy years ago, but most likely this time with billions.
Rates in Syria for Moscow
Russian Putin had a deep hard line around the survival of Al-Assad and Syria as a stable state. Few people ask why Russia warns of a possible world war if Washington continues to insist on demanding an immediate regime change in Syria, as Hillary Clinton does. This is not because Russia intends to promote its own imperialist designs in the Middle East. She is not in very good shape from a military and economic point of view for this, even if she wanted to. Rather, it’s about preserving for Russia the rights to the only Mediterranean port in Tartus, the only remaining military base outside the former Soviet Union, and its only Mediterranean sea replenishment point. In the event of a collision with NATO, this base becomes strategic for Russia.
Yet for Russia, something more is at stake. Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have made it clear that if NATO and the United States launch hostilities against Assad’s Syria, the consequences will be terrifying. Reliable sources in Damascus reported the presence of at least 100000 Russian "technical advisers" in the country. That's a lot, plus a Russian cargo ship carrying repaired Mi-25 combat helicopters is reportedly heading to Syria, while a few days earlier the Russian naval flotilla headed to Tartus, led by the Russian large anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko.
A group of naval ships with a large anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko is heading for the Syrian port of Tartus, where the only Mediterranean Russian naval base is located.
An attempt to send the repaired helicopters back to Syria, which bought them earlier, was blocked in June, not far from the coast of Scotland, when the cargo ship was not flying the Russian flag. Now Moscow has made it clear that it will not tolerate interference in its transportation of goods for Damascus. Representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense Vyacheslav Dzirkalin announced that "the fleet will be sent with the task of ensuring the safety of our ships and preventing anyone from fixing obstacles in the event of a blockade. I remind you that there are no limits," he added calmly. [6] These words mean that Moscow has declared that it is ready to face the version of the Cuban crisis 1962 of the year in the 21 century, if NATO continues to foolishly insist on regime change in Damascus.
While it became clear that the so-called democratic opposition in Syria is dominated by vague "Muslim brothers" - hardly an organization known for its multinational democratic orientation, the victory of the US-supported "Muslim Brotherhood" in Syria, according to Moscow, will cause a wave of Muslim destabilization in Central Asia in the republics of the former Soviet Union. China is also extremely sensitive to this danger, as it most recently faced bloody riots of a Muslim organization backed by the US government in its oil-rich Uygur Autonomous Province of Xinjiang. [7]
Russia resolutely united with China, as both countries fell into a disastrous trap, abstaining from a veto when voting in the UN Security Council on the US resolution. This US resolution made possible not only the destruction of Muammar Gadhafi by NATO forces, but Libya itself as a functioning state. The author of the article personally spoke in Moscow and Beijing after the Libyan catastrophe with well-informed people in both countries about how they could actually be so short-sighted in Libya. In both countries, it has been evidently concluded that the further promotion of Washington’s plans of what George W. Bush called the project of the Greater Middle East is diametrically opposed to the national interests of both China and Russia, hence the iron resistance to NATO’s plans in Syria to change the regime . Today, Russia and China, which are permanent members of the UN Security Council with the right of veto, have used the veto three times on new sanctions against Syria introduced by the United States, the most recent of which was applied on July 19.
Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, insist on strict adherence to the plan proposed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In contrast to what Washington prefers to generously contribute to it, the six-point Annan plan calls not for a regime change, but for a settlement through negotiations and a cessation of hostilities on both sides, for a cease-fire.
Washington's duplex hypocrisy
On the side of the violent regime change in Syria, there is a strange coalition that includes, along with Washington and its European "vassal states" (as Zbigniew Brzezinski called the European members of NATO), [8] is the most conspicuous Saudi Arabia - hardly a regime that anyone can blame for being a model of democracy. Qatar plays another leading role against Damascus, where the American army and the demonstratively pro-NATO propaganda channel are locatedAl Jazeera“In addition, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkish government provides training and training for armed mercenaries and other people who then cross the border into neighboring Syria.
The Erdogan government’s attempt to send the Turkish Air Force’s "Phantom" fighter into Syrian airspace, which flew provocatively low, apparently so as to provoke an incident modeled after the "Gulf of Tonkin" and kindle a flame of NATO intervention like Libyan, two weeks ago failed when the Turkish The General Staff issued a statement: "No traces of explosives or flammable products were found on the wreckage found in the sea." Erdogan was forced to change his position in order to save face, and stopped using the phrase "shot down in Syria" and instead spoke about "our plane, which Syria declared that it destroyed it." [9]
NATO created an operational control center in Iskenderun, in the Turkish province of Hatay, near the Syrian border a few months ago to organize, train and arm "anything but" the Free Syrian Army. [10] The Obama administration, which does not want a full-scale Syrian war before the US elections in November, also reportedly told Erdogan to "calm down".
Most people in the West, who consistently receive information about world affairs from the pages of the Washington Post, CNN or the BBC, are convinced that the Syrian confusion is a clear case of "good guys" ( called the Syrian National Council and its ragged improvised "Syrian Free Army") against the "bad guys" (Al-Assad dictatorship with its armed forces). For more than one year, Western media have shown videotapes, some, as noted, were not even made in Syria, claiming that a massacre was occurring in a one-sided massacre by the regime of an innocent, unarmed opposition civilian population. They have never explained how Assad would benefit from alienating his most important asset for survival, namely supporting the majority of Syrians in the fight against what he rightly called foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Syria.
In fact, according to numerous stories by journalists from Turkey and Syria, including the TV channel RTeyewitnesses claim that from the very beginning the "peaceful democratic opposition" secretly received weapon and training often in camps on the other side of the border in Turkey. Professor Ibrahim Allush from Zaituna University in Jordan said RT:
"Weapon secretly transported to Syria in large quantities from everywhere. It is clear enough that the rebels receive weapons from abroad, and Syrian television showed almost daily deliveries of weapons that were smuggled illegally to Syria through Lebanon, Turkey and other border crossings. Since the rebels support the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] and NATO, it can be assumed that they receive funding and weapons from the same sources that provide them with political cover and financial support."[11]
One venerable Turkish journalist, with whom the author spoke in Ankara in April, had just returned from an extensive trip to Syria, told how he witnessed the seizure of a small group of "opposition" militants. An Arabic-speaking journalist was amazed when the rebel leader asked why the soldiers who had captured them spoke Arabic. When he was told that it was their native language, the rebel leader blurted out - "But you must speak Hebrew, are you from the Israeli army?"
In a word, the mercenaries were quickly prepared not far from the border in Turkey, gave them Kalashnikovs and a few dollars and told them that they were conducting jihad against the Israeli army. They did not even know with whom they were fighting. In other cases, mercenaries recruited in Afghanistan and elsewhere and financed by Saudi money, including alleged al-Qaida members, constitute a “democratic opposition” to the recognized Al-Assad regime.
Even the main newspaper of the American ruling circles "The New York Times"was forced to admit that the CIA presents the Syrian opposition with weapons. She said that" the CIA officers are secretly acting in southern Turkey, helping the allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters on the other side of the border will receive weapons to fight the Syrian government, according to US officials and Arab intelligence officers. Weapons, including machine guns, RPGs, ammunition and some types of anti-tank weapons, are sent mainly across the Turkish border through a shadow network of intermediaries, including Syrian "Muslim Brothers," and are paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, officials said. "[12 ]
The International Committee of the Red Cross now classifies conflict as a civil war. [13] Peter Wallenstein, a leading peace researcher at Uppsala University and director of the Uppsala Conflicts Data Program, stated that "This civil war is becoming more international, and as we know from previous history, the more international the conflict, the last ... it's a civil war, but now there are so many weapons coming in from abroad, that in fact it is an international civil war. " [14]
According to Mary Ellen O'Connell, a reputable legal scholar and professor of law and resolution of international disputes at the University of Notre Dame, "the statement of the International Committee of the Red Cross means that the Assad regime is faced with an organized armed opposition using military force, and it has the legal right respond in the same way. The Syrian army will have more power to kill people based on the fact that they are part of the armed opposition than when Assad was restricted in using force m peacetime. " [15] Opposition rebel groups argue that this means quite the opposite.
While the US Department of State makes sanctimonious official statements about their support for "democracy" and demands that al-Asad withdraw and recognize the dubious and split opposition in the form of the Syrian National Council - the Muslim Brotherhood group, dominated by Russia works skillfully on the diplomatic front to weaken the western campaign in favor of war.
Putin's skillful diplomacy
President Vladimir Putin welcomes UN / Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to Moscow.
So, as soon as Vladimir Putin re-took office as the Russian president of 7 in May, he immediately embarked on a series of complex diplomatic missions to neutralize, or hopefully, to upset Washington’s plan in Syria. On July 16, Putin received Kofi Annan in Moscow, where he reiterated Moscow’s strong support for the Annan plan for a peace settlement. [16]
In connection with significant distortions in the media, it is useful to read the very text of the Annan plan, which consists of six points:
(1) to pledge to work with the envoy for a comprehensive political process led by Syria to accommodate the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people, and to this end to pledge to appoint an authorized contact person when the envoy asks for it;
(2) to pledge to cease hostilities and urgently achieve, under UN supervision, a real cessation of armed violence in all its forms by all parties in order to protect the civilian population and stabilize the country.
To this end, the Syrian government should immediately stop the movement of troops and stop the use of heavy weapons in populated areas and begin to withdraw troop concentrations near or from populated areas.
While these actions are being taken on the ground, the Syrian government should work with an envoy to promote a sustainable cessation of all types of armed violence by all parties with an effective monitoring mechanism on the part of the UN.
The envoy will seek similar commitments on the part of the opposition and all elements related to it in order to stop the hostilities, and work with him to promote a sustainable cessation of all types of armed violence by all parties with an effective monitoring mechanism on the part of the UN;
(3) take the necessary measures to ensure timely humanitarian assistance to all areas affected by the fighting, and to this end, as an immediate measure, agree and implement a two-hour humanitarian pause and agree on the exact time and conditions of the daily pause through an effective mechanism, including at the local level;
(4) to accelerate the pace and scale of the release of arbitrarily detained persons, including particularly vulnerable categories of persons, and persons involved in political activities, to provide, without delay, through appropriate channels, a list of all places where such persons are held, to immediately start organizing access to such places and through appropriate channels to quickly respond to all written requests for information, access or release for these individuals;
(5) guarantee freedom of movement around the country for journalists and non-discriminatory visa issuance policies;
(6) respect the freedom of association and the right to hold peaceful demonstrations, as guaranteed by law. [17]
In Annan’s plan, there is no demand that Bashar al-Asad leave before the cease-fire, in contrast to what Hillary Clinton repeats after she claimed that the United States also supports this plan. Annan's plan calls for a diplomatic solution. The United States obviously does not want a diplomatic solution. They want a regime change, and they obviously want an expanding war across the entire watershed between Shiites and Sunnis in the Muslim world.
Moscow and Beijing just as clearly want to draw a line and prevent the spread of chaos from Syria. 19 July Russia and China, members of the UN Security Council with veto power, again blocked the US-supported resolution on Syria, which, they argued, was intended to make the UN Security Council resolution possible based on the 7 chapter on Syria. The head of 7 allows the Council, consisting of 15 member countries, to authorize action, starting with diplomatic and economic sanctions and ending with military intervention. [18] The Haig resolution demanded that the Syrian government withdraw all of their heavy weapons from urban areas and return troops to the barracks during 10 days. Not a word was said about the disarmament of the "Free Syrian Army". Washington claimed that he was only interested in economic or diplomatic sanctions, not military. Well, of course. Um ....
Putin has more than enough leverage to use in relations with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. Erdogan visited Moscow shortly before the July 19 vote at the UN Security Council to discuss Syria with Putin. [19] Turkey is the second largest buyer of Russian natural gas, about 80% of its natural gas comes from the Russian state-controlled Gazprom. [20]
Turkey’s entire “energy hub” strategy, which is to play a key role in gas flows from Eurasia and from the Middle East to Europe, depends on gas from Russia and Iran. A year ago, an agreement worth 10 billion dollars was signed between Iran, Iraq and Syria to build a gas pipeline from the huge Iranian South Pars field to Iraq, Syria, and further to Turkey, and in the future it will be connected to Europe. [21]
Putin also visited Tel Aviv June 21 to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. [22] Russian influence in Israel is considerable. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of Russians, mostly Jews, have emigrated to Israel over the past two decades. Israel cannot greatly rejoice at the prospect of opposition to power in neighboring Syria under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. Although there were few details about the content of the talks, it is obvious that Putin conveyed the message that "a destroyed, disoriented and fragmented Syria will not help Israel.
“In Syria, there is the second most well-organized structure of the Muslim Brotherhood after Egypt,” according to former Indian Ambassador K. Gajendra Singh. [23]
Then, on July 11, Putin and Lavrov invited Abdel Basseta Seydou, the new head of the US-backed opposition organization, the Syrian National Council, to “talks” in Moscow. Seyda, descended from the Syrian Kurdish minority and lived in émigrés in Sweden for twenty years, is a curious figure as an opposition representative of the Kurdish minority in Syria — a person with little or no active political experience, clearly chosen mainly to hide SNA dominance "Muslim Brotherhood". Russia has reportedly made it clear to Seyda that it will continue to block any attempts to overthrow Assad and that the opposition must seriously observe the Annan plan and hold talks to resolve the situation. Seyda, for his part, made it clear that there would be no negotiations until Assad leaves - this position supports bloodshed. [24]
In the midst of all this bloodshed and escalating violence, there are signs that Putin has reached some kind of tacit agreement with Obama to rule out war until after the US elections in November. Russia recently agreed to reopen US military supply routes in Afghanistan, at the same time that Washington organized an "apology" for the recent killing of civilians in Pakistan by its drones. [25]
Experienced wandering journalist Pepe Escobar recently summarized the situation in all its gloomy reality:
"Turkey will continue to provide the material and technical base to mercenaries arriving from "liberated" Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Lebanon. Saudi dynasty will continue to give them money for weapons. And Washington, London and Paris will continue to finely regulate the tactics of the process, which remains a long, boiling prelude to the NATO attack on Damascus. And although the armed Syrian opposition does not control anything significant inside Syria, expect that the mercenaries, armed with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, will become even more merciless. Expect the non-Free Syrian army to continue operations for many months, if not years. The key point is whether a sufficient number of supply lines will remain in effect - if not from Jordan, then from Turkey and Lebanon"[26]
[1] David Harding, "How is the meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood?," The Daily Mail, 18 July 2012.
[2] Gajendra Singh, Syria: An update on regional, regional and international standoff, 18 July, 2012, email to author.
[3] "NATO preparing vast disinformation campaign”, By Thierry Meyssan, Komsomolskaïa pravda, Voltaire network11 June 2012.
[4] Raphael Satter, "UK journalist Syria rebels led me into death trap," Associated Press, June 8, 2012.
[5] Richard Lightbown, "Syria: Media Lies, Hidden Agendas and Strange Alliances," Global Research, June 18, 2012.
[6] Tom Parfitt, Russian ship sets with helicopters, The Telegraph, 13 July, 2012.
[7] "Washington is Playing a Deeper Game with China”, By F. William Engdahl, Voltaire network, 13 July 2009.
[8] The vassal quote by Zbigniew Brzezinski: "... barbarians from coming together. The Grand Chessboard: The American Primacy And The Geostrategic Imperatives , 1997, p. 40
[9] Adrian Blomfield, Syria: Turkey jet crash may have been accident, The Telegraph, 12 July, 2012.
[10] Pepe Escobar, "Why Turkey won't go to War with Syria," Voltaire network, July 8, 2012.
[11] RT, "Syrian opposition getting 'daily shipments' of arms", 8 February, 2012.
[12] Eric Schmitt, "CIA Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition," The New York Times, June 21, 2012.
[13] Mariam Karouny and Erika Solomon, Syrian forces surround rebels fighting in capital, Reuters, July 16 2012.
[14] Victor Kotsev, "Chaos in Syria overshadows rebels' hopes," Asia Times, July 18, 2012.
[15] Ibid.
[16] AFP, "Russia's Putin to meet Annan for Syria talks, "15 July 2012.
[17] "Six-Point Proposal Presented to Syrian Authorities", UN Security Council, 21 March 2012.
[18] Voltaire network stated, "Russia, China for third time, "19 July 2012.
[19] RiaNovosti stated, "Turkey Meets Turkey's Erdogan Ahead of Syria Vote,, "19 July 2012.
[20] F. William Engdahl, "The Geopolitical Great Game: Turkey and Russia Moving Closer," Voltaire network, 1 March 2009.
[21] Pepe Escobar, op. cit.
[22] AFP, on. cit.
[23] K. Gajendra Singh, Calm Middle East Tempest?, TARAFITS, June, 2012.
[24] RT stated, "Syrian National Council for first-ever talks, "11 July, 2012.
[25] Pepe Escobar, on. cit.
[26] Ibid.
Information