[News] What is the GCC up to in Syria?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NA31Ak04.html
January 31, 2012

What is the GCC up to in Syria?
By Pepe Escobar

So the Arab League has a new draft United Nations Security Council 
resolution to "solve" the Syrian saga. [ 1]

World public opinion may be fooled into believing this is an 
altruistic Arab solution to an Arab problem. Not really.

First of all this is a draft resolution of NATOGCC - that symbiosis 
between selected North Atlantic Treaty Organization members and 
selected petromonarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council. By now, 
after their "success" in blasting regime change into Libya, NATOGCC 
should be well known as the axis between the European poodles of the 
Pentagon and the six monarchies that compose the GCC, also known as 
Gulf Counter-revolution Club.

This draft UN resolution goes one step beyond a so-called Arab League 
transition plan laid out over a week ago. Now the spin is of a 
"political roadmap" that essentially means President Bashar al-Assad 
voluntarily stepping out, his vice president installed in power for a 
transition, the formation of a national unity government, and free 
and fair elections with international supervision.

According to the Foreign Minister of Qatar, Hamad bin Jassim 
al-Thani, "The president will delegate his first vice president the 
full power to work with the national unity government to enable it to 
perform its task in the transitional period."

Sounds very civilized - except that it masquerades the real agenda of 
UN-imposed regime change. A quick look at the draft resolution also 
reveals a two-week deadline for Assad to get out of Dodge; if not, 
expect hell, "in consultation" with the Arab League.

"Arab" League is now a fiction; what's really in charge is the Arab 
Gulf league, or GCC league; in practice, the House of Saud. Even 
aspiring regional superpower Qatar plays second fiddle. And everyone 
else, they are just extras.

So here we have the House of Saud and its Gulf minions detailing a 
road map for regime change followed by full Western parliamentary 
democracy, and places like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait 
defending human rights in Arab lands. It's as if this whole thing was 
a joint plan concocted by dadaist Tristan Tzara and surrealist Andre 
Breton with a Monty Python twist.

Stuff your Somalia remix

Not surprisingly, the Syrian government rejected the draft resolution 
as a "blatant intervention in its internal affairs", according to the 
SANA news agency. The Syrian ambassador to the UN, Bashar Ja'afari, 
was even more graphic; "Syria will not be Libya; Syria will not be 
Iraq; Syria will not be Somalia; Syria will not be a failing state."

BRICS member Russia - which alongside China had already vetoed a 
previous Western-redacted resolution - has already buried this one. 
For starters, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov couldn't 
understand why the Arab League suspended its monitoring mission in 
Syria this past Saturday. Instead, Lavrov would "support an increased 
number of observers".

Russia - which in no time learned the lessons of the open-ended UN 
resolution on Libya - has its own draft resolution which, according 
to Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin, privileges a "Syrian-led 
political process", not "an Arab League-imposed outcome of a 
political process that has not yet taken place", or, worse yet, 
"regime change" a la Libya.

Russia - unlike the West - ascribes the now non-stop violence in 
Syria to both the Assad regime and the "rebels". Even the GCC League 
has somewhat admitted that there are shabbihah (armed goons) on both 
sides, those on the "rebel" side affiliated with the already 
discredited Free Syrian Army.

That tray of sweets is all mine
Even though there are no objective conditions whatsoever for a NATO 
bombing of Syria, the NATOGCC + Israel geopolitical axis will pursue 
its objectives relentlessly.

The objectives are vast; exercising total control over any Arab 
Spring-related transition (as in the case of Yemen); preventing any 
changes to the status quo (as in pre-emption in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, 
Morocco); outright repression (as in the case of Bahrain); and 
preferably getting their cake and eating it too (as in the case of Libya).

But Syria is infinitely more complex; because of the Iranian 
connection; because BRICS members Russia and China will block any 
regime change scheme; because there have been no significant cracks 
among the Syrian military; and because the Assad regime is expert in 
navigating the divisions between a Sunni majority and the Alawite minority.

So the GCC League was successful in Yemen - controlling the 
"transition" and even having the dictator Ali Abdulla Saleh sent to 
the United States. It has been relatively successful in Egypt; even 
though the head of the snake (Hosni Mubarak) was kicked out, the 
snake is very much alive and kicking (the military establishment), 
and to top it off, the new parliament boasts a huge Islamist majority 
(our heart goes out to the youngsters who actually started everything 
in Tahrir Square and are left with nothing).

Even the venerable stones in the Umayyad mosque in Damascus know that 
the Syrian National Council (conveniently exiled in NATO members 
Turkey and France) is being financed by the House of Saud and Qatar. 
So expect more GCC-financed weapons to continue raising hell in Syria 
- now even in some Damascus suburbs. No wonder the GCC League had to 
pull out its "monitors"; they would have to roundly denounce the very 
people they are arming.

Even the Playstation King of Jordan - who was the first Arab 
potentate on the record to want to topple Assad (no wonder Jordan was 
invited to be a GCC member) - has been forced to admit, "I don't see 
Syria going through many changes." King Abdullah at least had the 
good sense to observe, "It's a very complicated puzzle and there is 
no simple solution. If you can imagine Iraq being a simple solution 
... and it's different in Libya, so it has everybody stumped and I 
don't think anybody has a clear answer on what to do about Syria."

By the way, there are pro-democracy protests in GCC-addicted Jordan 
virtually every day; but not a peep will be heard about it in Western 
corporate media. "Liberated" Libya totally disappeared from the 
Western triumphalist narrative - even as Amnesty International now 
has evidence of systematic torture in makeshift mini-gulags, and 
Medicines sans Frontiers (MSF) decided to leave Misrata for good 
after being asked by those formerly known as "rebels" to treat 
victims of torture, so they could be tortured again.

Which leads us to the ghastly equivalence between the "transitional 
councils" in both Libya and Syria. Their undisguised masters were - 
and are - NATOGCC. Russia may have its own agenda in Syria, but at 
least the Russians know hardcore violence is being served as much by 
the Assad regime as by the Syrian National Council and the Free Syria Army.

King Playstation at least got one thing right; no one has a clue on 
what to do about Syria. So it's Assad on one side against NATOGCC on 
the other, with average Syrians - covering a wide spectrum of opinion 
- squeezed in the middle. Rumors swirl about a possible plan C; a 
bazaar-style deal, over endless cups of green tea, between Assad and 
the House of Saud. That's unlikely; the GCC League wants the whole 
tray of sweets - and to eat them too.

Note 1. See 
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/120127_syria-res-jan27.pdf%20%29>here. 


Pepe Escobar is the author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim>Globalistan: 
How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 
2007) and 
<http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898>Red 
Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His most recent 
is 
<http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-Escobar/dp/1934840831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233698286&sr=8-1>Obama 
does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).





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