Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Syrian News Roundup

"Syria says Ambush Kills 5 Security Personnel" - right...and it is true because SANA says so. If you don't believe SANA then you're probably not a patriot, and not really Syrian, and probably working for the Mossad and the CIA and al Qaeda.

"ONGC mulls bringing its Syrian oil to India" according to sources speaking to Reuters


Well, India is often cited as a 'friend' by the Syrian regime so this move does make sense. As one company man there says, it's a "win-win" situation. Of course, India is farther from Syria than Europe is, and that will make the oil a little bit more expensive for that company. It's not a permanent solution, and I'm pretty sure ONGC will probably wrangle a good deal from themselves since they have the Syrian suppliers by the balls. So, overall, I doubt how effective this move will be for the Syrian regime in the long run. It will also be interesting to see how the unilateral European and American sanctions might start to creep onto those Indian companies doing business with the regime. There is no way this would happen yet, but if things begin to escalate, then it just might be an option. Let's see. Of course this does show that oil revenues are very important to the Syrian regime, and the loss of the European markets required an almost immediate replacement to keep those revenues coming in.

David Cameron recently took a tougher line in his first UN speech. Mentioning Syria he said, "Above all, on Syria, it is time for the Members of the Security Council to act". Of course Mr Cameron didn't have a problem with tyrants when he was visiting Putin a few days ago. Nor did Blair have a problem with Gaddafi when he met him in a tent in the Libyan desert and sorted out a tasty deal for BP. Yes, Libyan oil was available for the West before the Libyan revolution, and yes, Western leaders are hypocritical, but that's the nature of the beast. If the Syrians want to get rid of Assad, they will have to capitalise on whatever political currency they can get.


A clip on al Jazeera English showing the family of the "Israeli spy" that Syrian television paraded on air. Apparently he was instrumental in the killing of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbullah's man, a few years back. I think the Syrian claims are nonsense on stilts, as are all their on-air "confessions". Somebody should tell them that these things went out of fashion around the time that Stalin died.

And next we have the often forgotten victims of these revolutions: 21 Filipinos are arriving back home from Syria. The Filipino Department of Foreign Affairs is urging its citizens to leave Syria (apparently there are 17,000 Filipino nationals there). I guess Madam is going to have to do her own dishes from now on, which should go down a treat.

The WSJ has a silly article about how the Maronite Church in Lebanon has "long supported independence from dictatorship and military occupation". There is a political spectrum in Lebanon that is licking its lips with relish at the problems happening in Syria, and I find their mock indignation at the plight of the Syrian people quite tasteless. I don't recall them expressing such horror at the treatment of Syrian workers in Lebanon.

Some are beginning to say that the Syrian demonstrations are losing steam, and that this might drive the protesters to adopt more violent means.

”Idlibi, who forcefully argued for the non-violent nature of the protest movement, nevertheless added that the “delay of the international community in clearly supporting the Syrian revolution could lead to a deviation from the peaceful line.”
I liked this paragraph about Syria in an article from the Washington Times website:

The more I read about Syria and its history, the more I find it to be the very embodiment of the Arab peoples and their grisly, twisted fate. Not only is its ethnic makeup a microcosm of the Middle East, a jumble of ethnicities and religions; not only is it ruled, like so many other Arab states, by a ruthless minority, and along tribal lines; but, above all, Syria exemplifies the historic dispossession of the Arab peoples. The French occupiers carved the map of ancient Syria as they saw fit, slicing a piece off to Turkey and cutting off a big chunk to form Lebanon, an illegitimate entity in Syrian eyesThe loss of the Golan Heights to Israel is only the most recent happening in a never-ending historical drama in which, whatever happens, eventually, Syria gets royally screwed.
Benjamin Ra then concludes that the demise of the Syrian regime to be a great loss to both the region and to the United States. Apparently he's worried about instability there spilling over into Iraq or something like that. Somebody should tell him why Iraq was so unstable following the Iraqi invasion in the first place...

The "New York Jewish Week" has a predictably non-sympathetic view on Syrian-Iranian relations. Nothing new here. Just more spiel about how terrifying an Iranian nuclear programme would be and blah, blah, blah. Oy vey!

5 comments:

Jillian said...

Do you have a link to the article about the Filipino workers?

Thanks for this, btw.

Maysaloon said...

Hey no worries! I just updated the post with a link to the site, so you can check it out.

Nobody said...

*** Mentioning Syria he said, "Above all, on Syria, it is time for the Members of the Security Council to act". Of course Mr Cameron didn't have a problem with tyrants when he was visiting Putin a few days ago. Nor did Blair have a problem with Gaddafi when he met him in a tent in the Libyan desert and sorted out a tasty deal for BP. Yes, Libyan oil was available for the West before the Libyan revolution, and yes, Western leaders are hypocritical, but that's the nature of the beast. ***

You are making too much out of it. Life is life. They have to deal with Russia and China and others. And they had a deal with Gaddafi. If anything, I am surprised that they were ready to put so much at risk for the sake of supporting this lousy semi tribal semi Islamist revolution. They have basically toppled a friendly regime and sunk any prospect for a nuclear deal with Iran and North Korea. I wish to think that they will be rewarded for this with another democracy in North Africa, but they are just as likely to get collapse of migration controls into Europe, lose their oil and Libya itself to chaos and end their political careers the George Bush style

Nobody said...

*** "Syria says Ambush Kills 5 Security Personnel" - right...and it is true because SANA says so. If you don't believe SANA then you're probably not a patriot, and not really Syrian, and probably working for the Mossad and the CIA and al Qaeda. ***

************

*** McClatchy Newspapers

BENGHAZI, Libya -- Syrian activists fleeing persecution for taking part in the 6-month-old revolt against their government are flocking to Libya, where they face no visa requirements and can find work easily because of the exodus of foreign laborers during the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi.

With fresh bullet wounds, emotional trauma and little cash, the Syrians trade experiences with one another largely without fear of Syrian President Bashar Assad's security apparatus. They also are consulting with Libyan activists on the merit of armed rebellion, with many now convinced that taking up weapons is their only hope for toppling Assad, who remains firmly in place despite months of peaceful protests, tougher sanctions and calls from the United States and Europe for his ouster.

Several Syrians who hail from the flashpoint towns of Deraa, Homs and Hama, interviewed here this week, said a minority of protesters already had used weapons against Assad's forces. They described rogue attacks on checkpoints and convoys, and one told of his role in bombing a bus that was carrying militia members.

The only obstacles to wider violence, they said, are a scarcity of guns and the threat of regime airstrikes.

. . .

The refugees in Libya provide a rare inside look at what has taken place in their country in recent months.

A man from Deraa choked up several times as he recounted how, less than two weeks ago, he and three friends built a homemade bomb packed with nails and ball bearings and lobbed it at a bus that belonged to the regime's feared Shabiha militia. He said there were injuries, but no deaths.

His account was impossible to verify, but on Sept. 7, the Syrian state news service SANA reported an attack that matched his description, saying that about 11 law enforcement personnel and four civilians - including a father and his two sons - were injured when an "armed terrorist group" attacked a military bus near Deraa. The agency said the explosive device used contained metal pieces, steel nails and metal balls to cause the largest possible number of casualties.

Source

Nobody said...

*** If the Syrians want to get rid of Assad, they will have to capitalise on whatever political currency they can get. ***

By the way, I don't know what kind of support they are expecting from the West, but with all sympathy that exists towards these revolutions in the West, another military operation is unlikely, if not impossible. Libya is a very different country. It's a huge and sparsely populated place where the rebels could create their own enclaves and hold on before NATO arrived. Such conditions apparently don't exist in Syria.