By Douglas Chalmers
There can hardly be anything more absurd than governments in exile. By definition, they are incapable of ever governing anything, thus they have a strictly limited lifespan. The life that they do enjoy usually relates to their usefulness for foreign powers to create a front for opposition to a legitimate government.
Today, it is being tried again in Qatar which is itself no democracy. Neither is Saudi Arabia, a repressive sectarian kingdom state which has jointly been financing the FSA (Free Syrian Army) 'rebel' insurgency in Syria. But the emir of Qatar is hosting a meeting of the failed opposition against Syria (SNC), presumably to legitimise their own existence and to find a way to also legitimise the government-in-exile they wish to represent their interests in Syria.
The Syrian National Council must also find a way to justify the deaths of over 30,000 people in Syria which already has a legitimate government and an elected leader. So too must the international community which has already become divided and polarized by the diametrically opposed agendas of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. But here too, we find that the term 'international community' is being applied to the NATO clique in the Security Council (Britain, France, the USA) who themselves are becoming rather like a government-in-exile making constant demands to suit their own agenda but without any legitimate basis to act alone.
Well, it didn't work with the West's agenda for Tibet and the separatist's 'Free Tibet' fanciful government-in-exile based in India became bogged down with its own religious sectarianism, corruption and internal strife. Meanwhile, people in Tibet continued to benefit from an improving lifestyle along with the rest of modern 'One China' despite the malicious smear campaign waged against China by Western interests. Even having a CIA agent as the religious leader in exile failed to achieve any lasting impact as younger second-generation ethnic Tibetans living in the West were able to see through the elaborate charade and turned away from a puppet leader and his exclusive clique.
There was also a government-in-exile set up after World War 2 to represent exiled people from Poland. It soon became a clique for their own imperial elites who primped and preened and handed out knighthoods to those who pleased them. After all, what else could they do with no country to govern and nothing to administer except a few diplomatic letters to an from the countries in the West which supported them? In the end, it was a peasant trade union leader who became the key figure in creating peaceful change within his country. But that was a unique period when the end of the Cold War dinosaurs was inevitable.
However, it didn't cost 30,000 lives and the internal displacement of 100,000's of citizens and many fleeing to refugee camps elsewhere as has already happened with Syria. The other Cold War monsters are about to meet their fate soon too. The USA is bankrupt and printing money with no attempt at any intelligent economic solution while the EU countries are also either bankrupt or saddled with their neighbours' debts for many years. They will not be able to maintain a re-vivified NATO in the manner they once did when they planned for massive tank battles in the open countryside.
Neither are these nations going to commit to another 'coalition of the willing' which would leave them stuck with the same unpalatable and expensive consequences as their hegemonic invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Syria is not Libya and it is part of mainland Western Asia and thus in the sphere of Russia as well as China. These are the other permanent members of the UN Security Council and they have their own vital interests. They are not willing to lose out again in the face of Western aggression as they have both already had bitter experience of the Great Game that the West liked to play since the 1800's.
So, what are the real reasons that the West (the USA-NATO axis) want to destroy Syria? It is merely a pretence to have some government-in-exile waiting in the wings as what is happening there now has nothing to do with democracy. Nor is the appearance of Al Qaeda fighters with their sectarian agenda of creating a global Khilafah (caliphate) with the imposition of 7th century Sharia law at any price. These are the groups that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have already admitted funding, whether they are part of the FSA or not. That is all happening with the tacit assistance of Turkey, a country neighbouring Syria, which most of the insurgency must transit and through which their guns and supplies must be trucked.
Thus, the United States, Britain, France, Qatar and Turkey are the main actors in this saga of cold-blooded murder. They pretend to be 'the international community' but they simply represent the West's clique which always act together in the UN Security Council and their most significant petro-dollar economy Gulf allies. As with Libya, they have again fabricated the lurid fantasy that 'the government is killing its people' as an excuse for either their own military intervention (via NATO) or the financing of terrorism directly or through their allies. In North Africa, they had wanted to push China out from participating in the region's economic development so that they can re-assert their colonialist agenda as they did after the end of World War 2 by re-invading and re-occupying former colonies.
China does not yet have a military base in the region and thus Libya fell under the control of NATO which could project power easily across the Mediterranean. The result was that over 50,000 Chinese and Indian workers had to be evacuated within a fortnight ahead of NATO's onslaught and a similar insurgency to what we see in Syria today with rebel groups being backed and supplied by foreign interests. That cannot happen in Syria. It is a much stronger nation and there is a Russian naval base there in the Mediterranean port of Tartous. Despite numerous attacks, the Syrian military and its people are still behind their government in opposing a foreign intervention of any kind. They have spent the past 60 years opposing settler society Israel and they will not buckle because of a few thousand Al Qaida terrorists and foreign mercenaries.
The Levant region of the Eastern Mediterranean might once have been subjugated by British and French colonialism but these are independent peoples and they do not want their countries ruled again by foreign powers or by their puppets via some fake regime installed by force, whether it is comprised of enemy collaborators or some delusional group of ex-patriates being manipulated by outsiders via a government-in-exile. It has already been broken into smaller states and that itself is not providing lasting stability or security in the region.
As it stands now, although both the West and its Gulf allies and the Syrian Opposition insist on Assad and his government leaving power as 'a precondition for any dialogue aimed at finding a non-military solution', the Syrian government also insists equally that their current government will remain with its president Assad until the conflict ceases and a democratic solution can be implemented without security risks to Syria. Thus the real solution will be found only when foreign interests cease trying to overthrow the Syrian government.
But the other problem is the fake state of Israel which was itself created by UN decree resulting in the forced displacement of millions of Palestinians by an insurgency of European Jews and latterly Russian Jews. Many refugee Palestinians live in Syria today as well as in neighbouring Lebanon. While Israel is obsessed with its own ambitions to usurp the entire region, there can never be real peace. Yet the West and the USA in particular have foolishly mistaken their own interests for those of Israel. The result is that the oil (energy) security of the entire world is being jeopardised by unnecessary violent disruption of key states in the region such as Syria and the financing of terrorist groups by US allies bent on their own insane sectarian agendas.
There is nothing more absurd today than a Syrian National Council or whatever the main opposition group is to be called which is going to be largely comprised of the Syrian insurgency fighters which are now mostly Al Qaeda terrorists from Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, etc, whether they are called that or Jabhat Al-Nusra or the Al Nusra Front or some other more polite name along with various mercenaries from Europe and across the Middle East. Since the US ambassador was killed in Libya, it has become apparent that 'lying in bed with snakes' brings inevitable consequences. Also, what kind of aid is that supports a murderous insurgency instead of helping people in Syria who are now being deprived in every way by the West and its allies?
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Get to understand Syria's president Bashar Assad a little better by watching this speech from last year... he is an adept politican and leader who speaks knowledgeably about Syria today and his religion, Islam... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H28TTkKEZX8 (click for English captions).
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Some links:
“Rebel fighters are split into small largely autonomous groups, some led by local figures little known outside Syria. Most nominally belong to the umbrella Free Syrian Army, but their ties to it are often just lip-service. In many hotspots, fighters from a radical Islamic group inspired by the al-Qaida terror network have taken on prominent roles...” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/11/04/syria-opposition-con...
“The exile-dominated SNC would receive only 15 seats of about 50 in Seif's proposed new united assembly.... SNC leaders said the group is expected to expand from about 200 members to 400...” http://www.voanews.com/content/syrian-opposition-in-key-qatar-meeting-to...
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