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Turkey has already announced what is has called “smart sanctions,” targeting people in the ruling establishment with the hope of differentiating between the general public and the Assad regime — something not easy to do. Ankara bets that the changing internal dynamics will eventually force Assad and his cronies out of power, paving the way for a more representative government for its southern neighbor. This policy has its own limitations, however, considering how Assad still has the military means to crush the opposition and enjoys the backing of regional power Iran and global player Russia, for the moment.
It is difficult to reject a statement that Turkey may have rushed things a little bit with Syria, possibly out of guilt for the way it handled Libya. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu argues that his government has done everything possible on a bilateral platform to stem violence and push for a peaceful change in Syria. Davutoğlu does not accept criticism on this issue as he does with many other foreign policy issues. His brinksmanship with Syria, and policy of burning all bridges of dialogue on the senior level — which took Turkish officials nine years to cultivate — has robbed Turkey of valuable leverage to play interlocutor in the future. Unfortunately it also destroyed other opportunities for diplomatic maneuvering by the foreign policy establishment in Ankara.
To compensate for this loss in diplomacy, Davutoğlu and his team are now bringing pressure on the Assad regime using regional and international coalitions. Turkey has pushed hard for the Arab League to adopt sweeping sanctions against Syria and it is working behind doors with the US, Britain and France for a strong resolution in the UN Security Council. On the regional level, there are serious differences between Turkey and Saudi/Qatar-led Arab initiatives to determine how the Syrian regime should be brought down. While the former refrains from openly advocating armed struggle against the Assad regime, the latter wants to arm the opposition to the teeth and is willing to spend lots of money to accomplish this goal.
Iran is a wild card in the regional calculations and may further complicate Turkish efforts to isolate Syria. Though Davutoğlu defends his engagement with Tehran, saying that there is no rift between the two countries and that both share similar concerns over Syria, the true picture is far from that wishful thinking. If one takes a hint from Iranian senior officials’ sour reaction after Turkey’s decision to host part of the NATO missile defense shield network, one can easily conclude that ties with Iran are not as rosy as Davutoğlu wants us to believe. When the Syrian authoritarian regime falls, Iran knows it will lose valuable footing in the Arab world. Moreover, the position of Iraq today on the Syrian crisis is more tilted towards Iran than Turkey.
On the international level, the Turkish position is very close to that of the UK and US but there is a divergence with France. While the US and UK have no appetite to become embroiled in Syrian affairs, France leads the effort to use a military force to establish a humanitarian buffer zone within Syria. Turkey does not think the time has come to call for that even though Ankara made it clear that it has drawn contingencies for a buffer zone in case of a massive refugee crisis on Turkey’s southern border. The so-called BRIC countries have also made it difficult for Turkey to proceed forcefully on the international level. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are all opposed to a foreign intervention in the Syrian crisis and they advocate dialogue for the resolution. Just last month Russia teamed up with China to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Assad’s government for using violence.
Under this difficult regional and international outlook, a drawn-out conflict with Syria may seriously hurt Turkish interests. It has already drained much of the revenue pouring into the Turkish provinces along the Syrian border and local economies have been dealt a heavy blow with what some argue has been a hasty decision on the part of the Turkish government to slap sanctions on the Syrian regime. The same impact can also be felt on the other side of the border, especially in the northern part of Aleppo, leaving the bitter taste of resentment among the Syrian public. Here we may have to question the wisdom of smart sanctions as retaliation quickly escalates into a full-blown crisis that engulfs the general public. The fear is that the Syrian public may turn against Turkey if sanctions continue for a long period of time.
As for the question of military interference by Turkey, I do not believe that the Assad regime will resort to terrorism lest it give Turkey the perfect excuse to intervene. Turkish officials have said that Ankara has already made preparations for such a contingency, drawing on the experience of the 1998 crisis with Syria, when both countries came to the brink of war over Damascus’ support for Kurdish terrorist attacks on Turkish soil. Faced with a certain defeat by the superior Turkish Army, Syria backed down and expelled the leader of a Kurdish terrorist group. The tension finally diffused. This time, however, there is an additional factor that could trigger a war with Syria. If the regime’s violent crackdown escalates into a full-blown humanitarian crisis with quite a high numbers of civilians who have perished at the hands of the Syrian army, Turkey may be forced to intervene militarily. Davutoğlu raised this possibility in Ankara last week.
It seems the cost-free foreign policy overtures for Turkey and free-rides with rhetoric are long over. Ankara has raised the expectations of Arabs on the streets, perhaps beyond its capacity to deliver. Now the Turkish public has to bear the brunt of consequences for its government’s foreign policy decisions. For the moment, those choices do not look very appealing.
VIA Today Zaman
US financial watchdogs have demanded dozens of big-name Western firms open the lid on their business with Iran, Sudan and Syria — countries deemed by Washington to be “state sponsors of terrorism.”
Documents recently released show the Securities and Exchange Commission in a tug-of-war with household names like Sony, Caterpillar, Xerox, AIG and Siemens to provide a comprehensive account of their trade with the three nations, as well as Cuba.
The correspondence — which is released with a delay of at least 45 days and dates back to the beginning of this year — shows many firms staying within the letter of the law, while continuing business despite high-profile sanctions.
While many firms appear to be tidying up the remnants of legacy investments in Tehran, Khartoum and Damascus, others have pursued legal action against the use of their brand after ties have been severed.
But the documents also point to the repeated use of a loophole that allows Western — and in particular US firms — to do business in Iran, Syria and Sudan via non-US subsidiaries.
Correspondence from heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc. detail how its equipment continues to be sold in Syria and Sudan via dealers and distributors, netting the Illinois-based company tens of millions of dollars each year.
In the first quarter of 2011 sales to Syria totaled $600,000 and sales to Sudan totaled $19.5 million.
“Several of Caterpillar’s non-US subsidiaries have sold and continue to sell products to Syria and Sudan as permitted under US economic sanctions and export controls,” the company told the SEC.
The firm acknowledged that some of its products may have reached the Syrian government via these intermediaries.
And despite a broad three-decade-old US embargo on Iran, Caterpillar reported sales to the Islamic Republic worth $23.7 million in 2010.
Caterpillar later ordered non-US subsidiaries to sever ties with the country and that figure is down to zero this year.
That step has not yet been taken in Syria or Sudan.
While the US firms’ trade with Syria, Iran and Sudan represented a fraction of their overall business, trade did cut across sectors.
In the tech sphere Cisco reported “very limited operations in Syria” with sales worth “approximately $2 million or less in each of fiscal years 2008, 2009 and 2010.”
Government-rescued insurance giant AIG reported that since 2008 it had identified five investments totaling $233.0 million which related to Iran, Sudan or Syria.
VIA AFP
Al-Maliki recently admitted that should the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime lead to an increase in sectarian tensions across the region, Iraq could be forced into a Shia alliance, most probably led by Iran, against the Arab world’s Sunni states.
While the Iraqi prime minister has given al-Assad his support and is exploring ways of circumventing international sanctions by creating economic corridors through which Syria can trade, al-Maliki has not gone so far as to pledge Iraq’s allegiance along sectarian lines.
Instead, al-Maliki, who opposed the Arab League’s suspension of Syria and international sanctions against the al-Assad regime, has positioned himself as a mediator. The Iraqi prime minister announced recently that his government was ready to meet with the Syrian opposition to try to reach a solution and avoid more bloodshed, not only in Syria but also in Iraq’s Anbar province, where Sunni militants still harbor secessionist intentions, and in the wider Middle East.
He has also attempted to steer a neutral course between the growing rivalry between the Saudi and Iranian governments for influence in the Middle East; al-Maliki is acutely aware that many of his people still view Iran with distrust with memories of the catastrophic eight-year war between the two neighbors in the 1980s which claimed over a million lives still raw.
Al-Maliki is also wary of allowing his nation to become beholden to another state, especially as Iraq is so close to finally getting rid of the US presence which has influenced so much of Iraqi life for almost nine years.
“Iraq is not a follower of any country,” he told reporters recently. “Clearly, we are no enemy to Iran and we do not accept that some who have problems with Iran would use us as a battlefield. Some want to fight Iran with Iraqi resources as has happened in the past. We do not allow Iran to use us against others that Iran has problems with, and we do not allow others to use us against Iran.”
VIA Reuters
As explosions and gunfire continued to ripple in Syria, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights on Monday raised the death toll from the Damascus government’s crackdown on anti-regime activists to close to 5,000 people.
“This situation is intolerable,” Navi Pillay said in a briefing for the U.N. Security Council.
The same day that Pillay spoke, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a resident of Homs — an opposition hotbed and frequent site of violence in recent months — reported that a gas pipeline exploded near the city, followed by gunfire and circulating military airplanes.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA, played up local elections Monday as an expression of “democracy and free will.” Yet the Homs resident said there was no evidence of voting in that city. Instead, this witness reported nonstop shooting and bombardments.
Such violence is nothing new in Syria, with Pillay reporting more than 200 people have died in the last 10 days, and “the Syrian population continues to live in fear of further violent repression.”
The Syrian government, meanwhile, has consistently blamed the violence on “armed terrorist” gang members and denied any efforts to target peaceful civilians.
CNN cannot independently confirm events because the Syrian government restricts access of international media to the country.
Syrian troops threaten Homs
Peres: Syria’s Assad ‘a killer’
Kids caught in crossfire in Syria
Fears of ‘massacre’ in Syria
Pillay said Monday that “the nature and scale of abuses” indicate that Syrian forces likely committed “crimes against humanity.” Citing reliable sources, she said more than 300 of the dead have been children “killed by state forces.”
Several defectors from military and security forces said they got orders “to shoot unarmed protesters without warning,” according to Pillay.
“Independent, credible and corroborated accounts demonstrate that these abuses have taken place as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians,” she said.
Homs has been a regular flash point. As nightfall arrived Monday, many city residents went to bed afraid the steady waves of violence could soon give way to a historic siege.
Opposition figures said the Syrian government had warned people in Homs to stop anti-government protests, hand in weapons and surrender defecting military members by Monday night — or face attack by government forces.
Syrian forces gave a 72-hour warning, said Lt. Col. Mohamed Hamdo of the Free Syrian Army, an opposition group of defected Syrian military personnel. Activists on the ground said the ultimatum was issued Friday for Homs.
The government has not acknowledged any deadline for Homs in state-run media.
Hamdo said there are concerns about a repeat of what happened in 1982, when Syria’s military — acting under orders from then-President Hafez al-Assad, father of current Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad — launched an assault on the city of Hama, killing thousands.
“People are very afraid,” said Wissam Tarif, a human rights activist in Beirut, Lebanon, with the organization Avaaz, who is in touch with people in Syria.
There are enough troops around Homs “to take over the city,” he said, and casualties have been increasing “in very big numbers” over the past couple of days. Hamdo said the military has dug trenches around Homs and largely cut it off.
“There is no electricity, water, and the communication lines are much worse. The food supply is also decreasing, mainly because little food is going in,” he said.
The Syrian government denied reports of water and electricity being out in the city, according to a SANA report.
In fact, besides a story about seven “army, security and police martyrs” being buried Monday, state-run media did not report much on such dire conditions or violence.
Rather, state TV painted a picture of normalcy, with reports of local elections under way across the country.
VIA CNN
“U.S. and Western power in the region is weakening, and that is leaving a vacuum – most notably in Iraq – and you can see the main stakeholders in the region reacting to Iran’s readiness to fill that vacuum,” says Reva Bhalla, head of analysis at US private intelligence company Stratfor.
This year’s uprising in Syria – Iran’s rare Arab friend – has created a new battlefield. Since the early days of the uprising, U.S. officials repeatedly and pointedly said they believed Assad’s government was receiving support from Tehran.
Assad has since been rapidly abandoned by the Arab League, in a diplomatic effort led by Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Arab Gulf states. Analysts and officials say that could have as much to do with pushing back against Iran as in reining in killings and rights abuses in Syria itself.
Saudi or other Arab backing for the increasingly armed opposition could escalate matters further, potentially producing a sectarian civil war lasting years and spilling across borders into neighboring states.
In Iraq, the withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of this year leaves more room for both Iran and Sunni Arab neighbors to intervene through proxy militias. At worst, that could reignite the Sunni-Shia infighting that nearly tore the country apart during the US occupation.
“A proxy Saudi-Iranian war in Iraq represents a very considerable threat to oil supplies,” said Alastair Newton, chief political analyst at Japenese bank Nomura.
Rights activist and former opposition leader Moncef Marzouki on Monday became Tunisia’s first elected president since the north African country’s revolution sparked the Arab Spring.
“I am proud to carry the most precious of responsibilities, that of being the guarantor of the people, the state and the revolution,” said the 66-year-old Marzouki, wearing his trademark oversize glasses and his usual grey suit with white shirt and no tie.
Marzouki was elected with 153 votes in the 217-member constituent assembly, with three of the 202 deputies present voting against, two abstaining and 44 opposition members casting blank ballots.
The national anthem played in the assembly as supporters shouted “Loyalty to the Martyrs of the Revolution” after the vote was held.
Addressing the opposition, Marzouki said: “I have received your message that you will be keeping an eye on me.”
Among those who voted against Marzouki was Samir Betaieb of the left-wing Democratic Modernist Pole.
“This election took place on the basis of an unbalanced text that gives a lot of power to a designated head of government at the expense of an elected president,” he told AFP.
Markouzi is to be sworn in Tuesday at the presidential palace in Carthage, 11 months after the ouster of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali sparked the Arab Spring that also saw long-time dictators toppled in Egypt and Libya.
Free republic
“I have the great honour of becoming the first president of the first free republic of the Arab world,” the French-trained doctor told AFP.
The north African country’s new president was Ben Ali’s bete noire throughout his political career and was forced to live in exile in France for a decade.
Marzouki’s first order of business will be to name the prime minister, with Hamadi Jebali, the number two of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, expected to get the nod.
Critics accuse Marzouki of being a pawn of Ennahda, which came in first in the October 23 constituent assembly elections with 89 seats.
Marzouki’s Congress for the Republic Party – whose symbol is a pair of red glasses inspired by his giant spectacles – was second, winning 29 seats.
His election came two days after the assembly adopted a provisional constitution allowing the country to name a government.
The vote – 141 in favour, 37 against and 39 abstentions – came after five days of often tumultuous debate which saw hundreds of people demonstrating outside the assembly building shouting slogans demanding “Freedom and Dignity”.
The election of a president and creation of a new government could take place only once lawmakers adopted the “mini-constitution”, laboriously drawn up over two weeks after the elections.
Marzouki, who headed the Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LTDH) from 1989 until Ben Ali supporters forced him out in 1994, has a deep-seated passion for human rights.
An admirer of India’s independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, he travelled to that country as well as South Africa after its transition from apartheid to democracy.
Marzouki, a father of three, is divorced from his French wife. A prolific writer, he has penned several books in French and Arabic including one titled Dictators on Watch: A Democratic Path for the Arab World.
VIA News24
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become the latest leader to find himself on the receiving end of that popular Middle Eastern method of protest — the thrown shoe.
Like George W Bush before him, Ahmadinejad found himself staring down the sole of a gentleman’s shoe when someone believed to be a recently laid-off textile worker decided to demonstrate his anger during an official ceremony in the north of the country.
Ahmadinejad was speaking in Sari, the capital of the Mazandaran province, when the man local agencies identified only by his first name, Rashid, threw his shoes at the president. It would appear they missed their goal.
According to the Middle Eastern culture, throwing shoes is considered to be one of the strongest ways to show contempt.
Iranian media reported that Rashid, around 45, had been discharged from a textile company after a year of not being paid by his employers.
“One of the participants of the ceremony managed to reach the seats in the front row and threw his shoes at the president while criticising unemployment in the country,” said Tabnak, a conservative news website close to the former revolutionary guards commander, Mohsen Rezaei.
Missed opportunity
Local agencies said the shoes did not hit Ahmadinejad due to “his prompt reaction” but hit the poster behind him. Pictures of the incident were not immediately released.
The shoe-thrower is reported to have been wrestled to the floor by people attending the ceremony who shouted slogans in support of Ahmadinejad. It was not clear whether he was arrested afterwards.
In 2008, Bush was target of an Iraqi jouranlist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at him during a Baghdad press conference. Bush too showed quick reflexes in dodging the missiles.
In 2010, shoes were also thrown at the president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, in a conference in Birmingham.
Iran’s English-language state-run newspaper, Tehran Times, in September quoted the head of the country’s statistics centre as putting the unemployment rate at 13.5% in the previous year of the Persian calendar (ending March 20 2011). Many independent economists have questioned official figures and have set the rate much higher.
VIA Guardian
The results of the first round of parliamentary elections indicate that female representation will be minimal, if not nonexistent – a phenomenon experts and candidates attribute to cultural barriers.
Not a single woman earned a seat in parliament in the first round, nor did any female candidates contest the run-offs.
“It’s shocking that even after the revolution, this stereotype of women never changed. The domination of radical religious beliefs is widespread,” activist Dalia Ziada, who was eyeing a seat on Al-Adl Party’s list, told Daily News Egypt.
VIA Daily News Egypt
The fall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising and the killing of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Pakistan have been the hottest topics of 2011 on Twitter.
The Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March has been ranked third in the list, according to the microblogging site which has released details of the hottest topics in a range of subjects, including the most talked about actors, countries and news topics.
The January 8 shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Congresswoman, was the fourth hottest topic on Twitter, which was followed by the death of deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in October.
Twitter has also revealed the year’s most popular hashtags.
No casualties were reported and it was not clear who was behind the explosion.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the pipeline was “bombed,” while the state-run news agency SANA blamed terrorists.
“An armed terrorist group on Thursday committed an act of sabotage,” SANA said.
A government official said the blast caused a fire that has been burning for four hours. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The reports could not be independently confirmed.
Syria is trying to crush a 9-month-old uprising, but the conflict is turning more violent as once-peaceful protesters increasingly take up arms. Meanwhile, sanctions from Turkey, the Arab League and the European Union are aimed at squeezing the ailing Syrian economy and forcing the regime to halt the bloodshed.
The EU has banned oil imports from Syria in a move that costs the embattled regime millions of dollars each day.
On Wednesday, in a rare interview, Syrian President Bashar Assad said he never ordered the brutal suppression of the uprising in his country, and insisted only a “crazy person” would kill his own people.
Apparently trying to distance himself from violence that the U.N. says has killed 4,000 people since March, Assad laughed off a question in a rare interview broadcast Wednesday about whether he feels any guilt.
“I did my best to protect the people,” he told ABC’s Barbara Walters during an interview at the presidential palace in the Syrian capital, Damascus. “You feel sorry for the life that has been lost, but you don’t feel guilty when you don’t kill people.”
“No government in the world (kills) its people unless it is led by a crazy person,” Assad added in the interview, which was conducted in English. Assad, who trained as an ophthalmologist in Britain, speaks the language fluently.
The interview offered a rare glimpse into the character of the 46-year-old Assad, who inherited power from his father in 2000. His brother – widely regarded as the chosen heir – had died in a car crash years earlier.
Assad, who commands Syria’s armed forces, has sealed off the country to most outsiders while clinging to the allegation that the uprising is the work of foreign extremists, not true reform-seekers aiming to open the authoritarian political system.
The United Nations and others dismiss that entirely, blaming the regime for widespread killings, rape and torture. Witnesses and activists inside Syria describe brutal repression, with government forces firing on unarmed protesters and conducting terrifying, house-to-house raids in which families are dragged from their homes in the night.
“We’re talking about false allegations and accusations,” Assad said. When asked if Syrian troops had cracked down too hard on protesters, he said there had been no command “to kill or to be brutal.”
“They’re not my forces,” he said. “They are military forces (who) belong to the government. I don’t own them. I’m president. I don’t own the country.”
Assad said some Syrian troops may have behaved badly, but they faced punishment if so. He also said most of the people who died in the unrest were his own supporters and troops, slain by terrorists and gangsters – an allegation disputed by most outside observers.
Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri said Wednesday that he “openly and proudly” supports the uprising of the Syrian people, one day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah repeated his support for the Syrian regime.
“If Hezbollah openly supports the Syrian regime, we openly and proudly support the Syrian revolution and the Syrian people,” Hariri told his Twitter followers.
Meanwhile, lawmakers from Hariri’s Future bloc said that Nasrallah’s speech and rare public appearance were aimed at boosting the dwindling morale of his supporters since his regional allies “are falling” and after the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which the party had strongly opposed.
“He felt that there was a need to boost the morale of his supporters after a Cabinet, which his party dominates, had financed the tribunal,” Minieh MP Ahmad Fatfat told Future News.
“What’s more important in Nasrallah’s speech was the [part] on Arab affairs,” Fatfat said. “He will clearly fight by the side of President Bashar Assad and his regime and he accuses the [Syrian] opposition of treason, which is clear interference in Syrian affairs.”
Following a rare and short public appearance Tuesday, Nasrallah said that his group was continuing to arm itself and would stand by Assad who is facing a popular uprising nearing its ninth month.
“Our forces have increased and so have our arms day after day,” Nasrallah said in a video link on the occasion of Ashura, one of the holiest occasions in Shiite Islam which marks the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad.
“This resistance and its weapons will continue to exist and your conspiracies as well as your psychological, political and intelligence wars will not destroy us,” Nasrallah told crowds at a packed stadium in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Thousands of men dressed in black applauded as Nasrallah yelled: “The resistance in Lebanon, with its weapons and mujahideen, God willing, will continue to exist. We will hold onto our arms … our weapons do not rust. They are being upgraded.”
Fatfat said that Nasrallah had torpedoed dialogue when he refused to discuss the party’s arms.
Beirut MP Serge Torsarkissian, Fatfat’s colleague in the Future bloc, commented on Nasrallah’s statement that Hezbollah’s arms would not rust.
VIA Daily Star
The Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ) says the number of journalists jailed around the world has increased to its highest level since the mid-1990s and Iran is “the world’s worst jailer.”
The independent U.S.-based group, which promotes press freedom and the rights of journalists, says in a new report that 42 of the 179 news gatherers that the group counted behind bars are in Iran.
The group says Iran’s situation worsened “as authorities kept up a campaign of anti-press intimidation that began after the country’s disputed presidential election more than two years ago.”
CPJ says that in Iran “authorities have maintained a revolving cell door since” the June 2009 presidential election, with furloughed journalists forced to post huge bonds, politically pressured, and encouraged to “turn on their colleagues.”
“The volume of arrests, interrogations, and people out on bail is enormous,” Omid Memarian, an exiled Iranian journalist, is quoted as saying. “The effect is that many journalists know they should not touch critical subjects. It really affects the way they cover the news because they are under constant fear and intimidation.”
Five international broadcasters — Voice Of America, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Deutsche Welle of Germany, France’s AEF, and Radio Netherlands Worldwide — issued a joint statement on December 7 accusing Iran of increasing its intimidation of foreign media and accelerating efforts to disrupt satellite broadcasts in Farsi from reaching Iranian audiences. The statement was issued after a meeting of senior executives of the broadcasters in London.
VIA CPJ