 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Professor Ajaz Ahmed to discuss the latest scenario in Syria. Ajaz, the Syrian situation seems to be leading more to a confrontation at least at the international level with Russia and China of having vetoed the resolution. So how do you live in resolution? How do you look at the scenario that is developing right now, particularly the international level? Praveer, I think we are at a very, very dangerous point where the United States and the NATO powers, in my view, have overcommitted themselves to a regime change. And now they can't back off from there. So they will do everything that they can for this regime change. Even if they don't have even sanctions? Even if they don't have UN sanctions? So the question is what form will that take? The two Syrian opposition groups that they have fabricated have now taken the position that that an Arab intervention will not be considered a foreign intervention. So how does that play out? Would Qatar and Saudi Arabia and Libya will invade? And once they come in, then in order to obtain the peace, the NATO countries will come and so on. I mean, this is a fantasy scenario I am giving you. But to my mind, that is the real danger situation. So a shift has taken place in the Syrian groups in exile or outside, basically calling for an inter-military intervention from outside, which wasn't there. Only the groups that are aligned with the United States. One of the things about the opposition groups is that there are about 20 of them who have some kind of prominence that the Americans are trying to talk to and NATO countries are trying to talk to. But inner dissensions among them is so great that when they went to meet Hague, the foreign secretary, the British foreign secretary, they didn't even agree to meet with him together. Hague had to meet with them separately in London. They were they're all sitting in London, but they will not sit in the same room. So that's how splintered that opposition actually is. And this this does not even count the largest part of the actually secular opposition that is inside the country, which refuses to be a part of this Western intervention part. But these people who are sort of wanting Western patronage can't even sit in the same room. Interestingly, now reports are coming out that already basically intervention has taken place. There's a covert war going on inside Syria. Armed groups are not only operating, they're getting arms as well as people coming from outside. Some Libyan people have Libyan forces that actually died in this armed attacks and so on. So do you see this as something which is going to be further accelerated after this failure of their even resolution? May very well be may very well be. Although, as I said, the problem now for them is that having come to the United Nations and having lost it on that vote, they now don't really have a legal instrumentality to intervene. So stepping up of this covert and not so covert intervention is really the only option that they have got. How far that will succeed we still don't know. What we do know is that the entire Syrian establishment has stood behind the Assad regime. We know that popularity polls taken by a Qatari outfit show that Assad is more popular in Syria today than he was a year ago. Some 86% of the population is saying there should be no foreign intervention of any kind and the Arab League's economic sanctions against Syria must be lifted. So there is a kind of a coalescing both of the establishment and the vast majority of the population behind Syria, behind the regime. What they're going to do in this situation is very, very hard to tell. However, it seems to me that, A, what I said that it's very difficult for them to step back having gone as far as they have gone. But this is the first chapter of the war in Iran. Of course, this is really connected that we'll come back to that. So if you're going to step back on Syria now, then how do you de-escalate the entire project of containment of Iran? Coming to this other issue that you were saying, the overstep. What explains this overstepping going to the United Nations when they did not have Russia with them? And particularly after, in fact, having confronted Russia on the issue of this anti-ballistic missile treaty, which they're really breaking, setting up missile shields and so on. Don't you think it was rather infantile on their path to do this without having Russia on board? The United States simply does not know how to retreat gracefully as a global power. It does no longer see that there are power configurations in the world now that it cannot push around the way that it could. Five years ago, China and Russia were not as powerful as they are now. They're not as strong as they are now. So they are doing this kind of thing, which takes your breath away. One is knowing that Russia was going to veto it and China was going to veto it, knowing it. They went in for that veto. It's really quite extraordinary. That's a very important issue that the report that the Arab mission gave was very different from what the Arab League moved as a resolution after the report. Absolutely. And in fact, the report wasn't made public at that time. It was not made public. It had to appear as an annexure to the resolution because after all, if that is the basis, then you have to put it out there. But the authorities refused to allow the report to be translated into English. And did not allow the head of the mission to come as a delegate of Arab League into the United Nations Security Council discussions. Not even a translation because the Arab League's mission actually corroborates everything that the Syrian government has been saying and which the Russian media independently has been documenting. So if that is the case, then what kind of resolution is this? Let me read to you and extract from this report. It says, in Homs and Dera, the two major cities where Syrian army is supposed to have carried out these massacres. In Homs and Dera, the mission observed armed groups commuting acts of violence against government forces, resulting in deathly injury among their ranks. In certain situations, government forces responded to attack against their personnel with force. The observers noted that some of the armed groups were using flares and armor-piercing projectiles. In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the three centers of the power of the Iqwan Muslimin, of the Muslim Brotherhood, where all of these demonstrations are taking place. The observer mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against government forces and civilians that resulted in deaths and injuries. Examples of those acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing 8% and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil. A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed. The report speaks, and I can go on and on with this. There's a lot of detail in it. The report very interestingly speaks of there being an armed entity inside Syria, which is carrying out all this. Also said it is not included in the protocol with which they had come. That's right. That the protocol was only to check out on what the government was doing. Because only Syrian government is supposed to have been carrying out all the violence. And then they see it there on the ground and document it. The interesting part, to me this is very interesting, this armed entity. What is this armed entity? This is not the free Syrian officers so-called who are sitting in Turkey. This is an armed entity inside and it is an entity. It is not armed groups. Yes, that's interesting. So the phrasing is to me very intriguing that there is in fact an organized entity, which is not just the small groups running around. This is actually an entity, which is sending out these groups to do all that. Once you have got this report and then you read the text of the resolution, in the entire resolution towards the end of the resolution there are about nine demands. All of them are demands on Bashar al-Assad, on the government of Syria, demanding that he step down and hand over power to his vice president. All the demands are addressed to them and not nothing about any of this. In fact, that was the Russian amendment. Russian amendments, if you look at it, are very clear. They said also armed groups have to give up attacks on the state. Outside people have to stop supporting these armed groups, etc., which was found unacceptable by the United States. The other very important, I think, point in the mission state petition, 23 days, which is all they had on the ground. They actually said we could get people to disengage. We could bring some part in partial normalcy. People were actually going towards a peace position and also said that if we are given more time, if our mission is allowed to continue, we think we can bring back normalcy in Syria, which was not allowed by the Arab League. The mission report clearly says that the Syrian government helped them to the maximum degree to go wherever they wanted to go, talk to anybody they wanted, whether the people were for the government or against the government, etc., that they had maximum cooperation from Syria and maximum freedom of movement. So, they could observe, they could say we didn't. Secondly, they said that in all these three cities, the citizens there who even talked about the violence even from the side of the state, all of them said all we want is peace. We want violence to end from both sides. The mission statement has absolutely clarified it. And thirdly, the mission statement, diamond against us, the media outlets have been exaggerating and fabricating exactly what we have already said, gross distortions, you know. And this is, you know, one of the demands of the Syrian government is that Qatar in Saudi Arabia put some sort of, you know, protocol on what Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the two channels that they own, have been doing. You know, interestingly as the international media and of course, the Qatari and Saudi media did not report the mission report. That's also interesting. That's been one of the things. Precisely. That is the other side of it. That on the one side, even the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations, if you look at the report of the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations, the entire thing is based on claims made by the opposition forces. And primarily by this thing called Syrian Human Rights Observatory, which is London based, which is London based, which we now know from Washington Post, we know that it has been given, it has been funded from a Dubai based entity, which has received six million dollars from the United States. So it's American money. And this is an incredible organization. It's not registered as anything. It has no office. It has no personnel. And Al-Jazeera actually does the communications for it. This also now has come out that all their communications things is being set up on Al-Jazeera. And Al-Jazeera has a blog by the person who runs that thing. And the blog runs 24 hours. And all this information that you see in the world media, in the human rights industry, comes from places like this. But when a mission of the Arab League actually lays it out, it gets blocked. Coming back to the earlier issue that you raised against Iran, there is no question that this seems to be a part of a larger containment of Iran project, both in Lebanon and in Syria. This is really a part of that process. So what do you think is the larger containment of Iran project going to happen in this context? The least that the Americans want in Syria, or what the NATO countries together want in Syria, is a regime change in which they will have, they want to have someone like Burhan Ghayloun to be the next head of the state. And Burhan Ghayloun has gone, the chairperson of the Syrian National Council, the opposition group that the West is backing. He has given an interview to the Ballistic Journal, in which he has said that when we come to power, the alliance with Iran will be broken. Hezbollah will not be what it is now. And we will have the most liberal pro-Western regime in the Arab world. You've also said that vis-a-vis Israel will only have peaceful negotiations. And we will have only, which essentially means conceding the Jalan. This is what they would like to have. So Syria is also tied up with Hezbollah. It is tied up with Hamas. It's the whole package. Now how much of it they will get, we don't know. Risks are so great that Hamas is largely, at the moment, leaving Syria and relocating themselves somewhere else if they can, where it is not very clear to me yet. But this has become tricky for them, just where all of this is going. Also, because section of the Muslim Brotherhood, if you look at Tunisia, you look at Egypt, you look at Turkey, all three of them have now very strong Muslim Brotherhood presence. And what they, I mean, you see, the Syrian National Council is an amazing contraption. There are these exile academics from Paris and Belgium and so on. And there are the top Muslim Brotherhood people, top Syrian Muslim Brotherhood personnel in it, in the top leadership. So it is that kind of an alliance, highly pro-Western intellectuals of that kind who have no roots inside Syria, something like Chalabi or something like in the case of Iran, plus the Muslim Brotherhood. So yes, that is what they would like to know. So it is a very interesting alliance. You have Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Qatar and what Turkey being also part of the larger Islamic Muslim Brotherhood. The biggest intervention will be coming from Turkey. It is coming from Turkey. It is coming from Eastern Turkey. So it is basically an interesting alliance of actually Muslim Brotherhood Islamist forces, including Turkey, the monarchies who now all have become supporters of democracy and of course the NATO powers. That is what we are seeing vis-a-vis Iran. And it also tells you something about moderate Islam in general, that Muslim Brotherhood is no less a pliable instrument for the West than the monarchies and these Turkish Islamists. These are NATO's Islamists. A strong commitment to NATO and strong commitment to this kind of regime change in Syria. Ajaz, isn't it an irony of the situation that the monarchs in West Asia today supposedly bringing democracy to Syria? Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Yes, yes. But this medieval monarchs running completely undemocratic, autocratic, authoritarian, call it whatever they will. And then they are suddenly championing democracy and human rights in Syria. But listen, I mean, to be fair to the monarchs, that's not much more ridiculous than the idea that imperialism will bring you democracy. That's true. Colonialism and ex-colonialism bring democracy. And Americans will give you democracy and all of these people. No genuine democratic nationalist movement in the world has ever asked for an imperialist intervention. In this, what is being thrown is the Shia Sunni divide. And this is being aided by the Sunni monarchs in that sense. I mean, I think their religion is only just a fig leaf for what their other policies are. But this can really break the West Asian countries apart if this really spreads. In a certain sense, in a certain sense, but look, I mean, except for the really sort of Wahhabi Salafist kinds of people, the Sunni business really isn't, I mean, isn't very deep except for them. It still is something dangerous to be playing this car in the Middle East. It is a degeneration and a degradation of politics in general in the region. This is something that has emerged within the last 30 to 35 years after the defeat of the Arab secular national project. So with this, it does appear that Bashar is holding right now. Bashar al-Assad is holding right now. And if this violence continues, he may even gain more ground. Well, it depends how far it goes. It depends how far it goes. I mean, I go back to the question that you had where we began, that now that the Americans have gone to the Security Council, failed to do this, they might actually take the position that we tried to go the international law route. But the Russians and the Chinese just don't allow us to act legally. So we are going to have to act extra legally. I mean, this issue of extra-legality did not prevent them from going into Iraq. You know, labor of the Russian Foreign Minister has said, but of course, if there is a will to invade, we cannot prevent it. So it's not as if the Soviet Union, as if Russia and China are going to come and fight in Syria against them, they won't give them that resolution. But if they want to go ahead anyway as they did in Iraq, then nothing to stop them. So we really have to wait and see what happens. Thank you, Ajash. We'll continue to monitor the events and we'll discuss this with you as the time goes on and see what the events develop.