 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We bring you a roundup of some of the international events that have taken place in the past one week and to discuss the issue we are joined by Prabir Prakash. Welcome to NewsClick, Prabir. So, there is new development which is happening in East Ghouta of Syria and people are being shown under the rubbles. Is it the West is again trying to repeat the same LPO campaign that they had done last year? Well, it is interesting to see that whenever something is talked about with response to shall we say any military offensive by the Syrian government against what are being called as rebel forces, then we always have pictures of bombings, people being buried under rubble, people being killed and so on. While if a similar offensive is taken by forces allied to say the United States, which is what happened in Raqqa or in Mosul, then even though the towns were literally flattened there is a huge amount of civilian casualties also. There is really no outcry over that. But let us be very clear war is something which kills people and it is also true that the civilian casualties will always outnumber the people who are actually involved in the war itself. So, it is nothing new in a scenario of war. So, what is the East Ghouta operations all about and that is the important issue. This has been rebel held, held by is essentially forces which are either a part of ISIS, part of Al Qaeda, what was to be called as a Bahat al-Nusra. All forces which said they are the Free Syrian Army, but were closely connected to these two formations in different ways. Even if they are not, at best they can be called Al Qaeda light. They really are not forces which are not sectarian, which are not against secular Syrian state and so on. So, given that it was a question of time by which the Syrian government would move against East Ghouta pocket because it is from here there have been a large number of shellings attacks on the city of Damascus, which is the capital of Syria. The fact that they haven't moved against Ghouta earlier is because its strategic significance was not that great. So, they had no particular reason except the fact that it was used to attack Damascus regularly. There is really no other significance strategically of the East Ghouta pocket. Now, they have resolved Aleppo, they have had there is all being relieved. They have may now really got at least a major part of their country back that now they have decided to take out some of this pocket. So, I think Ghouta is in that sense very similar to Aleppo, that the West is on the wrong side. The Western media is completely on the wrong side of this conflict and they are pretending that it is all as if one side is waging war. While the reality is it is a scenario in which external forces are being used to support forces within Syria against a legitimate government and ultimately whether we like the Syrian government or not. The point is the destruction of a secular state in West Asia today is perhaps the worst scenario that is in store for the region. We have seen that in Iraq, we have seen that in Libya. Now, Syria is in the sense not falling to this kind of forces. I think is something which we all have to welcome. Things are also changing in Afrin with where Turkey's invasion was going on. So, is there a chance of confrontation between the Erdogan's forces and Assad's forces now? Well, this is the other part of the Syrian war, which we need to take cognizance of. You have Turkey, you have forces which are allied to Al Qaeda and ISIS originally backed by the Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia. You have the Kurdish forces, which were resisting both ISIS and Al Qaeda, but were also backed by the United States. But they also operated in cooperation with the Syrian government forces and the Russian forces. It is not that the Kurds were only with Americans. We saw both in Aleppo that there was a degree of understanding between the Syrian government and the Kurdish forces. And we also saw the Russians had maintained a certain kind of relations with the Kurdish forces. It's only after the fall of Raqqa that we see a sudden change in which the United States has backed the Kurds fully, particularly seizing the eastern oil fields and with forces which were earlier with Al Qaeda and seemed to have switched sides and joined the American offensive as well. So, this was read as a part of denying the oil fields to the Syrian government and therefore denying it to the economic resources. And United States backing the Kurdish forces was more to deny the Syrian government. So, this was one part of it. But what happens when you do that is that the Kurds have been seen by Turkey as their key enemy and partly because PKK has been in a civil war with Turkey for a very long time and they see the YPG, the Kurdish forces in Syria as really the extension of PKK. Whether it's true or not really doesn't matter. That's the way they see it. And therefore, they do not want a northern salient, shall we say, of Kurdish forces who will then be a permanent thorn in their sights is the way the Turkey looked at it. And therefore, the United States saying that it is going to be in the northern Syria for quite some time, that it is going to get into military alliances with the Kurds, if not it's already in the military alliances or see that something that the Turkish forces were deadly against. Afrin invasion was really a part of that and there the Syrian government did ask the Kurdish forces initially that accept our umbrella as it were, have local self-government and we will then negotiate with the Turks that this is our territory and you can't attack it. At that time it appeared that they were not very willing for it. Now they have battled the Turkish forces, how much the Turks have gained territory over there is open to question but they certainly have gained some and it's also true however well defended Afrin may be for the time being it is not something which can sustain itself in the long run. It's still a small pocket and Turkish army in the Turkish state is very big. So they need protection from the Syrian government. It now seems that there is some talks going on and it does seem that the Syrian government is trying to reinforce the Kurdish forces over there. The Kurdish forces have also withdrawn from Deir Ezzor and moved into the cooperation the Syrian government moved their forces to Afrin. So some realignment is taking place and this is going to also have an impact between the relation with the Kurds east of Euphrates as well as the Syrian government. So what the Kurds are going to do? Are they going to be de facto American allies only in the region and getting closer with them, break with the Syrian government, try to break north and the eastern part of Syria, a Kurdish dominated area. You know, Kurds are not the majority in lots of these places. So is that what they want to do or is it a temporary relationship with the United States and they are now going to seek accommodation with the Syrian government and also with the Russians as the intermediary. We'll have to see. It's a chess board which gets very complex because there are four or five sets of players. We shouldn't forget Israel sitting on the United States side trying to promote the Kurds not because they love the Kurds but because they would like to keep Iran, Iraq, Syria all in a state of war engaged internally. So there is no external engagement that they can do and therefore the whole issue of Lebanon, Jalan Heights, all of this will be forgotten is the hope that Israel has. So I think it's a complex chess board but I do not see too much of, shall we say, a traction either militarily or diplomatically with the United States. The net loser in all of this seems to be the United States at the moment. Yes, Turkey and the Syrian government forces, whether they will fight each other, how they will mediate their differences, something to be seen. But with Russia backing the Syrian government forces, the borders of Syria still is an international border. I do not think that a land grab by Turkey of northern Syria is sustainable in the long run. Yes, it does put the pressure on the Kurds to make up with the Syrian government and reach some sort of understanding which is autonomy but not independence which probably Turkey can live with. So this chess board also has a box called Idlib and situation things are changing there as well. Can you throw some light on that part also? Well that is where the Syrian and Turkish issues become even more complex because originally as per the accord they had with Turkey and Russia, they were supposed to guarantee certain shall we say status quo scenarios over there and they were supposed to have moved their forces in a way that they could guarantee the ceasefire that was proposed in Idlib. Now what we see from the map and this is you really have to see the map for this, that the Turks have moved beyond what area they were supposed to have set up their shall we say zone of peacekeeping in which they would keep the area quiet and they seem to be in a blocking maneuver to what the Syrian government forces are doing because the Syrian government forces have entered Idlib, they have taken over some parts of it, they have in fact relieved significant section of Idlib of the presence of Al Qaeda or other forces but if they wanted to proceed further then they would be proceeding towards the northern border as well and what the Turkish forces seem to have done is set up a set of check posts which are more blocking than militarily confronting Syria as of now. Will Syria bypass it? Will they actually go over the line the Turkey is trying to establish? Mind you this line is well in Syrian governments or Russian guaranteed areas. So they are beyond what they had originally undertaken to be but is that going to be provocation enough for the Syrian forces and Turkish forces to clash? We have to see. So I do think the chessboard of Idlib has become complicated with Afrin and because of that therefore the Turkey-Syria relationships can enter into a military engagement as well and let us not forget Turkey fully backed the rebels against Syria initially. This was one of the in fact the proxy fighters when you talk about Turkey was waging a proxy war in Syria along with Israel along with the United States and along with Saudi Arabia the Gulf monarchies. So Turkey has been complicit in the past are they going to be complicit again? We have to really see it's not it's not easy to really predict what this chessboard is going to play out as particularly as Russia and the United States are also in play so it's really a combination of factors that will decide and maybe it is Syria's relationship with the Kurds that will also decide how Turkey handles this shall we say this challenge. Also when we come to Asia things were getting normalized between South Korea and North Korea after the Winter Olympics but now US has imposed one of the biggest sanctions against North Korea. How do you see that actually what's happening when it comes to North Korea, US and South Korea? You know this is again a shall we say complex scenario that is evolving. It's clear that South Korea is not with the United States and with Japan completely in its engagement with North Korea that we saw the quickness with which the current president of South Korea responded and the fact that he had won the election on the on the basis of continuing of continuing with shall we say continuation of the peace policies that had been overturned by the new the earlier governments. So there was a peace process there was some thawing in the relation between North Korea and South Korea earlier and this was overturned by the new presidents which had come in for the last two terms. So the current president has actually said that we'd like to go back to that scenario and that's how he had won the election but then he was hit with this shall we say the nuclear missile and rocket test issues the hydrogen bomb all of these issues have hit the North Korea-South Korea relations just at this moment. It's clear that the United States if it militarily escalates and launches attacks on North Korea whether they North Koreans will be able to reach United States or not is still a very open question and probably not in my opinion right now but certainly they can reach Japan and they can reach South Korea they can south reduce soil to rubble without even nuclear weapons and we have always known that. So is a military attack to safeguard United States territory take out North Korea completely which is what militarily they would have to do is that something with the interest of South Korean Japan is the issue. In this Japan seems to be willing to take the risk and say let's take out North Korea and though it doesn't really go that far but it is saying let's continue to put the military pressure let's continue with the military exercises all of this is what they are trying to do which would essentially mean the thaw gets over the Winter Olympics thaw which is taking place would really get over because it's also a fact the North Korea has not done any test or any missile launches in this period. So they are very clear that it would start the military exercises with restart all of this though there has been no agreement on this there seems to have been a sort of hands off for the time being of these things don't do military exercises we don't do tests if the reduce resume the military exercises we are going to see North Korea resume its its earlier set of tests weapons program and so on. So this is where it stands the slew of sanctions which the Trump administration has put is still in a still a way of trying to ratchet up the tension along with military exercises so here how much the South Koreans would be willing to shall we say diverge from the American policies we have to see Trump's policy or the American policies have been very clear that they would like to continuously put pressure on North Korea Korea till North Korea surrenders that's what they are saying they will do no other course of action is acceptable to them and China and Russia though they have gone with the sanctions till now they have also said that there is no way out except negotiations and they said that we are willing to facilitate negotiations she'll take both sides into account no military exercises and no tests that should be the starting point United States is not willing to accept that what to be South Korea's position we have to see they have not said either or and Japan seems to be at the moment willing to play the American game so you have to see what happens but let's not forget when Trump says we will go over to phase two if this doesn't work that's this is that's really war talk because once you start military exercises once you say you can go to phase two you are getting into a zone of trigger you know hair trigger alert and if there is a hair trigger alert nobody can guarantee a war will not start by accident and that I think is also as much a possibility as war by intent and if it happens it will be a disaster not only for for the region nuclear exchanges are not going to only be restricted to that part of the world it has it has enormous consequences for the rest of the world and I'm I'm little shall we say disappointed shocked surprised that the global opinion has remained so isolated from what is an impending possible catastrophe for the globe thanks a lot probir and we'll be coming back again next week to discuss these developments and as these things proceed thanks a lot thank you for watching news click keep following our website and our facebook page