Syrian opposition rejects US meddling

AFP Photo / HO / Shaam News Network

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/news/syria-opposition-reject-us-791/

Members of the Syrian opposition have given an icy response to Washington’s calls to revamp the movement’s leadership, slamming it for attempting to dictate its will on Syrians.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for a re-shaping of the Syrian opposition's leadership adding that the Obama administration was suggesting names and organizations that should be included in the new leadership that may emerge in the talks held next week in Qatar.

“This direct tutelage and these dictates are not acceptable to the Syrian people anymore,'' said Zuhair Salem, the London-based spokesman for Syria's banned Muslim Brotherhood opposition group, which is a part of the Syrian National Council, AP reports.

Clinton was also dismissive of the Syrian National Council (SNC) holding a leading role, saying that the Paris-based group of exiled regime opponents does not represent those fighting on the ground in Syria.

Syria has various militias fighting Assad, many of which have reportedly been infiltrated by radical Islamists linked to Al-Qaeda.

According to Salem, Clinton's remarks show that Washington wishes to “tailor the Syrian opposition to specific demands.''

American criticism of the SNC reflects a growing sense that Washington has grown disillusioned with the group, for failing to gain support from numerous rebel factions. But despite US efforts to forge a new united opposition, one ready to cooperate with the West, many remain skeptical.

A defected Syrian army general, Faiz Amru, told AP that any transitional government or body created abroad, cannot possibly represent those dying in Syria. “Everyone is trying to push their own agendas,'' he said. “The big powers have hijacked the Syrian revolution.''

Amru claimed that none of the opposition groups really care about fighters on the ground.

Meanwhile violence continues to ravage Syria with at least 153 people – civilians, soldiers and rebels – killed in one day, according to activists.

Rebel forces are reported to have killed at least 78 soldiers on Thursday. About a half of them were killed in attacks on military checkpoints in the north of the country that followed a wave of bombings in the Damascus area earlier in the day.

Also a YouTube video showing rebels executing soldiers appeared on Thursday – though its authenticity could not be verified. It appeared to show rebels beating about 10 soldiers before lining them on the ground and executing them with automatic rifles.

Amnesty International slammed the summary execution of security forces that have allegedly happened in Idlib.

Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s Deputy Middle East and North Africa Programme Director said in a statement, "This shocking footage depicts a potential war crime in progress and demonstrates an utter disregard for international humanitarian law by the armed group in question."

Adrian Salbuchi, an international consultant and author, believes the revamp of the Syrian opposition proposed by Clinton will lead to even further violence.

“What we are going to see is even more violence in Syria because in the case of Syria, Obama for example had specifically said ‘Assad must go.’, Mitt Romney has said that he would be giving anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to the so called ‘opposition,’ the guerilla opposition, the terrorist opposition. Secretary of State Clinton has said the same,” he told RT.

Salbuchi claims that the US needs Damascus to fall quickly, to pave the way for an attack on Iran.

“What they need is to have overall turmoil throughout Syria. Let’s not forget that the road to Iran from the American point of view goes through Damascus. So they need Syria to fall quickly before the Israelis go ahead and unilaterally attack Iran.

 

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US defeat in Syria would be end of US hegemony in Middle East

AFP Photo / John Cantlie

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/news/syria-us-strategy-fail-783/

The United States is doing everything possible to salvage 'operation Syria' and in doing so hedging all their bets on its success, says Eric Draitser, geopolitical analyst from stopimperialism.com. But that strategy, Draitser believes, will fail.

­Earlier, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US no longer sees Syria’s foreign-based National Council as a leading opposition force, due to its lack of support on the ground.

The Syrian opposition consists of various rebel militias, many of which have been infiltrated by radical Islamists linked to Al-Qaeda.

A new 51 member "National Initiative Council" is due to be unveiled in Doha next week, and will include only 15 seats for the SNC.

Meanwhile, the SNC is planning to base itself inside Syria, in an attempt to prove its relevance to skeptical international backers. But as Eric Draitser told RT, these efforts may be too little too late to fit into US plans for the region.

RT:Washington's already suggesting names to represent a new opposition leadership, with the Syrian National Council to have just a few seats – why this shift now?

Eric Draitser: First and foremost I think it represents the manufactured nature of the opposition or at least the political opposition that we see in the public sphere. The Syrian national council and other leadership there, they never had any legitimacy among the Syrian people. They merely had legitimacy within the ruling class circles of the west. But what’s happened in recent months as the offensive from the Syrian military has developed, is that they have no real backing on the ground – that is to say the manufactured opposition. And so the United States, in their imperialist project to destroy the independent nation of Syria, has to find another way. And so a shakeup of the opposition with new “leaders” emerging…this is the US strategy. One that is doomed to fail.

RT:Doesn't Washington risk being accused of controlling events from the outside, rather than Syrians deciding things for themselves?

ED: Certainly it does run that risk. However I think the United States, the Obama Administration, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and the other major players, I think they’ve taken the calculated decision that it is worth the risk if it means they can salvage the Syria operation. We have to remember the US adventure in Syria ending in defeat would be the end of US hegemony in the Middle East. If they’re unable to continue their march from Syria, that means their attempt to destroy Iran is unlikely to evolve. That means that their stranglehold over the Persian Gulf and the oil resources is weakening so they’re putting all their cards on the table and all their chips in the pot when it comes to Syria.

RT:In an attempt to prove its relevance, the exiled opposition group has said it will move to Syria. But that might not be enough to save its credibility – could the major western-backed shift in the opposition help change anything on the ground?

ED: Well what’s interesting about the development of the SNC moving into Syria is that the propaganda line from CNN and the western corporate media is that this is to prove their relevance and legitimacy. But what I’m hearing from my sources and from independent sourcse around the world, this is because Turkey has grown tired of basing the FSA and so theyre pushing them and prodding and encouraging them to enter into Syria because it seems that turkey is looking for any way to disengage from this conflict once they’ve seen the writing on the wall that this would be the end of modern Turkey.

RT:Washington has revealed plans to hand more political power to major figures fighting on the frontline, but says extremists should NOT 'hijack' the Syrian revolution. Doesn't its latest policy make that more likely?

ED: Sure! And we shouldn’t be taken in by the rhetoric of the Syrian opposition. The manufactured opposition has been riddled with Al Qaeda and other forms of extremists, many of them imported from the imperialist war against Libya directly into Syria. So when they say on one hand that they don’t want to arm the extremist elements, on the other hand it is the same extremist elements that were imported by the US and Qatar and Saudi Arabia. So they’re talking out of both sides of their mouth. But the reality is they’re arming the opposition, arming extremists, because they want chaos in Syria. That is the only way to get military intervention and move forward with the imperialist project.

RT:Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that the violence in Syria could spread terror throughout the Middle East, and that ousting Assad's government would lead to more bloodshed. Why do you think some western states don't share his views?

ED: It’s not that they don’t share the view. I think it’s an objective fact that Alawites and Shias and Armenians and Jews and Christians, would all be slaughtered under an al qaeda regime. This is an objective fact. What’s not being recognized by the west is that the attempt to destroy Syria has stalled and ended. The rhetoric from Moscow has always been the same – defend human rights, defend territorial sovereignty and the norms of international relations. But what we see time and time again is that the United States is not interested in that. The us is interested in the singular goal of the destruction of Syria with the longterm project of destroying Iran so it makes sense that any attempt to reconstitute the opposition would be in the interest in the US and the Obama administration, which is going to be the one that suffers politically from all of this.

 

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Saakashvili concedes defeat, says his party now opposition

 

One of the opposition supporters holds a national flag to celebrate what they call the victory of Georgian Dream opposition bloc in central Tbilisi, late on October 1, 2012. (AFP Photo/Andrey Smirnov)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/news/georgian-parliamentary-elections-hindering-476/

Georgian President and leader of the United National Movement ruling party Mikhail Saakashvili has officially conceded the defeat in the parliamentary election on national TV. The UNM now goes into opposition to the winning Georgian Dream coalition.

The Georgian Dream coalition that has won the election will be forming the next Georgian government and it is expected that the coalition’s current leader billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili might be elected Georgia’s next prime minister. According to the laws adopted in the country recently, the prime minister will have more powers than the ruling president, making for an interesting power dynamic.

Central Elections Committee data indicates that with over 25 per cent of the votes counted so far, the opposition Georgian Dream coalition is winning with about 53.3 per cent of the popular vote, while the ruling United National Movement (UNM) has gained about 41.5 per cent. One more opposition party, the Christian-Democrat Movement, has managed to pass the necessary 5 per cent threshold.

The CEC has estimated the election’s final turnout at 61 per cent. With 3,613,851 voters officially registered in Georgia this means at least 2,204,450 people went to cast their votes.

The CEC said its website has suffered a denial-of-service attack, leading to a delay in the release of the results. “Our website was under DDoS attack, which has caused minor delays…but we were ready for such a scenario too,” said Elections Committee Chairman Zurab Kharatishvili, as quoted by Civil Georgia news website.

 

Opposition supporters celebrate what they call the victory of Georgian Dream opposition bloc in central Tbilisi, late on October 1, 2012. (AFP Photo/Vano Shlamov

Reaping what was sown

­The election campaign in Georgia was marred by a flurry of accusations from both the ruling party and the opposition, with some experts labeling the campaign “the dirtiest ever in Georgia”.

On the eve of the elections the battle for electoral minds reached its zenith after national TV channels broadcast video evidence of torture and rape in a detention facility in the capital Tbilisi – with the connivance of, or even direct orders from, the ruling party.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in several Georgian cities over the abuses in a Tbilisi prison. The minister of execution of sentences resigned as a result of the atrocities.

 

AFP Photo/Vano Smirnov

Polling day was not exempt from violations.

On Monday, Georgian media reported national security forces clashed with local residents in the town of Khashuri, a town close to the country’s capital Tbilisi. Three people were injured at a polling station when rubber bullets and teargas were fired by security forces, claimed opposition news station TV-9. Reportedly the cause for the incident was some kind of attempted illegal activities at the polling station.

An observer group Transparency International Georgia has claimed falsifications took place in Khashuri.

“Our observer present at precinct No. 46 reported that Georgian Dream had most of the ballots in a vote summary protocol, but shortly afterwards, armed persons arrived at the precinct, and kicked all the observers out of the building. A new summary protocol was made in which the United National Movement was the winner; the District Election Commission accepted this very protocol,” TI Georgia was quoted by Civil Georgia news website.

The Public Chamber of Russia and the Democratic Research Problem Fund, working in close co-operation with Georgian activists, have accused Georgia’s ruling United National Movement party of a number of gruesome violations during the elections on October 1.

“The election campaign of the UNM party was accompanied with open attempts of bribing the electorate. Speaking at the UNM congress [acting president] Mikhail Saakashvili promised mass distribution of 1000-lari [about US$1,660] certificates after the election, which according to international standards is an evident and transparent bribery of voters,” proclaims the Public Chamber’s statement issued on Tuesday.

The statement also mentions a number of other violations registered at the polling station by the Georgian observers, including already-completed ballots being brought to the stations, as well as prosecution and intimidation of opposition activists.

Overall 60,000 observers from 100 Georgian and international organizations and 15 countries were monitoring the elections in Georgia. The international observers have declared the elections conformed to international standards, despite a number of incidents at polling stations.

The OSCE mission in Georgia has acknowledged that the parliamentary election in the country was free, democratic and conformed to international standards.

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