Thus explained French President Nicolas Sarkozy, defending the starkly different postures of Nato countries toward Libya on the one hand and Syria on the other. Both countries have autocratic leaders who are murdering and oppressing their own people. It was to protect civilians, and militia rebels, from Muammar Gaddafi’s planned massacres that Nato intervened on the now stretched back of a United Nations resolution. No such intervention is contemplated in Syria, where civilians are being shelled by artillery and tank fire and where they face machine guns in the streets and mass arrests. Foreign Secretary William Hague declares that it would even be “difficult” to obtain a UN resolution backing increased sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Mr Hague recently told the House of Commons that “Gaddafi must go” arguing that there was “no viable way forward”. A little more than a week later, addressing MPs on the situation in Syria, the tone was markedly less bullish: “This violent oppression must stop. [The regime] must show restraint and reform not brutal repression.”
For one despot it’s time up, for another it’s a plea for restraint. While Tribune does not wish to advocate yet another military intervention by British, French or US forces in yet another country, it is clear that the reasons for doing so or not do not bear any relation to any impartial assessment of humanitarian need. It smacks of double standards, hypocrisy and lies. There will be no intervention in Syria because – notwithstanding Syria’s greater military resources over Libya’s – it is not in the West’s interests to destabilise al-Assad’s leadership.
A country of 22 million people, Syria sits on a key geopolitical faultline, with links to Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas and a Western-constrained working relationship with Israel. As a significant player, al-Assad represents an asset that London, Paris, Washington or Moscow, for that matter, would rather not see changed. Mr Hague met al-Assad in London earlier this year and believes he is a reformer. The families of those killed, maimed and imprisoned for contesting that assumption may beg to differ.
Meanwhile in Libya that new superbug of Western military adventure, “mission creep”, has gone beyond protection of the civilian public – a mission which mysteriously appeared to falter for a critical period during the siege of Misrata. As Mr Hague has said, Gaddafi “must go” and we must “prepare for the long haul”. As the attack on Gaddafi’s compound shows, the mission is now assassination and regime change. American reports suggest US and British military “elements” have been on the ground in Libya for months before the recent arrival of “advisors” to the rebels militias. Mr Hague’s “viable way forward” requires a new friend of the West in Tripoli. Puppet strings supplied.
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