Headaches All 'Round.

The UK is currently in the grips of a rabid quest to declare war on Syria. As a result international diplomacy is incredibly delicately balanced at the moment. However I think it is fair to say;

In the winter of 2010 the Tunisian people rose up to overthrow their dictator Ben Ali. They were quickly followed by the Egyptian people rising up to overthrow their dictator Hosni Mubarak. Both the Egyptian and Tunisian people were fighting for freedom, democracy and justice. However the Gulf Monarchies led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar saw an opportunity to dominate the entire Middle East, North Africa (MENA) region by imposing their distorted brand of Sunni Islamic politics. So in Libya Britain's MI6 set about creating a protest movement in order to remove Muammer Qaddafi from power so Libyan oil could be brought back onto the world market in order to extend the life of Saudi and Qatari reserves. At around the same time the Gulf States assisted by the US and the UK created another protest movement in order to remove Bashar al-Assad from power in order to create a Sunni dominated puppet regime in order to counter-balance the Shia dominated government in neighbouring Iraq.

Both of these artificial uprisings used as a template Nazi Germany's "Project Green" which allowed Hitler to justify an invasion of Czechoslovakia by staging a series of terrorist atrocities principally around the town of Ostrava. As a result while the focus of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions was very much about minimising confrontation between the security forces and protesters the insurgencies in Libya and Syria actively encouraged protesters to provoke the security forces into attacking them. The idea being to use these 'atrocities' as an excuse to allow western powers to use their military might to overthrow the governments in these nations under the United Nations principle of "Responsibility to Protect (R2P)." In Libya this was reasonably successful with western war planes quickly joining the war on the side of the insurgents who eventually overthrew the Libyan government. Libya is currently a borderline failed state with a barely functioning government being largely unable to control the armed militias and criminal gangs who carry out shootings, kidnappings and bombings on an almost daily basis. The conflict there has also had the knock-on effect of creating a powerful Islamist insurgency in Mali driving that country from being a relatively stable democracy to the brink of being a failed state. Libya's oil has be available for purchase on the global market for the best part of two years though so many are happy to call the operation a success.

In Syria things have not been running so smoothly. Primarily this is because a large proportion of the Libyan people didn't stick to the script and cheer the western invasion. Instead they took up arms and fought against the insurgency meaning that the war dragged on for some seven months. In the first instance this meant that the western powers simply didn't have the military resources available to also attack Syria. It also meant that with western intelligence services tied up in Libya the Saudis and Qataris were forced to take the lead in Syria. These are two nations that seem to lack any form of moral compass so they saw no problem with immediately raising an irregular army of foreign Jihadists. The Saudi and Qatari Irregular Army (SQIA) then set about enthusiastically carrying out increasingly worse atrocities such as the al-Houla massacre in the hope provoking western powers into intervening to overthrown the Syrian government. With the international community unwilling or unable to intervene to protect the Syrian people from the SQIA the conflict in Syria rapidly descended into something from hell with massacres, ethnic cleansing and even cannibalism becoming almost daily occurrences.

Things started to change for the better in Syria in the spring of 2013 when Hezbollah a Shia dominated political party and militia from neighbouring Lebanon joined the conflict on the side of the Syrian government. Hezbollah's long experience in this type of guerrilla style urban warfare gleaned from Lebanon's 15 year civil war coupled with dwindling support for the SQIA caused by their horrific treatment of Syrians finally tipped the balance of the conflict decisively in the Syrian government's favour. Since the spring of 2013 the Syrian government have be able to retake control of the main population centres along the west of the country including  Al-Qusayr, Aleppo and parts of Homs. The SQIA have been reduced to occupying mainly rural areas in the north of the country where they are desperately trying to create a Sunni enclave by forcing Shias, Christians and secularists into either government held territory or Iraqi Kurdistan. The only thing that is stopping the Syrian government moving north to put a stop to this ethnic cleansing is a small pocket of SQIA resistance in the Jobar suburb of Damascus. Over recent weeks the Syrian government have been concentrating their forces of Jobar in order to clear the area so their forces would be free to head north.

According to some reports SQIA fighters in Jobar were just days away from defeat when on August 21st (21/8/13) they decided to unleash part of their stockpiles of Sarin gas killing some 355 people. In the first instance this was intended to force the UN to force the Syrian government into halting its assault on Jobar under the pretence of investigating the Sarin attack. The SQIA's main short term motivation though was to halt the Syrian government operation in order to buy themselves time in order to regroup. To their credit the UN inspection team don't seem to be rushing the Syrian government to call a ceasefire because they very much object to being exploited in this way. The more long term objective of the SQIA's Sarin gas attack though was to give the Saudis and the Qataris grounds to put pressure on the western nations to intervene on the side of the SQIA in order to use their military might to overthrown the Syrian government.

The UK has been the first to respond to this pressure from the Saudis and Qataris by recalling Parliament to vote on military action against Syria. Apart from the fact that UK Prime Minister David Cameron is looking to use this vote as a way to exert his dominance of Conservative Party backbench MP's who've been very restive over Europe recently the main objective is to get a vote in favour of military action. This yes vote will then be used to exert pressure on US President Obama to join the military intervention because the UK going it alone in Syria is just a polite way of saying a lot of UK planes are going to be shot down.

Obviously in order to soften-up public opposition to any military action we are being told that rather then being a war this will simply be a short operation using so-called "stand-off" weapons such as Cruise missiles intended to intimidate the Syrian government into never using chemical weapons again. Putting aside the fact that the Syrian government haven't used chemical weapons yet this is of course a nonsense because unless the Syrian government can rapidly wipe out the SQIA in the days following any western attack there will be another chemical weapons attack and there will be another clamour for further western intervention. In fact the rumour I've heard is that the UK intends to use Cruise missiles against Syria's air defence systems. That way when the SQIA mount thier next chemical weapon attack it will be much harder for the US to argue against a full-scale Libya-style intervention and regime change.

(Originally Posted) 11:55 on 28/8/13.