Syria's dead are victims of the new Cold War

Syria's dead are victims of the new Cold War

By Peter McKay

PUBLISHED: 17:07 EST, 10 June 2012 | UPDATED: 17:18 EST, 10 June 2012

There can’t be any doubt that Syria’s ruler, Bashar Assad, is repressing bloodily those who oppose his rule; but is it black and white, good versus bad â€" or bad versus just as bad, with innocent victims caught in the crossfire?

Channel 4’s chief correspondent, Alex Thomson, says Syrian rebels tried to have him and his team killed by Assad forces by leading them into a firefight.

‘Dead journos are bad for Damascus,’ he explains, a reference to Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times who was killed in a Syrian forces bombardment. Was she, too, set up by the ‘Free Syria’ forces?

Bloody: There can be no doubt that Syrian President Bashar Assad is repressing those who oppose his rule

Now a group of Western women in Damascus has contacted the Mail on Sunday to say rebels ‘fire upon the army with the sole purpose of inciting riot and mayhem’.

They mention a ‘peaceful’ march in which a rebel pulled out a gun and shot dead an unarmed policeman. The following riot was reported as a police attack on peaceful protesters, they say.

True or false? I have no means of telling. The old cliché is that truth is the first casualty in war. We still argue about why the two world wars were fought â€" even though it’s the centenary of the first one in 2014.

But the so-called Arab Spring â€" of which the Syrian civil war is part â€" is a far more complex event than credulous innocents in the West imagine. It’s not simply uprisings by ground-down peasants against tyrants who repress them.

It’s about a transfer of power to rival clans and/or religious groups. And about a continuation of the old, U.S.-Russia Cold War stand-off.

Complex: The deepening crisis in Syria is not a black and white issue, but increasingly about bad fighting bad

During the Libyan uprising against Colonel Gaddafi, the rebels we supported were excitable armed men who fired constantly into the air and rode around in pick-up trucks with machine guns mounted on the back.

Now, under a transitional authority, the armed hooligans in pick-ups are still in charge. It reminds me of a colleague’s remark about bribe-seeking police in Mexico: ‘They don’t get a salary. Just a uniform and a gun. The rest is up to them.’

Yes, there are places in the world where the poor are repressed by rich families and clans, but we don’t want to know because the rulers involved are allies of (or oil suppliers to) the West. Saudi Arabia is one.

The U.S. accuses Russia of arming the Syrian regime. But America arms the Saudi regime, which â€" along with Libya and Qatar â€" is now accused of arming the anti-Assad forces.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been outspoken in her vilification of the Assad regime

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rails against the Assad regime. So does her faithful UK poodle, Foreign Secretary William Hague. They say Assad and Co must go.

Is this genuine anger at the Assad regime, or determination to install a new leadership in Syria because the present one is an ally of both Russia and Iran, especially the latter?

Mrs Clinton and Hague seem to be winning the argument here. A YouGov opinion poll shows substantial public support for a ‘no-fly zone’ over Syria such as we arranged in Libya. But that enthusiasm might fade if we knew more about the likely beneficiaries of our support â€" those most likely to take power in a post-Assad Syria.

Thomson says of the rebels who, as he saw it, tried to lead his team into deadly peril: ‘In a war where they slit the throats of toddlers, what’s the big deal in sending a van full of journalists into a killing zone? It was nothing personal.’

Like most of you, I imagine, I rejoiced at the downfall of Gaddafi and the blooming of the Arab Spring, and couldn’t understand why we were standing by while Assad brutalised his people.

But in the cold light of dawn, reality is messier, and now there is a suspicion that our sympathies for the downtrodden were hi-jacked by new oppressors, whom our own U.S.-UK ruling regime hopes will be more useful in their great game.

 

Historian Dr Lucy Worsley’s BBC4 series about the 200th anniversary of the Regency gives the Prince Regent a good slapping.

She ridicules the future George IV by showing how he glorified himself by building Windsor Castle’s Waterloo Chamber, where his portrait is bigger than the Duke of Wellington’s.

Dr Lucy Worsley presented the three-part series Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency

Dr Lucy, 38, says the Prince Regent was obsessed with outdoing Napoleon â€" ‘not on the battlefield, but in opulence, bling and monumental architecture’.

I hope it doesn’t give the current Prince of Wales any ideas.

Miss Worsley (pictured) lives in London with her partner, Mark Hines, and tells the Radio Times: ‘I have been educated out of the natural reproductive function. I get to spend my time doing things I enjoy. I just had other priorities.’

Motherhood’s loss is our gain, no?

 

This is a big week at Leveson, our long-running media inquiry. We’ll have the Chancellor and the Prime Minister. But I agree with the Left-wing weekly Tribune when it says: ‘Among the myriad unasked, and therefore unanswered, questions hanging over the Leveson Inquiry is the missing reference to Dr David Kelly. It would have been reasonable to assume that, between them, Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair might have been challenged on the death of the Ministry of Defence scientist. Kelly was exposed by Downing Street as the source in a BBC report which first raised the accusation that the Government was guilty of “sexing-up” intelligence reports on the case for invading Iraq.’

 

Diplomacy: The Earl and Countess of Wessex are visiting Gibraltar

Spain doesn’t like the cut of Sophie’s gib

The visit to Gibraltar today by the Earl and Countess of Wessex ‘has sullied the atmosphere’, says Jose Ignacio Lanaluce, mayor of nearby, unlovely Algeciras.

‘It’s a tense situation. It’s a most inopportune moment for them to come.’

Our ambassador to Madrid, Giles Paxman, brother of you know who, was summoned to the foreign ministry to hear about the Spanish government’s ‘displeasure’ over the royal visit.

You’d hope that bankrupt Spain, having applied to its Eurozone partners for a 100 billion euro bailout, would have much more on its mind than the old dispute about Gibraltar.

But, as we’ve found recently with the Argentinians, it sometimes profits politicians in trouble domestically to turn the focus on foreign grievances.

Prince Edward and his wife, Sophie (pictured), are presumed to be on the list of royals who’ll be sideline d in future. Perhaps a plucky facedown of the surly senors will improve their prospects.

 

Flying the flag - even if it’s Red

Former Labour premier Gordon Brown discloses that Russian financiers paid him £124,494, plus travel expenses of £4,000, for appearing at a  four-hour conference in Moscow, although ‘not a penny’ went into his own pocket.

His predecessor, Tony Blair, has also performed for the Russians, although his fees are unknown. As has Labour’s former Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson.

It seems likely the contributions they were invited to make, for a fee, were designed to help the listening oligarchs get even richer.

Why is it wrong for them to be paid to help Russian business types? Because everything they have learned which is of  interest to the Russians was acquired as public servants of the United Kingdom. It’s not theirs  to sell.

I don’t suppose Labour is unique in having former ministers keen on advising Moscow businessmen. But shouldn’t we curb this spivvy exploitation of past ministerial, and prime ministerial, office?

Dimbleby for D-G!

David Dimbleby presented a sparkling edition of Question Time from Inverness, but why wasn’t he asked about the great talking point of last week â€" the crass BBC coverage of the Diamond Jubilee flotilla and concert?

Because it would have been too embarrassing. As an expert at commenting on such occasions, he couldn’t have supported the BBC’s pathetic it-wasn’t-that-bad line.

Would David Dimbleby have added some sparkle to the BBC's Diamond Jubilee coverage?

I don’t know Dimbleby, nor am I a fan, but he would have made a better fist of it. He’d also have been a better Director-General of the BBC than most who have held that job since the Sixties because he knows and understands the institution.

But he has never been chosen because the politicians responsible do not like him â€" which, in an ideal world, might  itself be a qualification for the job.

 

Demure: The Duchess of Cambridge has won praise, and criticism, for wearing clothes more than once

The Duchess of Cambridge has done it again â€" by appearing in a ‘dove-grey coat, chestnut hat and nude L K Bennett shoes, all previously worn in public’.

Why does Kate continue to flout the modern convention that royals and celebrities must never be seen twice in the same clothes? Perhaps because it’s silly.

When and why did we decide collectively that this sartorial situation is interesting? Are their clothes, once worn, meant to be packed away for ever, given to charity or sold?

Critics of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations say the dependence of some on the royals is a sign of infantilism. Obsessively noting what they wear,  and how often, suggests that some see them as living dolls.

Incidentally, Princes William and Harry appeared at the same event as Kate â€" a wedding in Lincolnshire â€" in morning suits. We are not told whether they had worn them previously.

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