An offer ignored and "Blame Assad'

West 'ignored Russian offer in 2012 to have Syria's Assad step asid

Exclusive: Senior negotiator describes rejection of alleged proposal – since which time tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/15/west-ignored-russian-offer-in-2012-to-have-syrias-assad-step-aside

Russia proposed more than three years ago that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, could step down as part of a peace deal, according to a senior negotiator involved in back-channel discussions at the time.

Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world’s gravest refugee crisis since the second world war.

Russian Proposal Could Have Forced Syrian Assad to Step Down in 2012

Convenient memory lapses of the Anglo-American Press

Off- Guardian,

16 September, 2015

A quick scan of today’s major press outlets in the US, Britain and Israel reveals the Empire’s continuing attempt to conceal the full depth and extent of its culpability for the last three years of bloodshed and destruction in Syria.

To begin with today’s Guardian, which carries an article on Syria that still claims “Officially, Russia has staunchly backed Assad through the four-and-half-year Syrian war, insisting that his removal cannot be part of any peace settlement.“ 

The major news purveyed in the article are the details of a 2012 plan Russia had proposed to avoid the escalation of violence in Syria, which had by that point taken some 7,000 lives — a proposal rejected by the US, Britain, and the rest of the self-declared”Friends of Syria” group of countries.

Relying on the Guardian, today’s Washington Post also cites Martti Ahtisaari, Finnish diplomat and Nobel laureate, and his revelation that “in February 2012, when the conflict had claimed under 10,000 lives, Russia’s envoy to the United Nations outlined a peace plan that could have led to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s exit from power.”

Reporting the same news, Isreal’s Haaretz similarly claims that “Russia supposedlyproposed President Bashar Assad step down in 2012 as part of a larger Syrian peace deal, but was ignored by the West that thought opposition forces would oust the embattled dictator first”[emphasis mine].

Note the hedging and the rhetoric of doubt and uncertainty evident in the phrasing above. In reality, there is, as I will show, nothing of a mere supposition about it.

As early as June 6, 2012, in fact, Bloomberg had reported that “Russia is signaling that it no longer views President Bashar al-Assad’s position as tenable and is working with the U.S. to seek an orderly transition.” As Bloomberg also pointed out over 3 years ago, on June 1, 2012, speaking to the international press, Putin himself had indicated Russia’s commitment to finding a solution which would avert the possibility of a full-scale war in Syria. That solution, as he hinted, could involve Assad’s stepping down:

“We aren’t for Assad or for his opponents. We want to achieve a situation in which violence ends and a full-scale civil war is avoided.”

It is highly improbable that literally everyone at the Guardian’s, Washington Post’s, and Haaretz’s newsdesks suffers from such enormous memory deficits as to have forgotten the original reports on Russia’s flexibility regarding Assad from 2012. It seems much more likely, in fact, that Matti Ahtisaari’s statements are now being offered to the public as breaking news because the UK and the US administrations, in particular, are facing serious international embarrassment — and opprobrium at home — for having unnecessarily prolonged bloodshed in Syria and, by refusing Russia’s 2012 offer, both financially and practically facilitated the death of over 200,000 Syrians in the proxy-war they’ve been supporting there. Not incidentally, this also makes them directly responsible for the greatest refugee crisis of the last 50 years, now threatening stability and security in Europe.

The official Western narrative, pushed by the Anglo-American and EU mainstream media since 2011, has almost invariably claimed Russian intransigence on the issue of Assad. That narrative is now in tatters. The Guardian, Washington Post and Haaretz articles of the last 24 hours demonstrate that what now needs to be air-brushed from our view is the fact that it was always only a narrative – an anti-Russian, pro-war propaganda story the Western press knowingly imposed on the public.

There were always chinks in that story, of course. In June 2012, the Guardian itself had carried an item headlined “Russia backs Assad’s departure ‘if that is what Syrians want’,” with the subheading:

Foreign minister’s comments suggest that Moscow’s backing for Syrian president is weakening

The article  opened with

Russia has indicated that it will no longer stand in the way of the departure of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad if that is what Syrians want.

and went on to quote Lavrov saying that “If the Syrians agree [on Assad’s departure] between each other, we will only be happy to support such a solution.”

The current attempt to re-write history – all Ahtisaari has now revealed are some of the actual details of the Russian plan the US and EU rejected in 2012, not the fact that Moscow clearly signalled its flexibility on Assad long ago — stands as just another starkly pointed instance of bad faith on the part of the Western press.

Blame Assad: The world according to State Department

RT,

16 September, 2015

In the mind of State Department spokesman John Kirby, Russia should not back Syria against the terrorists, president Assad is to blame for ISIS, Iraq is much better off because of the US invasion, and it’s ‘absolutely astounding’ anyone would dare to disagree.

That is what the press briefing at the State Department on Tuesday amounted to in a nutshell. The retired US Navy admiral, now speaking on behalf of the US foreign ministry, repeatedly blamed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for the very existence of Islamic State terrorists.

“He is the reason ISIL, and other terrorist groups, have been allowed to fester and grow and sustain themselves inside Syria,” Kirby said. “Assad regime has allowed groups like ISIL to fester and grow inside the country.”

How, exactly, is the government in Damascus to blame for the sudden appearance and viral growth of Islamic State, Kirby did not explain. For almost three years prior to the emergence of IS, Assad has fought against an armed rebellion by a collection of rebel groups, backed by the US – currently dominated by Islamist factions like Jabhat Al-Nusra. US efforts to raise a “moderate” fighting force have so far been without success.

Meanwhile, over 80 percent of Syrians believe ISIS to be a creation of the US, reveals a recent poll cited by the Washington Post.

82% of Syrians say ISIS is a US creation in new poll http://t.co/vE4E4NvZjZpic.twitter.com/0Gee3Gi5OP

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) September 15, 2015

Kirby ruled out any role for the Syrian Army in battling IS, and claimed that Russian support for Damascus in that struggle would “isolate” Moscow in the world. His remarks came following the statement by Russian president Vladimir Putin that Moscow was providing military aid to the Syrian government against Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL) terrorists, and invitation to other countries to do the same.

“It is necessary to set aside geopolitical ambitions, drop so-called double standards, the policy of direct or indirect use of separate terrorist groups for achieving own goals, including removing the governments and regimes,” Putin said at the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

READ MORE: Putin: ISIS has designs on Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, endangers Europe & Russia

“I’ll let [Russian] comments speak for themselves on that,” Kirby countered. “We don’t want to see the Assad regime getting any support.”

“What we’re concerned about is any support that bolsters the Assad regime’s ability to continue to have within their means the capabilities of rendering further violence inside the country,” the State Department spokesman added, to the confusion of the press corps.

There was no need for another coalition against IS, he said, “when 62 nations are already aligned and having an effect”against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

READ MORE: 1yr, 6,700 airstrikes & $4bn after Obama vowed to ‘destroy’ ISIS, jihadists still on offensive

Kirby did not elaborate on the effect the coalition had achieved. According to the Pentagon’s own information, some 6,700 air strikes have been launched against the group, along with ground offensives by local proxy forces, at the cost of $4 billion, without any sign of slowing IS down.

Our bombs and theirs

“People are fleeing Syria, first of all, because of military actions … from atrocities of terrorists – we know they are committing brutalities there, and destroying cultural heritage,” President Putin said in Dushanbe on Tuesday, adding that it wasn’t Russia that destroyed government institutions and backed rebellions that created conditions for terrorists to flourish.

Yet the State Department spokesman absolutely refused to even consider the possibility that US interventions may have had anything to do with the mass displacement of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria, or elsewhere.“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,” Kirby replied when a journalist brought up the issue.

“Is Iraq better off without Saddam Hussein, and with a democracy? Yes, they are,” he said. But when asked about Libya and other places, he suddenly cut the reporter off. “I’m not going to answer any more questions on this from you.”

BREAKING: 'If you are worried about refugees, stop supporting terrorists' - Assadhttp://t.co/sVBQ447y58pic.twitter.com/WNzB6BAGR1

— RT (@RT_com) September 15, 2015

While refusing to even consider the role of US bombs in destabilizing countries, Kirby repeatedly referred to Assad’s use of “barrel bombs” as the self-evident proof the Syrian president’s rule was unacceptable.

“We still see the man dropping barrel bombs on his own people,” Kirby said of Assad at one point. As for the Syrians streaming towards European countries with generous welfare programs, “They are leaving because they are being barrel-bombed.”

The term refers to low-tech, improvised projectiles, made out of barrels or similar containers (such as oil drums) and dropped from aircraft. Pioneered by Israel in 1948, these improvised bombs have also been used by the US in Vietnam, by the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil rebels, and by various factions in Sudan, among others. The devices have also been used by the US-backed Iraqi government forces, both against Sunni tribal militias and civilians in IS-held areas.

Root causes, jobs and no military solution

If Assad is such a problem, asked AP’s diplomatic correspondent Matt Lee, why doesn’t the US take him out? Kirby appeared startled by the question, saying that the US was “working hard” on achieving “a political transition inside Syria away from Assad.”

President Obama – whom Kirby referred to as the Commander-in-Chief – has been “crystal clear” that there won’t be a military solution to the conflict in Syria, only a political one, and “there has been a lot of energy applied to that,” the spokesman explained. The key to defeating IS was “good governance,” and that means replacing the government in Damascus, he maintained.

READ MORE: US cannot win war against ISIS by killing, they need ‘job opportunities’ – State Dept

At another point, however, he insisted, “There are military solutions … and we’ve been doing it, quite effectively.”

The astounded admiral

“Frankly, I find it incredible that today, there are lines of questions being posed to me that would implicate that people actually think Bashar al-Assad is good for Syria and that his continued tenure in the country is a healthy thing,” Kirby complained at one point, calling such questions “absolutely astounding.”

AP’s Lee countered that the questions – posed by several journalists – were related to US policy and the apparent disconnect between Washington’s stated goal of opposing Islamic State while at the same time insisting on overthrowing the government in Damascus that is most opposed to it.

“I do think there is an implication in some of these questions” that the US should give up overthrowing Assad, Kirby retorted. “That’s not how we feel, have not ever felt, and have no intention of changing.”

He dismissed the notion that US weapons intended for “pro-coalition” fighters falling into the hands of Islamic State fighters could have anything to do with the refugee crisis, calling it a “huge stretch.” Sure, he said, IS has been brandishing M16s and driving around in US-made Humvees captured from the crumbling Iraqi army, but Washington cannot absolutely guarantee its aid won’t end up in the wrong hands. “I get it,” Kirby said, shrugging. “We’re doing the best we can.”