It's Time to Clean Up Syria.

Now that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has refused to endorse the Zionist* war against Syria the time has come for the Syrian government to put an end to the armed insurgency that has plagued the country for the past ten months. Tomorrow (7/2/12) the senior Russian foreign minister and intelligence chief will visit the country to offer their advice. While I don't want to pre-empt their visit or put words into their mouths there are things that I think Syria needs to do to put an end to the current terrible situation.

Firstly they need to ignore everything and anything the Arab League has to say. This is because since the Egyptian revolution there is no such thing as the Arab League.** What there is is the Saudi and Qatari lead Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) and nations like Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco who are too terrified to disobey the GCC in case the GCC do to them what they did to Libya. I for one have no intention of taking lectures on democracy and human rights from an absolute Monarchy that doesn't let women leave their homes unaccompanied and sent in troops to very brutally crush the uprising in Bahrain.

The second thing is to isolate Bashar al-Assad's brother and commander of the fourth armoured division Maher al-Assad from the decision making process. This is because I think it's fair to say that he can tend to be overly aggressive and has been caught on film personally shooting protesters. He is also the deputy the proposed UNSC resolution called on Bashar al-Assad to hand over power to.

Beyond that the next priority is to starve off the the insurgents supply of weapons by closing off Syria's borders with Turkey and Lebanon. This shouldn't be too difficult or labour intensive because the Turkish army is already heavily patrolling their side of the border and keeps expressing concern over the situation in Syria so should be more then happy to help improve it. Likewise the UN peacekeeping force that is currently deployed in Lebanon should be well suited to this task although it may take a UNSC resolution to change their mandate.

When or while this is going on the Syrian army needs to identify the insurgents strongholds. They then need to surround them and quarantine them in order to prevent the insurgents moving between them. Once the insurgent strongholds have been successfully strong-pointed the Syria army need to divide them into districts and seal those districts off one by one before going through them street by street and house by house. However the purpose of the exercise is not to kill people but to arrest troublemakers and seize equipment such as weapons, communications equipment and propaganda tools. As for the people who are arrested the soldiers who defected from the Syrian army and then chose to take up arms against that army will have to be tried by military tribunal and humanely executed if convicted. As for the civilians the foreigners should be deported while the Syrians should be tried by specially convened civilian courts. The trial procedure used and the penalties handed down upon conviction can then be used as a basis for a public debate over what sort of political reforms the Syrian people want.

Unfortunately as the insurgents are now at least as heavily armed as the Taliban in Afghanistan the Syrian army will have to used armoured vehicles to move against them and heavy weapons to take out mortar positions and anti-tank rockets. However rather then using un-aimed "dumb" weapons such as artillery and Grad rockets the Syrian air force should use aimed "smart" weapons such as missiles fired from fast jets and helicopter gunships being used in a close air support role. In short they need to do what NATO did in Libya. The Syrian authorities should also take the opportunity to be more honest with their people by holding regular press conferences explaining when heavy weapons have been used, why they've been used and how successful or not their use was. This has the added advantage that if the Syrian army are forced to publicly justify each and every use of force they will limit their use of force only to when it is strictly necessary.







*I'm not sure if Zionist is really the right word to use. While what's happening in Syria is happening because Israel wants it to happen Israel isn't really playing an active role. Instead they're forcing the United States to do all the work and take all the blame on their behalf. Since the Egyptian revolution Saudi Arabia have also played a leading role because if all these Arab countries do become functioning, modern democracies it is going to become impossible for the Saudi Royal Family to explain to the Saudi people why they're being forced to continue living in the Dark Ages. That is also the reason why Britain is playing a leading role.

**I'm also starting to doubt the existence of Al Jazeera. Following the Egyptian revolution their head Waddah Khanfar who has links to the Muslim Brotherhood was quickly replaced by the Emir (king) of Qatar's brother and since then the channel has become little more then a mouthpiece of the Qatari Royal Family. That's why it keeps calling for Arabs living in majority Sunni nations to "Awaken" and rise up to be slaughtered while keeping quiet about what's happening in Shia majority nations with minority Sunni rulers.