Operation Ostrava: Month 14, Week 1, Day 2.

Again according to Twitter my home Internet connection was blocked the first time I tried to post the following. So yes it's going to be a tense couple of days.

Today (9/4/12) Syrian forces opened fire with small arms on a refugee camp/Saudi Irregular Army (SIA) staging post within Turkey along the Syria/Turkey border. SIA fighters responded by rushing out of the camp and crossing into Syria to attack Syrian forces leading to clashes in which 2 were killed and 15 wounded. As always there is no figures available for how many Syrian soldiers were killed or wounded. There was a similar incident on the Syria/Lebanon border in which 1 Lebanese civilian was killed. If nothing else these incidents highlight why it is important to have military experts acting as monitors because this is how opposing armies talk to each other.

In the west these incidents are being presented as further evidence that the Syrian is government is not committed to Tuesday's (10/4/12) ceasefire. However as the western powers actually mean "surrender" when they say "ceasefire" the opposite is true. By firing into Turkey and Lebanon the Syrian government is highlighting two important issues that need to be addressed in order for the ceasefire to be successful. The first is in the 48 hours between the Syrians moving to ceasefire on Tuesday (10/4/12) and the SIA moving to ceasefire on Thursday (12/4/12) how much will the SIA be able to attack Syrian forces before the Syrian forces are able to respond and if they do respond what level of force are they allowed to use. For example under civilian rules if a person is being attacked in such a way as they are in fear of the life they are able to respond with lethal force to eliminate that threat to their life. So if a group of Syrian soldiers are manning a checkpoint when they come under attack from SIA troops and are forced to return fire in order to save their own lives will that count as a ceasefire breach? The second issue is what steps will Turkey and Lebanon be taking to prevent the SIA using their territory as a base to mount attacks on Syria?

So by bringing these issues up before the ceasefire the Syrian government is further demonstrating it's total commitment to the ceasefire process. Therefore I think it is almost an absolute certainty that Syrian guns will fall silent in little over ten hours from now (17:30BST/16:30GMT).

While it is undoubtedly better to be in a position where civilians aren't being killed this ceasefire itself presents a significant moral hazard. As with Libya what is happening in Syria is not a group of civilian protesters calling for political reform and being punished by a dictator for doing so. Instead it is a group of foreign powers funding and equipping an irregular army in order to overthrow the Syrian government. If this ceasefire holds it will invariably lead to some sort of political process. The combination of the high degree of foreign funding and training the opposition are receiving coupled with the all the violence and the fact the incumbent always gets the blame means it is more likely then not that this political process will result in the overthrow of the Syrian government. The foreign powers don't really care how this happens so they will view the overthrow of the Syrian government as a success. It was their success in Libya that encouraged them to take on Syria. So if they win a further success in Syria we will quite rapidly find ourselves facing a similar situation in a place like Mali, Nigeria, Iran or Somalia. In fact it's arguable that something similar is already happening in Somalia.