Operation Ostrava: Month 16, Week 4, Day 2.

I should really start by explaining one of the reasons why I refer to the Syrian insurgents as the Saudi Irregular Army (SIA). Using their given name the "Free Syrian Army" (FSA) they share an acronym with Britain's financial regulator the "Finacial Services Authority." On Wednesday (27/6/12) the FSA fined Britain's Barclays Bank for causing a number of the banking collapses (Northern Rock, RBS etc) during the 2008 credit crunch by rigging the benchmark London Inter-Bank Over-night Rate [of interest] (LIBOR). This shared aronym along with the complexity of the two issues seems to have played a significant role in the European Union's (EU) negotiations that led to today's (29/6/12) stinker of a decision to allow the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to bailout Eurozone banks directly. Britain of course intends to use this needless further EU intergration to fuel anti-EU feeling within the northern nations.

However pretending for a moment that events in Syria have anything to do with Syria;

On Tuesday (26/6/12) Turkey convened a NATO meeting under article 4 of the Washington Treaty. The overt aim of the meeting was to determine whether last Friday's (22/6/12) shooting down of a Turkish military jet over Syria by the Syrian government constituted a Syrian attack on Turkey of the sort that would trigger NATO's mutual defence agreement (article 5). As the incident was clearly Syria defending itself from Turkish aggression NATO quickly decided that the article 5 conditions had not been met. This outcome was so obvious that not even Turkey was expecting an article 5 response. Instead they were trying to re-open the old argument about what level of support NATO would give to it's new members if they got themselves involved in small, regional wars. This argument really reached it's peak of controversy in 2008 when NATO candidate country Georgia rather foolishly attacked Russia and then expected NATO to leap to it's aid when Russia counter-attacked. Needless to say Georgia's progress to full NATO membership has slowed considerably since then. No-one else in NATO seemed interested in re-opening this argument with Russia though so the Turks were put back in their box with the minimum of fuss in a little over two hours.

Enraged at this snub by NATO Turkey responded by adopting an aggressive military posture towards Syria flooding it's side of the border with troops, tanks and anti-aircraft missile batteries. This is something Turkey should have done 16 months ago and should help put an end to the conflict in Syria provided Turkey is prepared to use these military assests to stop the supply of weapons to the SIA and prevent SIA fighters using Turkish territory as a safe-haven to launch attacks against Syria. However the rumours I've heard is that the Turkish military is actively helping supply the SIA with weapons and the Turkish government is being quite open about it's role in supplying non-lethal aid to the SIA even issuing government permits to smugglers of medical supplies.

On Wednesday (27/6/12) the United Nations (UN) Office for the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) held a frankly surreal meeting on Syria. The purpose of the meeting was to allow a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) to present it's findings on the situation in Syria following the adoption of the Joint Special Envoy's six point peace plan and the deployment of the United Nations Supervision Mission In Syria (UNSMIS). The CoI concluded that the situation in Syria in terms of violence and human rights abuses has got dramatically worse since the introduction of the six point plan. However it failed to even entertain the idea that the six point plan might be the cause of the escalation of violence.

The CoI did examine the al-Houla massacre but determined that because it had been unable to visit the scene and collect evidence first hand it was unable to apportion blame for the massacre. It was though able to conduct telephone/Skype interviews with local residents. These interveiws completely corroborated the Syrian government's version of events - that is members of the SIA attacked a government checkpoint on the outskirts of the town before moving into the town to massacre women and children predominately from the Al-Sayed, AbdulRazak and Mashlab families. The CoI then apportioned blame for the massacre on the Syrian government asking people to believe that it was more likely that the Syrian government killed two families of Sunni to Alawite converts and the family of a sitting member of the Syrian Parliament.

The CoI also declared the Syrian government's recent attempts at political reform through a consitutional referendum and a Parliamentary election to be "unilateral." Refendums and elections of course involve seeking the opinions of the entire adult population so I am genuinely struggling to imagine how a political reform process could be made more multi-lateral.

To co-incide with the OHCHR meeting the SIA mounted two large attacks within Damascus the Syrian capital. On Wednesday (27/6/12) they attacked and destroyed the al-Ikhbariya TV station killing seven journalists. On Thursday (28/6/12) they attempted to detonate three Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) in the car park of the Palace of Justice/High Court. Only two of the IED's exploded injuring three and killing none. The purpose of the attacks was to convince the Syrian and world population that the SIA is in a much stronger military position then it really is. Although the war in Syria is asymmetric so there is no neat front-line dividing the two sides prior to March-2012 the SIA controlled large sections of the north-west of the country from the town of al-Qusayr on the border with Lebanon to the town of al-Qamishli on the border with Turkey including the population centres of Homs, Hama and Aleppo. Since then though they've been pushed back to the small, rural villages in the Kurdish mountains. If you're that interested in military history and want to annoy the USA you could compare the SIA's recent activity to the Viet Cong's 1968 Tet offensive during the Vietnam war. Either way the attacks on Damascus have pushed to average daily death-toll up to between 80 and 120 people killed per day.


Edited at around 18:35 on 29/6/12 to add:

I'm not even going to begin explaining the Barclays Bank thing in detail because it is big and it is complicated. So big and complicated in fact that it actually began life as a 2007(ish) CIA investigation into Barclays circumventing sanctions on Iran on behalf of the British government. I still need to look at how the deal with the FSA will affect their international liabilities but I'm inclined to think that because of the Syria connection they got off lightly because they have ripped off some very major players.