Operation Ostrava: Month 17, Week 1, Day 6.

The mandate for the United Nations Supervision Mission In Syria (UNSMIS) expires in a little over seven days on July 20th (20/7/12). With extreme violence meaning that UNSMIS are still confined to their hotels/barracks there seems to be no obvious reason to extend that mandate.

This has prompted the Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan to embark on a last gasp diplomatic tour to save the mission by switching it's focus away from the six point plan - which Annan himself admits has failed - towards the vague transition plan that was agreed at the June 30th (30/6/12) meeting of the Syria Action Group (SAG). This tour has taken him to Syria and Iran both of whom have agreed in principle to the vague plan. As always though the problem remains with the insurgents who Russia have been charged with negotiating with. The insurgents position remains that they have no interest in a political transformation in Syria and instead are wholly focused on the overthrow of the Syrian government. This leaves little hope of a diplomatic breakthrough before the July 20th deadline. This is a shame because despite having no clear purpose and the six point plan being the problem rather then the solution it would still make sense for the UNSMIS mission to be extended for a further 90 days and then have it's mandate changed whilst still in country rather then pulling the mission out, changing it's mandate and then trying to get it back into the country.

There seems little chance of the UNSMIS mandate being extended let alone changed though with the United States announcing at last Friday's (6/7/12) meeting at the Syria Contact Group (SCG) that it no longer intends to play an active role in diplomatic efforts on Syria. The thing that is obvious to all concerned is that what is going on in Syria is not a popular uprising against the government but is a Saudi and Qatari backed armed insurgency attempting to overthrow the Syrian government. As such it is a regional war in all but name. However in order to get people to ignore the obvious and go along with the lie the US has been forced to do a lot of favours and pay a lot of bribes to the other members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the 100 or so members of the SCG. Therefore Hillary Clinton's speech to the SCG in which she said "I don't think Russia and China believe they are paying any price at all, nothing at all, for standing with [the] Assad regime" and asked members of the SCG to "reach out [their grasping hands] to Russia and China" was as clear a statement as you're going to get in the diplomatic double-speak that dominates these things that the US is no longer prepared to pay to keep up the pressure on the Syrian government. In an election year Clinton's comments were specifically directed at the American people in order to explain to them that by calling for tougher action against Syria all they are doing is costing themselves a lot of money and prestige in order to put themselves in a worse position.

As the US government is still under immense pressure from the oil-rich Gulf Monarchies to overthrow the Syrian government they instead intend to wait for the sanctions to cause the Syrian government to run out of money which in turn will cause the Syrian state to implode. This compromise is actually worse then original problem. If the international community were to intervene militarily a post-Assad Syria would look a lot like post-Qaddafi Libya. That is to say a country awash with heavy weapons, no functioning government and a large number of disparate - some very extreme - groups fighting it out amongst themselves. If a sanction driven cash crisis were to cause the Syrian state to implode a post-Assad Syria would be a country awash with heavy weapons, no functioning government, a large number of disparate groups - some very extreme - fighting it out amongst themselves and no money available to help restore order. No wonder Israel has today (12/7/12) threatened to invade Syria under the very sarcastic pre-text of looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD's) - a clear dig at the US political right.

As for the daily death toll within Syria it is still hovering around the 70-100 mark. They had a good day on Tuesday (10/7/12) though when only 68 people were killed.


Edited at around 08:20 on 13/7/12 to add:

Although they've only gone public with it today the Syrian insurgents are claiming that yesterday (12/7/12) Syrian government forces massacred up to 250 people in the village of al-Tremesh close to the city of Hama. What appears to have happened is a re-run of the al-Houla massacre. That is to say the Saudi Irregular Army (SIA) attacked Syrian government positions on the outskirts of the village provoking Syrian government forces to retaliate with artillery fire. Then later unidentified armed men moved in from SIA strongholds in surrounding villages to kill the majority of the dead at close quarters.

Having taken Hillary Clinton's comments to the SCG at face value Britain has been pursuing a Chapter 7 UNSC resolution against Syria. This resolution would have given the Syrian government 10 days to surrender and could be backed by foreign military intervention if they failed to comply. If they'd been able to build momentum Britain was hoping for a vote on this resolution today.

Obviously the events at al-Tremesh will have to be examined in detail but they do seem to fit into the pattern of the SIA carrying out an atrocity and then blaming it on the Syrian government in an attempt to increase diplomatic pressure.