"The fact is that there is no uprising of the Syrian people against the government"

Wednesday, 30 May 2012

"The fact is that there is no uprising of the Syrian people against the government"

Via FLC

"... The fact is that there is no uprising of the Syrian people against the government. Nor have there been any major protests against Assad’s presidency in the country’s two biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, where the only mass demonstrations to have been held at all have been pro-Assad.Some try to explain the absence of mass rallies by claiming that the tyrannical nature of the government prevents them, but this will not wash.

In Egypt, the police, army and security forces under President Mubarak were far stronger than those under Assad in Syria today, yet they still could not prevent huge popular protests.

There has been nothing like that in Syria, for the reality is that the opposition does not represent the will of the people. Instead, it is a largely Islamist force that wants to end Assad’s attachment to secular rule, under which — for all the regime’s other failings — the rights of religious minorities are respected.

The opposition’s co-ordinating body, the Syrian National Council, is dominated by the hardline Muslim Brotherhood, which supports the imposition of Sharia law. The council is strongly supported by armed jihadists on the ground who want to create an anti-Western Islamic state in Syria.

These zealots have been provided with both arms and financial backing by the fundamentalist Muslim regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as both want to promote ultra-conservative Islamism across the region.

It is grotesque that our own Foreign Secretary thinks that we have a duty to take up the cause of these fanatics in Syria who have no interest in negotiation or democracy.

Hague is quite simply deluded if he thinks that we have anything to gain from intervention in the country.

Britain’s position is shot through with hypocrisy. Hague fulminates about human rights in Syria because the issue is dominating international news, yet says nothing about abuses of freedom in Saudi Arabia, just because the country happens to be our oil-rich economic ally.