NATO countries are strongly considering the possibility of an
international deployment to Syria if the Syrian opposition does not make
major advances in the next few weeks, according to informed Middle
Eastern diplomatic and security officials.
Egyptian security officials, meanwhile, outlined what they said
was large scale international backing for the rebels attacking the
embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad – including arms and
training from the U.S., Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Several knowledgeable Egyptian and Arab security officials claimed
the U.S., Turkey and Jordan were running a training base for the Syrian
rebels in the Jordanian town of Safawi in the country’s northern desert
region.
The security officials also claimed Saudi Arabia was sending
weapons to the rebels via surrogates, including through Druze and
Christian leaders in Lebanon such as Druze leader Walid Jumblatt;
Saudi-Lebanese billionaire Saad Hariri, who recently served as Lebanon’s
prime minister; and senior Lebanese opposition leader Samir Farid
Geagea.
Syrian sources claimed to WND that Jordan’s fingerprints can be
seen on the opposition forces entering the country. They claimed that
just this week they shot dead 15 armed smugglers coming into the country
from Jordan and that Jordanian forces helped to cover the smugglers’
tracks on the Jordanian side of the border. They said the incident did
not make it to the news media.
While Turkey, the U.S. and Arab countries may be arming the
opposition, Russia has been directly aiding Assad’s forces on the
ground, according to informed Middle Eastern diplomatic and security
officials.
In one recent incident, when opposition forces successfully
destroyed a Russian-provided tank in the rebel stronghold of Homs using
an anti-tank missile, the officials said that Russian technicians took
fragments of the missile to study the components in a Russian lab to
determine the exact missile used.
WND previously reported Russian military experts have been inside
Syria helping Assad’s regime face down the months-long insurgency.
NATO war in Syria in March?
Meanwhile, according to the Middle Eastern diplomatic and security
officials speaking to WND, the international community is considering
launching NATO airstrikes on Assad’s forces as soon as March if the
opposition does not make major strides toward ending Assad’s regime.
The NATO members, however, have been satisfied with the momentum
of the opposition in the last few days, which saw a number of defectors
from the Syrian military join the rebels, a move that also precipitated
the downfall of Muammar Gadhafi’s regime before the NATO campaign in
Libya.
Similar to Gadhafi, Assad’s regime has been accused of major human
rights violations, including crimes against humanity, in clamping down
on a violent insurgency targeting his rule.
Mass demonstrations were held in recent weeks in Syrian insurgent
strongholds calling for the international NATO coalition in Libya to
deploy in Syria.
Just yesterday, 50 foreign ministers from Western and Arab nations
got together in Tunis to demand that Syria allow aid to be delivered to
civilians in the absence of any international force to resolve the
conflict.
Damascus officials claimed to WND that NATO troops are currently
training in Turkey for a Turkish-led NATO invasion of Syria.
Any deployment would most likely come under the banner of the same
“Responsibility to Protect” global doctrine used to justify the
U.S.-NATO airstrikes in Libya.
Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by
President Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United
Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a
responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war
crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”
George Soros-funded doctrine
In his address to the nation in April explaining the NATO campaign
in Libya, Obama cited Responsibility to Protect doctrine as the main
justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.
The Global Center for Responsibility to Protect is the world’s leading champion of the military doctrine.
As WND reported, billionaire activist George Soros is a primary
funder and key proponent of the Global Center for Responsibility to
Protect. Several of the doctrine’s main founders also sit on boards with
Soros.
WND reported the committee that devised the Responsibility to
Protect doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as
well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the
Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation
Organization leader Yasser Arafat.
Also, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy has a seat on the
advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded
Responsibility to Protect. The commission is called the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term
Responsibility to Protect while defining its guidelines.
The Carr Center is a research center concerned with human rights
located at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to
Obama on human rights, was Carr’s founding executive director and headed
the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility
to Protect.
With Power’s center on the advisory board, the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty first defined the
Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
Power reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya.
Two of the global group’s advisory board members, Ramesh Thakur
and Gareth Evans, are the original founders of the doctrine, with the
duo even coining the term.
As WND reported, Soros’ Open Society Institute is a primary funder
and key proponent of the Global Center for Responsibility to Protect.
Also, Thakur and Evans sit on multiple boards with Soros.
Soros’ Open Society is one of only three nongovernmental funders
of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect. Government
sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway,
Rwanda and the U.K.
Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African
activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have made solidarity visits to
the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders,
which includes former President Jimmy Carter.
Annan once famously stated, “State sovereignty, in its most basic
sense, is being redefined – not least by the forces of globalization and
international co-operation. States are … instruments at the service of
their peoples and not vice versa.”
Soros: Right to ‘penetrate nation-states’
Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to
Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article titled “The People’s
Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World’s Most
Vulnerable Populations.”
In the article Soros said, “True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments.”
“If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens
have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is
justified,” Soros wrote. “By specifying that sovereignty is based on the
people, the international community can penetrate nation-states’
borders to protect the rights of citizens.
“In particular,” he continued, “the principle of the people’s
sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to
delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to
global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal
conflict.”
More Soros ties
“Responsibility” founders Evans and Thakur served as co-chairmen
with Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corp. Charitable
Foundation, on the advisory board of the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty, which invented the term
Responsibility to Protect.
In his capacity as co-chairman, Evans also played a pivotal role
in initiating the fundamental shift from sovereignty as a right to
“sovereignty as responsibility.”
Evans presented Responsibility to Protect at the July 23, 2009,
United Nations General Assembly, which was convened to consider the
principle.
Thakur is a fellow at the Center for International Governance
Innovation, which is in partnership with an economic institute founded
by Soros.
Soros is on the executive board of the International Crisis Group,
a “crisis management organization” for which Evans serves as
president-emeritus.
WND previously reported how the group has been petitioning for the
U.S. to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition
in Egypt, where longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was recently toppled.
Aside from Evans and Soros, the group includes on its board
Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei and other personalities who
champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot of the Muslim
Brotherhood.
WND also reported the crisis group has petitioned for the Algerian
government to cease “excessive” military activities against
al-Qaida-linked groups and to allow organizations seeking to create an
Islamic state to participate in the Algerian government.
Soros’ own Open Society Institute has funded opposition groups
across the Middle East and North Africa, including organizations
involved in the current chaos.
‘One World Order’
WND reported that doctrine founder Thakur recently advocated for a
“global rebalancing” and “international redistribution” to create a
“New World Order.”
In a piece last March in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, “Toward a
new world order,” Thakur wrote: “Westerners must change lifestyles and
support international redistribution.”
He was referring to a United Nations-brokered international
climate treaty in which he argued, “Developing countries must reorient
growth in cleaner and greener directions.”
In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.
“The West’s bullying approach to developing nations won’t work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia,” he wrote.
“A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train,” he added.
Thakur continued: “Westerners have lost their previous capacity to
set standards and rules of behavior for the world. Unless they
recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant
progress in deadlocked international negotiations.”
Thakur contended “the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO
power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of ‘superior’
Western power.”
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