Germany sends frigate to help secure Red Sea shipping
The deployment marks 'the most serious engagement of a unit of the German navy in many decades,' navy chief says
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched a series of attacks on ships crossing the Red Sea since November
Updated 09 February 2024
AFP
BERLIN: A German navy frigate set sail for the Red Sea on Thursday with the aim of protecting commercial ships from attacks by Yemeni rebels, as part of a planned European Union mission.
The deployment marked “the most serious engagement of a unit of the German navy in many decades,” navy chief Jan Christian Kaack told reporters in Berlin.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched a series of attacks on ships crossing the Red Sea since November, saying their campaign was in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas.
The Red Sea normally carries about 12 percent of global maritime trade.
The unrest has prompted some shipping companies to reroute their vessels away from the Red Sea, making them take the longer and costlier route around the southern tip of Africa.
The “Hesse” frigate set off from the northern German port of Wilhelmshaven with a crew of around 240 people, Kaack said.
It will be able to respond to potential attacks including from missiles, drones and remotely controlled “kamikaze boats,” he said.
It is expected to be tasked with escorting commercial ships and intercepting attacks.
The frigate’s mission still needs to be confirmed by the German parliament and the European Union, however.
The EU is currently considering a naval mission to improve security for merchant ships in the Red Sea.
A decision could be announced before the next meeting of EU foreign ministers on February 19.
Countries including Italy, France and Belgium have signalled an interest in joining the mission.
US and British forces meanwhile have in recent weeks carried out joint strikes aimed at reducing the Houthis’ ability to target vessels transiting the key Red Sea trade route, but the rebels have vowed to continue their attacks.
Most trade between Asia and Europe usually passes through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal that leads to the Mediterranean Sea.
According to the International Monetary Fund’s PortWatch platform, total transit volume through the Suez Canal was down 37 percent this year by January 16 compared with the same period a year earlier.
Once a leading force, Assad’s Baath party wiped off Mideast politics: analysts
The Baath had evolved into authoritarianism under Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez Assad, and later his son Bashar, in Syria
Updated 6 sec ago
AFP
CAIRO: The Baath party, once a powerful symbol of Arab nationalism, has become a fading relic of authoritarian rule in the Middle East after the fall of Syria’s Bashar Assad, analysts told AFP on Sunday.
The party has suspended its activities in Syria after Islamist-led rebel forces toppled Assad’s government last week, 20 years after its rival twin branch in Iraq was banned, marking the final collapse of a movement that once held sweeping power in both countries.
With Assad gone, “the Baath in Syria... is bound to fully decline,” said Nikolaos van Dam, an expert on the party and author of a book about its history, “The Struggle for Power in Syria.”
Van Dam said he does not believe “they will ever have an opportunity for a comeback.”
The Arab Socialist Baath Party, officially, was founded in Damascus on April 7, 1947, seeking to merge socialist ideals and Arab nationalism.
In its early years, the party recognized the important cultural role of religion for Muslims, who make up the majority in most Middle Eastern countries, while advocating a secular state that could unify the fragmented Arab world across sectarian divides.
But in both Syria and Iraq, whose populations are multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian, the Baath party had become a vehicle for minority rule.
In Iraq, Sunni Muslims ruled over a Shiite majority, while Alawites — the Assad family — ruled over Syria’s Sunni majority.
Sami Moubayed, a Damascus-based historian and writer, said that both the Iraqi and Syrian branches failed to live up to their slogan of “Unity, Freedom and Socialism.”
“There was never unity, let alone freedom,” he said.
“Their socialism amounted to disastrous nationalizations,” added Moubayed, author of “The Makers of Modern Syria: The Rise and Fall of Syrian Democracy 1918-1958.”
The Baath had evolved into authoritarianism under Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez Assad, and later his son Bashar, in Syria.
“Arab nationalism, particularly secular Arab nationalism, has lost much of its appeal... and thereby also the role of the Baath Party as an Arab nationalist party,” said van Dam.
“State nationalism has gradually become more important than pan-Arab nationalism.”
In Syria, a military junta dominated by Alawite, Druze and Christian officers seized power in 1963, adopting Marxist-inspired policies.
The party’s founders, Michel Aflaq, a Christian, and Saleh Bitar, a Sunni, were sidelined and then fled to Iraq.
Hafez Assad, an air force commander, emerged as the dominant figure in 1970, consolidating control over the party and leading Syria in a reign marked brutal repression.
In 2000, his son Bashar took power.
In neighboring Iraq, the Baath party solidified its grip in 1968 through a military coup led by General Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr.
In 1970, Saddam Hussein assumed control, ruling with an iron fist until his overthrow by a US-led coalition in 2003.
“Both parties only led their countries to failure,” said Moubayed.
“What victory can they claim?“
Under the Baath rule, Syria’s military lost territory to Israel in a 1967 war and suffered painful blows in another conflict six years later.
The Iraqi Baath party failed against Iran in the 1980-1988 war, initiated an invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and collapsed under the US-led coalition intervention in 2003.
Despite their shared Baathist roots, the Syrian and Iraqi branches were bitter rivals.
Syria supported Iran during its war with Iraq in the 1980s, reflecting a persistent sectarian divide as Hafez Assad aligned with Tehran’s Shiite leadership, sidelining Sunni Saddam.
Yet both Baath regimes relied on similar methods of coercion against their domestic opponents.
And both shared another striking similarity.
“The Baathist rulers of both Iraq and Syria became the party,” said van Dam.
The parties had their own institutions, “in Iraq better organized than in Syria, but they were fully subservient to their respective presidents,” he said.
Moubayed said that although the Baath’s decline was inevitable, that may not be the case for the ideals the party had claimed to champion.
“There may one day be a revival of Arab nationalism,” he said.
“But it is certain that it will not come from the Baath.”
London says it will provide 50m pounds aid for Syrians
“We’re committed to supporting the Syrian people as they chart a new course,” Foreign Minister David Lammy said
Updated 15 min 58 sec ago
AFP
LONDON: The British government said it will release 50 million pounds ($63 million) of humanitarian aid for “the most vulnerable” Syrians in Syria and in neighboring Lebanon and Jordan, the foreign ministry said Sunday.
“We’re committed to supporting the Syrian people as they chart a new course,” Foreign Minister David Lammy said in a statement.
The funds, which for the most part will be sent to UN agencies, “will enable an urgent scale-up of humanitarian assistance when needs are at their highest, and support delivery of essential public services in Syria.”
Lammy said Britain will also work “diplomatically to help secure better governance in Syria’s future,” adding that “it is vital that the future Syrian government brings together all groups to establish the stability and respect the Syrian people deserve.”
Separately, Britain said it will give 120,000 pounds to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for its work in Syria.
Why chemical weapons remain post-Assad Syria’s unfinished nightmare
President Obama’s 2012 retreat on Damascus’s chemical weapons pledge left a deadly legacy still unresolved
Bashar Assad’s downfall renews fears over hidden arsenal as OPCW calls for safe access to inspect sites
Updated 50 min 53 sec ago
Jonathan Gornall
LONDON: In August 2012, exactly two months after the UN had officially declared Syria to be in a state of civil war, US President Barack Obama made a pledge that he would ultimately fail to keep, and which would overshadow the rest of his presidency.
Since the beginning of protests against the government of Bashar Assad, Syria’s armed forces had been implicated in a series of attacks using banned chemical weapons.
During a press briefing in the White House on Aug. 12, Obama was asked if he was considering deploying US military assets to Syria, to ensure “the safe keeping of the chemical weapons, and if you’re confident that the chemical weapons are safe?”
A Syrian couple mourning in front of bodies wrapped in shrouds ahead of funerals following what Syrian rebels claim to be a toxic gas attack by pro-government forces in eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus on August 21, 2013. (AFP)
Obama replied that he had “not ordered military engagement in the situation. But … we cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.”
The US, he said, was “monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans. We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons.”
In the event, Obama stepped back from the action he had threatened — with devastating consequences for hundreds of Syrians.
INNUMBERS
360+
Tonnes of mustard gas missing from Syria despite admission of its existence in 2016.
5
Tonnes of precursor chemicals used to make the nerve agent sarin also unaccounted for.
Despite Syrian promises and, as part of a deal brokered by its ally Russia, commitments it made in 2012 by joining the Chemical Weapons Convention in a successful bid to stave off US military intervention, experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) believe that stocks of chemical weaponry still exist in the country.
Medics and other masked people attend to a man at a hospital in Khan al-Assal in the northern Aleppo province, as Syria's government accused rebel forces of using chemical weapons for the first time. (AFP)
With the fall of Damascus and the toppling of the Assad regime, the whereabouts of those weapons is a matter of great concern.
The nightmare scenario feared by the OPCW is that the weapons will fall into the hands of a malign actor. Among the missing chemicals, the existence of which was admitted by the Syrian authorities in 2016, is more than 360 tons of mustard gas, an agent used to such devastating effect during the First World War that it was among the chemicals banned by the Geneva Protocol in 1925.
Also unaccounted for, according to a confidential investigation leaked to The Washington Post, are five tons of precursor chemicals used to make the nerve agent sarin. When pressed by investigators to explain where it had gone, the Syrians told OPCW investigators it had been “lost during transportation, due to traffic accidents.”
United Nations (UN) arms experts collecting samples as they inspect the site where rockets had fallen in Damascus' eastern Ghouta suburb during an investigation into a suspected chemical weapons strike near the capital. (AFP)
On Thursday, the OPCW said it was ready to send investigation teams to Syria as soon as safe access to the country could be negotiated.
Reassurance has been offered by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the armed group that toppled the Assad regime and has now set up an interim government, that it has “no intention to use Assad’s chemical weapons or WMD (weapons of mass destruction), under any circumstances, against anyone.”
In a statement issued on Dec. 7, it added: “We consider the use of such weapons a crime against humanity, and we will not allow any weapon whatsoever to be used against civilians or transformed into a tool for revenge or destruction.”
There would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the use of chemical weapons.
Barack Obama, Former US president in 2012
The fact that chemical weapons might still exist in Syria at all is testimony to the failure of international efforts to rid the country of them back in 2012.
“Whether Obama had meant to say that these were real red lines, or they’re sort of pinkish lines, everybody in the region thought they were red lines,” Sir John Jenkins, former British ambassador to Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, who was in Saudi Arabia at the time, told Arab News.
“That whole episode was pretty squalid. The fact was, Obama didn’t want to get into any sort of conflict, even restricted action, involving Syria — and a lot of that was the legacy of Iraq — and the Russians gave him an excuse.”
Barack Obama, Former US president in 2012
In August 2013, almost one year after Obama’s “red line” pledge, as the civil war raged and the civilian death toll mounted into the tens of thousands, shocking photographs emerged of child victims of chemical attacks carried out against areas held by militant groups in the eastern suburbs of Damascus.
By chance, a UN inspection team was already in the country, having arrived on Aug. 18 to investigate reports of several earlier chemical weapons attacks, in Khan Al-Asal and Sheik Maqsood, Aleppo, and Saraqib, a town 50 km to the southwest.
Instead, the inspectors headed to Ghouta. After interviewing survivors and medical personnel, and taking environmental, chemical and medical samples, they concluded there was no doubt that “chemical weapons have been used … against civilians, including children on a relatively large scale.”
A picture downloaded from Brown-Moses' blog, a Leicester-based blogger monitoring weapons used in Syria, on August 30, 2013, shows the size of the back of a rocket used in the alleged chemical attack on Damascus' eastern Ghouta suburb. (AFP)
Sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent, had been delivered by artillery rockets.
On Aug. 30, 2013, the White House issued a statement concluding with “high confidence” that the Syrian government had carried out the attacks, which had killed at least 1,429 people, including 426 children.
Obama’s “red line” had clearly been crossed. But the promised “enormous consequences” failed to materialize.
In a televised address on Sept. 10, 2013, Obama said he had determined that it was in the national security interests of the US to respond to the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike, “to deter Assad from using chemical weapons … and to make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use.”
But in the same speech, the president made clear that he had hit the pause button.
Because of “constructive talks that I had with President Putin,” the Russian government — Assad’s biggest ally — “has indicated a willingness to join with the international community in pushing Assad to give up his chemical weapons.”
People are brought into a hospital in the Khan al-Assal region in the northern Aleppo province, as Syria's government accused rebel forces of using chemical weapons for the first time. (AFP)
The Syrian government had “now admitted that it has these weapons, and even said they’d join the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits their use.”
As part of the unusual collaboration between the US and Russia, later enshrined in UN Resolution 2118, the threatened US airstrikes were called off and on Oct. 14, 2013 — less than two months after the massacre in Ghouta — Syria became the 190th state to become a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, administered by the OPCW.
Syria’s accession to the convention was supposed to lead to the total destruction of its chemical weapons stockpiles.
The fact was, President Obama didn’t want to get into any sort of conflict, even restricted action, involving Syria.
Sir John Jenkins, former British ambassador to Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq
At first, everything seemed to be going to plan. On Jan. 7, 2014, the OPCW announced that the first consignment of “priority chemicals” had been removed from Syria. The chemicals were transported from two sites and loaded onto a Danish vessel, which left the port of Latakia.
Transporting these materials, said then-director-general of the OPCW Ahmet Uzumcu, was “an important step … as part of the plan to complete their disposal outside the territory of Syria.”
He added: “I encourage the Syrian government to maintain the momentum to remove the remaining priority chemicals, in a safe and timely manner, so that they can be destroyed outside of Syria as quickly as possible.”
In fact, as a joint statement by the US and 50 other countries a decade later would declare, “10 years later, Syria, in defiance of its international obligations, has still not provided full information on the status of its chemical weapons stockpiles.”
Not only that, added the statement on Oct. 12, 2023, investigations by the UN and the OPCW had established that Syria had been responsible “for at least nine chemical weapons attacks since its accession to the CWC in 2013,” demonstrating that “its stockpiles have not been completely destroyed and remain a threat to regional and international security.”
Over a year on, little has changed. In a speech to the EU Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Consortium in Brussels on Nov. 12, the director-general of the OPCW admitted the organization’s work in Syria was still not complete.
“For more than 10 years now,” said Fernando Arias, the organization’s Declaration Assessment Team “has strived to clarify the shortcomings in Syria’s initial declaration.”
Of 26 issues identified, “only seven have been resolved, while 19 remain outstanding, some of which are of serious concern,” and two of which “relate to the possible full-scale development and production of chemical weapons.”
This may have occurred at two declared chemical weapons-related sites where, according to Syria, no activity was supposed to have taken place but where OPCW inspectors had detected “relevant elements.” Questions put to Syria had “so far not been answered appropriately.”
Under the Convention, Syria is obliged to submit “accurate and complete declarations” of its chemical weapons program. The OPCW’s mandate, said Arias, “is to verify that this has indeed happened, and so far, we have not been able to do so.”
Meanwhile, the organization’s fact-finding mission “is gathering information and analysing data regarding five groups of allegations covering over 15 incidents,” while investigators have issued four reports to date linking the Syrian Armed Forces to the use of chemical weapons in five instances and the terrorist group Daesh in one.
This, said Arias, “highlights the ever-present risk posed by non-state actors … acquiring toxic chemicals for malicious purposes.”
“Everyone knew there were still secret sites, undeclared sites,” Wa’el Alzayat, a former Middle East policy expert at the US Department of State, told Arab News.
“Even the US intelligence community had assessments that there were still other facilities and stockpiles, but the more time passed, and with the change of administration, the issue not only got relegated but new political calculations came into place, particularly, I would say, during the Biden years, and also because of pressure from some neighboring countries that wanted to normalize with Assad and bring him back in from the cold.”
Twelve years on from Obama’s failure to act over Syria’s crossing of his infamous “red line,” it seems that an American intervention is once again unlikely in Syria.
Right before the fall of the regime, US intelligence agencies, concerned that Syrian government forces might resort to the use of chemical weapons to stall the advance of militant groups, let it be known that they were monitoring known potential storage sites in the country.
Just before the sudden collapse of the Assad regime, both the Biden and the incoming Trump administrations signalled a lack of willingness to become embroiled in the conflict.
President-elect Trump, employing his trademark capital letters for emphasis, posted on social media that the US “SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH” the “mess” that is Syria. “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT,” he added. ‘LET IT PLAY OUT.”
It remains to be seen whether the sudden collapse of the Assad regime has altered this calculation. What is certain, however, is that chemical weaponry remains at large in Syria and HTS is now under international pressure to allow OPCW inspectors into the country, for the sake of the entire region.
UN special envoy for Syria calls for sanctions relief following Assad’s fall
The Syrian government has been under strict sanctions by the US, EU and others
Rebuilding has been stymied by sanctions in the absence of a political solution
Updated 15 December 2024
AP
DAMASCUS: The United Nations special envoy for Syria on Sunday called for a quick end to Western sanctions after the ouster of President Bashar Assad.
The Syrian government has been under strict sanctions by the United States, European Union and others for years as a result of Assad’s brutal response to what began as peaceful anti-government protests in 2011 and later spiraled into a civil war.
The conflict has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. Rebuilding has been stymied to a large degree by sanctions that aimed to prevent rebuilding of damaged infrastructure and property in government-held areas in the absence of a political solution.
“We can hopefully see a quick end to the sanctions so that we can see really a rallying around building of Syria,” UN envoy Geir Pedersen told reporters during a visit to Damascus.
Pedersen came to the Syrian capital to meet with officials of the new interim government set up by the former opposition forces, led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), who toppled Assad.
HTS is designated a “terrorist group” by the US, which could also complicate reconstruction efforts, but officials in Washington have indicated that the Biden administration is considering removing the designation.
The interim government is set to govern until March, but it has not yet made clear the process under which a new permanent administration would replace it.
“We need to get the political process underway that is inclusive of all Syrians,” Pedersen said. “That process obviously needs to be led by the Syrians themselves.”
He called for “justice and accountability for crimes” committed during the war and for the international community to step up humanitarian aid.
Israel approves plan aiming to double annexed Golan population: statement
Government had “unanimously approved” the 40 million shekel ($11 million) “plan for the demographic development of the Golan,” Netanyahu said
Updated 15 December 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: The Israeli government on Sunday approved a plan to double the population of the occupied and annexed Golan Heights, following the fall of Bashar Assad in Syria, the prime minister’s office said.
The government had “unanimously approved” the 40 million shekel ($11 million) “plan for the demographic development of the Golan... in light of the war and the new front in Syria and the desire to double the population,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. Israel has occupied most of the Golan Heights since 1967 and annexed that area in 1981 in a move recognized only by the United States.
“The immediate risks to the country have not disappeared and the latest developments in Syria increase the strength of the threat — despite the moderate image that the rebel leaders claim to present,” Defense Minister Israel Katz told officials examining Israel’s defense budget, according to a statement.
The Golan is home to 24,000 Druze, an Arab minority who practice an offshoot of Islam, Levine said. Most identify as Syrian.
