Syria

Friday

Freddy Gray

Syria: when ‘red lines’ make the headlines

What is a red line, exactly? We’ve been hearing a lot of talk about ‘red lines’ from our politicians in recent weeks in relation to Syria, chemical weapons, and western intervention. ‘Red Line’ has become a sort of post-Iraq diplomatic catchphrase. It translates, roughly, as  the ‘point at which we, the West, will definitely — and we really mean it — intervene, so take us seriously, ok?’ But where has it come from? Is it connected to ‘redline’, the mechanical word for the maximum engine speed at which an internal combustion engine can operate without overheating? Is it to do with the red laser lines that alarm systems use? The thin red

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Does William Hague know what he is doing with Syria?

A week or so after the murder of a British soldier by two psychopathic savages in Woolwich, the Foreign Secretary William Hague is back pleading with our European partners to help the murderers’ brothers fighting the jihad in Syria. I use the term ‘brothers’ a little loosely, sure; it is the term they would use. The photographs of one such jihadi chopping up and indeed eating a Syrian army soldier has not dissuaded Mr Hague from the view that these people are in the main peace-loving democrats who wish for nothing more than an agreeable secular state with the full panoply of human rights for all. He was not dissuaded

Thursday

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern: the nature of war

Syrians continue to slaughter each other, and seem eager to draw others into the conflict. Thucydides, the great Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431-404 bc), would strongly resist. Thucydides starts by saying that he began his history because he expected the war would be ‘great and very well worth recording’. After assessing previous conflicts, he concludes that it was indeed ‘greater than all others’, but qualifies what he means by that: ‘there was suffering unparalleled on such a timescale… never before were so many cities captured and laid waste, never before were there such numbers of refugees nor so much slaughter, both in the war

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 30 May 2013

Home Ten men were arrested in connection with the public, daylight murder of Drummer Lee Rigby near his barracks in Woolwich. The two chief suspects, Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, Britons of Nigerian descent and converts to Islam, had waited in the street after the hacking to death of the soldier until armed police arrived, and were then shot. Adebolajo had made some statements recorded on a mobile phone. The two men were taken to different hospitals with wounds said not to be life-threatening, and Adebowale was discharged into police custody after six days. MI5 was said to have previously attempted to recruit Adebolajo, who was found to

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

William Hague tries to reassure on ‘naive’ Syria arms plan

Should the UK arm the Syrian rebels? William Hague thinks so, but it turns out neither his MPs nor the public are convinced. YouGov polling earlier this month found on 17 per cent of voters supported sending arms, and 56 per cent opposed the measure. Tory MPs such as John Redwood, John Baron and Julian Lewis today said the plan ‘might make it worse rather than better’, would ‘escalate the violence and escalate the suffering’ and that it was ‘naive’. Hague himself insisted that no decision to supply arms had yet been taken, and that the EU decision to not renew the arms embargo was a way of putting pressure on all sides

Shiraz Maher

Will the EU’s rescinding of the Syrian arms embargo have any impact?

The EU has said it will not renew an arms embargo on Syria which ends this Saturday. That should pave the way for countries wanting to arm the rebels, something both Britain and France have been saying they will consider. It is a tired truism, but nonetheless one still worth restating, that not all the Syrian rebels are jihadists. This is precisely what has motivated Britain and France to explore ways of working with the rebels, although there are currently no plans to supply them with arms. But arming the rebels would be a mistake. It is clear Assad must go and that a future Syrian state will need to

Monday

The Spectator

Spectator debate: Assad is a war criminal — the West must intervene in Syria

With further reports today that Bashar Assad is deploying chemical weapons in Syria, the prospect of intervention looms larger than ever. The EU is talking about lifting its arms embargo (at Britain’s insistence) and France’s foreign minister talks about “stronger and better substantiated indications of the local use of chemical arms”. Barack Obama has indicated that the use of chemical weapons would trigger American military action – but he’ll be aware that intervention in Syria is deeply unpopular in America. He’d have not much to gain, and rather a lot to lose. But should the West go ahead anyway? On Monday 24 June, The Spectator will hold a debate at

Monday

Isabel Hardman

William Hague: Case for changing arms embargo on Syria ‘compelling’

William Hague set out the government’s latest thinking on the horror in Syria to MPs in the Commons today. He explained that if the UK were to consider arming the rebels, it would be under three conditions: A decision in co-ordination with other nations. Carefully controlled circumstances. In accordance with obligations under national and international law. Hague said: ‘The EU should give strong support to this diplomatic process, including by agreeing further amendments to the arms embargo, without taking any decisions at present to send arms to the Syrian opposition. ‘The case for further amendments to the arms embargo on Syria is compelling, in order to increase the pressure on

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 16 May 2013

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, flew to Sochi, on the Black Sea, to talk with President Vladimir Putin, principally about Syria. He then flew to Washington, to support the American tour by Prince Harry and hold talks with President Barack Obama. They said that Britain and America wanted to strengthen the moderate opposition in Syria somehow. In a joint press conference, Mr Obama also said: ‘The UK’s participation in the EU is an expression of its influence.’ Mr Cameron tried to placate Tory MPs by rushing out a draft EU referendum bill, in the face of an amendment in the Queen’s Speech debate expressing regret at the absence of

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Game-changing

In the days when we had bottles of milk delivered, some tits discovered how to peck through the foil tops and consume the cream beneath. Suddenly all the tits were at it. This illustrated what the alternative scientist Rupert Sheldrake called morphic resonance. Something similar has happened over the past days with the phrase game-changing. Trevor Kavanagh, in the Sun, commented: ‘The local elections delivered a ground-breaking, game-changing, seismic political moment.’ In the Independent, Donald Macintyre compared ‘Ukip’s position to that of the game-changing SDP’. Except, in the days of the Gang of Four, the obligatory epithet was not game-changing but breaking the mould. That metaphor was used erroneously almost

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 9 May 2013

Home The UK Independence Party gave the government and opposition a jolt by doing well in the elections for 34 English councils, increasing its number of councillors from eight to 147 and gaining a projected national vote share of 23 per cent (compared with 25 per cent for the Conservatives, 29 per cent for Labour and 14 per cent for the Liberal Democrats). In a parliamentary by-election at South Shields, the Lib Dems were driven into seventh place, with only 352 votes, with Labour retaining the seat with 12,493 and Ukip coming second with 5,988. Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, grinned a good deal and said ‘Send in the

Tuesday

Shiraz Maher

The real significance of Israel’s strikes on Syria

It is hard to overstate the significance of Israel’s surgical strikes against Syrian military positions over the weekend. The raids targeted missiles bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon while also destroying battery launchers and other delivery systems. Beyond the obvious damage this inflicted on Syrian military capabilities, its real significance lies in the broader political objectives it achieved. Benjamin Netanyahu made a strategic miscalculation last November when he launched Operation Pillar of Defence against Hamas operatives in Gaza. He failed to inflict any meaningful damage on the group while the Hamas administration secured a number of victories, not least hitting Tel Aviv. The weekend’s air raids therefore go a long way

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 May 2013

Home In the run-up to local elections, Kenneth Clarke, the Minister without Portfolio, described the UK Independence Party candidates as ‘clowns’. RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, assumed control of ten Reaper drone aircraft in use over Afghanistan. Irfan Naseer, 31, from Birmingham, the ringleader of a plot to use eight suicide bombers in attacks that could have killed thousands, was sentenced to five life sentences; of ten others charged, four men who admitted an offence of travelling overseas for terrorism training were sentenced to three years, and six men to between four and 18 years. Six men from the West Midlands pleaded guilty to planning to bomb an English Defence League rally

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — Ukip vs Westminster, Ukip vs the Tories and intervening in Syria

Is UKIP a bunch of fringe lunatics, or a party ready to shake the establishment to its core? In this week’s Spectator cover feature, James Forsyth examines the Ukip mission and Nigel Farage’s plan for dominating the political landscape. On the latest View from 22 podcast, James reports in from South Shields on how Farage is being received on the stump, how the party is coping with growing into a serious force and what to expect in this week’s local elections. Someone who certainly doesn’t think they should be ignored is James Delingpole. Having previously written in the magazine of why he is a convert to the Ukip cause, Delingpole

Paul Wood

The Free Syrian Army is being taken over by groups of jihadist thugs

Ghadi had spent the past two years on the run from the Syrian regime but it was the rebels fighting against the government, the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) who finally caused him to abandon the revolution and flee Damascus. He had made the mistake of speaking out against one of the big FSA brigades running the Yarmouk district of the capital. ‘They are thieves and gangsters,’ he told me. ‘One Facebook post about what they’re doing will get you killed.’ I met Ghadi in a Beirut café, after he had made the long trek over the mountains from Syria to Beirut. Other activists joined us, all bitterly disillusioned by

Douglas Murray

If there was ever a time to intervene in Syria, it has passed

It is more than ten years since I first sat down with members of the Syrian opposition. Back then they included real moderates, but even these didn’t predict a bloodless transition. ‘We will have to unite the country against the Alawites,’ I remember one saying, referring to the minority from which the Assad dynasty comes. ‘Kill them?’ I asked nervously. ‘Or chase them into the mountains,’ he replied. Now, more than two years into the Syrian civil war, there may still be some Alawites but, as Paul Wood points out opposite, there are hardly any moderates. What good opposition elements there were have been killed, have fallen away or otherwise

Mary Dejevsky

Why Russia’s diplomats should learn swimming-pool etiquette

The first couple of evenings there was just me and a middle-aged couple swimming decorously up and down. On the third day it changed. There were three more people, spread out at the shallow end. You would not have thought that an extra three people in a decent-sized pool could have caused such irritation and havoc. They contrived to occupy an inordinate amount of space and move around in a way that caused maximum disruption. Sometimes they swam widths; sometimes diagonals. They would stop and change direction without warning. Sometimes they floated with their toes under the rail, or disappeared under water and surfaced far too close for comfort. And when

Friday

Shiraz Maher

What can Obama do about Syria?

Even John Kerry is now confirming what was already long suspected: that Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people. In all likelihood, he has used Sarin nerve agents against rebel held areas in the north. That he would do so is no surprise. This is the most strategically sensitive area in Syria today, providing the principal route by which men, money, and munitions, slip into the country. If Assad can regain control of the northern areas bordering Turkey he will be able to resolve the conflict decisively in his favour. President Obama is caught in a dilemma. He publicly warned Assad that using chemical weapons would be

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Syrian rebels pledge allegiance to al-Qaeda, but promise to behave

This, from the BBC – just in case any further evidence were needed. ‘The leader of the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist group fighting in Syria, has pledged allegiance to the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani said the group’s behaviour in Syria would not change as a result. Al-Nusra claims to have carried out many suicide bombings and guerrilla attacks against state targets. On Tuesday, al-Qaeda in Iraq announced a merger with al-Nusra, but Mr Jawlani said he had not been consulted on this. Al-Nusra has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the US. Debates among Western leaders over whether to arm Syria’s rebels have often raised

Friday

David Blackburn

What to do about Syria? Easter edition

This morning’s Times reports (£) of the arrest of a former US serviceman, Eric Harroun, suspected of assisting Jabat al-Nusra, a jihadist insurgent group in Syria. He has been charged with conspiring to use destructive devices outside the United States. That the alleged offences were made against the Assad regime is immaterial. The West looks at Syria through very dark glass. Basic cultural preconceptions about conflict demand a struggle of Good versus Bad. War is rarely so simple; but Syria is even more complicated: various shades of bad fight each other and whatever good may exist. If you haven’t read Mary Wakefield’s piece about the murder of Christians by some