Syria

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Syria crisis: debate turns to shoulda, woulda, coulda on tactics

The debate about the Syrian crisis is now as much about shoulda, woulda, coulda, as it is about what can happen now. Douglas Alexander’s response to the G8 communique this afternoon said: ‘This statement begs the question whether a different diplomatic approach by the Prime Minister, not focusing so much effort on lifting the arms embargo, but instead engaging the Russians at an earlier stage, could have resulted in a different and more positive outcome.’ So Labour would not have started from here. Beyond that Alexander isn’t clear about when that golden opportunity for engaging the Russians was, and whether he really believes that there was a point at which

Isabel Hardman

G8: leaders agree Lough Erne declaration and Syria communique

Remember that last communique signed at a summit of world leaders, the really challenging one that they’re all worried they will never meet in reality? You don’t? How strange. David Cameron mused at the weekend that these agreements that take days to draft end up in an ‘elephant’s graveyard’, and to try to show that his rolled up sleeves are having an effect on this G8 summit in Lough Erne, he has insisted on a 10-point ‘declaration’ signed by the leaders. Here it is: Private enterprise drives growth, reduces poverty, and creates jobs and prosperity for people around the world. Governments have a special responsibility to make proper rules and

Tim Bale

A hard rain's a-gonna fall over Syria

You know what it’s like. It starts getting hotter. Stickier, too. There’s something in the air you can’t quite put your finger on. But you sense it all the same. A storm is coming. David Cameron’s insistence – in the face of significant opposition from some of his parliamentary colleagues and possibly even more opposition significant from the king across the water, Boris Johnson – that something must be done in Syria is giving me that same feeling. This is exactly the kind of ‘exogenous shock’ that can blow up suddenly, blow coalitions apart and cost Prime Ministers their jobs. Academic observers generally try to avoid predictions, but that doesn’t

Alex Massie

The Worst Argument Yet for Intervening in Syria: If We Don't, Other Countries Will Snigger At Britain

We should, I suppose, be grateful to Benedict Brogan for his column today examining some of the reasons for why Britain should become more heavily involved in the Syrian civil war. Grateful, that is, because Mr Brogan’s article reveals how pitifully inadequate these reasons are. Here’s Mr Brogan’s conclusion: The coalition against intervention in Syria appears to have all the arguments on its side. It is, by any measure, a terrible idea, and on current standings the Prime Minister would struggle to secure necessary support in the Commons. But Mr Cameron says he wants to save Britain from international relegation. In which case, membership of the league of front rank nations

Monday

Alex Massie

Just Give War A Chance: Obama's Realpolitik Approach to the Syrian Civil War.

Boris Johnson makes a strong case in today’s Telegraph that even if the west wanted to intervene in the Syrian civil war the point at which is was plausible to do so has long since passed. The benefits of intervention no longer outweigh the risks. Meanwhile, Paul Goodman reiterates that there’s no obvious British national interest in intervening. It is difficult to disagree with either analysis. Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan is appalled by the Obama administration’s decision to offer a modest quantity of modest weaponry to the Syrian opposition. This isn’t just unwise; it’s close to insane, he suggests. Don’t be fooled into thinking this will shorten the conflict or save lives,

Isabel Hardman

William Hague: There are 'no palatable options' in Syria

While the G8 begins today with splits already clear on Syria, David Cameron will be aware, as he sits down for talks with world leaders, that the splits in his own Parliament are becoming increasingly vocal. It’s not just Boris Johnson’s column in today’s Telegraph in which the Mayor of London warns that ‘we won’t get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs’. Tory MPs have started openly discussing the lack of support for arming the rebels. Johnson’s intervention could be read by some as yet another attempt to undermine the PM who appears to be considering arming the rebels out of a deep personal conviction, given

Sunday

James Forsyth

Cameron wants to change the military balance in Syria, but how do you do that without arming the Islamists?

David Cameron and Vladimir Putin have just concluded their pre G8 talks, the main topic of which was Syria. Cameron wants to use the next few days to try and persuade the Russians to stop backing Assad; the weapons they’ve been sending him have enabled him to gain the upper hand on the rebels militarily. Cameron instinctively wants to do something about the slaughter in the Levant for both strategic and moral reasons. As one figure intimately involved in British policy making on Syria told me earlier, ‘The one certainty is that, if nothing is done, not only will lives be lost, not only will Assad not negotiate, but we

Isabel Hardman

Will Parliament get a vote on Syria? PM says 'basically yes'

David Cameron is far more optimistic than Nick Clegg about arming the Syrian rebels: that much has been clear for a while. He explained why he’s optimistic on Sky’s Murnaghan programme this morning, arguing that if the West doesn’t work with the ‘good’ rebels, then the ‘bad’ rebels will have more of an opportunity to flourish. He said: ‘I want to help the Syrian opposition to succeed and my argument is this: yes there are elements of the Syrian opposition that are deeply unsavoury, that are very dangerous, very extremist and I want nothing to do with them. I’d like them driven out of Syria. They’re linked to al Qaeda.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

UK finds 'credible evidence' for chemical weapons in Syria. But is there a credible case for arming the rebels?

David Cameron was pressed on Barack Obama’s decision to give assistance to the Syrian rebels when he spoke to journalists in the Downing Street garden this afternoon. He gave a long answer, the transcript of which you can read at the bottom of this post, along with the audio. But here are the key points on the Prime Minister’s current thinking on Syria. 1. He agrees with the American stance. He told the press conference: ‘I think it is right that the Americans have said what they have said and I wanted to back that up with the information and the involvement that we’ve had in that assessment.’ That included

Fraser Nelson

After Obama's intervention, will level playing fields in Syria become level killing fields?

Now that Barack Obama has decided to arm the ‘good’ rebels in Syria, it’s more likely than ever that Britain will follow suit. The G8 summit next week in Northern Ireland may well turn into a pre-war summit, which will certainly be interesting seeing as Putin will also be there. The Russians may respond by giving more arms to Assad and the level playing field may quickly turn into a level killing field. The Wall St Journal says that Obama has pretty much decided on a no-fly zone enforced by allied aircraft based in Jordan which will allow rebels to train. But which rebels? There are more than a dozen

Halla Diyab

Syria: Assad’s axis of evil

A few days ago in northern Aleppo, 14-year-old Mohammad Qataa was shot dead by armed fighters who accused him of blasphemy. The Free Syria Army denied any connection to the savage act, calling it an act of ‘terrorism’ committed by rebels linked to al-Qaeda. This is not the first time that a Syrian civilian has been accused of insulting Islam. On March 21 the prominent Sufi scholar Sheikh Muhammad al-Bouti was assassinated inside a mosque in Damascus because of his views about the violence in Syria. The FSA has denied these attacks and so has the Assad regime. So who are these rebels shooting people and chopping off heads in

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron wins PMQs... or does he?

Well, that was an easy Prime Minister’s Questions for David Cameron, wasn’t it? Sometimes the PM just turns up for work and knocks it out of the park. It helped, of course, that for once he had his own team cheering him along, with backbencher after backbencher leaping up to ask loyal questions. The whips will be toasting a win in their office this afternoon. The Prime Minister had some very good retorts to Ed Miliband indeed. If Labour had a good week on welfare last week, the happy feelings will have evaporated today as Cameron managed to ridicule them not just on the detail of their spending pledges –

Monday

John Slinger

A mass grave and a refugee camp for Syrians - Iraqi Kurdistan teaches that military intervention can work

Two experiences stand out from my recent visit to the Kurdistan Region in Iraq: meeting refugees fleeing Syria at the Domiz refugee camp; and seeing a weeping son uncovering the body of his father, Mohammed Serspi, murdered by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s. The first, a biblical tide of innocent humans cast out by a vicious dictator in 2013. The second is a single example from a multitude of evil which continues to wreak its effect decades on. The factor uniting these two experiences is Iraqi Kurdistan itself, whose very existence as a prosperous, free, secular place, and whose tragic history, shows just why dictators must be challenged. Whilst

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 6 June 2013

Home Patrick Mercer MP resigned the Conservative whip after being filmed in discussion with a fake Fijian firm that paid him £4,000 to ask parliamentary questions; he was in fact being investigated by BBC’s Panorama and the Daily Telegraph. Lord Cunningham and Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate were suspended by the Labour party after the Sunday Times filmed them discussing lobbying terms, and Lord Laird resigned the Ulster Unionist whip over the same matter. All the parliamentarians deny wrongdoing. Mike Hancock MP resigned the Liberal Democrat whip while he defends a civil case in which a woman constituent is alleging sexual assault. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, said that Labour, if

Dot Wordsworth

What, exactly, is a 'red line'?

Last August President Barack Obama said that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would cross a red line. He repeated the phrase in December: red line. Why should the line be red and what happens if it is crossed? A simple, unhelpful answer is that the metaphor is taken from a safety gauge indicating a maximum speed, for an aeroplane perhaps, or for an engine’s revolutions. The big fat Oxford Dictionary in 20 volumes traces that figurative use back to the 1970s. But it seems at odds with a warning against chemical weapons. If Assad loosed off clouds of deadly gas, Mr Obama wouldn’t shout ‘Hey, slow down!’ Nor

The Spectator

We need to talk about Syria

There can be little doubt that Britain is edging towards intervening in Syria. President Bashar Assad’s bloody ruthlessness seems to be paying off: his forces are retaking former rebel strongholds (the strategic town of Qusair was reclaimed this week) and the more he believes he can win, the less likely he is to negotiate. From a distance, there seems to be a case for the West to move quickly to help the rebels, and create a more level playing field. The aim would not be to prolong the conflict, but to make a negotiated peace settlement more likely. The Prime Minister made the case in the Commons this week. ‘Unless

Alex Massie

Syria: What has changed to make western intervention a necessary or realistic policy?

Peter Oborne is back in his David-Cameron-is-not-Disraeli-he’s-mad mode this week. He accuses the Prime Minister of losing the plot over Syria. As always, the ghosts of Iraq stalk this debate even though the two problems are scarcely comparable. For that matter, I’m not sure it is fair on Cameron to suggest that, after Libya, the Prime Minister has become war-crazy. Yet I was also struck by something the estimable Tim Shipman reports today: Mr Hammond was recently present when backbenchers suggested that the Tory leadership could do with ‘a small war’ to distract attention from party discontent over Europe and gay marriage. ‘It had better be a very small war,’

Norman Stone

What’s eating Turkey

  Ankara ‘Islam, politics, economics — choose two’ is a great line, said by one of my Turkish students, and it would make a good exam question. Tayyip (the name means ‘very clean’ in Arabic — cf. ritual washing) Erdogan (meaning ‘strong hawk’, a Turkish nationalist reference) came to power in 2002 with a very good press. This was to be what the world wanted — a Muslim version of German or Italian Christian Democracy — and for years he gave it that. The rival parties destroyed themselves in silly bickering and corruption, and Erdogan’s party was very successful, with reforms in health and housing that improved the lives of

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

The Syrian quagmire

What will it take before the UK decides to supply the Syrian rebels with arms? Many are cautious about whether this measure would really make the conflict any better, but William Hague has made it clear that he believes there is a strong case for at least threatening to do so. Further evidence of chemical weapons usage by the regime against the Syrian people suggested again this week that the ‘red line’ for action has definitely been crossed, but today Number 10 tried to spell out the thinking behind an apparent delay in acting. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said that the decision to not renew the EU arms embargo

Monday

James Forsyth

Why Cameron's warning on Syria leaves me feeling nervous

David Cameron’s Commons statement today contained two blunt warnings. In a significant escalation of the argument over communications data, he warned that ‘we will suffer’ if we don’t make progress on the matter. He also declared that not intervening in Syria could boost extremism and mean that the situation there becomes a ‘tragedy for us too’. On communications data, I suspect that there’s a limit to how much progress he can make with his coalition partners. The vibe from the Clegg camp is that they have no desire to back down on this issue and feel that many of their critics are being opportunistic post Woolwich. However, it was Cameron’s