The Russians are cunning

Hussein Shobokshi

It has been more than 16 bloody months since the ‘butcher of Damascus’, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, began his brutal campaign against his people. The killings are not stopping and the blood keeps flowing.

Frankly, the Syrian people have completely lost faith in the international community’s ability or willingness to interfere on the ground (as they have done so in the past in many places around the world). It is completely flabbergasting, as there has been tons of documented hard evidence pointing the finger clearly at the Syrian regime and holding it responsible for the crimes it has committed.

The Security Council has been dragging its heavy feet and is reluctant to militarily interfere and put an end to the misery of the Syrian people as it did with Libya or Serbia. All the lame and simply unconvincing arguments made against military intervention or clearly arming the opposition have actually directly contributed to escalating the human cost on the ground and gave the brutal regime a further license to kill, and the killing is still going on.

On the other hand, there is Russia which has been acting as the de facto defender of the Assad regime rejecting all charges against it and insisting on ‘keeping’ the regime intact and asking for a dialogue to take place between the Syrian government and a ‘selected’ opposition that meets the approval of Russia and the regime.

All initiatives, be it the ones proposed by the Arab League or by the UN, have failed and failed miserably. The Syrian government did not implement any of the points agreed upon in the initiatives and Russia continued to provide excuses and counter arguments in ‘defense’ of the Syrian government. While it is a clear reality that it is only a matter of time before the Assad regime falls, so there is not much to lose for it but one would have thought that the Russians would have had some logic, some sense, some political foresight to realize this situation and to carefully calculate their gains and losses before throwing their might and weight behind a dead cause. They might have won the heart of Bashar Al-Assad and his cronies but they have lost the respect of the Arab world.

Trade with Russia is declining fast in the Arab market. This was most evident recently in Saudi Arabia when businessmen in Jeddah and Riyadh refused to meet a visiting Russian business delegation because of their government’s support to Assad’s brutal machine.

The Russians have lost it big in the Arab world with their last stand they took and it will be a loss that cannot be reversed anytime soon!