Usually, Fisk makes things clearer. This time, he just confused me more than
I already am.
Miriam
Painted Matryoshka dolls, or Russian nesting dolls, bearing the faces of
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Russian President
Vladimir Putin at a souvenir shop in Moscow. (photo: Sergei
Karpukhin/Reuters)
The US Air Strikes Say More About the Vladimir Putin-Donald Trump
Relationship Than the Middle East
By Robert Fisk, The Independent
10 April 17
The pictures out of the town of Khan Sheikhun are terrifying, but Trump and
his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have the thorny problem of working out
how to deal with Russia
So did Bashar al-Assad use gas? The Russians must know. They are in the air
bases, in the ministries, in the military headquarters. And if they say the
Syrians did not use gas, then they had better be sure. The Russians had
advance warning of Trump's 59 Cruise missiles. Many hours of warning - not
the one hour that Washington claims - and would have ensured that Syrian
jets were way out of the air base. Russians are not to be killed in the
Syrian war; their presence would have meant casualties.
Did the Syrian army, a trifle arrogant, perhaps, after their capture of
eastern Aleppo decide to try to bring the war to an end in a quick way? The
question must be asked. In the past, villages in which army officers lived -
and in which their families lived - have been gassed. The Syrians blamed the
Turks for giving the gas to Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in
Syria, and Isis. The Russians said earlier gas attacks on Damascus used
chemical components shipped via Turkey to Syria from Libya.
Ever since the First World War, when gas made its appearance at Ypres - and
in Gaza, when it was used by General Allenby's forces on the Ottoman Turks -
chemical weapons have exerted a horror which even Hitler did not dare visit
upon the Allies. But what did Saddam do? He used chemical weapons upon the
Kurds at Halabja; indeed, his voice could be heard describing it in the
Baghdad court after he himself was hanged. But would Syrian troops use such
weapons against their own people?
The pictures seem to be decisive. Terrifying. Ghastly. But we must also
remember the 250,000 civilians of eastern Aleppo, who became 150,000 and
then 90,000. The Syrian war has become the most poorly reported conflict in
the world. How many dead has it caused? 400,000? 450,000? Or 500,000, the
latest figure. How do we complete the figures for death by gas? To believe
the Syrian government? When the last gas attack in Damascus took place, the
UN, in a brief paragraph in the middle of their subsequent report, said that
the chemical shells had been "compromised" by being moved between different
locations.
But then we come to the Russians. They underwrote the Syrian removal of all
gas weapons. They saved Obama's pitch after he had threatened - and then
withdrew - the warning of an air attack on Syrian chemical weapons. Now the
Russians have seen what Trump will do when he believes (if he does believe)
the use of gas attacks. And the Russians, so I'm told, knew all about the US
raid - and long before it occurred. Would they really have left any Syrian
aircraft on the airbase? Would they have left any such weapons at the
runway? Or in hardened bunkers?
In reality, the US attack on Syria says more about Trump-Putin relations
than about America and the Middle East. That's a problem for Rex Tillerson
to work out. And Bashar al-Assad, of course. Be sure, the phone calls
between Damascus and Moscow will last long into the night.
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