A fresh moratorium on Syria

It certainly looks as if wiser counsel has finally prevailed and that President Obama will probably not bomb Syria, now that Bashar al-Assad, at the behest of Vladimir Putin, has agreed to place all chemical weapons in Syria under international control. Obama did state that the United States had not ruled out a military option if diplomacy failed. But he no longer appears to be the man in charge. Putin is now hogging the international limelight and calling the shots. A military strike against the Syrian regime appears to be increasingly unpopular worldwide and the thumbs down signal, given by Britain’s House of Commons, which showed considerable maturity, might have had something to do with the change of heart.

I don’t know how many people have seen it, but there is also this very grim memorandum that was allegedly issued a few days ago from the office of President Putin to the armed forces of Russia, which must have also come to the notice of the US intelligence agencies and sent a chill down the spine of the House of Saud. It was issued as an email, sent to thousands of kibitzers. It also landed in my inbox. I don’t know how authentic it is and if it was actually sent from Moscow or issued by somebody who really hates the Saudi king, who Tariq Ali, in a BBC “HARDtalk” programme, once described as the world’s greatest tyrant. The thrust of the message is that if there is an attack against Syria, Russia will launch a massive military strike against Saudi Arabia, which is a strong US ally.



According to the communiqué, Putin allegedly became highly enraged after his early August meeting with Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who warned that if Russia did not accept the defeat of Syria, Chechen terrorists would attack the winter Olympics to be held in February 2014 in Sochi, Russia. This should be enough to enrage not only all Russians but also Brits, Europeans and Americans who are sick of the constant terrorist threat under which they live. The Telegraph had reported in August that Saudi Arabia had secretly offered Russia a sweeping deal to control the world oil market and safeguard Russia’s gas contracts if the Kremlin backed away from the Assad regime in Syria. But Putin, true to his word, said that Russia’s stance on Assad will never change.

Ever since Press TV of Iran, a highly balanced news channel, has been taken off air in Pakistan, possibly under Saudi pressure in Islamabad, I have had increasingly to turn to the BBC and CNN to find out what is happening in the rest of the world. I try not to ever miss Stephen Sackur on “HARDtalk”, a brilliant interviewer who does his homework; though I didn’t approve of his handling of a former right-wing prime minister of France, Dominique de Villepin.

When I want a change of scenery, I go to my computer and punch in ‘Amanpour’ of CNN. For some curious reason I keep getting the host Christiane Amanpour’s epic interview of the lord and master of Zimbabwe. The discussion goes something like this,

Amanpour: “Mr President don’t you think 89-years-old would have been a great time to rest and retire?”

Mugabe: “Have you ever asked Queen Elizabeth this question or is it just for African leaders?”

Most things in life are uncertain. But I am very certain about one thing: Amanpour isn’t ever going to get an interview with Her Imperial Majesty.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 15^th, 2013.

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