April 09, 2012 The Media Will Sabotage The Syrian Cease-Fire Yusuf Kanli writes for the Turkish daily Hurriyet on the situation in Syria: Will it be possible to achieve a cease-fire? Indications are that before Tuesday’s withdrawal of troops deadline, Damascus will undertake whatever possible to strengthen its position. The rebels, in the hope of getting foreign arms and war machinery assistance - if not direct intervention in the civil war - will most probably engage in all kinds of provocation to be able to tell the international community that the Baathist regime is cheating truce terms. Besides, the international media propaganda machine will likely work hard over the next few days to show that a truce can not be established, and even if it is established can not amount to much.

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The international “coalition of the willing” on the other hand, has started trumpeting that the Syrian regime will cheat on the terms of the truce even if a cease-fire can be achieved. There is, of course, some degree of distrust towards the al-Assad regime because of its not-so-promising past record with regard to honoring its own words. But, there is also rampant prejudice fuelled by wild expectations of a post-Baathist Syria. Kanli is right in his expectations that the usual "western" media will blame the Syrian government for not agreeing on its own immediate surrender in a one sided ceasefire and, as far as the ceasefire will take place, will blame the Syrian government when the rebels break it. This is already appearing with the false claim that Syria has set "new conditions" on a ceasefire. The New York Times headlines today: Cease-Fire in Doubt as Syria Demands New Conditions: The Syrian government put new conditions on any troop pullback on Sunday, casting new doubt on a truce that was scheduled to begin this week. The government of President Bashar al-Assad said it now wanted “written guarantees” that rebels would stop fighting before it pulled back its troops under the cease-fire plan, which it accepted last week. The demand for guarantees is not, as the New York Times and the Washington Post write, new. It was part of the Annan process and six-point proposal from the very beginning: A key point of the proposal calls for Syria to "commit to stop the fighting and achieve urgently an effective United Nations supervised cessation of armed violence by all parties.” As these actions are being taken, Annan "shall seek similar commitments from all other armed groups to cease violence under an effective United Nations supervision mechanism," it said. In a letter to Annan, Syria said it is "keen to end violence," but insisted that armed opposition groups give up their weapons first. It also demanded that Annan halt the supply and financing of weapons to the opposition. Syria has given a written committment to the ceasefire to Annan. The Annan proposal called for "similar commitments" from the opposition site. Syria is not demanding anything new. It simply demands that the Annan six-point plan is met by both sides. This has been expressed by Syria several times. As the Associated Press reported on April 5: [Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Bashar] Ja’afari accused Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, France and the United States of assisting the Free Syrian Army and said his government needs “a crystal cut commitment and a guarantee by Mr. Annan himself after he consults with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the others that once the government will observe and will respect the end of violence, the other parties will do the same and not fill the vacuum.” There will be more false claims in the "western" media about the ceasefire when its implementation will start on April 10. Any soldier or policeman that will then still provide security for the population will be called a break of the ceasefire. But what such false claims are in the end supposed to achieve is beyond me. Posted by b on April 9, 2012 at 10:17 UTC | Permalink Comments