Geneva talks on Syria

The following is some of the transcript from the latest episode of 20 March of RT's In The Now entitled "Trump Card". In the first part program host Host Annissa Naouai interviews Doctor Theodore Karasik a senior advisor of Gulf State Anaytics to discuss how the Syrian conlict may develop now that Russia has decided to withdraw most of its forces from Syria.

Much of the interview consists of a long ostensible explanation by Dr. Karasik of Saudi Arabia's actions in the conflict. The transcript of the end of the interview concludes in the paragraphs immediately below. Below, at the end of the article, is a #criticalResponse">critical response to that interview posted to that In the Now page.

#criticalResponse">Transcript of the conclusion of Annissa Naouai's interview with Dr. Theodore Karasik

04:18 Annissa Naouai (AN): Critics in the West were just pointing out how this was all just an attempt to bolster Assad. Putin's gotten in and out. How is Bashar al-Assad really feeling about Russia leaving Syria? You know, I mean, Syria doesn't really have many friends out there world at the moment.

04:32 Dr. Theodore Karasik (TK): I think that the Assad government is very interested in what happens next clearly. Russia is telling Assad that there must be movement on the political front in order to rectify the problems within Syria today and to come to a new state entity, if you will, that will govern the Syrian state.

This point is something that Moscow has driven home since the entry of Russia into Syria six months ago – that the political solution must come first and dealing with Islamic State in total, particularly in Raqqa, comes second. You can't have it the other way around.

Therefore, you see Russia pushing Assad to go along with this settlement discussion that's ongoing in Geneva. The big question, of course, is what about Assad's other friends, particularly in Tehran – and the Iranian reaction is this one that seems very positive, so far, but we need to be very careful about the dynamics within Iran and how various schools of thought will look at Russia's latest move and what that means for the settlement of Syria in the coming months and throughout the rest of the year.

06:07 AN: What about other key players like Saudi Arabia? Are they going to use this as an opportunity to make some moves? I assume in Tehren that could possibly be one of the options that is being discussed.

06:21 TK: I think what the Saudis are interested in the most is the protection of their interests in the Levant. I think that it's clear that Riyadh and other allies of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were taken by surprise with the Russian announcement of quote unquote 'withdrawal'. I think Riyadh also recognises that this gives an opportunity for a diplomatic solution. I don't think Riyadh wants to use the Islamic military alliance completely in full operation within the Levant, but, if push comes to shove, they will.

So I think that this is a moment for Saudi Arabia to decide how best to proceed diplomatically on trying to find a solution to Syria where Assad does leave and I think that all parties are beginning to agree that President Assad's days are numbered in his current position.

07:23 AN: Doctor Theodore Karasik, a senior advisor at Gulf State Analytics, thanks so much for being In The Now.

Response to the above Interview posted to "In the Now"

I thought that Russia's stance on President Bashar al-Assad is that only the Syrian people were entitled to decide on whether or not he was to be their President and for how long he would remain President. All the evidence, of which I am aware, shows that, even with all the killing, destruction and other hardships faced by Syrians since March 2011, the Syrian President remains immensely popular. In fact, he enjoys far more popularity than the leaders of purported democracies of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Israel and others that have criminally conspired against him. Probably the only national leader who can claim to be more popular than Bashar al-Assad is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Syrians can count themselves lucky to have been led since March 2011 by such a capable and well-intentioned man as Bashar al-Assad.

I found outrageous the suggestion by your guest, Dr. Theodore Karasik, that a settlement of the Syrian crisis required that the Syrian President step down. By saying so, Dr. Karaz demonstrated ignorance at best, or contempt for the wishes of the Syrian people at worst.

Your failure to challenge Dr. Karasik's views is what I have come to expect of corporate mainstream 'journalists' in the West and not from RT.

Could I suggest that you look at the many interviews that the Syrian President has given to the newsmedia in recent years, including CBS's 60 Minutes of 2014, and compare his forthright and honest answers, to the most probing questions, to what was mouthed by Dr. Karasaik?

Were President Bashar al-Assad ever to find the time to appear on "In the Now" together with Dr. Karasik, he would easily be able to show him up for what he is and cut his arguments to ribbons. I wish more journalists were as capable as the Syrian President.

Great advances this week by the Syrian army and Russian air force have broken the rebel siege of two towns, and broken their umbilical link with Turkey. But they have also revealed the truth about Western media 'journalism'...

Something really significant happened this week. It wasn’t the last-ditch attempts to find a peaceful solution to the Syrian conflict in Geneva, or their failure. Neither was it the game-changing developments on the ground in Syria and the tightening of the noose around the foreign-backed terrorist armies – though this was certainly ‘significant’.

What happened was that the mask of ‘humanitarian relief’ fell off the Western interventionists and their media cheer squads like so much dirty linen, exposing the naked self-interest behind the whole rotten Syrian conspiracy.
While the ridiculous deliberations over what style of terrorist was an acceptable participant in the Geneva talks may have been a vexing spectacle for Syrians, and the attention paid by the Western media to the ‘High Negotiations Committee’ an affront to their senses, it didn’t really surprise anyone.

Perhaps Syrians weren’t surprised either by the rapid gains of the Russian-Syrian offensive and moves to cut the last convenient border crossing west of Aleppo – something which so many had been hanging out for for so long and specially in rebel-besieged Aleppo. Unlike all those ignorant souls unable to see out of the Western media bubble, they had been watching it all unfold for weeks, as well as being conscious of the strategic significance and urgency of cutting Turkey out of the Syrian war – thanks in no small part to the Russian military’s free supply of information.

But as a collective cheer echoed around Syria when it was announced that the border had been cut, a collective spasm engulfed Western media commentators and government spokesmen, rapidly spreading to UN representatives and Aid agencies, Foreign Ministers and leaders.

“Rebel supply lines have been cut!” they cried indignantly, as if Russia had cut them by accident, not realising the rebels depended on these ‘supplies’ that came in from Turkey just to survive.

It may be a struggle to understand how it can be that all these people ‘just don’t get it’- don’t understand that the Syrian army and the Russian air force, Hezbollah and Iran are targeting their ‘rebels’ intentionally; that they are trying to kill them or drive them out, or trap them so they are forced to surrender. This is after all what military campaigns do, and it is abundantly clear that only a military solution is now possible against these murderous militants.

But perhaps they do understand it, and this is just ‘wilful ignorance’ – an attempt to maintain the sham reality of the ‘revolution’ and the ‘Free Syrian Army’ so they can go on using it to conceal their unrelenting campaign to seize power from Damascus.

What the falling of the ‘humanitarian mask’ has revealed is that all these drivers and accomplices to the armed insurgency have lied and obfuscated and spun their dirty conspiracy from the start. But now that Russia has ripped off their cover they are shameless about what they’ve done.

What is more, the admissions of complicity in this illegal armed insurrection against Syria’s elected government have come first from Western reporters and commentators, such as the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Matt Brown, who framed the news on the breaking of ‘rebel supply lines’ like this:

MATT BROWN: "It's substantial because of that supply line. It demonstrates the power of Russian air strikes because the UN says that they were unprecedented in this operation.

It's also cut the rebels off from supplies of food, fuel, ammunition, weapons and fighters that they were getting down that supply route from Turkey."

That’s right – the ‘rebels’, who we have been told for years need our ‘aid’ because they are being massacred and starved by the Syrian government have not been doing so badly after all.

Every time there was a new ‘massacre’ we have listened to earnest discussions on supplying ‘non-lethal aid’, and humanitarian aid, and demands that ‘humanitarian corridors’ must be opened.

And when the Syrian government has opposed these plans on the grounds that arms and ammunition might be smuggled in with the humanitarian aid, it has then been blamed for the failure and the ongoing war.

How astounding it is then to hear this admission from someone like Brown – who despite his record of advocacy for the rebel cause, has never revealed his knowledge of its umbilical connection to Turkey. In fact this reality has been concealed from his Australian audience at all costs, even though it’s been plain as daylight to the rest of us.

Back in 2013 Matt Brown made a documentary called ‘Ibrahim’s war’, which told the story of a 11 year old boy living in the rebel-occupied part of Aleppo, whose father had abandoned his job and went out every day to fight ‘on the front’. That this was actually with the Front – the Al Nusra Front – was never admitted by Brown, even less what this terrorist group was actually doing – targeting neighbouring residential areas with snipers and indiscriminate rocket and mortar fire.

Brown related his experience at the time he made his ‘UN award-winning’ documentary in the report above:

"In 2013, I drove down to Aleppo from the north, a little further to the east than where this has happened in what is now territory controlled by the Islamic State group; and earlier I had hiked in further to the west across the border into the towns west of Aleppo.

We slept in the same houses as foreign fighters actually, who were also crossing in, and the government is now pushing in that direction.

So, it just gives you some idea of how cut off the rebels in Aleppo are becoming. That's underlined the power also of Iranian advisors, the pro-government militias and those Russian air strikes and the rebels say it proves that the government isn't serious about those peace talks."

It might sometimes be a narrow line between journalism and political advocacy, but for Brown and his media colleagues this line has evidently now become invisible. But whether they identify themselves as political actors has almost ceased to matter, because as far as their audience is concerned they are only journalists, award-winning ones. When they report what 'the rebels say' - how would this audience know they are hearing dangerous nonsense?

As is was, proof that the rebels aren't serious about peace talks was just provided by the ABC's sister state TV channel, SBS in its evening news bulletin about the latest developments around Aleppo. Opinion was sought from the Syrian Opposition's 'Chief Negotiator', who turned out to be none other than Mohammed Alloush, the new leader of one of the Saudi's most favoured terrorist groups in Syria.

Do they really believe that the Syrian government could 'negotiate' with this man?

Article first published in Russian Insider. Check the comments out there too.