Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Because al-Jaafari does not understand | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Whenever Bashar al-Jaafari, al-Assad’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN), speaks, one wonders: Does this man realize what he is saying? Is he aware of what is happening on the ground in Syria? Or has his desire to defend the tyrant al-Assad blinded him from grasping the facts, and what is happening to the Syrians?

Yesterday al-Jaafari launched an attack on Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and accused them of what he called “supporting terrorism” in Syria, adding that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are not the exemplary states they claim to be with their issuance of a draft UN resolution against the al-Assad regime. The truth is that al-Jaafari, and many of those like him, such as Fahmi Howeidi, who deliberately mislead, primarily do not understand that if regimes such as al-Assad’s are to be accepted as republics, then they must fundamentally respect the concepts of a republic. Secondly, all that has been demanded of al-Assad, since the outbreak of the revolution, is to stop the relentless killing, and is this so difficult to understand?

The story of Syria is the story of a heavily armed regime supported by Iran – the worst model of rule in our region, and likewise Russia. At the start of the revolution the demonstrations were 100 percent peaceful; the revolutionaries did not carry arms at all, while the tyrant responded with murder, destruction, bombings and arbitrary detentions. The al-Assad regime has destroyed homes, orphaned children and killed them, along with women. We wrote, as did others, that security solutions and murder do not work, but al-Assad went on to describe the Syrians as germs, while his troops killed them in cold blood. Yet today, here comes al-Jaafari to say that Saudi Arabia is not the model example it claims to be!

Saudi Arabia does not kill its own people; it does not kill those Saudis in Qatif who have been deceived and exploited by Iran and the al-Assad regime. Saudi Arabia has actually exercised amazing restraint, even though these people carry weapons and throw bombs, and have done for quite some time, all within the al-Assad regime’s attempt to increase pressure on the Kingdom and implement Iranian agendas. Indeed, Riyadh has exercised great restraint while we find the al-Assad regime has been murdering its Syrians continually and systematically for seventeen months.

When I say that al-Jaafari does not understand, or that he is being deliberately misleading, it is because there are contradictions in everything he says. He even contradicts the statements of other Syrian officials. While al-Jaafari is accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of supporting what he calls “terrorism” in Syria, the Deputy Prime Minister of the al-Assad regime was speaking from Moscow on the same day, where he said that there was a need for the opposition and the al-Assad regime to sit at the dialogue table now, something that the al-Assad regime has repeatedly hampered. How is it possible for al-Jaafari to say that what is happening in his country is terrorism, whilst the tyrant’s Deputy Prime Minister calls for dialogue?!

Hence, Bashar al-Jaafari, and other agents of al-Assad like him, do not understand that all that is needed now is to stop the Syrian government’s killing machine and hold the killers accountable, first and foremost al-Assad, for the deaths of 20,000 Syrians. This is in order to turn the page on the worst regime our region has known in the past 40 years. This will be achieved very soon, according to the facts on the ground, and regardless of the nonsense that al-Jaafari is spouting in New York.