By Vestnik Kavkaza
This week the special envoy of the UN and the LAS on Syria, Lakhdar Brakhimi, regretted that his urging for peacemaking wasn’t heard. Brakhimi urged the sides of the Syrian conflict to cease fire for the period of celebrating the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. However, militants of anti-governmental groups attacked a base of the Military Forces of the country on the very first day; the Syrian governmental forces responded by fire. At the moment all sides interested in normalization of the situation in the Middle East state on continuation of negotiations, but their views on the situation are different. Vyacheslav Matuzov, Chairman of the Society of Russian-Arab friendship and business cooperation, expressed his view on the developments in the Middle East.
According to him, the chain of revolutions in the Arab world occurs in accordance with the strategy of the United States to change its image in the Muslim Arab world since the invasion into Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq, since 9/11, when the American public was shocked. The main ideologists of neo-conservatism in the United States were almost in power in this period and determined the political platform of the George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice. These were the neoconservatives like Dick Cheney and Charles Krauthammer, who was vividly described by a well-known American political philosopher Francis Fukuyama in his famous article in the National Interest, which is called The Neoconservative Moment. When the reformatting of image of the U.S. began, the U.S. thought that it was necessary to move away from direct confrontation. It pushes us to confrontation with the Islamic world, including the Caucasus, and also work to change the approach. The generated concept is to get rid of the burden of the U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim Arab world, which makes it difficult to achieve support of the masses for the U.S. The U.S. needs love, not hatred, and it does it by making us fight. It turns out that, changing this make-up, but without changing the essence of their policy, the Americans want to overthrow all their reliable allies in the Arab world.
Now our politicians and political analysts are wondering why the Americans could plan any bad steps against Hosni Mubarak though he was their great ally in Egypt; it is unnatural, it was against the will of Americans. I have heard from the most senior political and informational community here in Moscow the view that the events in Egypt allegedly caught the Americans by surprise. But when you read a telegram to the ambassador, you see that Hosni Mubarak was crazy from what the Americans were doing in Egypt, coming into contact with the opposition, "the Muslim Brotherhood" and encouraging them to intense activity. Americans decided to do this and, in the end, sacrificed all their allies, because they were really corrupt, like, for instance, Ben Ali in Tunisia. As follows from Wikileaks, nephews of the wife of President of Tunisia captured yacht accidentally coming into the Tunisian port, repainted it in a different color, and no one can do anything, because the level of contempt for the state and its laws in this little family was very high. The American ambassador reported this to the State Department long before all the Tunisian events. Ben Ali was doomed to destruction by the Americans, not because there was a self-immolation, he was doomed because he was already a ballast which caused anger and discontent of the people. Americans sacrificed him like Hosni Mubarak or Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Therefore, the Saudi regime, the Qatari regime is now in the same state. I have last year's record of the Qatari emir’s talks in Washington with Obama last April, when someone accidentally forgot to turn off the microphone, and then Obama commented who is the Qatari emir. The American press has deciphered this: Obama feels no "respect" to his servants. And the Qatari emir was clearly described there: he is a rich "guy" who has Al Jazeera and a lot of money, so as long as he is loyal to us, we will endure this. These were the words of Barack Obama behind the scenes, when someone forgot to turn off the microphone after a meeting with the Emir of Qatar. The American press published all this.
We should not say that there is a division between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, Iran, Syria. This is not true, and Saudi Arabia is well aware of it. Is a game of "who is the strongest one" - the power is respectable. Therefore, the Americans did this work perfectly, and being in Washington, I just frankly told Americans: "Guys, you got A + for this work, but you have one big disadvantage - breaking down the Arab community, you forget the design that appears after your hard work on the ruins of these structures. If you think that the Islamic fundamentalists are an alternative to the current regimes in the Arab East, you will get it, if you continue to aggressively follow suit. But then you will get the first hit in the same way you received it on 9/11, after you have begun to overthrow the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, everywhere".
So I'm doing this little excursion into the overall situation in the Middle East, before touching upon Lebanon, because I always considered Lebanon as a bunch of all the nerves of the Arab world - political, informational, financial. For many years I was friends with the famous last Lebanese Maronite leader of the National unit, Raymond Edde. Every week we were drinking tea with him - he had an office near Hamra – and we were talking a lot; I was young, and he was about 20 years older than me, but I was the first secretary and cultural attache. He received me as the official representative of the Soviet Union. He was one of the few people who created the current financial and banking system in Lebanon. Lebanon has a special status before a civil war in 1975, and now it retained this status as a center of financial and banking activities in the Middle East. He has always been an alternative to the Swiss banks, the banking system of the London and New York. To this day, Lebanon was the only country in the world, which kept secrets of bank deposits from Interpol. All other countries, including Switzerland, have obeyed the dictates of the Americans and poured them all the information. Lebanon has been and remains the only center. You will find in Lebanon Russian banks, which banking is a zero, and the presence exists. If you walk through the streets of Beirut, you will see the signs of our native Russian banks.
Lebanon was always the center of information. If someone wanted to know what is happening in the Arab world, he had to carefully read the Lebanese newspaper, when there was no Internet. This is a cluster of financial, economic, informational thoughts. Finally, it was the only democratic state in the Middle East, not only in the Arab world, where, in fact, there were elections. The fact that today the supporters of Syria have won in the election in Lebanon is the result of the very democratic process that has historically been in Lebanon. Americans do not like this. They say: Hizballa gained seats in parliament and has influence on the Lebanese government, this is scaring. But this is a democratic process. If you want a dictatorship, please change the regime in Lebanon.
In November last year I visited Lebanon and met with my friends, and I was told that some well-known figures of the political Olympus of Lebanon visited Libya and received $ 500 million in aid. At what expense? This is not American aid; this is due to Libyan assets. The looting of the Libyan state has become the source of funding of different opposition groups in Syria. The condition was one: holding anti-Syrian stance. Talking to someone who has received half a billion dollars is useless.
Here, when we are confronted with the political situation in Lebanon, the most powerful levers are connected with it. We see in Syria, in fact, the border with Turkey open to the north. Boundaries do not exist. Armed groups with the task to carry out terrorist attacks, shoot down military aircraft on Syrian territory penetrated there from Turkey. The question arises: where is the UN Charter? Where is the UN Security Council? The NATO Council made a decision that supported NATO member Turkey against aggression; I repeat, aggression, the word "aggression" has a deep meaning, a legal meaning, this word is quite serious. And if NATO Council passed a resolution stating that Syria committed an act of aggression against Turkey, if an international organization such as NATO, fixed the act of aggression, there should be immediate reaction. Aggression should be suppressed immediately. And if it is not an act of aggression, then you should not use this word in a serious document. The word was used. Why? Because Americans are now facing, I believe, the stiff resistance of the Syrian people and the Syrian army and losing the pace of reforms in the Arab world. And all their plans aimed at re-formatting of the Islamic Arab world faced the Syrian touchstone. Syria offered such a resistance which could not be counted by U.S. analysts. Now the resistance of Syria, in my opinion, frustrated the global plans of the U.S.
