Arab Summit Lays Bare Arab Disunion on Syria
The AP reports that the Arab League summit that ended Wednesday “exposed cracks in what was once solid Arab support for Syrian rebels, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar divided over which factions to back and Syria’s neighbors increasingly expressing fatigue with the flood of refugees from the country’s civil war.”
Syria’s opposition-in-exile used the gathering in Kuwait “to plead for its allies to unite in helping it at a time when Assad’s forces have made gains on the ground and prospects for a negotiated settlement of the three-year conflict have become remote.” Opposition leader Ahmad Jarba asked Arab leaders to pressure the international community to supply heavier weapons to rebel fighters.
The wire says that the cracks “are mostly rooted in long simmering tensions between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, a tiny but super-rich Gulf state. Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Qatar of sending weapons to Islamic militant fighters who have become increasingly powerful within Syria’s rebellion, clashing with more moderate rebel factions.”
Assad Prepares for Elections
TIME’s Aryn Baker reports on the presidential election preparations now under way in Damascus. The last time Bashar al-Assad ran for office, in 2007, he won 98 percent of the popular vote. “If he runs again in the upcoming election, it would dim the prospects of U.N.-backed peace talks to end the country’s bloody civil war,” she says.
“For the past 40 years, voting in Syria has been a pretty straightforward process. In 2007, the most recent presidential poll, the ballot asked one simple question: Should Bashar al-Assad stay in power for another seven-year term? Voters could check a green circle marked yes, or a red circle marked no. In at least one polling station in Damascus election officials even made the act of checking optional. Instead, they offered a stack of forms premarked in Assad’s favor.
“Anyone who wanted to vote against him simply had to ask for an unmarked ballot — in front of an array of police officers and intelligence agents. ‘Not once in the whole day did I see someone vote against Assad,’ says Siraj, a 28-year-old Syrian military defector now living in Beirut who was helping his father run the local polling site that day by passing out ballot papers. ‘If you asked for an unmarked ballot, all eyes would be on you.’”
OPCW: Half of Syria’s Chemicals Removed
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said in a Wednesday report to the United Nations that 53.6 percent of Assad’s chemicals had either been removed from Syria or destroyed.
“In a cover letter to the new OPCW report, addressed to the U.N. Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said two incidents this month of rocket attacks on the Syrian port of Latakia “did not stop the removal operations,” reports Al Jazeera.
“But Ban urged speed, saying ‘the precarious and unstable nature of the security situation further underlines the importance of expediting the removal of chemical weapons material from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic as quickly and as safely as possible.’
“The most toxic chemicals, including mustard gas and raw materials for making the nerve agent sarin, are being put on Danish and Norwegian cargo ships at the port of Latakia and will be transferred to a U.S. ship, MV Cape Ray, in the Italian port of Gioia Tauro. The Cape Ray is equipped with two machines that will render the chemicals inert.”
Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team
Reuters: Islamists Bomb Shi’ite Shrine in Eastern Syria
Guardian: Behind the Scenes with Syria’s ‘Emergency Cinema’
Al Monitor: Davutoglu Defends Syria Policy
Bloomberg: Syria Peace Effort Largely Failed, U.S. Official Says