‘NATO wants a simmering civil war in Syria – as a prelude’
Washington is ready to discuss Russia’s UN Security Council draft resolution on Syria, describing some provisions as however “unacceptable” and still not acknowledging that the anti-regime protesters are well-armed.
What exactly the US and NATO countries consider to be “unacceptable” is the real question, believes Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar.“Is it that the Syrian government cannot fight an armed insurgency in its own territory?” he ponders. “The Free Syrian Army are getting weapons smuggled from the Middle East to the borders [with Syria] in Turkey and in Jordan as well.”Pepe Escobar says that the Free Syrian Army, which claims to have more than 25,000 members fighting to bring down President Assad, is in fact turning into a huge militia marshalling forces near Syria’s borders with Turkey and Jordan. “This militia now is already involved in a sort of a pre-civil war at both borders with the help of NATO,” Escobar said. “What they want and what NATO wants is a simmering civil war as a prelude for something much tougher ahead, probably after the American elections in one year.” Escobar believes that “the fog of pre-war” is already there, and says Russia is making an intelligent move in pushing forward a “pre-emptive resolution.”“It condemns both sides and asks for a UN peacekeeping mission to solve the problem,” he said. “If there is a resolution in the UN, the first thing will be to send a UN peacekeeping mission, a fact-finding mission, to Syria.”One of the reasons he believes that such a mission must be sent to Syria as soon as possible is because there are still no credible sources of information about what is really happening on the ground. “The thing is we still do not know the role of these snipers that we see everywhere,” he explains. “In fact most of the civilian killings are by these snipers. And they even shoot children, this is true. But we do not know for sure if they are working for the Syrian army or Syrian intelligence, there is absolutely no evidence about it.”“Look, we don’t know where these snipers come from,” Escobar cited people in Homs as saying. “They could be government, but they could be opportunists, and they could be mercenaries trying to incite civil war.”
