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No to intervention in Syria

By: 
Paul Stevenson

June 27, 2013

At the G8 meetings in Northern Ireland the questions of Syria dominated the discussion but the major powers didn't come up with any sort of compromise. Instead they all announced that they would be funneling more arms to both sides in the conflict thus ensuring a much longer and more deadly war.  
 
There have also been discussions of a "no fly zone" over Syria to be implemented by NATO forces. As we saw with Libya, a "no fly zone" quickly turned into a full-scale campaign of airstrikes, which killed 30,000 people and left the country in ruins, while hijacking the political leadership of the revolution.
 
The Syrians who rose up against the government of Bashar Al-Assad are now stuck between the proxy forces of NATO on the one hand and Russia on the other. Each of those sides is now in a fight to remake the Middle East and to gain control of crucial resources. The Syrian people have not been consulted on their fate, which is now, increasingly, being decided in Washington and Moscow.
 
Fears of regional war 
The fears of a larger regional war are also expanding. In both Lebanon and Iraq specifically, the sectarian divisions being fomented by the Syrian war are causing a dramatic increase in violence.
 
In Lebanon, where the civil war remains a scar that has not been healed, certain forces are using the Syrian conflict to renew hostilities. In the south, Hizbollah, which had gained tremendous popularity throughout the Arab world after they dispatched Israel from Lebanese territory during the invasion in 2006, are gambling that support for Assad will allow them to maintain a flow of support from Iran through Syria. The Sunni sectarian groups are looking at this as a great opportunity to get rid of Hizbollah, which has been a major competitor for power in Lebanon.
 
In Iraq, where sectarian divisions were propagated by the brutal US invasion and occupation, the Syrian conflict has pushed some groups to renew their attacks. The level of killing is now near to the levels in 2006, the deadliest year of the US occupation. More than 2000 people have been killed since April and 180 people have thus far been killed in June alone.
 
Self-determination
It remains crucial that the anti-war movements around the world oppose any foreign interference in the conflict. We only need to look at Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya: NATO military intervention does nothing to help the people (despite the often-used justification of “responsibility to protect”) and instead leaves a wake of death and destruction.
 
The Syrian people and peoples throughout the Middle East need to decide their own fate without interference.

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