The unholy union of imperialism and reactionarism

The images of this rampage will break anyone’s heart, except those who premeditatedly entered the village of al-Qubeir and opened fire on children, young people and housewives.

The opposition and Damascus each accuse the other of committing the crime. The general tendency in most of the Western governments and media, meanwhile, is to point their finger at the Syrian Army, whose preliminary report on the Houla killings was drowned out amid the press hype.

These two massacres are similar in many ways; one of which is their influence on the mission of the UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan. The Houla massacre coincided with Annan’s plan to visit Damascus where he intended to discuss the obstacles to the implementation of the six-point plan with the Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The second massacre also grabbed the headlines when Annan was preparing to present the results of his talks in Damascus, his new suggestions, and his report on the Syrian developments in the United Nations Security Council.

These killings will render any political measure and diplomatic initiatives obsolete. The occasionally conflicting initiatives that have been presented amid tensions between the interests of various governments have so far found no common ground.

Many governments are members of the group. The former UN general secretary has included Iran's name among the members. However, Washington, which has become hysterically sensitive to hearing Iran's name in any issue, has announced, thorough its secretary of state, that Iran cannot and must not participate in this group. The new French Minister of Foreign Affairs Loran Fabius has also sung the same tune.

The US and France say because Iran supports the Syrian government it does not have the right to be a member of the contact group. This is not a sincere stance as China and Russia support the Syrian regime more than Iran, but no objections have been made to their membership in the Syrian contact group. Furthermore, the US, the West and some Arab states overtly support the armed opposition, but this is not seen as any obstacle to their membership in the group.

These governments have come together in Istanbul by the efforts of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to find ways of helping the Syrian opposition and removing the existing hurdles on the way of financial and military assistance to them. These policy will lead to no other end, but a civil war in Syria.

Regardless of whether the contact group will succeed or not, or whether Iran will take part in it or not, hasty opposition of American and French foreign ministers is reminiscent of the nervous remarks made by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal.

On the sidelines of a meeting of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council’s [(P)GCC] foreign ministers, Faisal said Iran is the source of all tensions in the Middle East as it opposes evolution of the “council” into a “union.” He aimed to show that the failure of Saudi plan was due to opposition from political forces outside the council.

Iran's opposition was just limited to taking positions which were aimed to protect sovereignty of Bahrain, not to interference in its affairs. Secondly, was Iran an obstacle to forming a monetary and customs union among council members as well? Were differences over headquarters of the common central bank between UAE and Saudi Arabia due to Iran’s intervention? Is Iran responsible for long lines of UAE trucks waiting behind Saudi borders? Was Iran responsible when Saudi Arabia did not allow construction of a causeway connecting Bahrain to Qatar because it crossed the disputed al-Aidid region? Is Iran responsible for disputes over al-Sheiba oil region?

Heads of UAE and Oman did not take part in the recent (P)GCC summit in order to show their opposition to Saudi king’s “personal” plan for establishing a union among council members.

Oman’s Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs Yusuf bin Alawi openly opposed the plan and said its implementation should be left to future generations, but his Saudi counterpart claims to have heard nothing any opposition!

There were three types of government in the world’s political literature up to three decades ago: revolutionary, imperialistic and its affiliates, and reactionary. The union between two last kinds was considered the most formidable obstacle to freedom of other nations. That union is now in place as the US and Saudi Arabia have reached an agreement on regime change in Syria which is followed by other Arab countries.

Neither US is a revolutionary regime, nor Saudi Arabia. One is profit-seeking, with the other one being symbol of reactionarism and backwardness. West’s support for the Arab states and Arab Spring is both selective, and an effort to assure the interests of Western countries. Any movement backed by the US and the West will not turn out to be anything better than Nicaraguan Contras back in the 1980s.