Helmut Kohl calls on EU leaders to take ‘one step back’ after Brexit vote

The Guardian reports: The former German chancellor Helmut Kohl has warned European leaders against applying too much pressure on Britain following the vote to leave the European Union.

In an account of an interview for the tabloid newspaper Bild by its editor-in-chief, Kai Diekmann, Kohl, 86, is indirectly quoted as warning against “unnecessary severity and haste” in the post-referendum negotiations.

The man who was one of the driving forces behind European integration in the 1990s believes that slamming the door on Britain would be an “enormous mistake” and that the country needs time to decide what it wants to do next, Diekmann writes.

Kohl, who oversaw the reunification of Germany and the introduction of the euro, is calling for Europe to “take a breather” and take “one step back before taking two steps forward”, at a pace that is manageable for all member states, the article says. [Continue reading…]

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Obama proposes new military partnership with Russia in Syria

Josh Rogin writes: The Obama administration has proposed a new agreement on Syria to the Russian government that would deepen military cooperation between the two countries against some terrorists in exchange for Russia getting the Assad regime to stop bombing U.S.-supported rebels.

The United States transmitted the text of the proposed agreement to the Russian government on Monday after weeks of negotiations and internal Obama administration deliberations, an administration official told me. The crux of the deal is a U.S. promise to join forces with the Russian air force to share targeting and coordinate an expanded bombing campaign against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, which is primarily fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Under the proposal, which was personally approved by President Obama and heavily supported by Secretary of State John F. Kerry, the American and Russian militaries would cooperate at an unprecedented level, something the Russians have sought for a long time.

In exchange, the Russians would agree to pressure the Assad regime to stop bombing certain Syrian rebel groups the United States does not consider terrorists. The United States would not give Russia the exact locations of these groups, under the proposal, but would specify geographic zones that would be safe from the Assad regime’s aerial assaults.

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter was opposed to this plan, officials said, but was ultimately compelled to go along with the president’s decision. For many inside and outside the administration who are frustrated with the White House’s decision-making on Syria, the new plan is fatally flawed for several reasons. [Continue reading…]

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Russia will countenance an Assad exit in Syria, but not yet

Reuters reports: Russia will countenance Syrian President Bashar al-Assad leaving office, but only when it is confident a change of leader will not trigger a collapse of the Syrian government, sources familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking say.

Getting to that point could take years, and in the meantime Russia is prepared to keep backing Assad, regardless of international pressure to jettison him, those sources said.

Such steadfast support is likely to further complicate already stalled peace talks with Assad’s opponents and sour relations with Washington which wants the Syrian leader gone.

“Russia is not going to part company with Assad until two things happen,” Sir Tony Brenton, Britain’s former ambassador to Russia, told Reuters.

“Firstly, until they are confident he won’t be replaced with some sort of Islamist takeover, and secondly until it can be guaranteed that their own position in Syria, their alliance and their military base, are sustainable going forward.” [Continue reading…]

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‘Iranians use Afghans as human shields’ in Syria

The Guardian reports: Iran is covertly recruiting hundreds of Afghan Shias in Afghanistan to fight for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, drawing them out of their own conflict-ridden country and into another war in which Afghanistan plays no official part.

The Afghan fighters are often impoverished, religiously devout or ostracised from society, looking for money, social acceptance and a sense of purpose that they are unable to find at home.

Iran’s recruitment of Afghan migrants and refugees within its own borders has been documented. But similar Iranian activities inside Afghanistan had previously gone unreported.

Iran denies using “any kind of allurement or coercion”, or to otherwise recruiting Afghans to fight in Syria, according to an embassy spokesman in Kabul. But a Guardian investigation can reveal both how Iran coaxes Afghan men into war, and the motives that prompt these men to travel thousands of miles to join a battle they might not return from.

Central in this recruitment are men such as Jawad. A police officer by day and self-declared “travel agent” when off-duty, Jawad said he acted for a year as middleman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) when in 2014 it formed an Afghan Shia militia, the Fatemiyoun Division, to fight alongside Syrian government forces.

From his “travel agency” on the second floor of a non-descript office building, Jawad connected combat willing men with Iran’s embassy in Kabul. The embassy assisted with visas and travel, and paid Jawad a commission for his troubles.

In return for fighting, Afghans are offered a residence permit in Iran and about $500 monthly salary. “Most go to Syria for the money,” said Jawad, wearing stonewashed jeans and replica Ray-Bans. “Others go to defend the shrine.”

Syria is home to several holy Shia sites, above all the Sayyidah Zaynab mosque in Damascus, which honours the Prophet Muhammad’s granddaughter, and which has been a rallying point for Shias who want to defend it from Sunni militants such as Islamic State.

The first time the Guardian met Jawad, he was preparing to travel to Syria himself. Isis had abducted 12 Afghan fighters in a suburb of Damascus. It was Jawad who had recruited them, and their families now demanded that he help secure their release, he said.

When he returned from Syria a month later, he was clearly shaken. Showing photos from Damascus, he said he had negotiated the hostages’ freedom, but also seen first hand how “the Iranians use Afghans as human shields”. He said he would stop working as go-between for the Iranians. “I’m ashamed because I sent these people,” he said. [Continue reading…]

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Fallujah’s importance to ISIS helped Iraqi forces retake it

The Wall Street Journal reports: For Islamic State, this city was unlike any other: the birthplace of its movement and the first urban center it seized in a blitz that began the occupation of a third of Iraq.

But it took Iraqi forces less than five weeks to defeat the extremist group here, much faster than Iraqi and American officials had expected. One reason, these officials and Iraqi commanders say, was how invested Islamic State militants were in Fallujah, which made them loath to blow it up.

“Fallujah was a command-and-control center,” said a senior Iraqi counterterrorism officer. “They were comfortable there. Their leadership lived there and so did their families. They could not destroy the city in the process of defending it.”

Commanders said the militants had bet on repelling Iraqi forces on the outskirts of Fallujah, but struggled to adapt to the overwhelming force. The center of the city was still inhabited—one reason it wasn’t booby-trapped, as Islamic State had done in other, largely deserted urban areas they lost.

Iraqi officials said the Fallujah campaign exposed weaknesses that raised hopes for retaking the much-larger city of Mosul, Islamic State’s last significant base in Iraq. Both have become administrative centers for the group, heavily populated with its own fighters and civilians. [Continue reading…]

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What comes after the Istanbul airport attack?

Mustafa Akyol writes: On Tuesday night, just as millions of Muslims here were breaking their Ramadan fasts, three terrorists attacked the city’s busy airport. They fired randomly at passengers with automatic weapons before blowing themselves up. They killed 41 innocent people, most of them Muslims, supposedly in the name of Islam.

The assault on the airport is the latest in a series of horrible traumas in Turkey. In the past year, the country has endured almost a dozen major terrorist attacks. Some were the work of the Islamic State, which kills in the name of God; others were the work of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which kills in the name of the people.

This country was much more peaceful a year ago. It was only last summer that a two-year-old peace process between the government and the P.K.K. fell apart. Meanwhile, the Islamic State, which initially benefited from Turkey’s lax control of the Syrian border, began to carry its violence inside Turkey. Islamic State suicide bombers first aimed at secular Kurds, then Western tourists and finally random people at the airport.

Since last summer, the Islamic State has been condemning Ankara as the capital of an “apostate regime” that allies itself with “Crusaders.” The group’s Turkish-language magazine proclaimed: “O Istanbul, you have allowed disbelief in your avenues. You have filled your streets with sins, but surely you will be conquered.” [Continue reading…]

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Brexit crisis contributing to ‘daunting’ U.S. security challenges, CIA director says

The Guardian reports: The US is facing its most daunting national security challenge in a generation after the European Union was plunged into “crisis” by Britain’s vote to leave, the head of the CIA warned on Wednesday.

John Brennan insisted that Brexit would not undermine cooperation with MI6 in the fight against terrorism, but suggested that the EU, a bulwark of peace and stability since the fall of the Berlin wall, would now be preoccupied with the UK’s departure.

“In the 36 years since I first entered government, I have never been witnessing a time with such a daunting array of challenges to our nation’s security,” Brennan told the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “Notable among those challenges is that some of the institutions and relationships that have been pillars of the post-cold war international system are under serious stress.

“Of all the crises the EU has faced in recent years, the UK vote to leave the EU may well be its greatest challenge. Brexit is pushing the EU into a period of introspection that will pervade virtually everything the EU does in the coming weeks, months and even years ahead,” he said. [Continue reading…]

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Brexit pushes U.S. closer to Germany

Benjamin Oreskes writes: When it became clear that Britain had voted to leave the European Union, President Barack Obama called David Cameron to offer his sympathy. Then he dialed Angela Merkel, the leader he actually leans on in times of crisis.

It’s no secret why. For years now, Germany, not the U.K., has been Obama’s main line into European politics. And that’s why Washington’s influence in Europe will survive a Brexit.

The longstanding “special relationship” between the U.S. and Britain gave Washington a key confidant at the table in Brussels, as Obama stressed in his April referendum intervention in London. But a Europe without a United Kingdom doesn’t exactly leave Britain’s former colony out in the cold.

“On the big issues, we’ve seen the transition for years now where the first call has not been to London, where it used to be, but to Berlin,” said Damon Wilson, a former senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council under George W. Bush and who is currently executive vice president of the Atlantic Council. “That transition has already happened and the great recession really accelerated that with the magnification of German economic and political power.” [Continue reading…]

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Elizabeth Warren is Hillary Clinton’s most rational choice for VP

Brian Beutler writes: Nearly all reports from the Hillary Clinton brain trust suggest Senator Tim Kaine is the runaway favorite to be the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2016.

There are soft spots in this consensus. For instance, the Clinton campaign is apparently not 100 percent convinced that Donald Trump will walk away from next month’s convention in Cleveland as the Republican nominee. Clinton’s allies think there’s a small but real chance she’ll be running against a candidate who isn’t fatally flawed himself (or mortally wounded for having deposed Trump). If that did happen, a more electric candidate might rocket to the top of her short list.

But Kaine-as-default-choice is what Clinton-world sources are telling reporters, and what they say matches conventional wisdom, which for several weeks has held that Clinton will pick him. The Virginia senator is ideologically closer to Clinton than Elizabeth Warren. He’s also temperamentally closer to Clinton than Warren, and his choice would be reflective of Clinton’s famous aversion to political risk. Kaine isn’t a progressive firebrand, so he won’t overshadow Clinton — and by the same token, he doesn’t come fully loaded with the powerful enemies Warren has earned. [Continue reading…]

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Leading Brexiter fears outcome in which ‘we will be worse off than when we were in the EU’

The Guardian reports: The British public have voted to leave the EU in an advisory referendum – but there have been voices in business, diplomacy, politics and European polities desperately asking if the issue can be revisited. Is that feasible?

The short answer is yes, just about, but many forces would have to align.

The referendum, for instance, has thrown up big constitutional questions for Britain.

Oliver Letwin, who was appointed by David Cameron, the outgoing prime minister, to oversee the process of withdrawal, is now at the helm of an expanded European secretariat at the Cabinet Office. But it is clear that very little preparatory work has been done. One of the first questions he will face is the future role of the British parliament in Brexit.

The British government has not yet said how parliament should implement the decision to leave. It is not clear, for instance, if and what laws would have to be passed to put the referendum decision to leave the EU into effect. [Continue reading…]

Echoing this discussion, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says there are a number of ways Thursday’s vote could be “walked back.”

But in the eyes of many — on both sides of the issue — the fact that this conversation is even taking place is widely viewed as an expression of contempt for democracy. It is seen as a cynical effort to accomplish by questionable means what couldn’t be achieved through a free and fair vote. The argument for rejecting these kinds of political machinations is that the will of the people must be respected.

Setting aside the question of whether there is such a thing as the will of the British people — sacrosanct as that notion is — if we simply accept the fact that the Leave campaign won (a result that no one disputes), then respecting the will of the people in that sense would surely have to mean delivering the outcome Leave voters supported. That is to say: respecting the popular expectations built around the meaning of withdrawal — a return of sovereignty, control over immigration, and so forth.

If leaving the EU leaves the UK in a position where it retains full access to the single European market — the so-called Norway option — on condition of maintaining the “four freedoms” (the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people) then in the words of Richard North, a leading proponent of Brexit, “we will be worse off than when we were in the EU.”

Let’s repeat that: We will be worse off than when we were in the EU!

Wasn’t that the central argument for voting Remain? That Britain would be worse off outside the EU than it is inside? And now Brexiters are warning about the danger of that very outcome!

Today, North writes:

We’ve been fighting the “war” for so many decades, with so little expectation of winning, that we’ve not devoted anything like enough time to winning the “peace”.
[…]
Yesterday, I was in London at a Leave Alliance meeting and there it dawned on me how ill-prepared we are to fight the coming battle. It is absolutely true that Whitehall didn’t have a plan, and Vote Leave certainly doesn’t have one. And, of course, neither does Farage. We are, therefore, at risk of losing the battle before many of us even realise what is at stake.

So here’s the irony for Brexit voters who naively imagine they just “got their country back”:

On one side are opponents of Brexit strategizing on how to stop it in its tracks, and on the other side are opponents of Brexit strategizing on how to minimize its effects. In between, the champions of Brexit haven’t a clue what to do next.

This is what happens when you passionately advocate for a goal, but expend very little effort figuring out how it can be accomplished.

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Brexit and the future of Europe

George Soros writes: Britain, I believe, had the best of all possible deals with the European Union, being a member of the common market without belonging to the euro and having secured a number of other opt-outs from EU rules. And yet that was not enough to stop the United Kingdom’s electorate from voting to leave. Why?

The answer could be seen in opinion polls in the months leading up to the “Brexit” referendum. The European migration crisis and the Brexit debate fed on each other. The “Leave” campaign exploited the deteriorating refugee situation – symbolized by frightening images of thousands of asylum-seekers concentrating in Calais, desperate to enter Britain by any means necessary – to stoke fear of “uncontrolled” immigration from other EU member states. And the European authorities delayed important decisions on refugee policy in order to avoid a negative effect on the British referendum vote, thereby perpetuating scenes of chaos like the one in Calais.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open her country’s doors wide to refugees was an inspiring gesture, but it was not properly thought out, because it ignored the pull factor. A sudden influx of asylum-seekers disrupted people in their everyday lives across the EU.

The lack of adequate controls, moreover, created panic, affecting everyone: the local population, the authorities in charge of public safety, and the refugees themselves. It has also paved the way for the rapid rise of xenophobic anti-European parties – such as the UK Independence Party, which spearheaded the Leave campaign – as national governments and European institutions seem incapable of handling the crisis.

Now the catastrophic scenario that many feared has materialized, making the disintegration of the EU practically irreversible. [Continue reading…]

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The revolt of the fragments

Kenan Malik writes: Over the past few decades, trade unions have weakened, social justice campaigns eroded, the left crumbled.

One consequence of this shift has been to lead many on the left to look to bureaucratic or managerial means of creating a more progressive society. This is one reason that the EU has become so important for many as an institution for protecting social needs and equal rights. It may also be one of the reasons for the generational division over the EU – many young people who have grown up from the 1990s onwards view the EU both as a vital component of their lives and identities and as a crucial institution for the enabling of social change.

A second consequence of the erosion of broader social movements is the creation of more fragmented, parochial, even sectarian, forms that popular disaffection increasingly takes. In an age in which there are few collective mechanisms to bind together the experiences and grievances of different groups and communities and to channel them into a common goal of social transformation, people often express their different experiences of discontent in very different ways.

It is against this background that much of the Brexit debate became polarized between, on the one hand, a liberal Europeanism that celebrated the managerial over the democratic, and ignored, or underplayed, the undemocratic character of EU institutions, and, on the other, a Euroscepticism that played on hostility to migrants, and that, in conflating democracy and national sovereignty, advanced a narrow, divisive notion of democracy. What was missing was the argument for a pan-European solidarity built from the bottom up, and which sought to break down national barriers through the extension of democratic institutions, not their emasculation. [Continue reading…]

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After a campaign scarred by bigotry, it’s become OK to be racist in Britain

Aditya Chakrabortty writes: On chaos of the kind Britain now faces, history is clear: some people always get hurt more than others. Just which groups stand to suffer most this time round is already becoming worryingly clear. Take a look at the hate reports that have come pouring in over the past few days.

In Huntingdon, Polish-origin schoolkids get cards calling them “vermin”, who must “leave the EU”. They come with a Polish translation, thoughtfully enough. From Barnsley, a TV correspondent notes that within five minutes three different people shout, “Send them home.” On Facebook, a friend in east London tells how, while trying to sleep on a hot night, he hears a man bellowing outside his open window: “We’ve got our country back and next I’ll blow that fucking mosque up.”

None of this is coincidental. It’s what happens when cabinet ministers, party leaders and prime-ministerial wannabes sprinkle arguments with racist poison. When intolerance is not only tolerated, but indulged and encouraged. For months leading up to last week’s vote, politicians poured a British blend of Donald Trumpism into Westminster china. They told 350m little lies. They made cast-iron promises that, Iain Duncan Smith now admits, were only ever “possibilities”. And the Brexit brigade flirted over and over again with racism. [Continue reading…]

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UK after the referendum: ‘There is a poisonous anti-foreign sentiment in the air’

The Guardian asked Eastern Europeans and ethnic minorities in the UK to share their experiences after the EU referendum result:

I feel scared after the referendum. In my workplace I have heard people saying things, such as: “Pack your bags and get the fuck out.” Followed by, “If you want I can give you a suitcase.” This referendum has not led to communities coming together in any way – the opposite has happened. Now I feel worried about me and my daughter’s future in Britain.

When I was growing up in Poland I experienced racism because my father was from the Middle East. I don’t want my child to feel the same sense of exclusion I did. Three years ago I decided to move permanently to the UK because it’s such a multi-cultural place. Since coming here I have joined classes to improve my English and learned about the country’s culture and history. My whole family used to love England, but now I feel disappointed. I had no idea so many people hated us so much – me and my family have never done anything wrong in England: we have never claimed benefits and we pay taxes, we respect English culture.

I have never had any problems in the UK until now. I feel like an unwanted guest and I have now decided it is time for me and my family to move on. We don’t feel safe any more. It’s very weird how this country has turned completely against us.
Anonymous, 31, Somerset

My blood ran cold when I heard we were leaving. I live in a small town in the north-east that voted 65% to leave. The Brexit campaign made me feel like an alien, an outsider, like being brown was now bad in England. I was excluded from the debate because I was up for debate – somehow I had become up for national debate.

Recently I spoke to a mum I know from my daughter’s school who has just recently moved from London. She says she isn’t happy here as the people are not very open and friendly.

Having been born and bred in England, my nationality, my birthright, has been suddenly called into question. I am fearful for my six-year-old daughter living in a place where people are being told on the street to “get back to your own country” or to “start packing”.
Sam, 34, Middlesbrough

The result has left me feeling like an outsider. As a child, I grew up in a predominantly white, working-class area, and ignorant comments were almost made on a daily basis to me. As a mixed-race child of Oriental and European descent, I felt like I had to prove myself. My mother was put off teaching me her native language as a teacher told her it would stop me from progressing and “confuse” me. I was ashamed to show off my culture.

Seeing the active persecution of ethnic minorities and immigrants, I’m scared that those feelings of isolation and alienation that I experienced as a child will come back. But on a bigger scale, to the point I fear for my safety. I walk down the street now and I’m worried that people think I’m an outsider and that they want me gone.

I’m scared to go to my home town to visit my parents. I’m scared of how people will treat my white father for being married to my Oriental mother. I am scared that she may be attacked. I feel safer being in Manchester, but there is this poisonous anti-foreign sentiment in the air.

Brexit has allowed some people to believe that their intolerance and racism is now justified. I was in Manchester city centre and a woman glared at me in disgust. Whether or not it was to do with Brexit, I am now vigilant and cautious when I used to be carefree and happy. It all builds up and as an ethnic minority I don’t know if people accept me anymore. I used to be proud of this ethnically diverse country. Now I feel scared of it.
Khristi, 23, Manchester

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What do Syrians want?

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: When the British House Foreign Affairs Committee convened hearings in September 2015 to reassess the government’s Syria policy, it invited seven witnesses to present evidence. The Committee chair, Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, acknowledged “that there have been observations that none of the people who are giving us witness evidence today are actually Syrian.” But this, he explained, was because “the Committee wants to understand all the perspectives in this conflict.”

Syrians, it seems, weren’t the only ones excluded from the hearing — so was irony.

Halfway in, a committee member asked: “What is it that the Syrians want?” The chair, who had ignored public calls to include Syrian witnesses on the panel, seemed intrigued. “What do the Syrians want?” he echoed.

The committee seemed interested in Syrian opinion, but only through the prophylactic medium of a Syrian-free panel. And the composition of the panel ensured that only one type of opinion would be heard.

The star of the proceedings was Patrick Cockburn, the Irish correspondent for the Independent and author of the bestselling The Rise of Islamic State. In articles and public appearances, the controversial journalist has made a case for providing military support not to Syria’s beleaguered opposition but to its murderous regime. Cockburn reiterated the argument before dismissing Syrian civil society as “not really players” and Syrian rebels as mere “jihadi groups” indistinguishable from the Islamic State (per his book, “there is no dividing wall between them and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies”).

The Syrian voice Cockburn was ventriloquizing might well have been a regime spokesman’s, since few others would present as a lesser evil a state that, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, is responsible for 95 percent of civilian deaths, and which the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria has indicted for “the crimes against humanity of extermination, murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance and other inhuman acts.”

But the Conservative-led parliamentary committee wasn’t alone in excluding Syrian voices. Britain’s main antiwar organization, the Stop the War Coalition (StWC—led until recently by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn), has also denied platforms to Syrians (except on one occasion when, three months after the August 2013 chemical massacre, it invited a close ally of Assad to its “antiwar” conference). Indeed, at a recent conference on Syria, chaired by the radical left-wing MP Diane Abbott, organizers called the police to evict a Syrian who tried to speak from the floor (StWC denies that it called the police). StWC later argued that in supporting a no-fly zone, the Syrians had embraced a “pro-war” position, which disqualified them from an “antiwar” platform. However, at the same event, StWC chair Andrew Murray made a case for providing military support to Assad in the fight against ISIS.

If Syrians haven’t been heard, it’s not for lack of trying. There are compelling voices covering the conflict — reporting, analyzing, prescribing. All are ignored. [Continue reading…]

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A lesson from Brexit: Stop ignoring Syria

Joyce Karam writes: The political earthquake that Great Britain witnessed last Thursday with the victory for the Brexit camp setting the stage to the UK’s exit from the EU, is not only a product of David Cameron’s mistakes and Europe’s struggle with its own demons, but has its roots 2,000 miles away in the raging war, the counterterrorism nightmare and the humanitarian disaster called Syria.

The Syrian war is the elephant in the room when it comes to the rise of identity-politics, and the protectionist wave across Europe and in the United States. The unprecedented refugee influx, the largest since World War II coming primarily from Syria, and the country’s transformation into a hub for every Jihadist group and extremist recruitment machinery, has sent shockwaves through Europe and is feeding a political rhetoric of hate and racism across the continent.

This rhetoric won’t necessarily go away if Syria is resolved, but it will only grow if the conflict is left to spread and fester. [Continue reading…]

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‘Europe pays a heavy price for Syria – it must act to end the crisis’

Ian Black writes: Europe’s extraordinary political turbulence, triggered by the Brexit referendum, has caught the attention of the world. But the longer-running and far deadlier crisis in the continent’s backyard bleeds on while precious little is being done to help end it.

Syrians fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad are close to despair: Russia and Iranian intervention has bolstered the president’s position while Washington and Moscow have moved closer together – perhaps to the point where they will seek to impose a solution to end the five-year war. The UN deadline for agreement on a “political transition” in Damascus is looming on 1 August.

Europe, argues the country’s main western-backed opposition movement, can and must do more – however badly it is distracted by problems closer to home. That was the message it took this week to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, who played a key role in last year’s landmark nuclear talks with Iran but has failed to make much impact on Syria, where 400,000 people have been killed and millions made homeless.

“This last year has proven that Europe is the first continent that is paying the price of a lack of serious management of the Syrian crisis – because of the refugees and security issues, and this is unlikely to stop,” said Basma Kodmani of the Higher Negotiations Committee. “Russia has not seen any terrorist attacks – isn’t that interesting?”

The links between European instability and the carnage in Syria have never been clearer – the atrocity at Istanbul airport the latest grim reminder. [Continue reading…]

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