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India's Ambassador confirmed: war in Syria has been instigated from outside

German Economic News | 16/01/16 Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten


A revealing report of the former Ambassador of India in Damascus makes clear:
The representation of the West, the Syrian President Assad should be overthrown by a popular uprising, is
not tenable.
The war was instigated from outside, including from the Gulf States and the Al Qaeda.
With these, the US worked together over the Al Nusra Wing.
Assad has underestimated the risk - because he knew his people behind him.
image top: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has underestimated the risk, which would mean a revolt instigated
from abroad against him. (Photo: AP)
Shri V.P. Haran served 2009-2012 as India's ambassador to Syria.
He has spoken with the multi-award winning Indian magazine Fountain Ink about how parts of the media have
exaggerated the rebellion and about signs the Al-Qaeda was since the early days of the conflict a teammate
(translation: German Economic News).
The assessment of the Ambassador confirmed the findings of the US journalist Seymour Hersh,
that Assad had not to fear militant opposition among his own people.

How was Syria when you got there in January 2009?


VP Haran: Syria was a peaceful country and there were no underlying tensions.
The Syrian economy was doing well and the average growth rate was more than 5 percent.
Unemployment stood at about 8 percent, but unemployed Syrians could find work in the Gulf States.
However, there was a high proportion of educated unemployed.
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India's Ambassador confirmed: war in Syria has been instigated from outside

Syria was also in a comfortable position in terms of foreign debt at 12.5 percent of GDP.
Much of it was owed to Russia, but which wrote many of the debt off.
The real problem was the drought in the north-east, which had led to a massive resettlement in the South and
the South-west.
What was life like in Damascus?
VP Haran: As a diplomat, you tend to live a withdrawn life, but sometimes I drove into the city center,
sometimes by taxi, drinking a cup of tea in the cafe and talked to the people.
Those were wonderful moments and wonderful days.
The public order was never a problem.
My female colleagues told me that they could wear jewelry and run home in the morning by two clock alone
and thereby feel safe.
In some districts restaurants had opened up at five o'clock in the morning.
You never had the feeling that there would be trouble on the streets.
Some say that would be owed the Muchabarat (military intelligence), but I felt that the people felt responsible
for their collective security.
When I reached Damascus, I was told that every second would be part of the Muchabarat.
This is a gross overestimation.
There is an intelligence department and internally they work very efficiently, but for me it has never been a
direct encounter.
In my four years of service, I was once followed (in the media) in Idlib province.
A Jeep has appended to us, but it was not intimidating.
Did you foresee the Arab Spring in Syria?
VP Haran: As the situation in Tunisia and Egypt got tense, President Bashar al-Assad gave a television
appearance, in which he stated that the political and economic conditions in Syria would be different.
He said he was confident that Syria would not follow suit.
That was the general assessment of the diplomatic community.
Bashar al-Assad was a popular leader and this partly contributes that he is still in power.
There is no adequate internal opposition and many of the problems in Syria come from foreign sources that are
trying to get rid of an inconvenient regime.
67 percent of the entire Arab world had voted for him in a 2009 survey for most popular Arab person.
Even the diplomatic community has generally agreed that he had the support of about 80 percent of Syria.
Even Western diplomats said that.
He had started in 2000 reforms, but which he did not complete because of the opposition by the Baath party.
That too is not simply a struggle between Sunnis and Shiites.
Have a look at the numbers.
There are more than 50 percent Sunni Muslims in Syria.
And there are Kurds, Druze, Maronites, Assyrians, Alawites and others making up the rest.
Bashar al-Assad has the full support of these minorities and even a large part of the Sunni Muslims supported
him.
But up to the time when I went out in 2012, Syria had changed a lot.
During the first few years were like in heaven, things worsened early in the year 2011.
Can you remember the first protests?
VP Haran: From February, when Bahrain witnessed protests, there have been attempts by some NGOs to
organize protests in Damascus.
Two were organized over two weekends, but only 20 or 30 people participated.
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India's Ambassador confirmed: war in Syria has been instigated from outside

The number of journalists and members of the diplomatic community was far greater than that of the
protesters.
Then the March 18th 2011, when children wrote on the walls of the school and then a large protest occurred.
In the following week, there was another protest in Latakia and then happened something every other Friday.
Soon it was chaotic in parts of Latakia, Homs and Hama, Aleppo remained calm what but really bothered the
opposition.
The opposition could not to bring the people of Aleppo to get up against the regime, so they sent busloads of
people to Aleppo.
These people then burned something on the streets and went back.
Journalists then reported it and said Aleppo had rebelled.
A few things need to be said about it: some parts of the media have exaggerated in their negative
representations of Syria.
Sometimes it was reported about things that were not happening.
For example, I spoke with a prominent sheikh, as my colleague phoned me totally stressed and felt the sheikh
would play a role in the protests scheduled for the afternoon.
But that did not happen.
For indeed I was sitting at the moment yes with him at lunch.
There was a lot of exaggeration by the media.
There was an outstanding occasion.
In Idlib belonging to the hard-core Sunni had gone to Aleppo and had people persuaded to join the opposition.
People in Aleppo began to beat them and sent them away.
The mass had become unruly and the police had to come and bring them under control.
The Sunnis of Idlib had to be brought into a house and the police had to give them their uniforms so they could
go without being lynched.
Damascus changed much in that time?
VP Haran: I can remember one incident on April 14, when I took my daily walk to the stadium, which was about
two kilometers away.
On the way I came to the bakery past where I always came over, but there was a long queue in front of the
unusually silent bakery.
On the way back, the queue was still there and I asked why.
The people stocked up with bread, because they had heard that something was going to happen.
The next day nothing happened, even though it was a Friday.
As the situation worsened, my walk to the stadium in the second half of 2012 has been replaced by a stroll
round the park in the Mezzeh district.
One day, a motorcycle at high speed turned off at a corner, from where it revved the engine.
A short time later, a jeep of security people came over, but it missed the turn, the motorcycle had taken.
After they could not find the bike, they came back to the park and asked the people if they had seen what had
happened.
Then we were told that the people on the motorcycle were planning attacks.
In Mezzeh, not far from the district where the diplomats live, there is a cactus field, and rebels were into it
passed through a tunnel device.
They had set up a camp from which they fired rockets at the office of the Prime Minister.
Then the security forces invaded and destroyed the camp.
This was a targeted operation and I was talking with someone who had an apartment with a clear view, and he
told me that they had targeted a building and destroyed completely.
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India's Ambassador confirmed: war in Syria has been instigated from outside

A huge secret camp with arms and ammunition was recovered from the building.
But parts of the country remained calm.
This, the external opposition supporters could not digest.
They sent a group of people at the Syrian-Jordanian border, where they overran two security guards.
They gave all the people around there their gruel.
Some of them were killed in the most gruesome al-Qaida way.
The government reported that not immediately, but a member of the diplomatic community confirmed that it
had been Al-Qaida from Iraq.
It was obvious that al Qaeda from Iraq was since April 2011 in Syria.
Al-Qaeda was there beginning from the first week on and not appeared since the first week since the end of
2011 where the Al-Qaeda flags were flown.
It was these groups that provided the opposition with support from outside the borders.
In Raqqa the fighters came from the north and it was clear that it was Al-Qaeda.
Assad has repeatedly said that there were terrorists from the beginning. Why has no one believed him?
VP Haran: The heads of the people were not open.
What interest Al-Qaida in Iraq should have in mind, to create chaos in Syria?
Much of this was driven by outsiders, namely the Gulf States.
Al Jazeera has also played a role.
In April, I had led a guest to the amphitheater in Bosra for which I had to take the highway to the Jordanian
border.
On this day an Al Jazeera correspondent was asked to leave Syria and he traveled on the same road.
The correspondent reported about checkpoints every few seconds.
My embassy called me in a panic, because of what they had seen on television.
I told them that I had encountered only one checkpoint.
Why the Syrian government did not provide better arguments in favor of the presence of terrorists?
VP Haran: We asked them about the lack of analysis with the media and they said, no one believed them.
They had very bad PR and media handling.
On the other hand, there were riots by the government.
Syria has very inadequate police forces.
And when began the problems, the government was forced to recruit security forces in order to address
problems that would otherwise be handled by the police.
Some in the army committed excesses and even the government had to put some of them under house arrest
or in jail, but they did not publicize.
Bashar al-Assad was not only slow to adopt reforms, but slowly to announce the changes that have been made.
For example, when they enacted the reform, which reduced the primacy of the Baath party, have been
reported about this reform only after three months.
Their PR was not wise.
They have handled the crisis not good.
source, translated from German to English by Parain
http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2016/01/16/indiens-botschafter-bestaetigt-krieg-in-syrien-wurdevon-aussen-angezettelt/

India's Ambassador confirmed: war in Syria has been instigated from outside

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