AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL has accused the Syrian government of war crimes after it bombed the city of Raqqa, in northern Syria, which ISIS is seeking to turn into the capital of its Caliphate.
The Damascus government says it is attacking ISIS, but Amnesty said Syrian government aircraft had targeted areas densely populated with civilians, and has committed war crimes.
Amnesty International said a referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court could send a strong message to warring parties that they need to be brought to justice.
Most people will consider that Amnesty has lost its senses since the Syrian government has every right to defend its territory from the ISIS movement which has butchered tens of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi people, as well as western journalists.
Meanwhile, Syria’s president is awaiting ‘actions’ from the US after Secretary of State John Kerry said negotiations to end the country’s conflict should include him.
President Bashar al-Assad said he would welcome any ‘sincere’ change in attitude. But he reiterated that talks on his future were ‘for the Syrian people’ alone and that ‘all the declarations from the outside do not concern us’.
In fact, the greater part of the Western-backed opposition has joined either the Al Qaeda supporting Al Nusra Front or the ISIS army of the Caliphate.
On Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry told CBS News that the US government was ‘working very hard with other interested parties to see if we can reignite a diplomatic outcome’ to the conflict.
Kerry added: ‘There is no military solution. There is only a political solution.’ Asked if Washington would be willing to negotiate with Assad, Kerry said: ‘We have to negotiate in the end.’
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf later denied that the comments marked a shift in policy and stressed that Washington was not open to direct talks with Assad.
She added: ‘By necessity, there has always been a need for representatives of the Assad regime to be a part of this process. . . It has never been and would not be Assad who would negotiate – and the secretary was not saying that.’
On Monday, Assad responded to Kerry’s remarks by saying that any ‘sincere’ change in attitude within the international community regarding the situation in Syria would be positive.
‘We are still hearing the declarations and we should wait for actions and then decide,’ he said in comments broadcast on Syrian state television.
Any such move, he added, should start with Western and neighbouring countries ‘ceasing political support to terrorists, stop financing them and stop sending weapons’.
Assad has repeated that it is for Syrians to determine his future. He added: ‘Anything coming from outside the Syrian borders is just words that vanish eventually. So it doesn’t matter if they say the president stays or goes, or if they’ve changed their mind or not, what matters is reality.’
The main Western-backed opposition alliance, the National Coalition, meanwhile, reacted to Kerry’s remarks by saying in a statement that ‘bringing down the head of the regime and all officials responsible for crimes against the Syrian people’ is one of its main goals.
It seems to be one of the main goals of the pro-imperialist Amnesty International as well. France, meanwhile, has said its goal is ‘a negotiated political settlement between the different Syrian parties that leads to a unity government. It is clear for us that Bashar al-Assad cannot be in this framework,’ it added.
However, as Assad has said, this is none of their business!
What has caused the crisis for the imperialists and their human rights organisations such as Amnesty, is that the Syrian people support Assad, and that the war in Iraq against ISIS could not be carried out if it did not have the support in the field of the Iranian government and the Shia militias that support Iran.
Kerry has had to think again. Amnesty should do the same and not be in a position where it defends ISIS against Assad’s forces.