WESTERN leaders and their allies have opened a donor conference in London with an urgent plea for billions of pounds in aid for refugees from war-torn Syria.
Germany pledged £1.7bn and the UK £1.2bn in extra aid for refugees. The goal of the donor conference is to raise £6.2bn ($9bn) for Syrian refugees. It is the fourth conference of its kind, focusing on education and jobs for the 4.6 million Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries. Turkey is hosting 2.5 million – the largest number.
The cynical idea that is driving on the donor states is that such ‘aid’ will serve to keep millions of Syrian refugees out of the EU, while at the same time their Islamist allies on the ground inside Syria are marshalled and paid for by Saudi Arabia, to walk out of the Geneva Peace talks before they even get started, and to keep the war going to remove President Assad and the Baath party from power in Syria.
They have been reduced to this manoeuvre by the fact that Russian military aid to President Assad’s army has changed the situation on the ground and the Syrian army has been able to change the relationship of forces inside the country and recover large areas of Syria from its occupation by Islamist and IS fighters!
This development has seen Cameron spluttering and his Foreign Secretary Hammond spitting out anti-Russian poison on a daily basis. The aid conference in London coincides with the postponement of the proximity peace talks in Geneva after the West’s Islamists walked out and refused to participate.
The first conference seeks to bolster Fortress Europe and to keep Syrian asylum seekers out by providing work and schooling for Syrian refugees in Turkey and Jordan.
There is no aid to help the Syrian government or to rebuild the textile industry inside Syria that employed hundreds of workers until it was destroyed by the West’s Islamists.
The US-UK axis hope that their aid will provide them with the time needed to reboot their military operation inside Syria to meet the Russian challenge and to achieve their major war aim, to remove the Assad-led government. They have grasped that peace is not in their interests, since Assad winning the war and securing a peace will cement his regime not undermine it.
If Assad is to go, the military situation inside Syria has to be reversed. This is why their Islamists have walked out of the talks. The chief allies of the US-UK axis, Saudi Arabia and Qatar can now be expected to make a big effort to reboot their military operation inside Syria.
Meanwhile, they have other big problems of their own making. It was the 2003 Iraq war that saw both millions of refugees created and then ISIS emerge in Iraq. The long US-UK war in Afghanistan produced the same situation there, with the Taleban supreme and many more refugees on the road to Europe.
In 2012, Cameron and President Sarkozy celebrated in Benghazi NATO’s victory in Libya, including the murder of Colonel Gadaffi. This victory led to the country’s collapse, from having the highest living standards in Africa to the most abject poverty, with IS controlling Sirte and millions waiting for the chance to cross over to Europe.
Directly after their victory in Libya, the EU leaders decided to spread the plague to Syria, where the Syrian army and the Syrian people have fought them to a standstill, to the point where Russia has intervened to prevent it being the next target for the West’s Islamists.
It is the imperialist powers that have set the Middle East and North Africa ablaze, and created the refugee crisis. It is these same powers that are determined to continue the war in Syria to remove Assad so that alongside Turkey they can redraw the map of the Middle East.
The UK workers cannot be and are not neutral in this struggle. Cameron and Co are seeking to ruin the Syrian people at the same time as they are working to ruin the UK working class and middle class at home. The question of the hour is the working class coming to the aid of the Syrian people by organising a general strike to bring down Cameron and the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism.
Our victory will be theirs and vice versa!
