MOSCOW, September 02. /ITAR-TASS/. The United States’ intention to deliver air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria is an attempt to use the UN Security Council’s August 15 resolution against Syria as a sovereign state.
UN SC Resolution 2170 furnishes the basis for a collective international response to the threats coming from terrorist organizations Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra in Iraq and Syria. At first Damascus welcomed the adoption of that resolution, hoping for the international community’s assistance in the struggle against terrorists “within the framework of respect for Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
However, after the public execution of US journalist James Fowlie by Islamic State militants Western politicians started claiming the jihadists should be bombed not only inside Iraq, but in Syrian territory, too. Republican Senator John McCain and the chief of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, are arguing that Islamic State extremists have erased the border between Iraq and Syria and for that reason air strikes against the territories of both states would be quite justified. The Pentagon is pressing for the White House’s consent to attacking targets in Syria’s territory. The Obama Administration is already considering such a possibility. It is expected that at the beginning of this month, when the Senators and House of Representatives members are back after the summer recess, the Administration will ask the Senate’s permission to expand air operations in the Middle East and also address Congress with a request for their extra financing.
Damascus has warned Washington against attacking Islamic State bases in Syrian territory.
“Any unilateral action beyond the scope of UN Security Council Resolution 2170 will be interpreted as an act of aggression against an independent state,” Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad has said.
The national coalition of oppositional and revolutionary forces based in the city of Gaziantep, Turkey (a group of Syrian opposition abroad campaigning against Syria’s current authorities) has already let the US command know the locations of Islamic State bases north of the city of Aleppo (360 kilometres away from Damascus). Observers believe that likely strikes against Islamic State positions in Syria will in realty pursue the aim of ousting President Bashar Assad and his government.
“All of our calls for pooling efforts in the struggle against the most dangerous jihadist group, issued at the special session of the UN human rights council in Geneva on August 31 ran against the American partners’ stubbornly reiterated demand: ‘Assad must go.’ In the meantime, it was the Syrian government army that in fact for so long fought with Islamic State militants on its own,” Russia’s representative at the UN office and other international organizations in Geneva, Aleksei Borodavkin has told the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta in an interview.
“Unlawful foreign interference with the aim to oust governments some may not like merely ruins statehood, and not encourages democracy. Chaos provokes extremism and terrorism. This is not the blame of the Iraqi and Syrian governments, but their headache, for they have to fight with an international alliance of terrorists on their own. The world community is obliged to help them with this in all possible ways and to coordinate its actions with Baghdad and Damascus.”
“The United States makes no secret it is using the UN Security Council’s resolution as a cover-up for doing away with Bashar Assad. It has been this way all along, and it will remain so further on. The contract with Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia for overthrowing Assad remains effective,” the president of the Middle East Institute, Yevgeny Satanovsky, has told ITAR-TASS.
“The US president and secretary of state have been urging the international community to fight with Islamic State terrorists and at the same time asking US allies to back up the Syrian opposition. This is clear evidence of the United States’ outspoken intention to bring the opposition to power in Damascus,” the expert said with certainty.
“There is no such thing as moderate Syrian Opposition. The former members of the so-called Free Syrian Army are joining the terrorists’ ranks. And Qatar openly supports and finances the group calling itself the Islamic State. It is US policies that keep fuelling the blaze of terrorism in the Middle East,” Satanovsky concluded.
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