Thursday 5th September

Robert Fisk has been reporting on and commentating for the Independent and Independent on Sunday for as long as I can remember.  He is their Middle-East specialist, and now in his late sixties or so has spent a lifetime in this troubled part of the world.  I am amazed that he still has the strength to get up each morning and attempt to enjoy life – he has seen so much misery.

He reported brilliantly on the recent ‘Arab Spring’ and warned at the time that the Muslim Brotherhood would not be tolerated if they won an election.  He is usually right in his analysis.  He takes no sides, admitting mistakes and failings on all sides, and he certainly has no love for Bashar Assad or his regime.  But he tells us that the opposition are no angels either.  In many ways the whole battleground of the Middle East is one of petty despots seeking to settle scores with each other.  There is also the great divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

Then there is the proxy war between Isreal, Suadi Arabia and America on one side and Iran and Russia and a mostly passive China on the other.  Caught in between are the Syrian people who have suffered two years of awful civil war, with over two million fleeing the country and now living in filthy refugee camps.  The civil war has fluctuated with the rebels, armed by us, the Saudi’s and the USA, winning at first but lately being driven back town by town.

And as the Assad regime is supported heavily by Iran, we in the west simply cannot allow him to win.  So an intervention was inevitable, all that was needed was a pretext.  And now we come to the interesting part.  If Syria knew that the use of chemical weapons was a red line that could bring America into the war and with that theri ultimate downfall, why on earth would they use them, especially as they appears to be winning anyway.   Assad is an intelligent man, sheer barbarity doesn’t explain things.  Who knows what the truth is?  Or if we will ever find out.  But it now looks almost certain that America will strike, hopefully with the backing of the UN, and Assad will be crippled and probably lose the war.

But who and what will replace him; many of the rebels are Jihadists and supporters of Al Quaeda.  Iraq continues to limp along, despite democracy and the billions spent there.  Let us just hope that this phase of the war is short and decisive and actually just.