US boycotts world disarmament body over Syria
The United States yesterday boycotted a session of the world’s leading disarmament body, citing Syria’s chairmanship as an attempt to normalise Bashar Al Assad’s regime, which has been accused of several chemical attacks since the outbreak of civil war in 2011.
The decision came on the same day that the US and Turkey brokered a deal for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia to remove its military advisers from the northern Syrian town of Manbij and a surprise ISIS offensive on eastern Syrian villages left at least 45 pro-regime fighters dead.
The events underscored the fractures, battle lines and conflicting parties in the war-ravaged country, now mired in its eighth year of conflict.
Robert Wood, the US ambassador to the Swiss-based body, explained Washington’s decision as a reaction to the conduct of the Assad government throughout the civil war.
“Based on Syria’s repeated attempts last week to use its presidency of the Conference on Disarmament to normalise the regime and its unacceptable and dangerous behaviour, we are not participating in today’s session,” Mr Wood said.
“We will continue to defend United States’ interests” in the disarmament body, he said.
The US has played a role in a larger proxy war in Syria, aiding rebels opposed to Mr Al Assad and deploying troops to aid the fight against ISIS, which captured large areas of northern and eastern Syria from 2014 onwards.
US President Donald Trump has taken a stronger line on the Syrian regime’s alleged chemical weapons activity, striking several chemical production sites in April in tandem with France and Britain.
Syria last week took over the CoD’s rotating four-week presidency that, according to a decades-old practice among its 65 member states, follows the alphabetical order of country names in English.
Mr Wood was present during the first plenary session on
Syria’s watch a week ago, when he took the opportunity to lead a number of countries to protest against what he described as “a travesty”.
Syria’s ambassador Hussam Edin Aala, meanwhile, criticised the protest as “sensational propaganda” and “characterised by double standards”.
More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the civil war began in Syria in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protesters.
After hundreds of people died in chemical attacks near Damascus in 2013, a deal with Russia was struck to rid Syria of its chemical weapons, staving off US air strikes.
But Damascus has since been accused of carrying out several mass-casualty chemi- cal attacks.
A suspected chlorine and sarin attack in the Syrian town of Douma that left more than 70 people dead on April 7 this year triggered missile strikes against Syria by the US, Britain and France.
Elsewhere in Syria, the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said yesterday its military advisers would leave Manbij, a day after Turkey and the United States reached an agreement for administering the area that includes a longstanding Turkish demand that the YPG withdraw.
The deal has eased fears of a direct clash between Nato allies Washington and Ankara over the strategic northern town once held by ISIS but controlled by Kurdish-Arab forces since August 2016.
Under the road map endorsed by Ankara and Washington for Manbij, near Syria’s northern border with Turkey, the two nations would jointly maintain security and stability there.
Turkey views the YPG as a terrorist group and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency on Turkish soil in a conflict that has left thousands dead. Washington views the YPG as a key ally in the fight against ISIS.
The YPG said its fighting forces had withdrawn from Manbij in November 2016 shortly after ISIS was defeated there, but military advisers who had remained would now also withdraw.
In Washington, US officials welcomed the announcement. “Those advisers are largely there to ensure that if there was a military offensive, they would be there to defend the city,” an official said. “Without the threat of a military offensive, the situation is different.” But the danger to former ISIS-held territory in Syria remains. An offensive by ISIS on several villages in eastern Syria yesterday left at least 45 pro-government fighters dead, according to a monitoring group.
ISIS launched the operation on Sunday against Euphrates Valley villages seized last year by government forces and their allies, and have retaken four of them, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group opposed to the Syrian government.
The villages are located on the road between the provincial capital of Deir Ezzor and the city of Albu Kamal, which lies farther south on the border with Iraq.
The Observatory said pro-government casualties were mostly fighters from Shiite militias in the area, including groups from Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
The small pockets controlled by ISIS in that area are the dregs of a caliphate the group proclaimed over large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.
The Kurdish YPG militia has pulled its advisers from Manbij, sparing Nato allies Turkey and the US the possibility of a military showdown