News Comment
Russia has been criticised by world powers at the UN Security Council in New York over the chemical weapons deaths in northern Syria.
Moscow’s suggestions that civilians were poisoned by rebel weapons on the ground have been widely rejected.
The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley before the Security Council and stated:
“When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” Haley said. “For the sake of the victims, I hope the rest of the council is finally willing to do the same.”
The United Nations (UN) is a body that has infamously failed the Muslim world, including the people of Syria. It’s history is one of inaction and utter contempt of the value of Muslim life.
The UN was the same entity that gave to the Muslims a “safe haven” in Srebrenica Bosnia where thousands of Muslims were massacred and raped in July 1995- after the UN forces abandoned them.
The UN has watched the devastation of Iraq and gave the green light for the US and it allies to wage a war which destroyed, maimed and crippled an entire population.
The UN did nothing to end the destruction of Afghanistan by the American military which bombed innocent men, women and children.
The reality is that UN and International Law are tools in the hands of America and Britain. It works under the orders of western powers, which history has proved time and time again.
The UN is designed to grant higher status through veto power to its permanent members of the Security Council. When the UN does not serve their interest, these nations go around the organisation– as America did when it invaded Iraq in 2003.
The UN has had no impact in ceasing the bloody war in Syria.
The UN itself has stated that at least 250,000 people have been killed in the past five years. However, the organisation stopped updating its figures in August 2015. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts the death toll at more than 321,000, while a other estimates suggest the conflict has caused 470,000 deaths, either directly or indirectly.
Five million people – most of them women and children – have fled Syria, according to the UN. Neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have struggled to cope with one of the largest refugee exoduses in recent history.
Almost 85% of Syrians live in poverty, with more than two-thirds of the population in either extreme or abject poverty. More than 12.8 million people in Syria require health assistance and more than seven million are food insecure amid rising prices and food shortages. Households spend up to a quarter of their income just on water. Some 1.75 million children are out of school.
No- the UN is not concerned about the Muslims in Syria, regardless if their representatives shed crocodile tears in its chambers.
The Muslim world is in no need of the United Nations, rather it is need of a united Muslim world, with a united army, under one Khaleefah who is able to relieve its pain and humiliation.
وَعَدَ اللَّهُ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مِنكُمْ وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ لَيَسْتَخْلِفَنَّهُمْ فِي الْأَرْضِ كَمَا اسْتَخْلَفَ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ وَلَيُمَكِّنَنَّ لَهُمْ دِينَهُمُ الَّذِي ارْتَضَىٰ لَهُمْ وَلَيُبَدِّلَنَّهُم مِّن بَعْدِ خَوْفِهِمْ أَمْنًا ۚ يَعْبُدُونَنِي لَا يُشْرِكُونَ بِي شَيْئًا ۚ وَمَن كَفَرَ بَعْدَ ذَٰلِكَ فَأُولَٰئِكَ هُمُ الْفَاسِقُونَ
“Allah has promised those who have believed among you and done righteous deeds that He will surely grant them succession [to authority] upon the earth just as He granted it to those before them and that He will surely establish for them [therein] their religion which He has preferred for them and that He will surely substitute for them, after their fear, security, [for] they worship Me, not associating anything with Me. But whoever disbelieves after that – then those are the defiantly disobedient” {An-Nur: 55}
News Article: Syria chemical ‘attack’: Russia faces fury at UN Security Council
Russia has been sharply criticised by other world powers at the UN Security Council in New York over the chemical weapons deaths in northern Syria.
Moscow’s suggestions that civilians were poisoned by rebel weapons on the ground have been widely rejected.
The UK’s foreign secretary, a rebel commander and a weapons expert all said evidence pointed to an attack by the Syrian government, Russia’s ally.
International donors have pledged $6bn (£4.8bn) in aid for Syria this year.
Seventy donor nations discussed aid efforts in the war-ravaged country in the Belgian capital, Brussels.
According to UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 20 children and 52 adults were killed in the chemical incident in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib province, on Tuesday.
Footage following the incident shows civilians, many of them children, choking and foaming at the mouth.
Witnesses say clinics treating the injured were then targeted by air strikes.
Some of the victims were treated across the border in Turkey. One woman in hospital said: “We were affected by the gas. We couldn’t stand up. I felt dizzy and sick. I suffer from shortness of breath. I couldn’t breathe.”
The World Health Organization said some of the victims had symptoms consistent with exposure to nerve agents.
A team from medical charity MSF treating victims in Idlib found patients’ symptoms were “consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas”, the charity said in a statement.
Sonia Khush, Syria director of the charity Save the Children, said victims had travelled far and wide to get treatment, making it difficult to estimate how many had been affected.
What do the Russians say?
The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denies its forces launched a chemical weapons attack.
Russia has acknowledged that Syrian planes did attack Khan Sheikhoun but says the aircraft struck a depot producing chemical weapons, for use by militants in Iraq.
“Yesterday [Tuesday], from 11:30am to 12:30pm local time, Syrian aviation made a strike on a large terrorist ammunition depot and a concentration of military hardware in the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun town,” Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konoshenkov said.
“On the territory of the depot there were workshops which produced chemical warfare munitions.”
What did they say at the UN?
Matthew Rycroft, the UK’s ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council that Mr Assad had “humiliated” Russia by “making a mockery” of the peace process it had brokered with some rebel groups.
“What is your plan?” he asked. “What is your plan to stop these horrific senseless attacks? We had a plan and we had the support and you rejected it to protect Assad.”
Russia and China have blocked attempts to impose sanctions on Syria.
Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Vladimir Safronkov, hit back by accusing the UK of being “obsessed” with overthrowing President Assad instead of seeking peace.
He said his country – which can veto any UN Security Council resolution – saw no need for a new resolution and called for a “full, objective” international investigation. Much of the video evidence of the attack had, he argued, been “staged”.
The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said Syrian chemical attacks would continue if nothing was done.
“Time and time again Russia uses the same false narrative to deflect attention from their ally in Damascus,” she said.
Hinting at possible unilateral action by the US, she added: “When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”
French UN envoy Francois Delattre blamed the Assad government for the attack, accusing it of “destructive madness”. He said the world needed an “America that is seriously committed to a solution in Syria”.
What do others say to the Russian version?
Hasan Haj Ali, commander of the Free Idlib Army rebel group, told Reuters news agency: “Everyone saw the plane while it was bombing with gas.”
Local journalists say there are no military positions in the town itself but an array of broadly aligned rebel groups controlling the area surrounding it.
Critics of the Russian statement say reports of the release of gas came hours before the times stated by Mr Konoshenkov.
A chemical weapons expert, Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, told the BBC that the Russian version of events was “pretty fanciful”.
The idea that a nerve gas like Sarin could spread after a weapons manufacturing process had been bombed was “unsustainable”, he added.
US President Donald Trump called the deaths a “terrible affront to humanity”.
Has Assad used chemical weapons before?
The Syrian government was accused by Western powers of firing rockets filled with Sarin at Ghouta.
President Assad denied the charge, blaming rebel fighters, but he did subsequently agree to destroy Syria’s chemical arsenal.
Despite that, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has continued to document the use of toxic chemicals in attacks in Syria.
How bloody is Syria’s civil war?
More than 250,000 people have been killed and, after more than six years, no political solution to the fighting is in sight.
Nearly five million Syrians have fled the country and more than six million are internally displaced, the UN says.
“This is the most complex and the most violent conflict in our times,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said at the conference in Brussels.
