Dodging bullet at what cost?
THOUSANDS of people flocked to the funeral yesterday of a Syrian soccer star turned fighter who became an icon of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.
Abdelbasset al-Sarout, 27, died on Saturday from wounds he sustained in north-west Syria, where an army offensive has pounded the last major rebel bastion for weeks.
After Assad’s iron-fisted crackdown on the protests, Sarout took up arms and became a wanted man. His path mirrored the uprising’s spiral into an armed fight to the death between Damascus and the myriad militias that the conflict spawned.
Sarout was moved from a hospital in Turkey, which backs the opposition, across the border yesterday, with a convoy of cars and motorcycles following the coffin into Syria.
People chanted, honked and waved rebel flags on the way to the funeral in the border town of al-Dana, where one of Sarout’s brothers is buried.
Four of Sarout’s brothers and his father died fighting pro-government forces.
Crowds stood on the roofs to watch Sarout’s body, wrapped in white, being carried through the town.
Rebels from his faction, Jaish al-Izza, fired into the air. With Russian and Iranian help, Assad’s military has reclaimed much of Syria by crushing opposition enclaves in recent years. Sarout was among hundreds of thousands of civilians and insurgents shuttled to the northwest under surrender deals as the army reconquered their home towns. TEHRAN: IRAN said yesterday Europe was in no position to criticise it for its military capabilities and it called on European leaders to normalise trade ties with the Islamic republic despite US sanctions, or face consequences.
President Donald Trump last year withdrew the US from the world powers’ 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and reimposed sweeping sanctions. France, Britain and Germany have defended the nuclear accord as the best way to limit Iran’s enrichment of uranium.
“The Europeans and other signatories of the (deal) should normalise economic ties with Iran,” said Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. “We will halt our commitments or will take action in accordance with their measures.” MEXICO may have dodged a trade war with the US, but the commitments it made on Friday after being threatened with tariffs by President Donald Trump would not be without major costs and are quickly sparking domestic criticism.
Under the temporary agreement, Mexico said it would house, educate and give jobs to what appears to be an unlimited number of US asylumseekers, which, if followed through on, experts warn, could result in economic and social upheaval in the northern parts of the country.
That includes Tijuana, where an influx of Central American migrants last year sparked nativist protests, and where Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador held a rally on Saturday celebrating the new agreement.
In previous comments, Lopez Obrador has repeatedly stressed the human rights of migrants, but now his government appears to be accepting an accord that seeks to limit asylumseekers’ ability to reach US territory.
Ironically, then-candidate Lopez Obrador travelled to Tijuana last year and assailed the Mexican government for doing the “dirty work” of the US in detaining and deporting Central Americans.
Now, however, Lopez Obrador is hailing a deal that targets migrants as a win for Mexico.
“It prevented this tax that was going to affect our economy,” Lopez Obrador told reporters on Saturday in La Paz, Baja California, where he stopped before heading to Tijuana.
Others called it an example of the Mexican government bending too much to US pressure.
“There is nothing to celebrate,” Soledad Loaeza, a professor at Colegio de Mexico, wrote on Twitter.
“Trump put us on our knees like no other president of the (US) had ever done. These are sad days for Mexicans.”
In fact, though, the accord could be short-lived.
According to a State Department summary, Mexico and the US may review the agreement in 90 days “in the event the measures do not have the expected results”.
That raises the possibility that Trump will again threaten tariffs.
“Facing a threat, the (Mexican) government eliminated the tariff threat but assumed an immense responsibility, maybe an impossible one,” wrote Mexican historian Enrique Krauze on Twitter. “Let’s get ready to reject the next threat, which without doubt will come.”
Officials in Tijuana and in other border cities that have received more than 10000 asylum-seekers returned to Mexico as part of a Trump administration initiative, widely known as Remain in Mexico, have repeatedly asked federal authorities for more help.
Under the programme, migrants who seek asylum along the US border are returned to Mexico as their cases are adjudicated, a process that can drag on for months or even years.
“People feel under strain, and I worry a lot about what is going to happen to social and political cohesion,” said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank.
Wood acknowledged that for Mexico, agreeing to accept more migrants was far better than suffering a 5% tax on all exports to the US, which Trump had threatened unless Mexico did more to deter Central American migrants from crossing its territory.
“Tariffs would have been catastrophic,” said Wood. “Mexico chose the lesser of two evils.”
Business leaders in Mexico celebrated the agreement as crucial for a nation dependent on exports. a leadership rival to Gove, said: “Anyone who takes class A drugs, they need to think about that supply chain that comes from Colombia… and the number of lives that are destroyed along the way.” | Daily Mail