Doaa El-Bey and Gamal Nkrumah write on the Port Said football massacre and the Security Council veto that gave the Syrian president a free hand to kill even more Syrians held their breath as Russia and China vetoed a United Nations resolution backing an Arab League proposal calling for Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to hand over power to his deputy as head of a transitional government that would oversee preparations for democratic elections. Supporters of the Al-Assad regime held back their tears of joy. And, that sentiment was reflected in the sardonic fury of pro-Syrian government pundits against Western powers and those Arab states seen as Western lackeys in Damascus. Syrian commentators who leapt to conclusions about the Sino-Russian veto were not the first to try to make political hay with the Syrian crisis. A plethora of Arab pundits inferred that Beijing and Moscow wound up on the wrong side of the argument about Syria's political future. Sensing that a defence of their pro-Western position was necessary, they pointed out that the political timing of the Sino-Russian veto amounted to monstrous criminality, arguing that there was no way for Moscow and Beijing to take a pro-Al-Assad argument and win it. Syria's official papers, in sharp contrast, exonerated the pro-government rhetoric circulating before the Sino-Russian double veto, and repudiated the Western taunts and accusations that began circulating after it in the Western media. Syrian columnist Munthir Eid applauded the Russian and Chinese positions in an article entitled 'Farewell to the unipolar world' in the Syrian pro-government daily Al-Thawra. "Russia and China know precisely what is happening in Syria. They understand the sordid realities of the so-called Arab Spring and the domino theory masterminded by the US and its Western and Arab allies. The Russian and Chinese reactions were politically astute. They courageously stopped the lewd American schemes because Washington wanted to enact in Syria the same scenario it had contrived in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya," Eid wrote in Al-Thawra. Eid noted that Washington was now trying to reacquaint itself with a world that is no longer unipolar. The world is multipolar and the United States is no longer the sole superpower. He attacked the US ambassador to the UN most aggressively and in personal manner, singling her out for retribution. "This black woman and her masters in the White House cannot stop the new propensity of stopping the US in its tracks at the UN Security Council that started with Syria" (Eid forgot to mention that Condoleeza Rice's master in the White House, US President Barack Obama, also happens to be black). Apparently, Eid's obsession with Rice's genius for badgering Washington's adversaries at the UN led him to use offensive racist phraseology. Irrational babbling galore in some of the pro- government Syrian papers attempted to draw attention to the piety of the Syrian president who was portrayed as participating in the religious rituals associated with Al-Mulid Al-Nabawi -- celebrations marking the Prophet Mohamed's birthday. Al-Thawra quoted Mufti of Damascus Sheikh Bashir Abdel-Bari, an influential Sunni Muslim cleric, as beseeching God to "protect our Arab and Islamic nation from the Zionists." Ironically, the way Syria's political establishment's press attempted to calm the waters only further infuriated the country's opposition. While self-congratulatory and patriotic sloganeering flooded the official Syrian press, the Arab press pondered the role of Russia in the region. Writing in the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, Raghda Dargham observed that Russia is deeply concerned about the new alliance that appears to be emerging between the West and the Islamists. Dargham notes that Moscow does not relish the prospect of yet another Arab country falling into the hands of Islamists who have a tacit association with the West. She concludes on a pessimistic note. "The common concern and frustration in the ranks of both Russia and among moderate Arabs will not lead to a partnership between the two as long as Moscow continues to defend the regime in Damascus." However, Dargham believes that a common platform can be created uniting the forces of the moderation in the Arab world. The secularists in particular can join forces with Russia against the resurgent American/European alliance with the Islamists who are now in control of most Arab countries. Moscow, the writer observes, must first eschew its blind backing of Syria's ruling Baath Party. Another London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat highlighted the formation of the Friends of Syria group proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and supported by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The paper noted that Clinton urged the founding of a "Friends of a Democratic Syria" to support the Syrian opposition's peaceful political plans for democratic transition. Clinton, the paper reported, called on the Friends of a Democratic Syria to unite and rally against the regime of Al-Assad in response to the Sino- Russian veto. "The crux of the matter is that it has become imperative to support the French proposal for a Friends of Syria group because the Syrian regime has proven that terror is a hereditary trait in Damascus," wrote Tareq Al-Hamid in Asharq Al-Awsat. The writer urged Arab and Western nations to follow the Tunisian example and sever diplomatic ties with Syria. The paper also highlighted the visit to Damascus by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accompanied by Russia's Foreign Intelligence Director Mikhail Fradkov. Asharq Al-Awsat also insinuated that the high-level Russian delegation to Damascus might try to persuade Al-Assad to resign. In a provocative commentary in the same daily on the Syrian government forces' alleged slaughter of the citizens of the predominantly Sunni Muslim central Syrian city of Homs, Hamid Al-Majid warned in 'After the Homs massacre�ê� the Brotherhood and the Shia crescent' that "the crimes of the Syrian regime aided and abetted by Iran... surely should induce the Muslim Brotherhood to change its strategic relationship with Tehran". The writer urged the Muslim Brotherhood that has won landslide victories in the post-Arab Spring polls to rally behind the "core and influential Arab countries, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, to forestall Iran's machinations to control Arab countries and worm its way into the domestic affairs of the newly-elected Arab governments."
