Foreign Digest: Syrian Civil War Anniversary, New German Government, the United Kingdom Response to Russia’s Attack

Syrian Civil War Seventh Anniversary

            The seventh anniversary of the Syrian Civil War was marked last week.  The rebellion against the tyrannical Baathist regime of Bashar Assad and his brutal suppression of it has claimed several hundred thousand lives and displaced ten million people, causing the largest refugee crisis for Europe since the Second World War.  Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism, is backed by Iran and their ally, the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization Hezbollah, and the Russian Federation.  Moderate Muslims, Kurds and Islamists terrorists, such as al-Qaeda and the “Islamic State” are the rebels in the multi-sided war.  Turkey is fighting Kurdish guerillas, some of whom are associated with Marxist terrorists, while an American-led coalition of Western and Arab states has been targeting the Islamists.  The Syrian regime and its allies targets civilian areas for bombing, including with chemical weapons.

Germany’s New Grand Coalition Government Takes Office

            Germany’s conservative-liberal grand coalition government was sworn into office last week, six months after parliamentary elections in September of last year failed to give a majority to any party.  The ruling center-right party of Chancellor Angela Merkel and its conservative Bavarian allies won the most votes and seats.  They are now joined in government by the main center-left party, with Merkel in her fourth term as Chancellor.  The new government excludes the far-left and the pro-Russian, anti-European far-right.

The United Kingdom Responds to a Russian Chemical Weapons Attack on British Soil

            After a chemical weapon attack committed earlier this month by the Russian Federation against an ex-Russian spy for the United Kingdom, the British Government responded last week.  The U.K. response included the expulsion of Russian spies posing as diplomats, a suspension of high-level contacts between the two governments, a freeze on Russian state assets, and checks on customs, private flights and freight.  Also, no British officials will attend the World Cup in Russia.  The British are considering stronger measures, such as freezing of assets of the many Russian oligarchs in London.  The attack with a nerve agent that had been manufactured in the Soviet Union seriously sickened the spy, his daughter and a police officer.  More than a score were treated and hundreds had to decontaminate themselves and their homes.  All 29 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including the United States, expressed solidarity with the United Kingdom and blamed Russia for the attack.  Member states are considering a coordinated response to the Russian attack. 

           A police inquiry was opened last week into the deaths of 14 Russians on British soil over the last several years.  Since then, another Russian exile who was an associate of a critic of Vladimir Putin, the authoritarian leader of the Russian Federation, was apparently murdered.  A previous U.K. investigation had determined that the Russian government had murdered in London an ex-Russian spy who had become a Putin critic with highly-radioactive polonium.