In fits and starts the United States is moving ever closer to fully backing the Syrian rebels. During a major meeting of the contact group "Friends of Syria" in Istanbul on Saturday, Washington stepped up aid to Syrian rebels once more, in the form of a $123 million (Dh451 million) pledge.
But while the increased aid is welcome, the cascading crisis in Syria requires much more than humanitarian overtures and night vision goggles to bring a "peaceful end" to two years of war.
Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the US would provide material support to Syrian rebels in the form of body armour and other defensive tools of war. Hundreds of millions of dollars has been promised to Syrian rebels before. The trouble is that only a fraction of the promised aid has been delivered. The question now is whether the newly promised aid will make any difference.
Mr Kerry said that aid provided by the contact group this time around would be channelled through the general command of the Free Syrian Army, headed by General Salim Idris, who defected from Bashar Al Assad's army in July last year. Channelling money through Gen Idris's leadership could encourage Syrian rebels to unite under his command. Gen Idris's command structure has been supported by major countries such as the US, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The idea was to present a command-and-control structure to ensure an orderly transition if the regime falls, while preventing extremist forces from taking over.
That effort must be supported, but appropriately. Supporting the Free Syrian Army politically while failing to empower it could prove counterproductive. The FSA must be able to prove itself as an effective force with superior tools and strategies over extremist groups. Without doing that, the FSA will have no credibility or authority over the rebels.
But in other ways the support offered at the weekend was little more than rhetoric. For instance, the group called for a solution based on the Geneva communiqué, a peace plan signed by the friends grouping, Damascus and Russia. This will be meaningless without exerting efforts to force the regime to accept a safe exit for itself. No reasonable people dispute that Mr Al Assad is determined to fight until the end. The only effective way to make a political solution achievable is to enable the rebels to tip the balance and force Mr Al Assad and his circle out. Then and only then will a political transition be possible.
The situation in Syria is still a deadlock that will not be broken without sustained military aid to the rebels. Syria's true friends must combine aid with serious support to remove Mr Al Assad and save Syria.
MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: 3.5/5
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Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
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Monday's results
- UAE beat Bahrain by 51 runs
- Qatar beat Maldives by 44 runs
- Saudi Arabia beat Kuwait by seven wickets
ONCE UPON A TIME IN GAZA
Starring: Nader Abd Alhay, Majd Eid, Ramzi Maqdisi
Directors: Tarzan and Arab Nasser
Rating: 4.5/5
CREW
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Tips to keep your car cool
- Place a sun reflector in your windshield when not driving
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Gender equality in the workplace still 200 years away
It will take centuries to achieve gender parity in workplaces around the globe, according to a December report from the World Economic Forum.
The WEF study said there had been some improvements in wage equality in 2018 compared to 2017, when the global gender gap widened for the first time in a decade.
But it warned that these were offset by declining representation of women in politics, coupled with greater inequality in their access to health and education.
At current rates, the global gender gap across a range of areas will not close for another 108 years, while it is expected to take 202 years to close the workplace gap, WEF found.
The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracked disparities between the sexes in 149 countries across four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment.
After years of advances in education, health and political representation, women registered setbacks in all three areas this year, WEF said.
Only in the area of economic opportunity did the gender gap narrow somewhat, although there is not much to celebrate, with the global wage gap narrowing to nearly 51 per cent.
And the number of women in leadership roles has risen to 34 per cent globally, WEF said.
At the same time, the report showed there are now proportionately fewer women than men participating in the workforce, suggesting that automation is having a disproportionate impact on jobs traditionally performed by women.
And women are significantly under-represented in growing areas of employment that require science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills, WEF said.
* Agence France Presse
The Bio
Favourite vegetable: “I really like the taste of the beetroot, the potatoes and the eggplant we are producing.”
Holiday destination: “I like Paris very much, it’s a city very close to my heart.”
Book: “Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. I am not a communist, but there are a lot of lessons for the capitalist system, if you let it get out of control, and humanity.”
Musician: “I like very much Fairuz, the Lebanese singer, and the other is Umm Kulthum. Fairuz is for listening to in the morning, Umm Kulthum for the night.”
Six large-scale objects on show
- Concrete wall and windows from the now demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar
- The 17th Century Agra Colonnade, from the bathhouse of the fort of Agra in India
- A stagecloth for The Ballet Russes that is 10m high – the largest Picasso in the world
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office
- A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century
- Torrijos Palace dome
