On current developments in Iraq

Iraqi families leaving Mosul following Sunni rebels takeover.

Sunni-majority towns in Iraq are falling to a broad Sunni alliance that includes ISIS as a major player. Only Iran and Maliki want us to believe that ISIS is solely responsible for the current offensive.

On the other hand, the idea that Iran is orchestrating this development in order to convince America and the international community to allow her to intervene directly in Iraq is naive. Such intervention would be too costly and Iran is already knee-deep in the Iraqi quagmire anyway, not to mention the Syrian one, and does not need to do so more overtly. Should Iran’s decide to embark on such a course, it would be a massive miscalculation on their part.

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Syrian genocide needs justice

Opinion: Syrian genocide needs justice – CNN.com.

(CNN) — The debate over what is happening inside Syria should now end. A new report by three veteran war crimes prosecutors, released exclusively by CNN and The Guardian, offers what appears to be irrefutable evidence of systemic war crimes by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

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Syrian Crisis Threatens Development in Arab World

Syrian Crisis Threatens Development in Arab World – Inter Press Service.

In some countries, autocratic rule did not come as an impediment to development but as a facilitator thereof, but in Arab-majority countries, among others, communal identities were too entrenched and have severely constrained the ability and willingness of the ruling regimes to develop their countries. In Syria, the Assads have ruled the country as a conquered enemy territory, and try as they did, and they did try, they could not assimilate and reflect in their collective behavior the ideals of unity, integration and justice that they assiduously preached. Their schizophrenic behavior reflected the artificial nature of the state they controlled and served to feed and amplify the identity crisis from which each Syrian community and each Syrian citizen suffer. The result is this devastation, and its regional and global ramifications.

Kerry says administration may give more aid to Syrian rebels, but is US only ‘dealing with symptoms’ of conflict?

Democracy Digest

Some observers suggest that realpolitik is driving external actors’ strategies rather than any concern to end the conflict or advance a democratic transition.Whether by design or not, external players are indeed doing just enough to maintain a state of stalemate,” says liberal activist Ammar Abdulhamid right, the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion.“Syrians will not be allowed to solve their problems until these players solve theirs,” he contends.“Islamists, loyalists, secularists, Alawites, tribalists, even nonviolence activists, all now are but instruments of implementation of agendas that they do not control or even want,” he writes.