When President Obama tells us that choosing our leaders is up to us at a time when our leader is busy exterminating his opponents by all means under his disposal and with the help of Iran and Russia and with support of thousands of Shia recruits from Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and even Afghanistan, and at a time when Saudi, Qatar and Turkey are engaged in a tug of war over who will get to decide the leaders of the opposition, while Al-Qaeda Jihadis are busy invading and carving up enclaves for themselves in different parts of Syria, does he know how moronic he sounds? It’s like telling a girl who is being gang raped that she should take responsibility for herself and should determine her own fate! No, no, no, no! Dealing with the situation in Syria is not the responsibility of a dysfunctional institution (UN) but of the world’s viable democracies. You can shirk the responsibility, but you will never stave off the blame, nor avoid for long the inevitable fallouts.
Tag: Shia
Iran calling the shots in Syria
Now Lebanon, February 28, 2013.
Further, Iran is building a sectarian Alawite- and Shia-majority militia, Ammar Abdulhamid, a pro-democracy Syrian activist based in Washington DC, and the head of the Tharwa Foundation, tells NOW. Abdulhamid believes this new militia will seek to maintain old alliances with minority communities, loyalist Sunni clans and groups, while attempting to forge new ones in the future among potential ‘rogue’ rebel units who would be more interested in carving out turf for themselves than in the fate of the country.
“At this stage,” adds Abdulhamid, “Assad is a mere placeholder. Despite the all-too-real cult of personality that surrounds Assad in the ranks of the Alawite community, this does not ensure his long-term survival. Iran eventually wants a group that will be beholden to [it] first, not to Assad,” says Abdulhamid.
After Assad: What’s Next for the Future of Syria?
Quoted in the Time:
If Syria is allowed to fracture, each ethnic group hunkering down, says Ammar Abdulhamid, an exiled Syria opposition leader in Washington, “it won’t be easy to put humpty dumpty back together again. It would take decades of instability and violence to sort itself out. And that is what we’re most worried about.”
It’s not always good to talk
Recommendations to engage with Syria and Iran are a testament to how cut off the Western powers have become from the realities on the ground.
Despite frequent claims to the contrary, the fundamental problem in the Middle East is not intervention by the West. On the contrary, the real problem is that, for all their dabbling, the Western powers seem capable of neither war nor dialogue. This leaves everyone in the region at the mercy of the Middle East’s oppressive regimes and proliferating terrorists. Continue reading “It’s not always good to talk”
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 