It’s really strange how everything conspired from the very beginning to undermine moderates and support the rise of extremism among the protesters. Assad and his allies needed this, and they worked assiduously for it, but what did the others, Turkey, Saudi, Qatar, U.S., hope to achieve? What do they hope to achieve? Perhaps exactly what’s happening today. The “mistakes” that led to this are simply too numerous and consistent to be ascribed to chance. No, I am not endorsing some conspiracy, but the political agendas that crisscrossed the Syrian map have always been intricate and complex. There is always a bargain involved in supporting regime change in a country like Syria. In this case, there were simply too many of them. The opposition failure to understand this and to be more proactive about it helped pave the way as well to this worst of outcomes. And it’s far from over.
Tag: United States
Notes on Current Developments in Syria: January 13, 2014
For long activists have contended that the one true concept that captures the essence of what’s really happening in Syria is: Genocide. They referred to regime prisons as concentration camps dedicated to the liquidation of prisoners, most of who civilians, relatives of activists and rebels, and the peaceful pro-democracy activists themselves, the overwhelming majority of whom hail from an Arab Sunni background. Now, this horrific image currently making round on social media sites seem to capture this truth: the numbers on the rotten cadavers, denote the security branch responsible for this massacre. In this case, it’s the infamous Section 215 of the military intelligence apparatus. The emaciated bodies of the dead underscore the living conditions prevailing in the camps. The picture was reportedly smuggled out by a defector, and while its authenticity is yet to be confirmed, it’s consistent with the myriad eyewitness accounts given to Human Rights Watch, among other organizations.
Continue reading “Notes on Current Developments in Syria: January 13, 2014”
Syria and the perils of proxy war
Syria and the perils of proxy war – latimes.com.
Reducing the current proxy-war situation in Syria to a Saudi-Iranian competition over regional hegemony is a gross oversimplification and overlooks serious involvement by other actors, including Turkey, Qatar, Israel, U.S., France, the U.K. and Russia, to name but the most visible operators. There is much at stake in Syria for many different powers around the world. The Saudi-Iranian proxy-war could not unfold without support, or lack thereof, from these other players.
Syria Militants Said to Recruit Visiting Americans to Attack U.S.
Syria Militants Said to Recruit Visiting Americans to Attack U.S. – NYTimes.com.
And here we go again: Building up a case for drone strikes, and for going back to doing business with Assad. I am not implying that the reports are false. On the contrary they are as true as those reports of Assad’s complicity in the chemical weapons attack and all the massacres perpetrated by his loyalist militias from the onset of this genocide to this very moment. But issuing an order for a drone attack is much easier for this administration than committing to a policy that can make a real difference on the ground. It creates the impression of doing something, while your main focus is to actually avoid entanglement. I am yet to hear a cogent argument showing how one can actually make a difference on the ground without being “entangled,” at least for a certain period of time, and for all the headaches that come with entanglement. Drone strikes against “certain rebels” while avoiding strikes against the Assad regime, even after they crossed all red lines, the one drawn by Obama and those delineated by international law, will only serve to make matters worse in Syria. Rebels are doing their best to combat extremists with no support from the U.S. But Assad has to go in order to really curtail spread of violence beyond borders of the country and the region.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 