The terrible situation in Syria

[pjotr]

We have a major war brewing here and we are smack-dab in the middle of it!!!



Iran will send 4,000 troops to aid Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria

World Exclusive: US urges Britain and France to join in supplying arms to Syrian rebels as MPs fear that UK will be drawn into growing Sunni-Shia conflict

Robert Fisk
Sunday, 16 June 2013

Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.

For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.

The Independent on Sunday has learned that a military decision has been taken in Iran – even before last week’s presidential election – to send a first contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the largely Sunni rebellion that has cost almost 100,000 lives in just over two years. Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel.

In years to come, historians will ask how America – after its defeat in Iraq and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan scheduled for 2014 – could have so blithely aligned itself with one side in a titanic Islamic struggle stretching back to the seventh century death of the Prophet Mohamed. The profound effects of this great schism, between Sunnis who believe that the father of Mohamed’s wife was the new caliph of the Muslim world and Shias who regard his son in law Ali as his rightful successor – a seventh century battle swamped in blood around the present-day Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala – continue across the region to this day. A 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, compared this Muslim conflict to that between “Papists and Protestants”.



America’s alliance now includes the wealthiest states of the Arab Gulf, the vast Sunni territories between Egypt and Morocco, as well as Turkey and the fragile British-created monarchy in Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan – flooded, like so many neighbouring nations, by hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees – may also now find himself at the fulcrum of the Syrian battle. Up to 3,000 American ‘advisers’ are now believed to be in Jordan, and the creation of a southern Syria ‘no-fly zone’ – opposed by Syrian-controlled anti-aircraft batteries – will turn a crisis into a ‘hot’ war. So much for America’s ‘friends’.

Its enemies include the Lebanese Hizballah, the Alawite Shiite regime in Damascus and, of course, Iran. And Iraq, a largely Shiite nation which America ‘liberated’ from Saddam Hussein’s Sunni minority in the hope of balancing the Shiite power of Iran, has – against all US predictions – itself now largely fallen under Tehran’s influence and power. Iraqi Shiites as well as Hizballah members, have both fought alongside Assad’s forces.

Washington’s excuse for its new Middle East adventure – that it must arm Assad’s enemies because the Damascus regime has used sarin gas against them – convinces no-one in the Middle East. Final proof of the use of gas by either side in Syria remains almost as nebulous as President George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

For the real reason why America has thrown its military power behind Syria’s Sunni rebels is because those same rebels are now losing their war against Assad. The Damascus regime’s victory this month in the central Syrian town of Qusayr, at the cost of Hizballah lives as well as those of government forces, has thrown the Syrian revolution into turmoil, threatening to humiliate American and EU demands for Assad to abandon power. Arab dictators are supposed to be deposed – unless they are the friendly kings or emirs of the Gulf – not to be sustained. Yet Russia has given its total support to Assad, three times vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that might have allowed the West to intervene directly in the civil war.

In the Middle East, there is cynical disbelief at the American contention that it can distribute arms – almost certainly including anti-aircraft missiles – only to secular Sunni rebel forces in Syria represented by the so-called Free Syria Army. The more powerful al-Nusrah Front, allied to al-Qaeda, dominates the battlefield on the rebel side and has been blamed for atrocities including the execution of Syrian government prisoners of war and the murder of a 14-year old boy for blasphemy. They will be able to take new American weapons from their Free Syria Army comrades with little effort.

From now on, therefore, every suicide bombing in Damascus - every war crime committed by the rebels - will be regarded in the region as Washington’s responsibility. The very Sunni-Wahabi Islamists who killed thousands of Americans on 11th September, 2011 – who are America’s greatest enemies as well as Russia’s – are going to be proxy allies of the Obama administration. This terrible irony can only be exacerbated by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adament refusal to tolerate any form of Sunni extremism. His experience in Chechenya, his anti-Muslim rhetoric – he has made obscene remarks about Muslim extremists in a press conference in Russian – and his belief that Russia’s old ally in Syria is facing the same threat as Moscow fought in Chechenya, plays a far greater part in his policy towards Bashar al-Assad than the continued existence of Russia’s naval port at the Syrian Mediterranean city of Tartous.

For the Russians, of course, the ‘Middle East’ is not in the ‘east’ at all, but to the south of Moscow; and statistics are all-important. The Chechen capital of Grozny is scarcely 500 miles from the Syrian frontier. Fifteen per cent of Russians are Muslim. Six of the Soviet Union’s communist republics had a Muslim majority, 90 per cent of whom were Sunni. And Sunnis around the world make up perhaps 85 per cent of all Muslims. For a Russia intent on repositioning itself across a land mass that includes most of the former Soviet Union, Sunni Islamists of the kind now fighting the Assad regime are its principal antagonists.



Iranian sources say they liaise constantly with Moscow, and that while Hizballah’s overall withdrawal from Syria is likely to be completed soon – with the maintenance of the militia’s ‘intelligence’ teams inside Syria – Iran’s support for Damascus will grow rather than wither. They point out that the Taliban recently sent a formal delegation for talks in Tehran and that America will need Iran’s help in withdrawing from Afghanistan. The US, the Iranians say, will not be able to take its armour and equipment out of the country during its continuing war against the Taliban without Iran’s active assistance. One of the sources claimed – not without some mirth -- that the French were forced to leave 50 tanks behind when they left because they did not have Tehran’s help.

It is a sign of the changing historical template in the Middle East that within the framework of old Cold War rivalries between Washington and Moscow, Israel’s security has taken second place to the conflict in Syria. Indeed, Israel’s policies in the region have been knocked askew by the Arab revolutions, leaving its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hopelessly adrift amid the historic changes.

Only once over the past two years has Israel fully condemned atrocities committed by the Assad regime, and while it has given medical help to wounded rebels on the Israeli-Syrian border, it fears an Islamist caliphate in Damascus far more than a continuation of Assad’s rule. One former Israel intelligence commander recently described Assad as “Israel’s man in Damascus”. Only days before President Mubarak was overthrown, both Netanyahu and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called Washington to ask Obama to save the Egyptian dictator. In vain.

If the Arab world has itself been overwhelmed by the two years of revolutions, none will have suffered from the Syrian war in the long term more than the Palestinians. The land they wish to call their future state has been so populated with Jewish Israeli colonists that it can no longer be either secure or ‘viable’. ‘Peace’ envoy Tony Blair’s attempts to create such a state have been laughable. A future ‘Palestine’ would be a Sunni nation. But today, Washington scarcely mentions the Palestinians.

Another of the region’s supreme ironies is that Hamas, supposedly the ‘super-terrorists’ of Gaza, have abandoned Damascus and now support the Gulf Arabs’ desire to crush Assad. Syrian government forces claim that Hamas has even trained Syrian rebels in the manufacture and use of home-made rockets.

In Arab eyes, Israel’s 2006 war against the Shia Hizballah was an attempt to strike at the heart of Iran. The West’s support for Syrian rebels is a strategic attempt to crush Iran. But Iran is going to take the offensive. Even for the Middle East, these are high stakes. Against this fearful background, the Palestinian tragedy continues.

P.S.- Posted by John (JJ) on the other Forum, and copy pasted by me overhere, because I reacted on that article and I wanted to share it with you. Poland has a historical connection to the Arab world due to the Polish People Republic period, when Poland choose the side of the Arab nations in the Israeli-Arab wars.

[pjotr]

Dear friends,

The war in Syria is a very sick war, because there is no compassion for civilians, for human beings, for women, children, teenagers, old people by both the regime and the resistance (rebel fighters/Free Syrian Army). The humanitarian situation is very bad. Human rights violations are normal there. I hope that there are christians, Muslims and jews in the world who pray for them, and I know that there are Christian, Jewish and Muslim people who care about the Syrians. I saw sick video's this morning (youtube) of that war I don't want to post here. A family taken prisoner are beaten up in a truck surrounded by soldiers who beat them with rifle bats; teenagers tortured in prison cells or police stations. I saw two living men, still alive who where kicked in and stamped on their mutilated, bloody faces (the most awful images), and I couldn't stand the image of the mother, father and their sons who were abused, kicked and beaten by the soldiers. I don't know who is worse, the Syrian regime forces or backers or the rebels of the Free Syrian Army and the al-Nusrah Front. Mind you that a lot of the Free Syrian army soldiers and officers were former Government soldiers and officers who first attacked or fought against Syrian civilians themselves. We don't know their past and their real intentions. The Free Syrian Army and the Sunni Islamist fighters did their share of war crimes. Behading, torture, kanibalism, executions and torture. In a war all sides are crual. War veterans know this. (John) Not one side is good and the other is bad in this case. The Western media are Pro-rebels (Free Syrian Army and thus the Sunni Muslim side in Syria) and not neutral.

Maybe the best for Syria would be if a very powerful Multi-National Force would put an end to the civil war and the suffering of the Syrian people (regardless of what sect, religion or ethnic group they are). A new Syrian regime should respect the rights and property of all Syrians, regardless if they are Sunni muslim, Allawite, Shia Muslim, Christian, Druze, Kurd or Palestinian. That is why it is so important for the Syrians and the region (the Lebanese, Turkish, Jordanian and Israeli neighbours too) that the civil war is ended soon, that law and order returns to Syria (that the legal system will work again and justice returns to the Syrian society), and that the Syrian economy, education system, infrastructure and health care are restored and working again.

Here another article from Marwan Bishara about Syria from a Middle eastern perspective: www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/06/20136131049162160.html
(Marwan Bishara was born in Nazareth, Israel and is an Israeli of Arab descent)

You've listened. You've watched. You've witnessed the worst crime of the 21st century thus far.

A people bombed, murdered, purged, tortured, imprisoned and humiliated. The world watches from the sidelines, as a whole society is destroyed and tens of thousands of its finest people killed for daring to demand a life of dignity.

Clearly, "never again" is never really never again. The atrocities in Syria continue - again and again. It's the ultimate complicity of silence.

The so-called international community's commitment to the doctrine of R2P, or "responsbility to protect", is more of a "right to peddle" unfulfilled promises. Alas, when it comes to Syria, Iraq and Palestine, the international community has proven to be neither international nor a community.

Syria's four-decade-long dictatorship run amok has been permitted to slaughter its own citizens, wreak havoc in its country and forever stain the nation's history in blood.

What began as largely peaceful protests against regime repression was soon turned by the regime into an open battlefield throughout the country as the opposition became armed and extremists joined the fight.

But the state's belligerence has been to no avail: no force could deter the people or crush an idea whose time has come. Despite the excessive use of air-power against cities and the shelling of civilians, the Bashar al-Assad regime failed to quell the revolution or break its fighting spirit.

Marwan Bishara

Cheers,
Pieter

[pjotr]

Dear Fellow Forum members,

That is an exellent article of Robert Fisk in The Independent, I read his article with pleasure and interest and largely share his views. I think that the USA must be very careful and restrained in it's approach towards Syria. I think that the situation in Syria, Lebanon, the Israeli Golan Heights, the Turkish border with Syria, Jordan and Iraq is very dangerous. The USA wants to help the Syrian rebels. Do they know who their enemies are and what forces are behind the Syrian regime? Yes, they do, and they were and are hesitant, but are now taking the risk in arming the Free Syrian army. On the other side the Syrian Baath regime of Assad is fully backed by Russian arms supply and probably Russian advisors too, Iranian revolutionairy guards and arms supplies, thousands of Hezbollah fighters with their rifles, guns, machine guns, artillery, RPG's, rockets and probably tanks, Armored cars and suicide bombers and terrorist units. (Remember the Beirut Barracks Bombing [October 23, 1983] in Lebanon in which 241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers died. The suicide bombers were from Hezbollah). Next to Iran, Russia and China the Syrian Baath regime will have the support of Shia Muslims from Azerbaijan, Iraq, but also from Pakistan, India, Lebanon (other Shia then Hezbollah, for instance the large Shia clans and their militia and Amal), Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan (Hazara) and various Arab Gulf states. The Shia will see this war as a holy war agains the Sunni Muslims and agains the West who back them. There are about 200 million Shia Muslims in the world. Next to Russia, China and Hezbollah and radical shia Muslim militia from Iraq, North-Korea is also an allie of Syria. We are dealing with not rational regimes and extremist forces here.

North-Korea


North-Korean Scud ballistic missile during a military parade in Pyongyang, North-Korea

North Korea's missile exports to Syria also worried U.S. officials during the ninetees, though most of the missile-related technology for Damascus was being routed through Iran, a U.S. official told the Risk Report in 1996.

In the late 1980s, Syria was looking for a partner to supply new surface-to-surface missiles and to help upgrade the Syrian arsenal. Syria first approached the Soviet Union, but was turned down. Damascus then turned to Pyongyang. Syria has since contracted to buy more than 150 North Korean Scud-Cs. In 1991, North Korea delivered an estimated 24 Scud-Cs and 20 mobile launchers, and in March 1992 shipped some unknown quantity of additional Scuds to Syria through Iran. Syria flight-tested Scud-C missiles in July 1992, in mid-1994, and in the summer of 1996. Israeli and Western officials also report that Syria in the ninetees was building its own Scud-C missile factory with North Korean help.

The Syrian conflict attracts extremists

Next to Sunni Fundamentalist Islamist extremists and Shia fanatics other extremists will feel attracted to the conflict, like some extreme left and extreme right lunatics who will allign themselves with the Syrian regime and Hezbollah due to their anti-Western and anti-American ideology and affiliation. Western embassies, Consulates, trade missions, cultural institutions, companies and banks all over the world will be a target for these extremists.

If the USA will get involved in the Syrian civil war it must have a reliable, stabile, loyal, Pro-Western, legal partner in Syria with a support base and grassrootsmovement in Syria. That movement must have a civilian branch next to the militairy one, a democratic and moderate, secular, political wing. There must be (structural) funds, supplies, institutions, the certainty of the rule of law and the implementation of a legal system after the war is over. The mistake of the Iraq war must be avoided. A sort of Marshall plan for Syria should be developped.

Military


Saudi special forces

If the USA supports the Free Syrian army, then it must train, advice and support the Free Syrian army with militairy instructors, arms and advisors who stay in Syria with the Free Syrian Army. Free Syrian Army soldiers and officers can be trained in Turkey, the USA, Egypt, Saoudi Arabia and even in Northern-Iraq in the Kurd region. The USA could use Arab American, Iranian American or other American instructors who look Middle eastern, speak Arabic or will be trained in Arabic. If the USA will get involved in the Syrian conflict it must realize how much it will costs and generate the budget for that. The Free Syrian army needs artillery, rockets, anti-tank guns, tanks, armoured cars and fighter yets, to be able to conquer Assad's forces. Will the USA allow for instance Saoudi, Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese Sunni, and Turkish soldiers and officers to fight with the Free Syrian army against the Syrian army, the armed Allawite and Shia Syrian civilians, Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionairy guards, the Iraqi Shia militia, and probably other Syrian allies? If the USA wants to support the Syrian rebels and in the same time wants to avoid the capture of American arms by the Islamist rebels of the al-Nusrah Front, allied to al-Qaeda, it has to control the Free Syrian army with the help of Saoudi, Egyptian, Syrian, Turkish and maybe even Israeli allies. What unites all these countries and groups is their common enemy Iran.

Only an American drilled, modelled, facilitated, backed, controlled, financed and armed Free Syrian Army with American supervisors, advisors, trainers and fellow fighters (American special forces) will guarantee a Syrian opposition free of Al Qaida and Salafist (Algerian, Libyan, Chechen)/Wahhabist (Saoudi and Yemenite extremist islamists) influence. This will require a great effort from the American intelligence agencies, American diplomacy (foreign affairs/Geopolitical strategies and tactical operation), the American armed forces (US-Army), the state department (foreign affairs), the American president, the Pentagon, the FBI (for internal security in the US) and the close allies of the USA (Great-Britain, France, Israel and Poland). You have to gain the support of the American and European public opinion (to get the support of the European partners - Great Britain and France-), and your own political party. The anti-war or pacifistic left wing in the Democratic party, and the opposition of the Republicans in congress, whom out of opportunistic, tactical and strategic political reasons could oppose an American involvement in the Syrian civil war. Nex to that you have the extra-parliamentary opposition of the Peace movement, anti-Globalist, the Occupy Wallstreet movement, student movements, Indpendent Conservatives and libertarians, and other possible radical extra-parliamentary opposition.


Mecca, -, SAUDI ARABIA : Saudi Interior ministrys special forces perform before Interior minister and Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz (unseen) during a special parade on the eve of Hajj season in Mecca City, on November 01, 2011.

In the case that the USA has decided to help the Syrian rebels, the so called secular, Free Syrian Army, then the USA should act in a pragmatic and realistic way. It should engage the best elements in it's security and military aparatus. The USA will use the intelligence of the CIA and NSA, the Military Intelligence Corps (MI), the Marines, the Special Operations Forces (SOF), the Delta Force, Navy Seals, the Green Berets (the United States Army Special Forces), with the operational, tactical, strategic and intelligence support of the Special Operations Command and the United States Army Intelligence Support Activity (USAISA). The USA will need the support from it's Western allies with a colonial heritage and experiance in the Middle east, Great Britain and France. The British Special Air Service (SAS; known to be one of the best special forces in the world), the British secret services MI5 and MI6, the Royal Air Force (RAF), the British Navy and British army, and the French Foreign Legion (REP; the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment) and the GIGN (the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group, commonly abbreviated GIGN (French: Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale) (a special operations unit of the French Armed Forces), the French army, navy and Airforce. The GIGN is part of the National Gendarmerie and is trained to perform counter-terrorist and hostage rescue missions in France or anywhere else in the world. Next to the Brits and the French the USA could get support of the Canadian Joint Task Force-2 (Canadian special forces), the German Krisenreaktionskräfte (KRK) (Crisis Reaction Forces), the paramilitairy borderguards of the GSG-9 (Grenzschutzgruppe 9) who has a long history of experiance with domestic and foreign terrorism inside and outside Germany. Next to these Western allies the Free Syrian army could get help and training from the special forces and armies of Turkey, Saoudi Arabia and Egypt. Saoudi Arabia has three main enemies in the region: First Iran who threatens the Persian Gulf region and the Sunni Arab Gulf states, secondly Al Qaida (because the Saoudi Unitary Islamic absolute monarchy is supported by the USA) and thirdly Israel, because Palestinians are arabs and Sunni Muslims like the Sunni Muslim Saoudi Arabian arabs. (Saoudi Arabia has good ties with most Sunni Muslim countries and Sunni minority groups in the world. It is the largest funder of mosques outside Saoudi Arabia; in Europe, the USA, Africa, Asia and elsewhere).


The Egyptian Unit-777

So the Royal Saudi Land Forces, the Saudi Arabian National Guard and the (Saoudi) Special Security Force (the Saoudi's are trained by the American Delta Force, Navy Seals and by the German GSG-9 and the French GIGN), the Egyptian army and it's special forces like Unit-777 and Unit-333, and the Turkish army and the Department of Special Operations (Commando Brigades and the Amphibious Navy Brigade) and the National Police Jandarma Commando's (OIKB; a counterterrorism unit) could assist the Free Syrian Army. Only with a combined American, British, French, Turkish, Saoudi, Egyptian and Syrian multi-national force the opposition against Assad would have a chance. America is stil the superior military force in the world (the only superpower). Only such and International army would be able to conquer Assad. What must be avoided at all costs in my opinion is a full scale war against Iran. An Iranian war will drag all the nations of the region into a world war. Not only Iran, the USA and Israel, but also Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, India, China, Saoudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Iraq, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Lybia, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Great-Britain, France, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and fighters from other Muslim countries.


Turkish Special Forces

I think that Israel wants to remain neutral, due to it's Sunni Arab and Shia Arab neighbours. Israel has not the luxery nor the political will and strategic interest to get involved in the bloody Syrian civil war and the Sunni-Shia conflict which is linked to that. Israel has by the way exellent special forces and intelligence agencies with special Arab speaking units, Mistaravim, from the Militairy Intelligence Agency AMAN special field units. The Mossad has it's informants and units in the neighbouring Arab countries too. I am sure they have their guys in Syria as well to monitor the situation there on the ground.

Cheers,
Pieter

P.S.- Personally I am against the involvement of the USA and European allies in every armed conflict in the world; civil war, anarchy situation or war. The best way would be if Syria was surrounded by a large international force, who seals of the Syrian border and enforces a No-flyzone over Syria, and controls the land and sea entrence to Syria. Such a Multinational peacekeeping force would block the import of arms, and in that way the war would fade out due to the lack of ammunition for the artillery, tanks and war planes. But ofcourse that is a dream now and naive thought, and the Syrian regime has a lot of arms supplies. And next to that the Syrian borders with Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest are to large to be able to control totally.

[Bonobo]

I ran a lesson about refugees in Poland for my students and showed them a few pics from Syria. We were shocked - that war is a disaster. Those Syrians cities look like Warsaw after WW2 - the sea of ruins.

[pjotr]

You are right, those Syrians cities look like Warsaw and Rotterdam after WW2 - the sea of ruins.

[Bonobo]

Oct 29, 2015 15:32:05 GMT 1 pjotr said:

You are right, those Syrians cities look like Warsaw and Rotterdam after WW2 - the sea of ruins.

I am a pessimist here. Those fighters can go on like that for decades - remember Lebanon. I remember the news from Lebanon civil war throughout all my childhood and even adolescent years.