Category Archives: Lebanon

The new Crescenters: Turkey and Qatar

Posted on January 10, 2012 | Comments Off on The new Crescenters: Turkey and Qatar

FN-09/01/2012-

Qatar and Turkey are the new Crescenters ( in opposition to crusaders) of the Arab world. They are working to move the whole Arab world into becoming Sunni Islamic republic. They plan to  “moderate” these countries by injecting massive funds in economical investment.
For that, they have the full support of the USA and the western countries tired of fighting against extremists isla, supporting hopeless dictators and facing increased immigration of moslems to their countries.
As for Iran with which Turkey and Qatar enjoy good relationship, they consider that with a few adjustments, ultimately Iran would become another moderate Islamic republic.
Syria, Lebanon and Iraq  are most difficult countries to tackle because they are not homogeneous so the move to a ‘moderate’ Sunni or Shia islamic republic is not as straighforward as Egypt, Libya, Yemen or Tunisia where the religious or ethnic minorities are either unexistant or weak.
At first, Turkey and Qatar thought that Syria that has a majority of sunni will easily replace the alawite regime by a sunni islamic republic. After 10  months, that plan failed because the regime had the support of Iran who refuses to have its allies in Lebanon isolated.
The different strategies are the following 1) Let Lebanon, Syria and Iraq stay under the umbrella of Iran with the hope that Iran will move to a moderate Islamic republic, 2)Let these countries in limbo to find their own balance or 3) Use a military option make the necessary changes.
It seems that the solution 2) is the one being considered by Turkey and Qatar after many attempts to use solution 3)

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Posted in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Middle East Geopolitics, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen

A dialog of deafs: the different layers of the Syria uprising

Posted on December 10, 2011 | Comments Off on A dialog of deafs: the different layers of the Syria uprising

10 December 2011-

There are three layers or agendas to the uprising in Syria, a local, regional and international.

This is why it is very difficult to have one position on the subject. Each person gives a priority to one agenda over the others. In addition as these three agendas are imbricated, the conflict is more complex to deal compared with other countries,

The local layer is clear, the political system in Syria is obsolete it needs a serious overhaul . While the socialist Baath ideology is valid for a country like Syria, it has been abused and corrupted. This is what the majority of Syrians believe and some have actively joined protest with the intention of achieving this goal. For them this is the priority of the uprising.

The second layer is regional taking root on the eternal antagonism between Shia and Sunnis. Since the Iran islamic revolution,the Shias who were the poorest and less estimated group in Arab countries have raised their head and do not accept anymore to be treated as second class or persecuted anymore. The Sunnis, with Saudi Arabia leading them, is refusing to allow Iran and all Arab Shias to increase their demand for power sharing and their influence the region. The Sunnis have allied with the western power who, for other reasons, are not in favor of the growth of Iran in the region. This rejection of Shias has motivated many Syrians Sunnis to protest against the Alawites, assimilated to the Shia, who are holding the power in Syria in order to topple the regime and build another one where Sunnis will be in control of the country. They demonstration reflects this ambition and the are financially supported by rich gulf countries and Turkey, another Sunni power.
The third layer is international. The US and some western allies have been adamant in weakening and neutralizing any country opposed to Israel. Two countries in the Arab world are openly at war with Israel, Lebanon and Syria. Therefore there has been a relentless efforts from the US to neutralize both countries.
After repeated failures, like the 2006 war that did not neutralize Hezbollah, the uprising in Syria offered the best opportunity to achieve the destruction of Syria from within. This is why the media campaign, the funding of the opposition and a whole plot was set up to use the two other layers as a launching pad for a total soft war against Syria.
Many Syrians are working consciously or unconsciously toward this plan and their goal is to break the country by removing all possible support it may get from its allies, namely Iran and Lebanon.

Average people will accept of reject the development of the events in Syria according to the priority they give to any of these agendas.
The Syrian government insists on the third one, the international, and would give a less importance and priorities to the two others.
The opposition is divided. The Syrian local oppositions follows the local agenda and would compromise to prevent the second and the third agendas to be executed.
The SNC is following the local and international agenda and while officially rejecting the regional, it is secretly encouraging it. The LCC and the FSA are following the local and regional agendas and ignore the existence of the third one.
Each individual  favors one or more of these agendas and ignores the others. This is why sometimes it looks like a dialog between deafs.

http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=12909&cp=6#comment-287058

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Posted in Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Syrian Opposition, Turkey, US-Syria

The Syrian stalemate and the Lebanese (mis)givings

Posted on October 19, 2011 | Comments Off on The Syrian stalemate and the Lebanese (mis)givings

By Scarlett HADDAD | 20/10/2011
(L’Orient-Le Jour- Lebanon Translated from french)

While the mediation of the Arab League is heading for a clinical death, the situation in Syria continues to divide the Lebanese between those who believe that the fall of the regime is inevitable, even imminent, and those who think that Bashar al-Assad almost got over it. The reality, as is often the case elsewhere, however, is between these two extremes.

Back from Syria, visitors report that the regime is in total control of the situation in large cities, particularly Aleppo and Damascus, where incidents occur regularly, but are quickly contained.
In remote areas, the situation is more confused. Small communities have often to deal with robbers and other troublemakers that are not necessarily with the opposition but take advantage of the fact that the police are busy elsewhere.

At present, the real problem for the Syrian authorities is concentrated in Homs where a security chaos is prevailing. In this socially diverse city, the police have no control over entire neighborhoods, which are in the hands of the opposition. But authorities remain broadly confident, preferring to let the opposition exhaust itself or sink into violence, which to them would only serve to discredit them to the people. Besides, everyone (almost) now recognizes that violence is the fact of both sides.

According to many Lebanese figures who visited Syria recently, the regime of Bashar al-Assad is more serene, confident that the situation is bound to evolve in its favor.
It considers itself protected from foreign intervention and sanctions of the Security Council of the United Nations by the Chinese and Russian veto, which is part of the long-term strategy of these two states and is therefore not subject to a sudden change. Similarly, it considers itself protected internally by the strength of its institutions, including the army and security forces that did not suffer from significant defections, seven months after the start of the insurgency.

Turkey, which represented a real threat to the Syrian regime with its plan to create a buffer zone at the border and thus give a bastion to the Syrian opposition, is currently immersed in its own problems with the Kurds but also with the various components of its social fabric.
Spearhead of European-American plan to destabilize Syria, Turkey is now virtually paralyzed, and the harsh statements of its leaders against the Syrian regime and their considerable support for the Syrian opposition do not constitute a real threat to Assad.

As a matter of fact, the real problem of the Syrian regime is elsewhere. It lies mainly in the deepening of the divide between the community components of the Syrian society, especially between Sunnis and Alawites.
Now, members of both communities are openly critical of each others, while for many years, the religious approach was apparently non-existent in Syria. If there is actually a plan of confessional destabilization through the exacerbation of sensitivities between Sunnis and Shiites, as the camp hostile to the Americans believes, it is scoring points in several countries in the region, particularly Syria.
This new reality hinders the process of reforms intended and announced by the Assad regime. Thus, in a climate as exacerbated, if the reforms were to occur through an electoral process, the regime may fall. It’s obviously what it does not want. Therefore it would be in a kind of impasse, convinced of the need for reforms, but reluctant to give them shape and risk its survival.

This allows us to reach the following conclusion: the system is therefore still the reins of the country and is not seriously shaken. But there is no end in sight to the internal crisis.

The authority has shown that its security approach widely criticized has allowed it to remain in place and push the opponents to resort to violence, but has not yet found a solution that allows it to calm the opposition.
Faced with such findings, many Western governments believe that the Syrian crisis would take more time and that its outcome is uncertain.
The Lebanese that are waiting for an early resolution to this crisis will be disappointed, and the Lebanese political class that have been waiting for the evolution of in Syria to move in one direction or the other would need to change its plans and approach.

The Syrian regime seems here to stay, even if it has less time to spend on local developments in Lebanon. It would be a positive development if the Lebanese of all affiliations, stop keeping an eye on Syria before making a decision about them. Not to mention their watches, set permanently on the Syrian hour

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Posted in Lebanon, Syria, Syrian Opposition, Turkey-Syria

The Lebanese civil war and the role of Syria

Posted on October 15, 2011 | Comments Off on The Lebanese civil war and the role of Syria

JC 14 october 2011

Depending on whom you talk to, the Lebanese Christians, principally the Maronites allied with pro-Israel Geagea, will tell you the the Syrians massacred them, while the others, Greek orthodox, Armenians and Maronites now allied with Aoun and Frangie will tell you that the Syrian saved them from the Druze, the Sunni militias and the Palestinians.

The civil war in Lebanon was such a messy and complex war that violence, killings and excesses came from all the protagonists independently of their religion and political affiliation.

When the Maronites were on the verge of defeat in front of the Palestinians,the Druze and Sunnis militias, the Maronite Lebanese president Frangie called on Syria to intervene.
“In October 1976, Syria accepted the proposal of the Arab League summit in Riyadh. This gave Syria a mandate to keep 40,000 troops in Lebanon as the bulk of an Arab Deterrent Force charged with disentangling the combatants and restoring calm” (wikipedia)

The huge mistake was that the mandate was not limited in time and the Arab league never asked Syria to withdraw its troops.

Therefore the Syrian army “pacified” the country and settled in Lebanon. Some Syrian leaders, like Abdel Halim Khaddam, found that Lebanon was a good place to make money with corrupted Lebanese and intervene in the political directions of the country.
With time, the gratitude faded away and the resentment grew against Syria and the abuses and interference of its representatives in the political life of the country. We know the rest….

The Syrians responsible of crimes during that war were never indicted. The same applies to Christian Lebanese leaders responsible of horrendous massacres. In addition some of them are shamelessly still active in Lebanese politics. There has not been any thorough judicial investigation of the terrible crimes that happened during and after this war. This is why the murder of Hariri rallied the Lebanese who thought that finally some kind of justice was coming to their country.

Therefore the obituaries presented by Antoine of Christians killed should be completed by the obituaries of the Moslems, Druzes and Syrians soldiers who died during that war.
Then we could have the whole picture of the victims of that dirty war that no Lebanese want to remember.

http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=12492&cp=7#comment-278667

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Posted in Lebanon, Middle East Geopolitics, Syria

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