Category Archives: Syria

How Syria is Being Ripped Apart by Foreign Meddling and Sectarian War

Posted on December 27, 2012 | Comments Off on How Syria is Being Ripped Apart by Foreign Meddling and Sectarian War
One can no longer say that Syria is a moderate, pragmatic, stabilizing and secular regional centre keeping extremism at bay.
December 20, 2012  |

Everything about Syria is steeped in miasma: is this conflict politically and sociologically definable as a civil war? Has it become a sectarian war? How strong and widespread is the Salafist (and global Jihadi) presence? Was militarization wise or did the opposition have no choice in this regard? Are the armed groups able to defeat the regime’s forces or will there be a perpetual, bloody stalemate whose only certainty is Syria’s complete physical destruction and long-term division? Is a negotiated outcome, that is, a political solution the only possibility, or is it uninformed to speak of political solutions at this stage of the conflict?

Despite this fog, there are, in my mind, several certainties. One, Syria is not a clear-cut case of bad regime versus good society, for that society is not at one regarding the violent overthrow of the state. This is not a mass, democratic revolution but a Sunni rebellion. Any spontaneity to its genesis, including the goal of non-violent resistance, came to a speedy end, provided with a significant impetus by the flow of foreign arms, money, and intelligence, including from the US. A substantial ‘silent’ majority desperately wishes to avoid Syria’s disintegration because they simply love their country, not the regime or armed rebels, and prefer reform and a negotiated settlement.

Two, it is false to equate, as the regime portrays it, every Syrian’s opposition to the Ba’athi state with acting on behalf of Zionists and imperialists, and equally false to suggest that advocating a negotiated settlement equates to buying into the regime’s self-narrative of an indispensable anti-imperialist frontline.

Three, foreign powers, especially Washington, several of its NATO allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, the latter essentially monarchic police states, are violating international law in pursuing subversion and violent regime change, and share primary responsibility for the radicalization, destabilization, and horrific violence inflicted on the people of Syria. Washington is interested in regime change, not in ensuring that neither side prevails to force a settlement.

Four, the fundamental truth is the Syrian people’s case for dignity and freedom, rights brutally denied and violated for so long by fearsome regimes such as the Syrian Ba’ath. The revolt against the Ba’athist regime, despite its now tainted nature, is not a conspiracy.

Five, despite Syria’s social diversity and divided loyalties, the fact that the regime has many supporters, and that a majority desires peaceful change, calls for the Syrian socio-political system to become no less than a civil, human rights-respecting, citizenship-based state. Still, Syria’s internal complexity and regional role requires special care and objective realism. Take Aleppo as a microcosm of Syrian complexity, the largest Syrian city containing some 82% Sunnis. Listening to the western, Qatari, or Saudi media, one would think that the city erupted into spontaneous rebellion and from the beginning was fighting a heroic war against the regime’s military and security forces. By objective accounts, however, Aleppo’s denizens supported the Damascus government by a large majority, many of them paying the price of Free Syrian Army reprisals. Now, since the penetration of armed groups and the violent zealotry of Salafists and foreign Jihadis, with their suicide bombings, kidnappings, and beheadings, looting and rape, as well as heavy, indiscriminate government firepower leading to the slow obliteration of this great historic and commercial city – one wonders what has happened to its people and their loyalties.

We only know that government forces and loyalists still hold the city, minus a couple of districts, as they do most of the country. Countless people have fled, many of their empty homes looted and ransacked by their would-be liberators, fearful of returning to rebel reprisals. Aleppo’s Islamist leaning al-Tawhid Division, ostensibly part of the FSA, contains numerous-armed factions, including many Salafi Islamists, who, themselves, are varied, ranging from Brotherhood types to al-Qaida-like extremists. There is also quite noticeable and significant Salafi literalist influence among the armed rebels generally. The disparate factions that make up the FSA are largely Islamist-dominated. Its battalions contain thousands of fighters of the Salafi/Jihadi group, Jabhat al-Nusra, a mainstay of the al-Tawhid in Aleppo.

In a situation of decentralized and disparate commands, such people are there at the front lines. All these groups, including the FSA, have an uneasy, distrustful relationship with the newly minted National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, as they previously did with the now discarded Syrian National Council, and as they have with the western powers. Fortunately, Syria does not have a tradition of extremist political Islam. On the contrary, given its pluralist diversity, its geostrategic location, and secular nationalist history, Jihadi-type extremism does not fit in Syria.

The chaos and physical destruction, the ever-present danger of the regime-Sunni war transmuting into a sectarian civil war are deeply worrying, and the Salafists thrive on such an environment. No question, though, in its militarist, violent manifestations, this is essentially a rebellion of the Sunni Muslims, at core from the regions of Hama and Homs, and battle-tested foreigners, including Salafis, supported by the Sunni autocracies and wealthy donors of the peninsula. It is unlikely that a literalist Salafist regime will come to power, much less global Jihadis, but likely that a Sunni-Brotherhood dominated regime, sidelining the National Coalition, will.

The defunct National Council’s main obsession was arming without a clear political programme. The new National Coalition has got itself political recognition as a sort of provisional government—even as Syria remains a member state of the UN led by the al-Assad government—from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, France, Britain, and Turkey, followed by the US, which, however, consigned one rebel group, the Jabha, to its terrorist blacklist. (This prompted all the rest of the armed rebel groups to declare their support for the Jabha.)

Western support is predicated on the promise that the Coalition will unify the opposition, at least act as an umbrella, and be a better watchdog that presumes to undertake the impossible, even inane, task of vouching for and endorsing those groups deserving of armed support, which Washington reckons amounts to two-thirds of the fighting groups and their commanders. These parties essentially cajoled through the expansion of the new Coalition’s membership to three times the previous Council’s size and which includes most of the old Council’s members. The new body’s composition is a safeguard to dilute Islamist influence.

Washington in particular rejected the Brotherhood-dominated Council because it could not deliver unity, or control or exclude extremist Islamists, even though Council members did what the US wanted most of all: they talked about peace and good relations with Israel.

Whether the US is willing to advocate a negotiated solution is in my view not an open question. Its apparent caution in providing advanced, or heavy, weaponry, unlike the reckless monarchic allies it shakily controls, is due to its fear of uncontrolled, unmanaged violence leading to an incompliant, even hostile, Islamist regime. The Obama administration’s ambivalence stems from the tension between aggressive regional allies and its recognition of several realities: the proliferation of extremist groups, the possibility of a bloody stalemate that will destabilize the region, and the potential that an armed group will get its hands on chemical weapons.

Thus, Washington’s most urgent and immediate goal, when not obstructing UN peace and dialogue missions, is to pressure the Coalition to construct a centralized military command and political unity and ferret out the extremists, supposedly one-third of the armed rebels. Its version of a negotiated solution is not genuine internal talks between Damascus and the rebels, but Assad’s departure, which Washington defines as a ‘transition’, but which is actually a precondition.

This, the US imagines, would avoid the concomitant augmentation of Salafi extremist power caused by protracted violence and keep international law and Russia out of the equation, ensuring an obeisant Coalition’s rule. Washington’s conception of ending Syrian suffering is not via morally, legally, diplomatically urgent negotiations between rebels and government. Instead, it repeatedly stresses Assad’s inevitably violent downfall, as only he is responsible for his people’s calamity, thereby absolving it and its allies of complicity in Syria’s torment and prolongation of this horrific upheaval.

Yet the foreign arming of the rebels – that is, the militarization of this conflict – has been Syria’s worst affliction. For Syria does not need lethal arms and war, but a coherent, truly representative opposition built without interference, and ready to find a negotiated political solution to violent conflict. This requires internal Syrian national agreement on a transitional regime change through supervised elections. This at least is the ideal, though not the reality; for everyone, from assorted rebels, hell bent on acquiring advanced weaponry to Coalition members to Washington to local Gulf regimes, wants Assad’s head. The Alawite core of the regime not surprisingly sees this as an existential threat.

What prevails in Syria today is maddening ambiguity and galling hypocrisy on all sides: of the relationship between the Coalition and armed rebels, the craziness of inter-Arab politics, Gulf and Turkish hatred of the Shi’i Alawite Syrian regime—which I call the Sunni Syndrome—nation-destroying French and British actions characterized as advocacy of democracy, and single-minded US control of Syria couched as constructive, responsible diplomacy.

With multiple external players violently pursuing their own agendas supporting multiple factions with their own visions, such as these are, the chance of Syrians reaching a negotiated political solution, much less a compromise leading to such, is virtually nil. In reality, the Ba’ath, the Syrian regime, al-Assad, the socio-political system that prevailed in Syria for nearly a half century all have ended, or at least will not be restored. This in itself is extraordinary. Ultimately, the horrific violence and terrorism from both the state and its opponents is the responsibility of the regime, for it chose to let the country go to hell, and unwittingly invited outside intervention, rather than peacefully oversee a democratic transition in the early phase of the rebellion.

This is an enduring quality of Arab ruling regimes, mostly because they lack fundamental legitimacy and rule over divided societies. One can no longer say Syria is what it used to be, a moderate, pragmatic, stabilizing and secular regional centre keeping extremism at bay. This political role is a natural function of its geography and relatively diverse ethno-sectarian make-up, as well as the political sophistication of its people. Under radically changing circumstances, most importantly, a weakened and fractured Syria, it may not be able to play that role again for decades to come. The west and their autocratic Middle Eastern allies are destroying one ruling group in exchange for another dominated by Brotherhood Islamists. And those Salafists/Jihadists on the front lines will not only want a share of power, but some of them may continue post-Assad violence and insurgency, to the continuing danger of many Syrians.

Issa Khalaf, a Palestinian-American, has a D. Phil. in Politics and Middle East Studies from Oxford University

http://www.newsnow.co.uk/A/617515563?-20865:11558

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Posted in Iran-Syria, Syria, Syrian Opposition, Turkey-Syria, US Middle East Politics, US-Syria

Has Syria Become Al-Qaeda’s New Base For Terror Strikes On Europe?

Posted on December 19, 2012 | Comments Off on Has Syria Become Al-Qaeda’s New Base For Terror Strikes On Europe?

Exclusive investigation: The terror network in Syria includes dozens of European members, and wants to get its hands on Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapon

By Florian Flade and Clemens Wergin
DIE WELT/Worldcrunch

 

A photograph from Syria shows a large man in fighting garb, carrying an assault rifle. His head is wrapped in black cloth, and the sign on his armband indicates beyond a doubt that he is an Islamist. But the man is not Syrian; he identifies himself as “holy warrior Abu Ahmad al-Almani” from Germany.

The picture of him was posted on Facebook. The information the man provides about himself says that he was born in Lebanon, and until recently lived in Germany. He left to join the fight against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

But now “Abu Ahmad” is an Islamic fighter, and he’s calling for German Muslims to join the cause. “Dear brethren, come join our ranks, fight with our brothers as if we were a wall. Faith is the weapon our enemies most fear.”

According to a Die Welt investigation, the fighter from Germany is only one of hundreds of foreigners who have associated with Syrian rebels in their fight against the Assad regime. Most of them are young men from North Africa, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. But more and more Europeans are joining the militia fighters.

Western intelligence agencies believe that there are some 100 Muslims with European passports involved in the war in Syria, Die Welt has learned. A great many of these are fighters, some are radical Islamists, and see it as their duty to join the “Holy War” against the Syrian strongman.

“There could be many reasons for somebody to travel to Syria,” one source told Die Welt. “Somebody might want to help their family. Somebody else might aspire to become a martyr. Some only become Islamists as a result of taking part in the fighting.”

German intelligence views the travel of radical Muslims to Syria with concern. The assumption is that most of them plan to take up fighting against government troops.

From the standpoint of intelligence agents, the situation of the Syrian opposition remains highly opaque. According to the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) – the German intelligence service – the biggest problem for foreign jihadists is the chaotic situation of countless warring parties, citizens’ militias, and rebel groups. Only very few Islamists coming in from Europe know anything about the group they join up with, or what that group’s ideology and goals actually are.

The most radical of the rebel groups is probably Jabat al-Nusra, which has a jihadist orientation and wants to create a theocracy in Syria. Jabat al-Nusra is considered to be a regional branch of al-Qaeda, but the group — which is said to have about 1,000 fighters — has deliberately avoided official affiliation with the terror network so far, for reasons of image and strategy. Intelligence operatives believe that Jabat al-Nusra doesn’t want to give Assad fodder to nourish his claims that the opposition consists of al-Qaeda fighters.

Egypt’s terrain is ripe

Western intelligence operatives say that al-Nusra runs several large training camps in Syria where Islamists with fighting experience – veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – train new recruits, including Islamists from Western countries. In a situation similar to the al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s, hundreds of Islamists are presently being trained in the use of fire arms, bomb-making and hand-to-hand combat in Syrian camps managed by Jabat al-Nusra.

Al-Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahiri is focusing his efforts on Syria and Egypt, trying to build new structures in these two key countries since many of the established al-Qaeda offshoots no longer listen to the network’s leadership after the death of Osama Bin Laden, according to information from Western intelligence sources.

Al-Zawahiri’s contact in Syria is Abu Muhammad al-Julani, the Jabat al-Nusra leader. In Egypt, Jamal al-Kashef and Sheik Adel Shahato look after al-Qaeda interests. Al-Qaeda’s aim is to fight the “heretical regimes” in both countries; to al-Zawahiri the new regime of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi also counts as one of these. In one of his recent speeches, al-Zawahiri called for attacks on the Egyptian military to help bring down Morsi’s government.

According to intelligence sources, several al-Qaeda leaders who were originally from Egypt have returned there after years of fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Other leaders and active members have been released from prison by the Morsi government. The al-Qaeda cell in Egypt is thought to have been involved in the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

On October 24, Egyptian security forces however did raid a “safe house” in Cairo that was used by al-Qaeda members under al-Kashef’s orders. One al-Qaeda fighter was killed, and others were taken into custody. A large weapons depot and explosives were found at the site. In several other raids over the next few days, 20 more al-Qaeda operatives were arrested. Egyptian sources said the cell was directly under al-Zawahiri’s orders and was working to bring the Morsi government down.

Because of the political turmoil in Egypt, the country has become a stomping ground for global jihadists. A German al-Qaeda fighter, Denis Cuspert, who has threatened attacks in Germany, has gone to Cairo. Many German and European fighters pretend to be going to Egypt to study Islam or Arabic, but then head for al-Qaeda training camps in Egypt, the Sinai or Libya.

Chemical and biological stockpiles

But the most important field of operations for al-Qaeda at the moment is Syria. According to Die Welt’s information from Western intelligence sources, last year al-Zawahiri sent at least three organizers to Syria to create jihadist groups to carry out his instructions.

Particularly worrying for the West are al-Qaeda efforts to get their hands on chemical and biological weapons. Local al-Qaeda operatives have allegedly already been told to find out where these weapons are stockpiled. Intelligence sources also say that al-Qaeda is looking for experts in Syria to train their fighters in how to use the weapons.

Al-Qaeda’s efforts are said to be focused mainly around Deraa in the southwestern part of the country, and Aleppo, where its HQ is thought to be located.

Another major concern for Western intelligence services is al-Zawahiri’s intention to train extremists with European passports in Egypt and Syria so that they can build terror cells in Europe, and to see Syria turn into a kind of Waziristan – a remote part of Pakistan where members can move about pretty much unhindered.

For future attacks in Europe, extremists with European passports are particularly valuable – men like the Spaniard Rachid Wahbi who arrived in Syria via Turkey in June 2012 headed for a training camp for European fighters, or Mehdi al-Harati, a Libyan with an Irish passport. He was one of the founders of the Tripoli Brigade, the first rebel unit in Libya. He now leads the rebels in the north of Syria.

According to Western intelligence sources, al-Nusra commander Abu Mohammad al-Julani is already planning to expand his base of operations to Europe via Turkey. He’s preparing to make Syria – after the fall of the Assad regime – a center of jihadist activity with branches in other countries.

Some of al-Julani’s al-Qaeda cells are already up and running in other countries in the region, and Western intelligence operatives say he is in the process of building additional cells in Europe.

It has been noted that so far Jabat al-Nusra has avoided using European fighters in suicide missions. Apparently these fighters are too valuable to “burn” right now – their European passports will come in good stead when the fighting in Syria is over and the terror network enters a Europe-oriented expansion phase.

http://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/has-syria-become-al-qaeda-039-s-new-base-for-terror-strikes-on-europe-/islam-jihad-al-qaeda-bin-laden-morsi-assad/c1s10415/#.UNEoUKx5LPU

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Posted in Al Qaeeda, Europe, Middle East Geopolitics, Syria, Syrian Opposition

Russia stands firm on diplomacy to solve Syria’s crisis

Posted on December 13, 2012 | Comments Off on Russia stands firm on diplomacy to solve Syria’s crisis

By Andrew Andreev, the Russian Federation’s ambassador to the UAE
Dec 14, 2012

The wars of today are not waged only on the battlefields. In the case of Syria, the battles are being fought in the programmes of the well-known Arab satellite channels and in the pages of regional newspapers. Audiences are being persuaded that the regime of President Bashar Al Assad is responsible for everything – as is Russia, which is said to be providing him with all kinds of assistance. The fundamentals of nonpartisanship and impartiality are being sacrificed for the sake of labelling and achieving particular political goals.

It may sound like a revelation for The National, which ran a recent editorial under the headline Russia cannot wash its hands of Syrian blood, but it is Russia which first raised the Syrian issue in the UN Security Council. Upon our initiative, the basic principles were developed to be incorporated later on into two UNSC resolutions and the Geneva Communiqué of the Action Group for Syria.

The editorial talks about Russia “doing nothing meaningful”, but forgets that it is Russia that constantly contacts both the Syrian authorities and all the opposition groupings. We motivate Syrians to seek a settlement of internal problems by peaceful means, through broad national dialogue, without imposing solutions from abroad. Any other patterns are fated to be nondurable and ineffective.

Those who present the issue as if Russia were responsible for the deterioration of the current conflict in Syria ignore the fact that not all foreign actors are interested in its peaceful resolution. These sides in particular did their best to withdraw Arab League observers from Syria, and create unbearable conditions for the personnel of the UN monitoring mission. Each time there was a slight chance to obtain unbiased information about the developments in Syria, or get at least a bit closer to a political settlement, these parties reduced that chance to zero.

If the primary goal is really to achieve international consent regarding the ways to settle the Syrian crisis, an urgent focus on the implementation of the existing consensus – ie, the Geneva Communiqué – is needed. All international parties should influence both conflicting sides in order to make them finally stop the bloodshed. None of our partners, who have direct influence on the so-called Syrian opposition, have even tried to implement it yet. While they formally confirm their commitment to the Geneva Communiqué, they ignore our efforts to approve the understanding in the UN Security Council.

Instead, the suggestion is that the Security Council should adopt a different document – which would allow the international community to offer de facto support to one of the conflicting parties. We have had such an experience before, and we know how some of our partners can interpret UNSC resolutions to justify actions that are not sanctioned. The examples of such actions are well known, and their grave consequences are perceptible in the region today.

The UN Security Council is authorised to deal with the resolution of conflicts, not conduct revolutions or regime change. We will never allow parties to take advantage of the Security Council to promote adventurous ventures having nothing to do with international law and the aim of upholding international peace and security.

It is clear that it is not the welfare of the Syrian people that drives the actions of some countries, which divide terrorists into “bad” or “good”, openly siding with the opposition and providing it with military support. They ignore the murder of ordinary Syrians who live in the territories that are under control of the central authorities. As Russia calls for all the opposition groupings to unite for the sake of holding serious negotiations with the regime, some western and Middle Eastern parties encourage opponents of Mr Al Assad to wage war to “the victorious end”. Not only do they refuse to deal with the president of Syria, but they try to suffocate him through the economic sanctions.

It would be naive to think that those who fight against the Syrian army are ordinary citizens who were forced to take up arms by the “violations” of the authorities. They are not only former army officers who decided to side with the opposition.

The real picture, which can be proved by western sources, is that quite a number of religious extremists and mercenaries of every stripe, including Al Qaeda members, are united today under the banners of the opponents of Mr Al Assad. And their ambitions differ greatly from the aspirations of the Syrian people.

If the situation continues along this scenario, the country is going to slide into the chaos of sectarian war with the risk that it will spill into the neighbouring states and even echo in more distant parts of the Arab world. It is not a secret that some confessional and ethnic minorities are among the allies of Mr Al Assad inside Syria, and they are concerned about their own security in case of the victory of the “revolution”.

We would like to stress, once again, that Russia does not defend the regime in Syria but stands for the principles of respecting sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-intervention in a nation’s internal affairs, and other fundamentals of international law. These fundamentals have a universal nature and cannot be observed selectively, depending on geopolitical or other subjective concerns. If the change of Mr Al Assad’s regime is the most important issue for some parties, the price for such an approach will be new victims and destruction. As for Russia – we try our best to avoid these casualties.

Andrew Andreev is

Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/russia-stands-firm-on-diplomacy-to-solve-syrias-crisis#ixzz2Ex7sSGQF

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Posted in Middle East Geopolitics, Russia, Syria, Syrian Opposition, United Nations

Who are the Alawites?

Posted on November 29, 2012 | Comments Off on Who are the Alawites?

By Aymeric Chauprade

Extracted and translated from a conference in french given in Funglode, Saint Domingue,  27th  november 2012:  “Où vont la Syrie et le Moyen-Orient ?”

http://www.realpolitik.tv/2012/11/aymeric-chauprade-ou-vont-la-syrie-et-le-moyen-orient/

…. “there is a need to understand who are the Alawites. This is a community issued, in the tenth century, in the borders of the Arab Empire and the Byzantine Empire, from a distant split of Shi’ism, and that practices a syncretism with elements of Shi’ism, Hellenistic pantheism of Persian Zoroastrianism and Byzantine Christianity. It is very important for our analysis to know that the Alawites are considered by Sunni Islam as the worst of heretics. The fourteenth century jurist Ibn Taymiyya Salafi, ancestor of the Wahhabi and a current important reference for Islamists worldwide, issued a fatwa calling for their systematic persecution and genocide.

This fatwa is still current among Salafis, Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood, that is to say, all those the Alawite power is facing right now!

Before the coup Hafez el-Assad in 1970, the Alawites have known persecution from mainstream Islam, Sunnism.

You still need to know that until 1970, the Sunni bourgeoisie were still buying, under a notarized contract, young Alawite slaves.

Things got better with the installation of the Baathist nationalist ideology in 1963, which is Arabism precedence over all other considerations, and especially 1970.

” In summary, today’s war is the new episode of bloody war supporters of Ibn Taymiyya against heretics Alawites, a war that has lasted since the fourteenth century! This fatwa is in my opinion a new source of potential genocide (similar to that of Rwanda) if the plan is to fall. This is an essential that Westerners are trying to ignore.

Hunted and persecuted for centuries, the Alawis had to take refuge in the coastal mountains arid between Lebanon and Turkey present while giving to their belief an hermetic and esoteric side, allowing themselves lies and concealment (the famous Taqqiya) to escape their tormentors.

But then you wonder what the Alawites have done to come to power?

Subject to foreign military occupations for centuries, the bourgeoisie Sunni Syria (a similar process occurred in Lebanon) committed the usual mistake of the rich after the country’s independence in 1943. The profession of arms was relegated to the poor and not the son of “good family.” The army was constituted by minorities: a majority of Alawites, but also Christians, Ismailis, Druze, Shia.

Hafez al-Assad came from one of these poor families of the Alawite community. He first became Chief of the Air Force and defense minister prior to seize power by force in order to give the community its revenge on History (with its allies Druze and Christians) .

So you understand immediately that the regime backed by 2 million Alawites, probably 2 to 3 million other minorities, but also a part of the Sunni bourgeoisie including Damascus, whose economic interests are now closely linked to dictatorship has no choice but to fight to the death.
When I say fight to the death, I mean to distinguish the regime from Bashar al-Assad. The regime is more powerful than Bashar and can get rid of  him if it considers that it is in its survival. But getting rid of possibly does not mean putting a democracy that would see inevitably (mathematically) the triumph of the Islamists, as in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen …

Christians in Syria have seen what happened to the Christians of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. They see what happens to the Copts in Egypt, after the victory of the Islamists. Druze also know that they are, as the Alawites, considered heretics  to be destroyed by the Salafi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is absolutely unrealistic to think, as we think in the West, that the Alawites will accept democratic reforms that would lead mechanically Salafists in power.

I repeat the mistake of thinking that the country went into civil war in 2011. It was already in 1980 when a commando Muslim Brotherhood  introduced itself into the school Cadet Air Force Aleppo, set aside cadets Sunnis and Alawites and massacred 80 Alawite cadets under the fatwa of Ibn Taymiyya. The Muslim Brotherhood have paid dearly in 1982 in Hama, a stronghold of the Brotherhood, the uncle of the current President exterminated  by making perhaps 20,000 dead. Sectarian violence have never really stopped but that does not interest the West because there was at that time no oil and gas agenda for Syria, or any agenda against Iran.

It is said that the regime is brutal and it is obviously incredibly brutal, but it is not  brutal by itself. Syria has risen from the Ottoman occupation and its methods of skinning alive, the French Mandate from 1920 to 1943, former Nazi refugees from 1945 who became advisers and counselors and then the KGB. It is obvious that there is nothing to expect from this regime in human rights, democratic reforms … But there is nothing to expect either from Islamist rebels who want to take power and who have a fatwa allowing them to  organize the genocide of the Alawites.   And elsewhere are we expecting something of Saudi Arabia in terms of Human Rights?

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Posted in Syria, Syrian Opposition

This Is Not a Revolution

Posted on October 27, 2012 | Comments Off on This Is Not a Revolution

The New-york review of books|

November 8, 2012
Hussein Agha and Robert Malley|

All lies and jest
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
—Paul Simon

Darkness descends upon the Arab world. Waste, death, and destruction attend a fight for a better life. Outsiders compete for influence and settle accounts. The peaceful demonstrations with which this began, the lofty values that inspired them, become distant memories. Elections are festive occasions where political visions are an afterthought. The only consistent program is religious and is stirred by the past. A scramble for power is unleashed, without clear rules, values, or endpoint. It will not stop with regime change or survival. History does not move forward. It slips sideways.

Games occur within games: battles against autocratic regimes, a Sunni–Shiite confessional clash, a regional power struggle, a newly minted cold war. Nations divide, minorities awaken, sensing a chance to step out of the state’s confining restrictions. The picture is blurred. These are but fleeting fragments of a landscape still coming into its own, with only scrappy hints of an ultimate destination. The changes that are now believed to be essential are liable to be disregarded as mere anecdotes on an extended journey.

New or newly invigorated actors rush to the fore: the ill-defined “street,” prompt to mobilize, just as quick to disband; young protesters, central activists during the uprising, roadkill in its wake. The Muslim Brothers yesterday dismissed by the West as dangerous extremists are now embraced and feted as sensible, businesslike pragmatists. The more traditionalist Salafis, once allergic to all forms of politics, are now eager to compete in elections. There are shadowy armed groups and militias of dubious allegiance and unknown benefactors as well as gangs, criminals, highwaymen, and kidnappers.

Alliances are topsy-turvy, defy logic, are unfamiliar and shifting. Theocratic regimes back secularists; tyrannies promote democracy; the US forms partnerships with Islamists; Islamists support Western military intervention. Arab nationalists side with regimes they have long combated; liberals side with Islamists with whom they then come to blows. Saudi Arabia backs secularists against the Muslim Brothers and Salafis against secularists. The US is allied with Iraq, which is allied with Iran, which supports the Syrian regime, which the US hopes to help topple. The US is also allied with Qatar, which subsidizes Hamas, and with Saudi Arabia, which funds the Salafis who inspire jihadists who kill Americans wherever they can.

In record time, Turkey evolved from having zero problems with its neighbors to nothing but problems with them. It has alienated Iran, angered Iraq, and had a row with Israel. It virtually is at war with Syria. Iraqi Kurds are now Ankara’s allies, even as it wages war against its own Kurds and even as its policies in Iraq and Syria embolden secessionist tendencies in Turkey itself.

For years, Iran opposed Arab regimes, cultivating ties with Islamists with whose religious outlook it felt it could make common cause. As soon as they take power, the Islamists seek to reassure their former Saudi and Western foes and distance themselves from Tehran despite Iran’s courting. The Iranian regime will feel obliged to diversify its alliances, reach out to non-Islamists who feel abandoned by the nascent order and appalled by the budding partnership between Islamists and the US. Iran has experience in such matters: for the past three decades, it has allied itself with secular Syria even as Damascus suppressed its Islamists.

When goals converge, motivations differ. The US cooperated with Gulf Arab monarchies and sheikhdoms in deposing Qaddafi yesterday and in opposing Assad today. It says it must be on the right side of history. Yet those regimes do not respect at home the rights they piously pursue abroad. Their purpose is neither democracy nor open societies. They are engaged in a struggle for regional domination. What, other than treasure, can proponents of a self-styled democratic uprising find in countries whose own system of governance is anathema to the democratic project they allegedly promote?

The new system of alliances hinges on too many false assumptions and masks too many deep incongruities. It is not healthy because it cannot be real. Something is wrong. Something is unnatural. It cannot end well.

A media war that started in Egypt reaches its zenith in Syria. Each side shows only its own, amplifies the numbers, disregards the rest. In Bahrain, the opposite is true. No matter how many opponents of the regime turn up, few take notice. It does not register on the attention scale. Not long ago, footage from Libya glorified motley fighters with colorful bandanas and triumphant spiel. The real battles, bloody and often from the skies, raged elsewhere. Casualties were invisible.

Throngs gather in Tahrir Square. The camera zooms in on protesters. What about the unseen millions who stayed at home? Did they rejoice at Mubarak’s overthrow or quietly lament his departure? How do Egyptians feel about the current disorder, unrest, economic collapse, and political uncertainty? In the elections that ensued, 50 percent did not vote. Of those who did, half voted for the representative of the old order. Who will look after those who lie on the other side of the right side of history?

Most Syrians fight neither to defend the regime nor to support the opposition. They are at the receiving end of this vicious confrontation, their wishes unnoticed, their voices unheard, their fates forgotten. The camera becomes an integral part of the unrest, a tool of mobilization, propaganda, and incitement. The military imbalance favors the old regimes but is often more than compensated for by the media imbalance that favors the new forces. The former Libyan regime had Qaddafi’s bizarre rhetoric; Assad’s Syria relies on its discredited state-run media. It’s hardly a contest. In the battle for public sympathy, in the age of news-laundering, the old orders never stood a chance.

In Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Bahrain, no unifying figure of stature has emerged with the capacity to shape a new path. There is scant leadership. Where there is leadership, it tends to be by committee. Where there are committees, they emerge mysteriously to assume authority no one has granted them. More often than not, legitimacy is bestowed from abroad: the West provides respectability and exposure; Gulf Arab states supply resources and support; international organizations offer validity and succor.

Those in charge often lack the strength that comes from a clear and loyal domestic constituency; they need foreign approval and so they must be cautious, adjust their positions to what outsiders accept. Past revolutionary leaders were not driven by such considerations. For better or for worse, they were stubbornly independent and took pride in rebuffing foreign interference.

Not unlike the rulers they helped depose, Islamists placate the West. Not unlike those they replaced, who used the Islamists as scarecrows to keep the West by their side, the Muslim Brotherhood waves the specter of what might come next should it fail now: the Salafis who, for their part and not unlike the Brothers of yore, are torn between fealty to their traditions and the taste of power.

It’s a game of musical chairs. In Egypt, Salafis play the part once played by the Muslim Brotherhood; the Brotherhood plays the part once played by the Mubarak regime. In Palestine, Islamic Jihad is the new Hamas, firing rockets to embarrass Gaza’s rulers; Hamas, the new Fatah, claiming to be a resistance movement while clamping down on those who dare resist; Fatah, a version of the old Arab autocracies it once lambasted. How far off is the day when Salafis present themselves to the world as the preferable alternative to jihadists?

Egyptian politics are wedged between the triumphant mainstream Muslim Brotherhood, more hard-line Salafis, anxious non-Islamists, and remnants of the old order. As the victorious Brotherhood tries to reach an arrangement with the rest, the political future is a blur. The speed and elegance with which the new president, Mohamed Morsi, retired or sidelined the old military leaders and the quiet with which this daring move was greeted suggest that the Islamists’ confidence has grown, that they are willing to move at a faster pace.

Tunisia is a mixed tale. The transition has been largely peaceful; the an-Nahda party, which won the elections last October, offers a pragmatic, moderate face of Islamism. But its efforts to consolidate power are a source of nervousness. Mistrust between secularists and Islamists is growing; socioeconomic protests at times become violent. Salafis lurk in the wings, assailing symbols of modern society, free speech, and gender equality.

In Yemen, former president Saleh is out of power but not offstage. One war brews in the north, another in the south. Jihadists flex their muscles. The young revolutionaries who dreamed of a complete change can only watch as different factions of the same old elite rearrange the deck. Saudis, Iranians, and Qataris sponsor their own factions. Minor clashes could escalate into major confrontations. Meanwhile, US drones eliminate al-Qaeda operatives and whoever happens to be in their vicinity.

Day by day, the civil war in Syria takes on an uglier, more sectarian hue. The country has become an arena for a regional proxy war. The opposition is an eclectic assortment of Muslim Brothers, Salafis, peaceful protesters, armed militants, Kurds, soldiers who have defected, tribal elements, and foreign fighters. There is little that either the regime or the opposition won’t contemplate in their desperation to triumph. The state, society, and an ancient culture collapse. The conflict engulfs the region.

The battle in Syria also is a battle for Iraq. Sunni Arab states have not accepted the loss of Baghdad to Shiites and, in their eyes, to Safavid Iranians. A Sunni takeover in Syria will revive their colleagues’ fortunes in Iraq. Militant Iraqi Sunnis are emboldened and al-Qaeda is revitalized. A war for Iraq’s reconquest will be joined by its neighbors. The region cares about Syria. It obsesses about Iraq.

Islamists in the region await the outcome in Syria. They do not wish to bite off more than they can chew. If patience is the Islamist first principle, consolidation of gains is the second. Should Syria fall, Jordan could be next. Its peculiar demography—a Palestinian majority ruled over by a trans-Jordanian minority—has been a boon to the regime: the two communities bear deep grievances against the Hashemite rulers yet distrust each other more. That could change in the face of the unifying power of Islam for which ethnicity, in theory at least, is of little consequence.

Weaker entities may follow. In northern Lebanon, Islamist and Salafi groups actively support the Syrian opposition, with whom they may have more in common than with Lebanese Shiites and Christians. From the outset a fragile contraption, Lebanon is pulled in competing directions: some would look to a new Sunni-dominated Syria with envy, perhaps a yearning to join. Others would look to it with fright and despair.

In Bahrain, a Sunni monarchy intent on retaining power and privilege violently suppresses the majority Shiites. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states come to their ally’s rescue. The West, so loud elsewhere, is mute. When Libya holds elections, Islamists do not fare well; their opponents believe they finally achieved their one victory in a country that has no tradition of political openness, lacks a state, and is sated with armed militias that regularly engage in deadly clashes. An octogenarian leadership in Saudi Arabia struggles with a looming transition, lives in fear of Iran and its own population, doles out cash to fend off dissatisfaction. How long can all this last?

Mohamed Morsi; drawing by John Springs

In some countries, regimes will be toppled, in others they will survive. Forces that have been defeated are unlikely to have been crushed. They will regroup and try to fight back. The balance of power is not clear-cut. Victory does not necessarily strengthen the victor.

Those in power occupy the state, but it is an asset that might prove of limited value. Inherently weak and with meager legitimacy, Arab states tend to be viewed by their citizens with suspicion, extraneous bodies superimposed on more deeply rooted, familiar social structures with long, continuous histories. They enjoy neither the acceptability nor the authority of their counterparts elsewhere. Where uprisings occur, the ability of these states to function weakens further as their coercive power erodes.

To be in the seat of power need not mean to exercise power. In Lebanon, the pro-West March 14 coalition, invigorated while in opposition, was deflated after it formed the cabinet in 2005. Hezbollah has never been more on the defensive or enjoyed less moral authority than since it became the major force behind the government. Those out of power face fewer constraints. They have the luxury to denounce their rulers’ failings, the freedom that comes with the absence of responsibility. In a porous, polarized Middle East, they enjoy access to readily available outside support.

To be in charge, to operate along formal, official, state channels, can encumber as much as empower. Syria’s military withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005 did not curb its influence; Damascus simply exerted it more surreptitiously, without public glare and accountability. Tomorrow, a similar pattern might hold in Syria itself. The regime’s collapse would be a significant blow to Iran and Hezbollah, but one can wonder how devastating. The day after such a long and violent conflict is more likely to witness chaos than stability, a scramble for power rather than a strong central government. Defeated and excluded political forces will seek help from any source and solicit foreign patrons regardless of their identity. To exploit disorder is a practice in which Iran and Hezbollah are far better versed than their foes. Without a Syrian regime whose interests they need to take into account and whose constraints they need to abide by, they might be able to act more freely.

The Muslim Brotherhood prevails. The newly elected Egyptian president comes from their ranks. They rule in Tunisia. They control Gaza. They have gained in Morocco. In Syria and Jordan too, their time might come.

The Muslim Brotherhood prevails: those are weighty and, not long ago, unthinkable, unutterable words. The Brothers survived eighty years in the underground and the trenches, hounded, tortured, and killed, forced to compromise and bide their time. The fight between Islamism and Arab nationalism has been long, tortuous, and bloody. Might the end be near?

World War I and the ensuing European imperial ascent halted four centuries of Islamic Ottoman rule. With fits and starts, the next century would be that of Arab nationalism. To many, this was an alien, unnatural, inauthentic Western import—a deviation that begged to be rectified. Forced to adjust their views, the Islamists acknowledged the confines of the nation-state and irreligious rule. But their targets remained the nationalist leaders and their disfigured successors.

Last year, they helped topple the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt, the pale successors of the original nationalists. The Islamists had more worthy and dangerous adversaries in mind. They struck at Ben Ali and Mubarak, but the founding fathers—Habib Bourguiba and Gamal Abdel Nasser—were in their sights. They reckon they have corrected history. They have revived the era of musulmans sans frontières.

What will all this mean? The Islamists are loath either to share power achieved at high cost or to squander gains so patiently acquired. They must balance among their own restive rank-and-file, a nervous larger society, and an undecided international community. The temptation to strike fast pulls in one direction; the desire to reassure tugs in another. In general, they will prefer to eschew coercion, awaken the people to their dormant Islamic nature rather than foist it upon them. They will try to do it all: rule, enact social transformations incrementally, and be true to themselves without becoming a menace to others.

The Islamists propose a bargain. In exchange for economic aid and political support, they will not threaten what they believe are core Western interests: regional stability, Israel, the fight against terror, energy flow. No danger to Western security. No commercial war. The showdown with the Jewish state can wait. The focus will be on the slow, steady shaping of Islamic societies. The US and Europe may voice concern, even indignation at such a domestic makeover. But they’ll get over it. Just as they got over the austere fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia. Bartering—as in, we’ll take care of your needs, let us take care of ours—Islamists feel, will do the trick. Looking at history, who can blame them?

Mubarak was toppled in part because he was viewed as excessively subservient to the West, yet the Islamists who succeed him might offer the West a sweeter because more sustainable deal. They think they can get away with what he could not. Stripped of his nationalist mantle, Mubarak had little to fall back on; he was a naked autocrat. The Muslim Brothers by comparison have a much broader program—moral, social, cultural. Islamists feel they can still follow their convictions, even if they are not faithfully anti-Western. They can moderate, dilute, defer.

Unlike the close allies of the West they have replaced, Islamists are heard calling for NATO military intervention in Libya yesterday, Syria today, wherever they entertain the hope to take over tomorrow. One can use the distant infidels, who will not stay around for long, to jettison local infidels, who have hounded them for decades. Rejection of foreign interference, once a centerpiece of the post-independence outlook, is no longer the order of the day. It is castigated as counterrevolutionary.

What the US sought to obtain over decades through meddling and imposition, it might now obtain via acquiescence: Arab regimes that will not challenge Western interests. Little wonder that many in the region are persuaded that America was complicit in the Islamists’ rise, a quiet partner in what has been happening.

Everywhere, Israel faces the rise of Islam, of militancy, of radicalism. Former allies are gone; erstwhile foes reign supreme. But the Islamists have different and broader objectives. They wish to promote their Islamic project, which means consolidating their rule where they can, refraining from alienating the West, and avoiding perilous and precocious clashes with Israel. In this scheme, the presence of a Jewish state is and will remain intolerable, but it is probably the last piece of a larger puzzle that may never be fully assembled.

The quest to establish an independent, sovereign Palestinian state was never at the heart of the Islamist project. Hamas, the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, harbors grander, less territorially confined but also less immediately achievable designs. Despite Hamas’s circumlocutions and notwithstanding its political evolution, it never truly deviated from its original view—the Jewish state is illegitimate and all the land of historic Palestine is inherently Islamic. If the current balance of power is not in your favor, wait and do what you can to take care of the disparity. The rest is tactics.

The Palestinian question has been the preserve of the Palestinian national movement. As of the late 1980s, its declared goal became a sovereign state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Alternatives, whether interim or temporary, have been flatly rejected. The Islamists’ plan may be more ambitious and grandiose but more flexible and elastic. For them, a diminutive, amputated state, hemmed in by Israel, dependent on its goodwill, predicated on its recognition, and entailing an end to the conflict, is not worth fighting for.

They can live with a range of transient arrangements: an interim agreement; a long-term truce, or hudna; a possible West Bank confederation with Jordan, with Gaza moving toward Egypt. All will advance the further Islamization of Palestinian society. All permit Hamas to turn to its social, cultural, and religious agenda, its true calling. All allow Hamas to maintain the conflict with Israel without having to wage it. None violates Hamas’s core tenets. It can put its ultimate goal on hold. Someday, the time for Palestine, for Jerusalem may come. Not now.

In the age of Arab Islamism, Israel may find Hamas’s purported intransigence more malleable than Fatah’s ostensible moderation. Israel fears the Islamic awakening. But the more immediate threat could be to the Palestinian national movement. There is no energy left in the independence project; associated with the old politics and long-worn-out leaderships, it has expended itself. Fatah and the PLO will have no place in the new world. The two-state solution is no one’s primary concern. It might expire not because of violence, settlements, or America’s inexpert role. It might perish of indifference…..

Read More: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/08/not-revolution/?pagination=false

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Posted in Egypt, EU-Syria, Iran-Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Middle East Geopolitics, Religion, Russia, Syria, Syrian Opposition, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkey-Syria, Yemen

Is the Glass Half Full for Syria’s Assad?

Posted on October 11, 2012 | Comments Off on Is the Glass Half Full for Syria’s Assad?
He may no longer control huge swathes of Syrian territory, but his forces appear nowhere near collapse. Over the past 18 months, at least, the dictator has beaten the odds
By Tony Karon | @tonykaron | October 11, 2012 | 1

Winter is coming, and with it the near certainty that the lot of millions of suffering Syrians will get substantially worse. Some 335,000 and counting find themselves in refugee camps in neighboring Turkey and Jordan, the lucky among them in pre-fabricated structures provided in some of the Turkish camps, the vast majority huddled in tents. But for millions more back home, the brutal ravages of an 18-month civil war that has claimed as many as 30,000 lives must now be endured under the growing privations of a siege economy imposed by war and sanctions, the winter chill and shortages of everything from fuel to medicines and foodstuffs raising the specter of disease and hunger along with the threat of instant death from rockets and bombs.

But one group of Syrians may be greeting the oncoming winter with a grim sense of satisfaction: As bad as things may be, President Bashar al-Assad and his entourage — and those who are willing to fight and die to keep in power — know that for them, things could be a whole lot worse. Sure, the regime has lost control of vast swathes of territory that appear to be intractably under the control of insurgents. But if the rebels are able to control much of the countryside, they remain hopelessly outgunned in the head-to-head fight for the major cities, with no sign of any heavy weapons deliveries from their allies abroad, much less a NATO cavalry riding to the rescue as it had done in Libya. The rebels continue to be plagued by divisions, and Western powers are increasingly anxious over the influence of salafist extremists within the armed insurgency.

The expected collapse of Assad’s armed forces has failed to materialize, and defections to the rebel side have slowed to a trickle. Instead of signaling an imminent denouement, the incremental gains and losses of each side along the shifting front-lines suggests a strategic stalemate, in which neither side is capable of delivering the other a knockout blow. Against that backdrop, the latest developments on Syria’s borders with Turkey and Jordan in recent days and weeks appear to be symptoms of that stalemate, rather than signs of imminent outside intervention. ”If this continues we will respond with greater force,” said Turkey’s military chief, General Necdet Özel, Wednesday, during a visit to the Turkish border town of Akçakale, which had suffered six days of artillery fire from Syria. Turkey had responded in kind to the shelling that began last week, and on Wednesday it intercepted and inspected (and later released, after confiscating communication equipment) a Syria-bound civilian airliner on suspicion of carrying weapons from Moscow.

But for all Turkey’s bluster — and NATO’s obligatory vows “to protect and defend Turkey if necessary” — the fact that the provocative shelling from the Syrian side continued for six days suggests that Assad is calling the bluff of his old friend, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A majority of the Turkish public opposes sending troops into Syria; the war has already imposed an economic burden on Turkey through the cutoff of trade and the refugee crisis, and it has also boosted the fortunes of the separatist PKK insurgency among Turkey’s Kurds as well as raising tensions with its Alawite and Alevi minorities. The Western powers without whose active involvement most analysts concur Turkey might find its capabilities stretched by a solo Syria intervention show no appetite for that option.

Alarmed by the sense that Washington is preparing for a scenario in which the Syria war drags on for many months yet, some of Turkey’s recent moves may point to a growing urgency in Ankara about quickly resolving the Syria crisis, rather than living with the consequences of a long war.  Foreign minister Ahmed Davutoglu last weekend publicly nominated Assad’s deputy president, Farouk al-Sharaa, as an acceptable figure to head a transitional government, a suggestion quickly rejected by rebel groups.

Even the reported deployment of some 150 U.S. soldiers in neighboring Jordan to help that country plan for various Syria contingencies is unlikely to unduly trouble Damascus. Reports of the deployment suggests its purpose is to help “insulate” a key regional ally from the fallout on its own terrain from Syria’s civil war, and perhaps to prepare for an emergency contingency of securing Syria’s stock of chemical weapons should the regime be in danger of losing control of them. The political consensus in Washington opposes direct military intervention in Syria, even if there are differences over the question of facilitating arms transfers to the rebels.

Insulating Jordan could even be a two-way street, not only preventing the Syrian military from conducting cross-border operations but also preventing anti-Assad insurgents using it as a sanctuary from which to stage attacks: The salafist current in the Syrian insurgency would, in the long-term, pose as much threat to the Hashemite monarchy as to the Assad dictatorship, and Jordan hardly wants jihadists operating on its own soil, even if their immediate target is in Damascus. It may also want to avoid the sort of artillery barrages that raged across the Turkey-Syria border last week, which are likely to have begun because the border territory on the Syrian side is in rebel hands, and Turkey has been allowing the rebels to operate from its territory. Unable to directly retake that ground, Assad’s forces have instead resorted to shelling rebel held border areas, and apparently deliberately firing into Turkey, too.

Things are hardly looking good for Assad at this point.  His prospects for defeating the rebellion and restoring control over all of Syria appear remote. He governs by naked force and fear of the alternative, and even then, over a shrinking domain. Still, he’s far from beaten, and if anything, the more immediate danger may be that Syria itself is breaking up into warring fiefdoms along the lines seen in neighboring Lebanon from the 1970s until 1992.

Assad’s opponents, of course, had hoped that he would, by now, have been removed from the scene, either by exile, imprisonment or death.  But the regime itself appears to have either chosen, or stumbled onto,  the terrain of sectarian civil war — the “Milosevic Option” we dubbed it last January – stirring fears of an extremist-led Sunni rebellion to rally his own Alawite sect and other minorities, and even the urban Sunni bourgeoisie, and then making that a self-fulfilling prophecy by violently suppressing peaceful protests. Assad also coolly assessed the regional and international strategic balance and concluded that he could count on strong backing from Iran and Russia against any attempt to dispatch him a la Gaddafi.

Milosevic, of course,  eventually got his comeuppance at the hands of his own people, and died in a prison cell at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It may well be that a similar fate eventually awaits Assad. But Milosevic was ousted eight years after the beginning of the wars that ended Yugoslavia, and in the interim, the Serbian strongman had succeeded in making himself indispensable to the process ending the very wars he’d played a major role in starting. That moment came when ending the war became a greater priority in the minds of the global power brokers than changing the power arrangements. Assad if far from achieving that goal, and he may never do so. But with the second anniversary of the Syrian rebellion just over four months away, he may have more reason for satisfaction over the course of events, at this point,  than do his adversaries.
Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/10/11/is-the-glass-half-full-for-syrias-assad/#ixzz28zoLNjxO

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Posted in Russia, Syria, Syrian Opposition, Turkey, Turkey-Syria, US-Syria

On Syria and way beyond, an interview with Guenter Meyer

Posted on September 28, 2012 | Comments Off on On Syria and way beyond, an interview with Guenter Meyer

On Syria and way beyond
By Lars Schall

One of Europe’s most outstanding experts on the Middle East, Professor Guenter Meyer, addresses in this exclusive in-depth interview for Asia Times Online the Syrian civil war and its international dimensions.

Professor Dr Guenter Meyer has for almost 40 years carried out empirical research on the social, economic and political development in Arab countries and has published more than 150 books and articles, especially on Syria, Egypt, Yemen and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. He directs the Center for Research on the Arab World at the Johannes Gutenberg

University in Mainz, Germany, which is one of the world’s leading information centers for the dissemination of news and research on the Middle East. Professor Meyer is chairman of the German Middle East Studies Association (DAVO), president of the European Association for Middle Eastern Studies (EURAMES), and chairman of the International Advisory Council of the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES).

Lars Schall: Professor Meyer, since our perceptions are framed by the media, how do you feel about the coverage of the conflict in Syria in the Western media?

Guenter Meyer: My perceptions are not only framed by the media, but also by my own experience in Syria and by contact with Syrians, other Arab experts and political activists of the Arab spring. The information I receive from these sources and also from Arab news media covers a much wider range of views and assessments than the rather one-sided reporting in the majority of the Western media.

LS: What kind of things do you have to criticize in particular?

GM: Until recently mainstream reporting in most Western media was clearly biased. It focused mainly on the distinction between the “bad” Syrian regime, which has to be toppled, and the “good” opposition, which has to be supported because it is fighting against a corrupt, authoritarian and brutal government. This perception has changed gradually during the past few months. More and more media are reporting about the conflicting interests of the highly fragmented oppositional groups as well as about the atrocities of the rebel groups and their crimes committed against the civilian population, especially against Alawites but also against Christians.

The influx of Salafis, jihadis and followers of al-Qaeda and the expectation that radical Sunni Islamists will control Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad are disturbing themes that are now also reported in Western media. After a long delay, the news coverage of the development in Syria does no longer focus only on spreading the political view of the “Friends of Syria”, but has started to provide a more comprehensive picture about the highly complex situation in Syria.

Nevertheless, there is still a bias when it comes to the reporting of massacres. The majority of Western media – and also Western governments – tend to take the information offered by oppositional sources for granted that government forces, in particular the Shabiha militia, are responsible for the cruel killings of civilians, many of them women and children. At the same time, evidences of a systematic “massacre marketing strategy” [1] by the rebels are rejected as propaganda of the Assad regime. It is obvious that in many cases, especially in the massacres with the highest number of victims at Houla [2] and Daraya [3] oppositional forces committed brutal crimes against civilians in order just to blame the government for these massacres. Through this strategy they try to manipulate public opinion and influence political decision making against the Syrian regime.

LS: Would you say that those who want to explore the interests that collide in the conflict in Syria would do well to examine the geopolitical importance of Syria for the Eurasian energy chessboard? I mean, ultimately Syria is a main transport hub for future oil and gas pipelines, right?

GM: Whenever you try to analyze political conflicts in the Middle East and get to the bottom you are likely to find oil or gas. The present conflict has been linked to Syria’s role as transit country for Iranian gas export. Last year, a contract was signed between Iran, Iraq and Syria to build a natural gas pipeline by 2016 from Iran’s giant South Pars field to the Syrian Mediterranean coast in order to supply Lebanon and Europa with gas. As a result Turkey would loose her highly profitable and political important position as the dominant transit country for gas from Russia and the Caspian Basin. [4]

Could this expected competition have been a reason for the Turkish government to give up its good relations with the Syrian regime and support the opposition? This is rather unlikely. During the last few years, Iran has signed numerous Memoranda of Understanding and contracts with foreign governments and companies to exploit Iranian gas and oil fields and to build pipelines. None of these schemes has been executed, as a result of the US embargo against Iran. Therefore, it has to be supposed that the contract to build a pipeline to Syria was signed mainly for domestic political reasons of the Iranian government. One has also to question the economic viability of this project. Why should gas from Southern Iran be exported to Europe when the highest demand for Iranian gas comes from neighboring Pakistan and India?

There is another project that would make much more sense. In 2009, Qatar had proposed to build a pipeline from the emirate’s giant gas fields via Syria to Turkey to be connected with other pipelines to Europe. [5] Based on this scheme, Assad loyalists had claimed that the unrest in Syria is not an uprising but a Qatari-instigated aggression designed to dominate the country and ensure Qatari access to the Mediterranean Sea for its gas export. However, this argument can be regarded as a conspiracy theory. [6]

LS: Are the discovered energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean and Levantine Basin also of interest here?

GM: The untapped natural gas finds are extremely important for Israel, which will no longer have to rely on the insecure supply of gas from Egypt. The discovered gas reserves are so huge that Israel can not only achieve energy independence but will also benefit from lucrative export deals. Further gas and even oil reserves are expected to be discovered in the offshore areas of Syria and Lebanon. [7] Nevertheless, the newly discovered resources have no direct impact on the present crisis in Syria.

LS: When it comes to the Western powers, are they especially intended to weaken the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis?

GM: There are numerous statements from the US government which stress the geostrategic importance of the ousting of the Syrian regime so that both Iran and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon will loose their most important ally. The Iranian and Syrian supply of military equipment to Hezbollah will no longer be possible. The weakening of the military force of this Shiite organization means that its impact on the power structure of Lebanon and especially its ability to attack Israel will dramatically decline. [8] The fall of Bashar Al-Assad will also weaken the influence of Russia and China in the Middle East and strengthen the role of the US and Saudi Arabia in this region.

LS: Are we currently experiencing a “Balkanisation of Syria” or a “Balkanisation of the Middle East” in general?

GM: During the last decades Syria has been a secular state with a strong focus on pan-Arabism. Now the ethnic and religious frictions have become a dominant factor and threaten the unity of the Syrian state. The worst case scenario would indeed be a “Balkanization” for Syria, which means that the country is split into a northeastern Kurdish state providing a safe haven for the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] and a nightmare for Turkey, an Alawite state in the western mountains and the coastal area, a tiny Druze enclave in the south, and a Sunni state in central Syria. Only the last one would probably have sufficient economic potential to exist on the long run.

Other experts suggest a “Lebanonization” scenario that pins down the Syrian army and weakens the central government in Damascus. [9] The model of an “Iraqization” of Syria might also have chances to become reality, with several autonomous or semi-autonomous regions. Similar demands are also raised in the oil-rich east of Libya, where large parts of the population no longer want to be dominated by the center of the political power in Tripolitania, the western region of Libya.

LS: Do we see in Syria a similar situation as earlier in Libya or is it very different?

GM: The situation in Libya was completely different. Gaddafi’s military forces were far too weak to resist the combined military power of NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] which was authorized by the UN Security Council to intervene in Libya. Large parts of the population and almost the entire east of Libya opposed the authoritarian regime so that foreign advisers were able to move freely in this part of the country, support the oppositional fighter groups with heavy weapons and train them how to use the sophisticated military equipment.

Bashar Al-Assad, on the other hand, can rely on the excellently trained and best-equipped Republican Guards and the 4th Armored Division – elite troops who are almost entirely Alawites. The Syrian air force and in particular the air defense force are equipped with the latest Russian military technology. A recent analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came to the conclusion that the Syrian air defense is five times more sophisticated than [former Libyan leader Muammar] Gaddafi’s. [10]

A military offensive by foreign troops to oust Bashar al-Assad would be an extremely risky and expensive operation. In addition, there is no chance that Russia and China will accept a UN resolution for a military intervention in Syria. Under these circumstances, the US, France and the UK have so far only resorted to training opposition fighters on Turkish territory close to the northwestern border of Syria and to supplying them with communication means and other non-lethal equipment. At the same time, Iran is using civilian aircraft to fly military personnel and large quantities of weapons across Iraqi airspace to help Syria crush the uprising, according to a Western intelligence report seen by Reuters. The Iraqi government, however, denies that such flights are taking place.

LS:We know that forces of al-Qaeda are fighting on Syrian soil. Ed Husain, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote about this:

By and large, Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are tired, divided, chaotic, and ineffective. Feeling abandoned by the West, rebel forces are increasingly demoralized … Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now. [11]

That’s quite a statement after more than 10 years of the so called “War on Terror”, isn’t it?

GM: Indeed! There are many similar reports – among others from the Eastern Euphrates valley near the Iraqi border – where opposition fighters had for several months tried in vain to take over garrisons from the Syrian army. At last, they asked an al-Qaeda group for support. As a result of their attacks the army withdrew from this base within a few days.

The al-Qaeda fighters and jihadis are not only from Arab countries, especially from Iraq, Libya, the Arabian Peninsula, but also from Pakistan and include even radical Islamists from European countries. Their number is rapidly growing. This is the major reason why the US government has been so reluctant to supply the opposition fighters with surface-to-air missiles, which might end up in the hands of al-Qaeda or Hezbollah. It has only recently been reported that the Free Syrian Army acquired 14 Stinger missiles. So far, however, it has not been confirmed that these weapons were used to attack Syrian fighter planes and helicopter gunships [12].

LS: What kind of importance has it that al-Qaeda is a Sunni terrorist organization?

GM: About 70% of the Syrian population are Sunnis. Many of them regard the ruling Alawites not as real Muslims. The same applies to al-Qaeda, which demands that all Muslims should unite in order to eradicate the Alawite “infidels”. However, this does not mean that al-Qaeda and other foreign jihadis are supported by all Syrian Sunnis. Quite the contrary. The vast majority is rejecting both the extremist views and the intervention of radical foreign Islamists.

LS: It is said that Syria’s ruler, Bashar al-Assad, could use chemical weapons. What is your view on that?

GM: The regime has assured that it will never use chemical or biological weapons. This statement can be regarded as reliable because the use of weapons of mass destruction or even the movement of such weapons would mean “crossing the red line”, as President Obama threatened. A massive military intervention against the Syrian government would be the consequence [13]

However, there are detailed reports that NATO powers in coordination with Saudi Arabia are preparing a fake attack with chemical weapons in southern Syria for which the Assad regime will be blamed in order to justify a massive international invasion. [14]

LS: Do we observe in the Syrian conflict certain developments like under a microscope: the US can no longer afford financially some certain types of adventures and has reached the limits of its influence, while the Russians and the Chinese don’t want to be told what to do in the Middle East?

GM: The financial aspect is very important from the perspective of the US government, but there is also President Obama’s promise “to bring our boys back home”. A new American involvement in another war is extremely unpopular, especially during the present presidential election campaign. Concerning Russia and China, they have important geostrategic interests in Syria. There is no compelling reason why they should give up this comfortable and influential position.

LS: With regard to the external influences, it was written recently that European and Arab states pay high government officials, if they turn away from Assad. [15] Your thoughts on this?

GM: This applies not only to leading representatives of the Syrian regime, but especially to members of the Syrian army. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have publicly announced that they will spend at least US$300 million to pay the salaries of the oppositional fighters and also financial incentives to motivate soldiers from all ranks to defect from the military forces and to join the oppositional troops. Under these circumstances, it is really astounding that only so few officers, generals and leading members of the regime have defected until now. This underlines how stable the power of the government, the military and the security services still is.

LS: How would a European attitude look like be considered worthy of support?

GM: Let me start by explaining why the present European attitude is not worthy of support. The leading governments of the EU have discarded a political solution of the Syrian conflict and opted instead for the – at least indirect – support for a military ousting of the Assad regime. They are co-operating in particular with the Syrian National Council (SNC), which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and which consists mainly of Syrians who have lived for a long time in Western countries, especially in the US. These people want to rule post-Assad Syria, but they are by no means accepted by the majority of the population living in Syria.

In Berlin, for example, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) in cooperation with the US Institute of Peace arranged the facilities for members of the Syrian opposition and international experts to meet in order to plan for “The Day After”. [16] The result is an agenda to create a new political system in Syria according to Western democratic standards and values after the fall of the present regime.

This plan was designed without any knowledge about the future distribution of power among the various forces that might be involved in the toppling of the government, and with only a little participation of the numerous oppositional groups inside Syria. It is not surprising that such a plan was rejected by members of the inner Syrian opposition as an “academic exercise” with no relevance at a time when the outcome of the Syrian crisis is still completely open. The same applies to various government-sponsored committees planning the Syrian future in Paris, Rome, Istanbul and Cairo.

The frequent demands that the extremely heterogeneous opposition should unite have turned out to be futile. This applies also to the latest attempt of the French President Francois Hollande, who also offered to recognize a new Syrian government-in-exile. The proposal was immediately rejected by the US government as untimely due to the lack of unity among the opposition groups.

Much more relevant for the present development of the crisis is the proposal to establish a safe haven for Syrian refugees. This was first demanded by the Turkish government and was recently supported by the French president. At present, more than 80,000 Syrians have arrived in refugee camps in Turkey; 100,000 have been declared by the Erdogan government as the maximum number of refugees to be accepted on Turkish territory. Additional refugees have to be accommodated in a safe buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey. The same has been proposed along the Jordanian border.

At first sight such a demand might appear to be rather harmless and unproblematic, involving only a limited military intervention. However, the establishment of a safe buffer zone in Syria can only be achieved by a full-scale war of NATO and allied troops from Arab countries against the strong Syrian armed forces. To protect the refugees in the safe haven, a no-fly zone has to be established, which can only be controlled after NATO has gained air superiority over the total Syrian territory.

This would involve the destruction of the Syrian air force with about 400 fighter planes and the huge arsenal of highly sophisticated anti-air craft missiles. The size, expenditure and duration of such an intervention would be tremendous as the MIT analysis showed. [10].

One has also to keep in mind that in legal terms such an attack could be carried out under the rather controversial international norm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). But its application has to be approved by a resolution of the UN Security Council, where a veto from Russia and China can be taken for granted.

Coming back to the question about the position which should be supported: the most sensible position and the only one that would allow a peaceful solution is still the [Kofi] Annan plan [proposed by the former United Nations secretary general] involving not only the opposition and their supporters, but also the governments in Damascus and Teheran in the negotiation about the future development of Syria. However, there is no chance that this proposal will be accepted by the opposition in exile and its supporters in the US, the Arab League, Turkey and the EU.

LS: What do you think about the helping hand that the Bundesnachrichtendienst [BND – Germany’s foreign intelligence agency] is giving to the rebels?

GM: The German newspaper Bild had revealed that members of the BND stationed on ships near the Syrian and Lebanese coast and at the NATO base near Adana collect intelligence on the movement of Syrian government troops and share this information with the forces of the Free Syrian Army. [17] The same applies to agents of the British intelligence service based in Cyprus and also to the activities of US intelligence agents and spy satellites.

more …

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Posted in EU-Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Middle East Geopolitics, Syria, Syrian Opposition, Turkey, United Nations, US-Syria

Turkey is gearing down in Syria

Posted on September 27, 2012 | Comments Off on Turkey is gearing down in Syria

Mehmet Ali Birand |

Turkey is hitting the brakes on the issue of Syria, some news reports claim. As a matter of fact, the voice of the government is not as loud as it used to be. It looks as if the tempo has slowed down. I think Turkey is doing the right thing.

At the beginning, mostly with the agitation of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, we set off as a large group headed by Washington and Europe. For the sake of humanity, despite Russia and Iran, the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship should have been brought to an end. If need be, there would be embargoes imposed and no-fly buffer zones formed, leaving al-Assad with no breathing space.

And it was our roaring voice that was heard the most.

We yelled and cried a lot and have been dragging him through the mud until now. We gave him five- or six-month deadlines. It didn’t happen. We raised our voice more. We thought he would not be able to resist too long and would leave in a few months; it didn’t happen. We postponed the deadline to one to two years; again, it didn’t happen.

We opened our doors; we accepted Syrian refugees. We said we would be able to handle them until their numbers reach 50,000. Now, they are reaching 100,000. But, they are still flowing in; the costs are reaching $400 million. Nobody seems to be willing to contribute either.

We provided facilities for the Syrian opposition in our lands. Not knowing most of the details, we did what we could. Then we saw that their power was not sufficient. On top of that, all of a sudden, we found ourselves being accused of “arming the Syrian opposition, providing bases for them.”

Frankly, we jumped into dangerous waters first, thinking we were leading other nations that we assumed would jump together; however, we looked back and saw that no one was behind us. We have been left all alone. Moreover, the Washington that set off together with us is now holding us back. It wanted us to calm down. It urged us not to conduct a military intervention.

Well, why? Why did the calculations not come out as we expected?

First, the presidential elections in the United States are close. U.S. President Barack Obama does not want to take any risks. There is no guarantee after the elections either. Regardless of who sits in the White House, nobody is in favor of a military intervention. Because the American public does not want to send its children to wars in Middle Eastern deserts and spend trillions of dollars anymore. It is fed up with continuous casualties and losses. The Iraq and Afghanistan experiences have hurt everyone.

Another reason why the West took the government change in Syria so slowly is the worries over the Christians living in the country, and more importantly, the questions of Israel on who will rule Syria after al-Assad.

When questions such as “What if after al-Assad, Islamic fundamentalists take over power and end secularism?” started being asked, this time both the United States and Europe hit the brakes.

Turkey raised its voice, it cried; it said, “Help the Syrian people for the sake of humanity.” It cried, “You are committing crime against humanity;” nobody listened.

It did not serve anybody’s interest to upset the equilibrium Syria had set up.

Especially when Iran stood behind al-Assad with all its power, the Baath government nowadays has been able to breathe again. It is indefinite how long this will last.

Ankara used to issue a statement almost every week. When the situation is like this, voices are hushed. It was said that the number of Syrian refugees was not to increase at this pace. The Syrian opposition has said it has moved its headquarters from Turkish soil to the liberated zones in Syria.

We will now proceed in a lower gear as we now have to make a turn after speeding excessively in the beginning.

September/27/2012

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-is-gearing-down-in-syria.aspx?pageID=449&nID=31056&NewsCatID=405

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

Egypt’s Morsi resets ties with US

Posted on September 24, 2012 | Comments Off on Egypt’s Morsi resets ties with US

By M K Bhadrakumar | 25 September 2012

The confusion in the American mind about Egypt ended this past weekend, a mere nine days since President Barack Obama made the famous remark in a television interview that he wasn’t sure of post-Hosni Mubarak Egypt being the United States’ ally.

The confusion actually arose when US National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor scrambled to clarify that “ally” is a “legal term of art”, whereas Egypt is a “long-standing and close partner” of the United States, and, thereupon, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland butted in to contradict both Obama and Vietor by insisting Egypt was indeed a “major non-NATO ally”.

In an interview with The New York Times on Saturday, Egyptian
President Mohamed Morsi offered to clear up the confusion. Asked whether Egypt was an ally, Morsi smilingly remarked: “It depends on your definition of an ally.” He then helpfully suggested that the two countries were “real friends”.

Growing up with the Brothers
Now, as Morsi probably intended, the thing about “real friends” is that they don’t expect either side to fawn, as a poodle might do by wagging its tail. Thus when he travels to the US to address the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, Morsi doesn’t have to meet with Obama. Yet they will remain “real friends” – although they’ve never met.

According to The New York Times, Obama cold-shouldered Morsi’s request for a meeting. Cairo maintains that it is all a scheduling problem and the planning of a visit by Morsi to Washington was work in progress. Meanwhile, Morsi has “quite a busy schedule” in New York and Obama too happens to have a “tight schedule” – this according to Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr.

In fact, Morsi’s only meeting with US officials during this week’s visit to that country may be at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (which, by the way, Obama also is attending).

There is hardly any excuse left now for the American mind to remain confused about the bitter harvest of the Arab Spring on Tahrir Square. The spin doctors who prophesied that Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood would ipso facto pursue the Mubarak track on foreign policies have scurried away.

This is especially so after watching Morsi’s astounding televised interview on Saturday, his first to the Egyptian state TV since his election in June. He spoke at some length on the Iran question, which has somehow come to be the litmus test to estimate where exactly Egypt stands as a regional power.

Morsi affirmed that it is important for Egypt to have a “strong relationship” with Iran. He described Iran as “a major player in the region that could have an active and supportive role in solving the Syrian problem”. Morsi explained his decision to include Iran in the four-member contact group that Egypt has formed – along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia – on the Syrian crisis.

Dismissing the Western opposition to engaging Iran, he said: “I don’t see the presence of Iran in this quartet as a problem, but it is a part of solving the [Syrian] problem.” He said Iran’s close proximity to Syria and Tehran’s strong ties Damascus made it “vital” in resolving the Syrian crisis.

Morsi added: “And we [Egypt] do not have a significant problem with Iran, it [Egypt-Iran relationship] is normal like with the rest of the world’s states.”

Equally, Morsi spoke defiantly in his interview with The New York Times regarding Egypt’s ties with the US and the latter’s relations with the Arab world. The overpowering message is that Cairo will no longer be bullied by Washington. He said:

  • “I grew up with the Muslim Brotherhood. I learned my principles in the Muslim Brotherhood. I learned how to love my country with the Muslim Brotherhood. I learned politics with the Brotherhood. I was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
  • “Successive American administrations essentially purchased with American taxpayer money the dislike, if not the hatred, of the peoples of the region.”
  • It was up to Washington to repair relations with the Arab world and to revitalize the alliance with Egypt.
  • The United States must respect the Arab world’s history and culture, even when that conflicts with Western values.
  • “If you [US] want to judge the performance of the Egyptian people by the standards of German or Chinese or American culture, then there is no room for judgment. When the Egyptians decide something, probably it is not appropriate for the US. When the Americans decide something, this, of course, is not appropriate for Egypt.”
  • The Arabs and Americans have “a shared objective, each to live free in their own land, according to their customs and values, in a fair and democratic fashion … [in] a harmonious, peaceful co-existence”.
  • Americans “have a special responsibility” for the Palestinians because the United States signed the 1978 Camp David accord. “As long as peace and justice are not fulfilled for the Palestinians, then the treaty remains unfulfilled.”
  • If Washington is asking Egypt to honor its treaty with Israel, Washington should also live up to its own Camp David commitment to Palestinian self-rule. The last bit in particular is ominous. Morsi could be hinting that Egypt intends to seek changes to the 1978 peace treaty. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman hurried to declare on Sunday that there was not the “slightest possibility” that Israel would accept any such changes. “We will not accept any modification of the Camp David Accords,” Lieberman said.

A ‘fast-forward’
The refrain by Western experts used to be that Egypt’s Brothers depended on US and Saudi generosity to run their government in Cairo. More important, Washington spread an impression that it enjoyed a larger-than-life influence over the New Egypt. The US was supposed to have acted as a mediator between the Egyptian military and the Brothers.

But Morsi scattered the thesis. “No, no, it is not that they [military leadership] ‘decided’ to do it [stepping down]. This is the will of the Egyptian people through the elected president, right? The president of the Arab Republic of Egypt is the commander of the armed forces. Full stop … We are behaving according to the Egyptian people’s choice and will, nothing else – is it clear?” he asked the New York Times editors.

The picture that emerges from Morsi’s stunning interview is that the US has suffered a huge setback to its regional strategy in the Middle East. The fact that Obama has shied away from meeting with Morsi this week underscores the gravity of the deep chill in the US-Egyptian ties. And Obama’s snub comes after he took the initiative to invite Morsi to visit the US and insisted it should be an early visit, even sending Deputy Secretary of State William Burns to deliver the invitation letter and thereafter following up with visits by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to Cairo.

Morsi has taken a series of steps since he took over in July, which, in retrospect, had the principal objective of conveying to Washington that he resented the US diktat and intended to follow an independent foreign policy. His decision to visit China and Iran was a calculated one, intended to signal his empathy with countries that challenged US hegemony in the Middle East and to underscore that he hoped to reduce Egypt’s dependence on the United States. But Washington kept pretending that it didn’t take notice.

However, there has been a “fast-forward” in the past 10 days, since the anti-Islam American film, the killing of the US ambassador in Benghazi and the storming of the US Embassy in Cairo by Egyptian protesters. Morsi didn’t react to the storming of the embassy for a full 36 hours. Simply put, he could sense the Arab street heaving with fury toward the US and he decided that it would be politically injudicious for him to do anything other than let the popular anger play out.

Morsi’s deafening silence or inertia provoked Obama to call him up to admonish him (according to leaked US accounts), but all that Morsi would do was to send police reinforcements to protect the embassy compound. He never condemned the storming of the embassy as such.

Living with yesterday’s tyrant
Things can never be the same again in the US-Egypt relationship. A 33-year slice of diplomatic history through which Cairo used to be Washington’s dependable ally is breaking loose and drifting to the horizon. Uncharted waters lie ahead for the US diplomacy in the Middle East. Clearly, the axis that is pivotal to the US regional strategy in the Middle East – comprising Israel and the so-called “moderate” Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, etc – cannot hold together without Egypt, and the strategy itself is in peril.

In immediate terms, the fallout is going to be serious in Syria. A Western intervention in Syria now can be virtually ruled out. On the other hand, without an intervention, a regime change will be a long haul. In turn, Turkey is going to be in a fix, having bitten more than it could chew and with the US in no mood to step in to expedite the Arab Spring in Damascus. (Obama called up Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan last week to extend moral support.)

The good thing is that the US and its allies may now be open to the idea of a national dialogue involving the Syrian government. In fact, the most recent Russian statements on Syria hint at an air of nascent expectations. On the contrary, nervousness with a touch of bitterness is already apparent in the comment by the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper on the weekend, while taking stock of the United States’ growing difficulties with Egypt’s Brothers:

Will the US president allow his legacy to bear the headline of having kept Bashar al-Assad in power? It would be a terrible legacy to leave behind, no matter how much it could be justified by such arguments as the wisdom of living with yesterday’s tyrant because today’s tyrant could be worse – and what is meant here is not just the tyrant of unruly mobs, but also the tyrants of Muslim extremism and its relations with moderate Islamism in power.

Not surprisingly, Saudi Arabia stayed away from the meeting of the quartet on Syria that Cairo hosted last Monday, without offering any explanation.

Simply put, Riyadh is unable to come to terms with Egypt’s return to the centre stage of Arab politics after a full three decades of absence during which the Saudi regime appropriated for itself Cairo’s traditional role as the throbbing heart of Arabism. Riyadh will find it painful to vacate the role as the leader of the Arab world that it got used to enjoying. Almost every single day, Saudi media connected with the regime pour calumnies on Egypt’s Brothers, even alleging lately that they are the twin brothers of al-Qaeda.

Uncontrollable anger
Again, the elaborate charade that the Saudis stage-managed – propagating the Muslim sectarian discords as the core issue on the Middle East’s political arena – is not sticking anymore, now that the two biggest Sunni and Shi’ite countries in the region – Egypt and Iran – are holding each other’s hands, demonstrating goodwill and displaying willingness to work together to address key regional issues. The worst-case scenario for the Saudi regime will be if in the coming months the Arab Spring begins its fateful journey toward Riyadh and the Arabian Peninsula, where the Brothers have been active for decades, welcomes it as a long-awaited spring.

The heart of the matter is that on a regional plane, the Iranian viewpoint that the Arab Spring is quintessentially “Islamic” stands vindicated. In an interview with the Financial Times last week, the Speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, made the stunning disclosure that Iranian diplomats had met members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria as well as the Salafis (who are being financed by the Saudis) to encourage them to accept “democratic reforms through peaceful behavior, not violence”. This made complete mockery of the Syrian logarithm as per the Saudi (and Turkish and US) estimation – Sunni militancy as the antidote to (Shi’ite) Iran’s influence in the region.

In sum, Morsi’s friendly remarks about Iran point toward a regional strategic realignment on an epic scale subsuming the contrived air of sectarian schisms, which practically no Western (or Turkish) experts could have foreseen. It is a matter of time now before Egypt-Iran relations are fully restored, putting an end to the three-decade-old rupture.

The biggest beneficiary of this paradigm shift in Middle Eastern politics is going to be Iran. Arguably, we are probably already past the point of an Israeli attack on Iran, no matter Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tilting at the windmill. In the prevailing surcharged atmosphere, the Muslim Middle East would explode into uncontrollable violence in the event of an Israeli (or US) attack on Iran.

In the event of such an attack, Egypt’s Brothers would most probably annul the peace treaty with Israel – and Jordan would be compelled to follow suit; Egypt and Jordan might sever diplomatic ties with Israel. Baghdad is seething with fury that the US and Turkey are encouraging Kurdistan to secede; Lebanon’s Hezbollah has been threatening retribution if Iran is attacked.

Even more serious than all this put together would be the domino effect of region-wide mayhem on the Arab street on the fate of the oligarchies in the Persian Gulf, which lack legitimacy and are allied with the US – and where the Brothers have been clandestinely operating for decades.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NI25Ak02.html

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Posted in Iran, Iran-Syria, Middle East Geopolitics, Syria, Syrian Opposition, Turkey, Turkey-Syria, US Middle East Politics, US-Syria

Is UN “Responsibility to Protect” on the way out?

Posted on September 23, 2012 | Comments Off on Is UN “Responsibility to Protect” on the way out?

DOUG SAUNDERS |The Globe and Mail|Published

A year and a half after the killings began, a question hangs in the air: Why haven’t we sent our soldiers to save the people of Syria from mass murder by their government?

Twenty-five years ago, that question would have been almost nonsensical. Until the end of the Cold War, the idea of sending the world’s soldiers to stop a country’s internal atrocity would almost never have been considered. Armies were used strictly for purposes of strategic interest.

And then, as a new world order emerged, we experienced a series of just such interventions, most very controversial, some successful, many facing serious opposition from some countries, and most involving Canada.

When Serbian militias were slaughtering Muslims in Bosnia, we sent troops in an attempt to prevent a larger massacre. When Slobodan Milosevic was threatening mass killings in Kosovo, we launched an attack against his forces and his capital to prevent it. When Sierra Leone was descending into butchery, we flew our soldiers in to bring stability. And when Moammar Gadhafi was poised to shoot his country’s people, we sent military planes to hold him back. Over that 16-year period, it seemed we were making progress.

The 1999 Kosovo intervention had been fiercely opposed by Russia, and was technically “illegal,” but, by 2011, there were no votes in the United Nations Security Council against the Libya action.

The seemingly absolute values of human rights and national sovereignty, whose contradicting agendas allowed atrocities to go unstopped in such places as Cambodia and Rwanda, no longer seemed so incompatible. A consensus seemed to emerge: Maybe national sovereignty is not so much a right as a responsibility, one that carried obligations.

Starting in 2001, a Canadian-led team began formulating a way around that problem. In 2005, their new set of principles, known as the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, became part of UN policy. R2P meant that, if a country’s government started killing its people, then the world’s armies were required to consider doing something about it, and the Security Council was allowed to authorize force to stop the killing.

After the debacle of the Iraq war, R2P seemed highly unlikely to succeed. It was a policy championed by Paul Martin, and co-authored by Michael Ignatieff, so it was with some surprise that its first major use came last year, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s strong backing, when Canada and other NATO nations went to war in Libya. Suddenly, it seemed this idealistic policy just might work.

And then it all fell apart. The Syrian slaughter, which is more deadly and more complicated than the Libyan uprising, has gone unstopped (except by NATO member Turkey, which is playing an active role in backing the rebels). It took more than a year just to get the Security Council members to condemn the violence.

It’s easy to say that this is because Russia is an ally of Syria or that Iran’s backing of Bashar al-Assad makes the conflict potentially explosive. But the fact is, the problem goes much deeper, and it’s not the same old Cold War problem.

At its root is our use of the word “we.” The countries proposing intervention, usually on noble human-rights grounds, are mostly former colonizers. The world’s new economic and military powers, increasingly able to call the shots, are mostly former colonies such as India, South Africa and Brazil.

Many of these countries were angered by the Libya campaign – not because it stopped mass murder (they backed it for that reason) but because it didn’t stop until it had overthrown the regime.

In recent months, these former colonial countries have been pushing for a new policy that will make intervention more difficult, on the basis of “sovereign equality” – that is, making national borders sacred again.

“Sovereign equality, for former colonial states, is hugely important, and it became a leading principle for them after the Libyan war,” says Jennifer Welsh, the Canadian Oxford University professor who has played a leading role in creating human-rights intervention policy in Canada and elsewhere. “And while the relative influence of the United States is on the decline, these statements from countries like India and China and Brazil are only going to get stronger.”

This may be the end of the era when “we” can easily invade a country to protect its people. We can only hope that someone else will start taking up the challenge.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/stopping-syrias-slaughter-what-do-you-mean-we/article4559859/

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