Is there an 'anti-imperialist camp'? A debate (part 2)

 Michael Karadjis:

 'To compare the US invasion of Iraq, with hundreds of thousands of troops, with US policy on Syria – i.e., to refuse to send even a bullet to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) for three years while the Assad regime destroyed the entire country with every conceivable “conventional” weapon of mass destruction – is too absurd to even begin to take apart; basically, for you to even make such an impossible comparison is in itself a classic example of bogus “anti-imperialist” analysis furiously attempting to push square poles into round holes.

 It is fascinating to read a writer like Felipe, who in other ways is very lucid and logical, refer to NATO having “nearly destroyed Syria”. So apparently, the MiG fighter planes, helicopter gunships, ballistic missiles, barrel bombs, cluster bombs, incendiary bombs, tanks, artillery, starvation sieges of whole towns (and for that matter, of Palestinian refugee camps), and chemical weapons, have all been supplied to Assad by NATO! Oh, but no, you don’t mean that, do you. You simply think that the duty of “anti-imperialism” is to look the other way while a regime of mega-capitalists destroys every city of its country, including the working-class sections of Damascus and Aleppo, because condemning a capitalist regime for waging unlimited war on its working people is apparently too difficult for modern-day “anti-imperialist” analysis unless you can somehow show that imperialism is responsible.

 And so since the imperialists issue criticisms of the Syrian regime’s genocide, and arm the opposition with … the occasional supportive speech (and even those are laced with jihadist-mongering similar to that of “the left”), therefore we don’t know what to say. So we have to instead create a conspiracy, and pretend that this mass uprising of ordinary Syrians is all a foreign conspiracy involving the US, the Gulf states and al-Qaida (and some even throw in Israel for good measure despite Israel’s quite constant support for the victory of a weakened Assad).

 And what exactly has been the role of the US and NATO? As I have continually documented with a great deal of evidence over the last two years, not only has the US sent nothing of any use to the Free Syrian Army, but moreover it has moved operatives into Turkey to actively block the delivery of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles (manpads) and other advanced forms of weaponry to the rebels, when regional states had planned to send a few of these defensive weapons to the rebels to help defend their communities against Assad’s savage air war. (Assad’s air war in comparison to the Kiev regime’s air war in east Ukraine is basically an elephant-to-flea comparison). However, it has promised to maybe, perhaps, if they’re really good, to think about possibly supplying a few arms to a few “vetted” rebels if they agree to use them to launch a frontal attack on Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian wing of al-Qaida. Yet the left conspiracists would imagine that the US supports al-Nusra, in order to “destroy Syria.” You need to question your analysis when it begins to rely on total delusions like this.'

All religions are suffering in the Middle East mess

 In which Eamonn McCann turns into a fucking loon. I don't think there's any element of this story that's true.*

 'In September last year, the Christian village of Saidnaya near Damascus was overrun by Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the multitude of groups fighting to overthrow the Assad dictatorship. Local people begged for and were given weapons by a Syrian army base. They then drove the Islamist rebels out. Now the US was threatening to bomb pro-Assad forces in response to a poison gas attack attributed to Assad's army. The Saidnaya Christians believed with reason that they might well be among the targets.

 "We gave you St Paul," one Christian fighter told a British news programme. "You bomb us in return."

 A Russian-brokered deal led to cancellation of the bombing. Otherwise, the US might well have bombed a Christian village because it had fought off Islamist extremists.'

*Clay Claiborne had the details. "First Assad deployed his troops and tanks at the convent on a hill in Qalamoun. Then they started bombing civilians in Qalamoun from that convent. This forced the FSA to attack the Assad forces there to stop them from slaughtering people."
[http://claysbeach.blogspot.co.uk/…/how-fsa-attack-on-conven…]

Hopes fade for ending world’s bloodiest war

 'After more than three years, the rebels are not ready to lay down their arms. “We started our revolution for dignity and peace,” he said. “Nothing has changed.” '

 Also contains quotes from Joshua Landis, "there are no good choices," showing his neutrality between Assad and the opposition, and an endorsement of Hassan Hassan's piece in Foreign Policy* this week.
*[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/…/too_big_to_fall_syria_aleppo…]

Syria 'torture' photos shown in US

 "This is something that has to matter. And you can't be numb to it."

Assad Poised to Torture and Murder 150,000 More

 “I am not a politician and I don’t like politics,” Caesar said through his translator. “I have come to you honorable Congress to give you a message from the people of Syria… What is going on in Syria is a genocidal massacre that is being led by the worst of all the terrorists, Bashar al Assad.”

Mutual struggle, mutual solidarity

 Leila Al Shami:

 'I spent a lot of time in Gaza during the first two years of the Syrian revolution. Unlike in other social contexts, where I often hesitated to talk about Syria fearful of having to deal with stupid reactions or banal analysis, in Gaza this wasn’t an issue with people I met. People in Gaza who experience terror on a daily basis never failed to ask me how my family in Syria was doing, or express their solidarity with the Syrian uprising against the terror of the Assad regime. Through their own experience, they empathized with the suffering of the Syrian people, understood their desire for freedom and supported their resistance to tyranny.'

Women and the War in Syria

 'Another activist revealed her identity under torture, and government security forces detained her at a Damascus cafe. They beat her during the night with a thick, green hose: “They slapped me on the face. They pulled me by my hair. They hit me on my feet, on my back, all over.”

 They eventually took her to a police station, where men in police uniforms sexually harassed and tortured other female detainees. She saw one woman, handcuffed and naked, alone in a cell. “Once they brought her to our cell and made her beat the other women. Her body was defaced. It was all blue,” Maisa said.'

One of the oldest Christian communities has been destroyed as the Sunni Caliphate spreads

 Where to start with Robert Fisk? Perhaps with the suggestion that it was better when the Syrian army was advancing; bombing, torturing and raping as it went.

 'For the Saudis lie behind this vast new force of the Caliphate, whose Islamist rulers have brought some of their Iraqi military assets – courtesy of George W again – to Syria and are now giving the Syrian army a tougher fight. Before the Caliphate spread to Mosul, the Syrian army was winning, or at least not losing. Now their soldiers are being executed, just like the Iraqi Shia army units captured near Mosul. And, of course, we continue to buttress this savagery in Syria.'

Children of Syria

 'Yarmouk, home to some eighteen thousand people, trapped by the siege, and the fight against rebel groups.'

 Assad's war is one that doesn't distinguish between civilians and rebels, anyone who stays in an opposition area is a target for starvation and bombing, because the régime has so little legitimacy it struggles to win any clash of arms without foreign help despite its massively superior weaponry, and so has to rely as much on inflicting as much horror as it can to force the opposition areas to depopulate. Chemical attacks aid this process too.

'Mummy, why did everyone forget about Syria when Gaza started?'

 'Anti-Assad activists protest against a "selective internationalism" which opposes "the collective punishment and mass murder of Palestinians and Arabs in one land by one government and supporting or justifying their collective punishment and mass murder next door when a different government is the perpetrator".'

 When Ian Black says, "Reporting on it is difficult: Syrian visas for journalists are sporadic and access is strictly controlled. Reporting from the rebel side via Turkey is extremely dangerous," two things should be remembered. The régime has been happy to let in journalists that will support its narrative, or at least present it as a confusing mess we can't make any judgement of. And it is dangerous to report from the rebel side because the régime murders those journalists like Marie Colvin, who reported its massacres, and because there is no Western state really opposed to Assad, there is no particular pressure to report what is going on.

Nemesis in Iraq

 'Although the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and local revolutionary committees have fought to keep alive the vision of a secular and democratic Syria, armed Sunni jihadis, often bankrolled by Gulf sheikhdoms, have increasingly made the running militarily. '

 You would take from Callinicos' formulation that the FSA and revolutionary committees are the only good people, while he refers to the Islamists in fairly racist terms, and you wouldn't get the impression that they have done much of the fighting against Assad, just that they are a stepping stone to ISIS. That Callinicos quotes Patrick Cockburn as an authority on the politics of the region shows quite how out of touch he is with the Syrian revolution.

It's Not Complicated

Amal ThePoet Kassir:

 'So often, I come across comments of non-Syrians saying the conflict in Syria is "too complicated" now because "the enemy" isn't clear anymore, so it's not worth defending. Choosing to be ignorant does not make your confusion justified. If the conflict in Syria is too complicated for you, stop talking about ISIS, stop talking about extremists, stop saying "civil war", stop talking about how "confusing" it is.

 Your silence is the most respectful thing you can do. You are not entitled to an opinion on a country whose conflict you haven't made an effort to untangle. There are people working hard, literally every day since the War began, educating themselves to educate those around them. Do not justify your apathy by saying the conflict is too complicated for you, this is solely your laziness. I assure you, the "enemy" is quite clear.'

The truth about conspiracy theories is that some require considering

 So Cockburn thinks one example, when ISIS came in at the end of a siege with only a few dozen government soldiers left*, weighs more heavily in the evidence than the vast amount of fighting ISIS has done against the real rebels,and that their headquarters is never bombed.

 'Predictably, the western media, diplomats and the "moderate" Syrian opposition claimed that Assad not only benefited from the existence of Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra but was secretly in league with them. "Notice Isis doesn't attack government forces," people would say with shallow cynicism in Beirut, though Isis was responsible for the capture of Minnigh military air base north of Aleppo, one of the few rebel victories last year.'

 Robert Thouless writes in Straight and Crooked Thinking** of a trick used in argument of imputing to one's opponents a stronger proposition than they are defending. This is what Cockburn does here. ISIS has capitalised on the destruction wrought by Assad, and their continuity of interest means that only the real rebels have an interest in their defeat. It isn't Cockburn or the lizards, it is his insistence that the opposition in Syria is little more than the creation of the government in Washington that is the wacky conspiracy theory.

 'But it has always been an absurd exaggeration to imagine, as your true-born conspiracy theorist would hold, that Isis and al-Nusra were the creation of the government in Damascus.'
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Menagh_Air_Base]
**[http://neglectedbooks.com/Straight_and_Crooked_Thinking.pdf]

A short history of the Syrian revolution

Louis N. Proyect:

 'Progressive intellectuals, concerned citizens, and humanists were shocked on August 21st but they felt powerless. Their neutrality, under the pretext that both sides are evil, and their silences and inactivity allowed the Syrian regime to isolate and besiege the Syrian revolution. As the revolution became increasingly invisible, the regime’s narrative became more hegemonic.

 Many progressive intellectuals dismissed the revolutionary struggle of several hundred thousands Syrians in a myriad different arenas, and portrayed the situation as a civil war between Shia and Sunnis, a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, or a violent conflict between global Jihadists and a regular army. As the revolution became unthinkable, the regime propaganda turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sadly, in such a conjuncture the silence of progressive intellectuals became a license to kill Syrians.'

FYI, the Syrian people started a revolution, Assad started a war

Abdulrahman al-Masri:

 'To make it clear to you, simply as it is, the Syrian people started an uprising movement demanding freedom, dignity and political participation and so, the uprising quickly switched to be a public peaceful revolution spreading all over Syria.

 Someone sarcastically said: “Ha peaceful? But what is the free army?!!”

 Yes dude, a peaceful revolution. Dear, the Free Syrian Army is basically not an army, the FSA is an idea. The creation of the FSA came because of the Assad brutally reaction towards the revolution as a few officers in the Syrian Army decided not to kill their own people and refusing taking orders asking them to become monsters. The FSA started as “The Free Officers Movement” which includes army officers who defected and wanted to protect their people, it is a defense-armed groups not an organized army that in turn does not erase the peaceful nature of the revolution.'

Syrian Civil War is being fought with homemade weapons made of gas canisters and old tank parts

 'He said that while some FSA groups are receiving supplies from Gulf states, many rebels like this group in Aleppo have received nothing. So the rebels make do with what they can cobble together themselves.'

Assad regime kills deserted soldiers in Syria

 'Twenty-three soldiers who deserted the Syrian army were killed on Thursday by Shabiha – an armed militia group from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime - in Syria's Homs.

 According to the Syrian Revolution General Commission (SRGC), Shabihas killed 23 soldiers by cutting their throats because they wanted to leave the Syrian army in the Al-Qabu town of Homs.'

 A régime that cuts the throats of deserters is a metaphor for its own lack of a future.

So near, so far

 Hassan Mustafa:

 "If the war ends, Assad's regime collapses and security is restored with no one like Assad in charge, I'll go back to Syria."

EU Targets Syria Commander, Oil Companies

 'However, the EU's sanctions on Syria have faced a growing number of successful legal challenges in the bloc's top courts. EU judges have repeatedly ruled against the bloc's sanctions decisions, saying the member states have failed to provide confidential evidence that could back up their claims.'

 They don't seem to be trying very hard. Can they find no evidence linking Colonel al-Hasan to the barrel bomb campaign, or do they just not care if the sanctions are applied?

Syrian death toll and extremist threat increases, but the U.S. does little

 'The Free Syrian Army forces the administration proposes to support are steadily losing ground to the regime and the Islamists. There’s a real risk that by the time the program gets off the ground — if it ever does — there will be no units left to support.

 It’s not easy at this late stage for the United States to intervene in Syria or Iraq in a way that would be constructive. But if one principle seems obvious, it is that moderate forces willing to fight the Islamic State should be aided — and quickly. Foremost among these are Syria’s secular rebels.'

Israel plays Assad and Khamenei’s game in Gaza

 I will get back to this.

 'When Israel’s government declares the Iranian and Syrian regimes responsible for arming Hamas, and when it accuses Hamas of deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way, they make it clear that when they then go on to hit only targets in Gaza, and continue to contain Gaza’s population together with a Hamas regime that by the Israel government’s own account is happy to see them bleed, then Israel is playing Assad and Khamenei’s game in Gaza.

 Assad and Khamenei are blessed to have an enemy like Israel, an enemy who will draw the world’s outrage while Assad’s helicopters and Khamenei’s militias get on with slaughtering Syrians across the border. And though Israel has repeatedly demonstrated that they have the ability to hit inside Syria, they’ll let Assad’s helicopters and Khamenei’s supply planes carry on flying.

 Syria still needs a No-Fly Zone. It would serve the Israelis’ interests too, but they don’t seem to have the wit to see it.'

The regime makes people suffer in rebel held areas

 Some bits of this are good, explaining how the régime makes things unbearable in rebel held areas, so as to polarise society so that people think they would be worse off under rebel control. But as I read more, the sense I get is not that the military resistance to Assad's war on Syria should be supported, but that the military struggle is a terrible diversion from a non-violent class struggle that could solve problems in a jiffy.

 The reverse is the truth. The revolution armed itself, because that was the only way to resist when the demonstrators were shot at by their government at every demonstration. When the government moved on to the massacres and rapes, it was only by military resistance that Sunni communities could be protected from a sectarian bloodbath. That's actually a truth you can find in this piece, "That means that even in the rebel areas any political activity needs to be protected," but if you didn't already know that, you wouldn't get that from here. The image is presented of a revolution that is nearly extinguished, precisely because it is all about armed men. I think a Marxist analysis would start from the fundamental instability of a régime that constantly erodes its social base, and has lost permanently the consent of most Syrians, how the position of Assad as a client of Russian imperialism leads to a coincidence of interests that might be exploited to overthrow him, how victories on the battlefield open up political opportunities to deepen the revolution, and ensure that no Syrian need ever fear torture for speaking their mind again.

Selective Internationalism: An Activist Disorder

 'The Saudi and Qatari monarchies are among the most reactionary forces in the world — are the FSA and the Islamic Front wrong or mistaken in accepting or seeking their patronage? How can any of these forces claim to be freedom fighters or revolutionaries given their backers? Don’t alliances with reactionary powers run counter to consistent internationalism?

 The erroneous assumptions embedded in these questions are that alliances are matters of morality rather than expediency, that political struggle is primarily about first principles rather than advancing the interests of living, breathing constituents, that it is impossible or impermissible for the oppressed and exploited to exploit contradictions between various camps of oppressors and exploiters to win freedom. The history of successful revolutions is a history of unusual and ugly alliances with morally revolting backers.'

Free Syrian Army Advances On Military Strongholds Near Damascus

 'The FSA forces advanced from the Ghouta area, an eastern suburb of Damascus, to Abbasiyeen Square in the capital.

 “It is unusual in recent times,” Daniel Serwer, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said. “In recent history the Syrian military and the extremists have been gaining ground and I don’t see that changing any time soon.” '

 If the FSA had the same level of weaponry as the Assad régime or the Islamic State, it would be more powerful than either, as it has the support of Syrian people, and doesn't rely on foreigners to do its fighting.

 I'm reminded of Clay Claiborne's post on the changing importance of Qusayr, Syria in the Media*:

 'For more than a year, while it was a liberated area, it was a nothing, throwaway city as far as the media was concerned. Since Hezbollah conquered it for Assad and it is back in Syria government hands, the media cannot even print Qusayr without the "the strategic city of" prefix. This is one example of how the mainstream writes to support Assad and undermine the revolution without being up front about it.'
*[http://claysbeach.blogspot.co.uk/…/the-changing-importance-…]

Aldi staff told shopper he was spending too much money on tinned food for children in Syria

 He seems to know more about Syria than all those commentators who tell us it is such a confusing situation that we have to blame Western interference for the suffering. There are people starving in Syria by the way, including Palestinians in refugee camps. Refugees because Israel forced them from their homeland, starving because Bashar al-Assad wants it that way.

 'I was buying stuff to send over to Syria. I am not from there and never really knew anything about the situation but two weeks ago I started seeing all this stuff about these poor children going without food and had to resort to eating cats.

 For me that was utterly shocking and I thought I would get as much cheap tinned food as I could to send it over there. It was nothing to do with religion.'

If the UN really wants to protect Syria’s people, stop these futile resolutions

 'The best example of the unintended consequences of the international community’s fumblings occurred last August, following the use by Assad of Sarin gas in Damascus, resulting in hundreds of deaths. When the US and Russian governments hammered out a deal on chemical weapons, Assad took this as permission to do even greater damage with conventional weapons.'

Former chief: Hezbollah as bad as takfiris

 ' “We are sorry to say that Hezbollah has been tuned into a sectarian party and a killing machine, as bad as takfiri groups, at the hands of the Iranians,” Toufaili said.

 He charged that Hezbollah’s battle was directed against Muslims for the sake of defending “the regimes of corruption and tyranny,” in reference to Syria and Iran.

 “Hezbollah’s involvement in the fighting in Syria against Syrian children and people is a main factor in igniting sectarian hostilities and animosity that only serve the Zionist enemy and its allies,” Toufaili said.'

Choosing sides

 Bassel Oudat:

 'Two developments have deepened Alawite involvement in the country’s sectarian strife. One has been the contributions made by Alawite societies to pro-regime paramilitary gangs. The other has been the fact that many young Alawites have joined these gangs, thus becoming part of the regime’s killing machine.

 Iran has also been instrumental in fomenting sectarian tensions in the country. Since the beginning of the conflict, Tehran has sent hundreds of military experts to Syria and ordered Hizbullah in Lebanon to send its battle-hardened combatants to support the regime. As the war has dragged on, Iran has sent more Shia into the country, among them militiamen from Iraq and Yemen, on the ostensible mission of protecting Shia holy sites.

 The foreign Shia fighters sent into Syria have had no doubt in their minds about what kind of war they are fighting. For them, the Syrian war is not a conflict between freedom and despotism, as the revolution intended it to be, but between the Shia supporters of Hussein and the Sunni supporters of Yazid – a reference to a conflict that many thought had ended 13 centuries ago.

 Even Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese officials have confirmed their fanatical zeal, many making public statements to the effect that the Syrian war is one fought between Sunnis on the one side and Shiites on the other.

 The Al-Assad regime has promoted this distorted discourse, for without the conflict turning sectarian its chances of survival are minimal. It has only been if the regime can pose as the protector of the Shia community, and particularly of the Alawites, that it can justify its acts.'

British Jihadis' threat to UK is exaggerated

 'British Jihadis are motivated by wanting to topple Bashar Assad dictatorship in Syria says group critical of British counterterrorism policy.'

 Good for Cage. Those on the left who play up the jihadi threat don't seem to be so much worried about Islamists, as anxious to find an excuse not to care about Syria.

Female Fighters

 'A series of striking images of an all-female battalion in the Free Syrian Army has resurfaced over a year after being taken. Taken by Sebastiano Tomada, the powerful and haunting images shed light on the central role of females in the civil war.

 The term female empowerment has perhaps never been more apt. The women, who Tomada photographed at an undisclosed command post inside Aleppo, took up arms side by side with their male counterparts in the largely secular Free Syrian Army. Along with their quest to end the Assad regime's injustices, some of the women picked up a gun in a bid to prove the equality of women. 'I fight for life and freedom, I fight to prove that woman and man are equal,' one 27-year old widow said. Another 72-year-old mother of three joined the battalion after her home in Dara'a was destroyed and she was forced to flee to Aleppo. "I chose to pick up a weapon and fight the regime." '

Obama’s unconvincing aid to Syria’s rebels

 'In essence, Ghanem said the administration is “almost setting itself up for failure” by not whole-heartedly pushing for the effort or providing enough specifics and administration officials to lobby for it on Capitol Hill. This sentiment has been echoed by lawmakers on the Hill. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Adam Smith, the committee’s senior Democrat, criticized a panel of Pentagon officials who refused to discuss the specifics of the aid package in the open session. “You have to push the policy,” said Smith, noting that such a request is “a big damn deal.” He warned that if the administration couldn’t sell the program, the Congress will not authorize it.

 The administration found itself in a similar position last September, after U.S. President Barack Obama kicked the ball to Congress on striking the Assad regime, but was not able to secure the votes.'



Note 26/3/25, original link to al-Arabiya broken. This link is dated 1st December 2015, but same story originally published 17th July 2014.

Syria's rebels close to collapse as Isis and Assad make gains

 "This is all about the weapons," says one activist in Deir Ezzor. "If moderate forces offered as much funding and support as Isis, you'd see a lot of so-called Islamist fighters drinking whisky and saying they are secularists."

In Syria, the Enemy of America's Enemy Is Still a Lousy Friend

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad:

 'After three years of serial atrocities, massacres, starvation sieges, torture, and rape, we face a surreal situation in which, instead of calls for accountability, Western intelligentsia are debating the rehabilitation of the monster who presided over this horror. It bespeaks a moral decay and failure of imagination when, in the name of expediency, some appear willing to burnish their “realist” credentials by condemning the nearly 10 million displaced Syrians to the indignities of stateless exile.

 The legitimate fear of black flags over the Levant is causing panic in Washington. But the short-term fixes being proposed will only burden the US with long-term woes. If ISIS is treated as a causeless symptom in need of a quick remedy, cynical alliances to quash it will seem attractive. But ISIS is the consequence of a failed policy, and it's the original sin of abandoning the revolution that demands redress. The US will never be secure if it allies itself with the tormentor of the Syrian people and condemns millions to the squalor of hostile refugee camps.

 The only way the US can defeat ISIS without engendering blowback is to give meaningful support to the Syrian resistance.'

Isis marches further into Syria tipping the balance of power in the civil war

 Patrick Cockburn has liked to pretend that there aren't any moderate political forces all along, and that they were being backed to the hilt by Washington and Riyadh all along if they did exist. The truth of course is that they have had miserly support, and despite being the choice of Syrians far more than Assad or ISIS, are in danger because they are the only ones without a supply of weaponry, and Cockburn's opinionating is designed to obscure that at every turn.

 'The recent Isis advances in Syria, following victories in Iraq last month, are altering the balance of power in the whole region. The opposition military forces not aligned with the Syrian government or Isis are being squeezed out of existence, making obsolete the US, British, Saudi and Turkish policy of backing groups hostile to both Assad and Isis.'

 Assad never bombed their headquarters in Raqqa. The signs that both Assad and ISIS are interested in fighting the Syrian rebels and not each other would be conveyed by anyone actually reporting news from Syria. Cockburn is trying not to be the complete bullshit merchant that Robert Fisk has turned into, so he concedes a little and obfuscates. The idea that Assad and the Islamic State will fight to the death when there is no competition is as doubtful a proposition as that they are doing it now, but it has been implicit in Cockburn's argument all along: there is no moderate opposition other than a few Western financed tossers in Turkey (who spread propaganda that he's not clear about the faults of), so you've got to lay off Assad or al-Qaida wins. Resembling a poor George Bush impression.

 'The Syrian opposition has always claimed that Isis and Syrian government forces have had a sort of de facto ceasefire and hinted at undercover links. This was mostly propaganda, though regurgitated in Washington, London and Paris, but it is true that since Isis helped to take Minnigh air base north of Aleppo last summer, it has mainly fought other rebel groups. When President Assad and al-Baghdadi do confront each other, the West and its allies will have to decide if they will go on trying to weaken the Syrian government.'

The New Middle East War

 The more the Left goes along with the myth that American opposition to Assad is the problem in Syria, the more the voices that will be dominate as the myth is exposed as the problem will be those of supporters of traditional American foreign policy.

 Michael Doran:

 'On Syria, for example, the White House continually repeats the tired line that we are working to convince President Bashar al-Assad to step aside and allow the opposition and the government to negotiate a caretaker authority. Yet who any longer gives any credence to this claim? It has long been clear that Washington wants and expects Assad to stay. Post-Mosul, the United States and its European allies even see the Syrian regime as a potential asset against ISIS.

 What about the $500 million in support of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) that the administration has lately requested from Congress? Simply put, the purpose of that aid is to keep the beleaguered FSA on life support lest ISIS swallow it up. Even after having made the request, the administration has explicitly resisted providing the FSA with the kind of weapons and training it would need to change the local balance of power. Instead, the administration remains wedded to its policy of “preserving regime institutions”—a euphemism for Assad’s murder machine, which is thoroughly integrated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards—and turns a blind eye to the deployment in Syria of Iraqi Shiite and Hizballah militiamen supported by Tehran.

 The upshot is that when the president says he opposes the presence of foreign fighters in Syria, he is referring exclusively to Sunni jihadis. He has given Shiites a pass.'

Syrian regime arms supplier visits UK airshow

 Michael Rosen just brought this up on the Wright Stuff press preview. His take was that it shows that we don't know that weapons we sell won't be used against British troops. I would have thought that the moral is that that Cameron's supposed caring about Syria is all front, and an opportunity to big himself up as an opponent of tyranny while doing less than nothing about it, while his self-satisfied opponents can present themselves as being opposed to his 'warmongering' in Syria, with the fallout that Syrians continue to face these Russian weapons without the means to defend themselves.

Syrian opposition plan to oust Islamist extremists awaits U.S. hearing

 Roy Gutman:

 ' “I need weapons. I need money. I need a no fly zone or anti-aircraft weapons. I need intelligence data,” Kholouf, who’s held the post since May in the Syrian interim government, told McClatchy.

 “We could kick them out of the Aleppo region in 20 days and force them back to the borders of the Raqqa region,” he said in the interview Friday. At that stage, the rebels must “take account of what weapons they’re deploying, and respond,” he said.

 “But I can say confidently that if the American side makes the decision to end the Syrian crisis, we will have sufficient fighters.” In six months, he said, “we can bring security to 80 per cent of Syria.” There was one condition, he said: “that we are not left alone.” '

Iraq crisis: How Saudi Arabia helped Isis take over the north of the country

 Patrick Cockburn is lying about sectarian killings in Syria, which Assad and his foreign thugs from Iraq and Iran have been overwhelmingly responsible for.

 'Simply to be identified as Shia or a related sect, such as the Alawites, in Sunni rebel-held parts of Iraq and Syria today, has become as dangerous as being a Jew was in Nazi-controlled parts of Europe in 1940."

 The extremist jihadis want to overthrow what they see as the corruption in Saudi Arabia. From the truth, which is that the Saudi authorities do not support ISIS, Cockburn gives us a 'might turn a blind eye', with no word for it other than a British spook who has no evidence, allowing others to further elide to Saudi Arabia supports ISIS.

 'He does not doubt that substantial and sustained funding from private donors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to which the authorities may have turned a blind eye, has played a central role in the Isis surge into Sunni areas of Iraq.'

 What destabilised Iraq was Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese support for Assad's anti-Sunni reign of terror, and Iranian support for a similarly sectarian policy by the Maliki government in Iraq. What enabled the jihadis, first those fighting Assad, then those that do not like ISIS, is not the support for the Syrian opposition, but the lack of it.

 'What destabilised Iraq from 2011 on was the revolt of the Sunni in Syria and the takeover of that revolt by jihadis, who were often sponsored by donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates."

 By not giving any weaponry to the opposition, the US and Britain gave a lifeline to a dictator nearly swept away by an almost defenceless rebellion.

 'By insisting that peace negotiations must be about the departure of Assad from power, something that was never going to happen since Assad held most of the cities in the country and his troops were advancing, the US and Britain made sure the war would continue.'

 Having established the common sense of the lie that Saudi Arabia backs IS and Turkey Jabhat al-Nusra (who have gone on their terrorist list ffs), Cockburn can blame them for what happens in Syria.

 'Saudi Arabia has created a Frankenstein's monster over which it is rapidly losing control. The same is true of its allies such as Turkey which has been a vital back-base for Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra by keeping the 510-mile-long Turkish-Syrian border open.'

 And likewise. If you are part of the revolution in Syria, you are no more than a Sunni sectarian incited by Saudi Arabia. Either you might as well blow yourself up now, or Cockburn is telling a racist narrative in which we should prefer Assad to a bunch of mad Muslims.

 'As for Saudi Arabia, it may come to regret its support for the Sunni revolts in Syria and Iraq as jihadi social media begins to speak of the House of Saud as its next target.'

Two British men admit in court to planning terrorist acts

 Fighting a dictator is a terrorist act.

 'He described the case as "grave", and told the court that together Ahmed and Sarwar had "carefully planned a journey from the UK to Turkey and on to Syria to join Islamist rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad".'

Obama caves to conventional wisdom on Syria

 Fareed Zakaria is wrong. And it isn't the conventional wisdom, it was the elephant that hasn't got into the room for the last two years.

 'The Obama administration’s decision to seek $500 million to train and fund elements of the Syrian opposition has been greeted with bipartisan support in Washington. The general consensus is that, if the administration had done this three years ago, the situation in Syria would not have turned into a sectarian civil war. But this conventional wisdom is wrong.'

 The proposal isn't to Do Something, it is a concrete proposal to arm the rebels.

 'The administration is caving in to the classic Washington desire to “do something” in the face of a terrible situation without any clear sense as to whether it would improve things or make matters worse.'

 Radical Christians like John Brown and Thomas Jefferson have been the core of the American Revolution from the very beginning, centuries ago.

 'In fact, radical Islamists have been the core of the opposition to the Assad regime from the very beginning, decades ago.'

 So the régime has always been quite murderous.

 'An armed Islamist insurgency killed more than 300 supporters of the regime in Aleppo alone. Assad, in turn, ordered crackdowns that killed some 2,000 Islamist opponents.'

 So the régime has always been quite murderous.

 'They opened the gates of a cell block for us. Six or seven of us entered and killed all those we found inside, some 60 or 70 people in all. I must have gunned down 15 myself. ... Altogether some 550 of those Muslim Brother bastards must have been killed.'


 So the régime has always been quite murderous. The New York Times* gives figures of 90 dead and 135 injured for that Damascus bomb. Wikipedia** gives estimates of between 10,000 and 40,000 for the Hama massacre. I would think it more appropriate to call Assad's the terror campaign.

 'The Islamists’ terror campaign spread, moving even to Damascus, where in November 1981 they exploded a car bomb in the city center that killed 200 people and wounded 500. Then, in 1982, came the uprising and the gruesome massacre in the town of Hama, where between 10,000 and 20,000 people — including women and children — were slaughtered by government troops.'

 Since then the régime has tortured, raped and murdered in exponentially increasing quantity as people have risen in revolt against it. The Muslim Brotherhood seemed to have given up the thought of armed resistance and came late to the revolution.

 'Since then, the regime has organized itself for war against the Islamists and they, in turn, have been preparing for opportunities to wage war against the regime.'

 Divided by Orientalists who think Syrians can only be defined by their sect. There was no insurgency before 2011, so any opposition funding is a little irrelevant. There has been limited support for those fighting for their lives in Syria since then, nothing compared to the thousands of Iranians and Iraqis and shedloads of weaponry that have gone to support Assad's war on Syria.

 'By the late 1970s, it was already divided into camps, largely defined by Islamism and sect. Outside powers in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran — have been funding, arming and training militants on both sides.'

 Because there has been no reliable source of arms for the Free Syrian Army, it has been up to brigades to fend for themselves. There are tens of thousands of fighters who still see themselves as FSA, or belong to groups that are moderately Islamist, but these are invisible to Zakaria. There were none of the radical groups a couple of years ago, and if the FSA had got or does get the weapons it needs there would be no need for them now. And the foreign fighters with the Islamic state that isn't part of the rebellion against Assad are mixed in with the rest.

 'Today, according to James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, there are about 1,500 separate insurgent groups in Syria, with between 75,000 and 115,000 insurgents. In addition, there are 7,500 foreign fighters from neighboring countries. The strongest groups are all radical Islamist — the Islamic State, Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra.'

 Remember that if the FSA doesn't get any arms, there is no way an exiled opposition is going to exercise influence over them, or over those looking for actual assistance in fighting Assad.

 'Remember that neighboring powers, like the Turkish government, spent months trying to establish a moderate Syrian opposition. I met with some of its leaders in Istanbul in 2012. They were genuinely liberal and democratic people. Unfortunately these people barely had contact with, let alone influence over, the actual groups fighting in Syria.'

 Finding moderate insurgent groups is going fine so far.***

 'But now, Washington is going to “vet” this vast, dispersed opposition of 1,500 groups and find moderates. Good luck.'

 Dumbass. The Islamic State doesn't fight against Assad. And a change in Damascus has been America's stated goal, but it actions have been far more to preserve Assad up to now.

 'The complexity of Washington’s task can be seen in the American attitude toward the Islamic State. When the group battles the Maliki government in Iraq, it is a deadly foe and must be ruthlessly attacked. But when it crosses the (now-nonexistent) border between Iraq and Syria and battles the Assad regime, it is aligned with America’s stated goal of regime change in Damascus.'

 They fought Assad to a standstill, with light weapons against tanks and helicopters. Anti-aircraft weapons would have stopped the Syrian bombing, and meant there would not be millions of refugees. Only massive foreign assistance has saved the régime so far, it would be gone if there was any sort of equivalence in war materiel.

 'With this history in mind, it is difficult to believe that three years ago a modest American intervention of arms and training would have changed the trajectory of events in Syria.

 But can anyone now believe that a modest American intervention is going to find genuine democrats in the maelstrom, help them win against Assad and also the radicals, and stabilize Syria?'

 The help - the word intervention blurs the line between an invasion and empowerment through arms and training - might need to be greater now that America has sat on its hands for so long, but it is ironic to deny Syrians a future because you don't think they can be proper democrats.

 'But can anyone now believe that a modest American intervention is going to find genuine democrats in the maelstrom, help them win against Assad and also the radicals, and stabilize Syria?'

 No.

 'Or is Washington’s new activism more likely to throw fuel onto a raging fire?'
*[http://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/01/world/death-toll-in-syria-explosion-put-at-90-killed-and-135-hurt.html]
**[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre]
***[http://eaworldview.com/…/syria-9-insurgent-groups-us-made-…/]

UN report on children in Syria paints picture of ‘unspeakable’ horrors

 'Detailing the detention of children as young as 11 years old for alleged association with armed groups by Government forces in large-scale arrest campaigns, the report says they were ill-treated and tortured to extract confessions or humiliate them or pressure a relative to surrender or confess.

 “Ill treatment and acts tantamount to torture reportedly included beatings with metal cables, whips and wooden and metal batons; electric shock, including to the genitals; the ripping out of fingernails and toenails; sexual violence, including rape or threats of rape; mock executions; cigarette burns; sleep deprivation; solitary confinement; and exposure to the torture of relatives.” '

On an English road trip with Syria’s artists

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'So the Syrian revolution is alive and well in Bristol if not in Bradford, for this is where the revolution happens first, before the guns and the political calculations, before even the demonstrations – in individual hearts, in the form of new thoughts and newly unfettered words. Syria was once known as a “kingdom of silence” in which public discourse was irretrievably devalued by enforced lip-service to the regime and its propaganda pieties. As a result, many Syrians describe their first protest as an ecstatic event, a kind of rebirth.

 Ossama Mohammed’s story The Thieves’ Market concerns a woman who attends the state’s official demonstrations, until her friend is murdered for participating in an oppositional one. “I grew up,” she says, “came of age, abandoned someone and was abandoned, on a march that finished yesterday.” When that coerced march ended and a thousand new ones began, Syrians found unprecedented liberation simply by expressing honest opinions in the presence of their neighbours, by breaking the barriers of fear.'

U.S. Ignored Warnings Before ISIS Takeover of a Key City

 'The American-supported Free Syrian Army was forced to withdraw from a key city on the Iraq-Syria border last week after its pleas for help went unanswered by the United States.'

 Not that American-supported.

 ' “[The U.S. officials] showed an understanding of the situation but there was no movement at all,” the commander of the FSA battalion near Der al Zour told The Daily Beast in an interview. “There’s no clear American position in that part of Syria. We told the Americans we are going to fight ISIS and ISIS is close to us, but they did nothing.” '

Today's example of Assad's support for Islamic State

 'Dawud Brigade swore allegiance to the İslamic State and conveyed the fighters and ammunition from the town of Sarmin in the countryside of Idleb province to IS- held areas in the province of Al Raqqa, where a military convoy of more than 50 vehicles were seen carrying fighters from Dawud Brigade and passing near the city of Saraqeb. The convoy was going towards the provice of Al Raqqa through the road located between the two towns of Athrayya and Khanaser which is held by the regime forces which were able to target the convoy and prevent it crossing the area but they did not do so.'

Airports face chaos

 'The Islamist Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate involved in fighting with Syrian rebels to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, is also thought to be plotting an airliner attack, according to intelligence reports.'

 I doubt this. Who would benefit from such an attack? Bashar al-Assad, who has always tried to present those fighting him as terrorists, not those trying to see the back of him. I noticed a terrorism expert repeat this on the BBC just now, so it seems like mainstream opinion.

Palestinians and the Assad regime

 'Even the craziest of the extremists will not be able to torture a human being every day for twenty years just for being a Baathist and follower of the party in Baghdad; or for being a young Muslim Brotherhood member; or a communist belonging to the Riad Al-Turk group; or a Christian of the "Arab Socialist Democratic Union" headed by Hassan Abdel Azim; or any of the others who represent all of the political spectrum in Syria.

 On what basis does Bashar Al-Assad's regime deserve and get praise from Palestinians? The answer may be overly naïve and tested by events: it is, we are told, to protect Palestinians in Syria. This is flawed reasoning; exempting Palestinians from being killed like their Syrian brothers is not a solution for the situation in Palestine. In any case, look at what has happened to the Palestinians in Yarmouk refugee camp and in the regime's prisons where they were killed.


 Despite the huge tragedy of the Palestinians, some attributed the atrocities, or their causes, to the existence of armed opposition in the camp, even when it was clear that Assad's army was behind them. Discussions with Palestinians displaced from Yarmouk or any other refugee camp reveal the truth, while those who are sympathetic with the regime back its version of events even though they know that it lies about everything."

The Danish gangster who turned jihadi

 "We have to stop the Syrian army or we'll have more massacres like in Daraya."

Assad’s ‘Machinery of Death’ Worst Since the Nazis

 “There is a point when you just can’t look the other way.”

Let's not follow 'Syria model' in Iraq

 'Speculation varies from direct, if limited, US intervention in Iraq and remote support for government institutions and their security services to confront terrorism, maintain security and stability in the country and avert regional war.

 Strangely enough, these options didn't come up following the ISIS attacks in Syria. No one offered to support the Free Syrian Army (FSA) against ISIS even when the FSA battled and pursued ISIS, which was expelled from vast regions in northern Syria only to make up for it by occupying other Syrian regions. All these events occurred in plain view of the West, and the United States in particular. Even more strangely, this terrorist organization is not regarded as dangerous in our country even though its circumstances in Syria and Iraq are similar, perhaps even more favorable to it in Syria than in Iraq.'

Russian Syrian Secrets

 'A year ago it was believed that the Syrian Air Force was in very bad shape. It had suffered major losses since 2012, as the aircraft and helicopters were unleashed on rebels (and civilian supporters) and took a beating from the rebels.

 Desperate times demand desperate measures and in the by early 2013 even the MiG-29 fighters were seen dropping bombs. These are the most modern aircraft Syria has and their pilots were trained to fight Israeli jets, not bomb civilians. But a village or city neighborhood is hard to miss, even for a rookie.

 All Syrian aircraft are showing their age, except for the MiG-29s, which were relatively new and now we know that the Russians were refurbishing them. Lack of money has meant few flying hours for air force pilots and not enough money to keep all aircraft flyable even before the revolution began in 2011. Fuel and spare parts were even more expensive after that (because of sanctions) and the air force had a hard time dealing with the payroll and the expense of running (and defending) its bases. But all that seems to have changed in the last year and that is largely because of massive Russian assistance to the Syrian Air Force. In addition to fuel and spare parts, the Russians appear to have put technical people into Syria to help with maintenance, upgrades and training. A number of Syrian Air Force personnel were sent to Russia for training. A year ago it was not the beginning of the end for the Syrian Air Force but the start of a Russian financed and supplied revival.'

Help the Syrian rebels that America has forsaken

 Mohammed Ghanem:

 'Though more outgunned than ever, these rebels rely on motivation — that secret weapon of Syrian farmers, dentists and students — to bring victory despite impossible odds. They shouldn’t have to.

 President Obama recently announced a $500 million “train-and-equip” program for moderate Syrian rebels, and this is most welcome. But rebels might be long gone from eastern Syria before the program clears Congress. Commanders tell me that the weapons most needed are what the United States has already provided on a very limited basis, such as TOW missiles.

 If the president is serious about stopping ISIS, let alone aiding moderate Syrian rebels, he should use his executive authority to get these weapons now to the farmers, dentists, and students of eastern Syria.'