The Syria Analysis Thread

Team Zissou Friday 9 Dec 2011

Those are the signs being waved around: "The Christians to Beirut! The Shia to the graveyard!" But the US is leaving Iraq and there are plenty of armed Shia militias there. My concern of course is the Christians, but worst comes to worst they will go to the US and Canada and Lebanon et al.

Angocachi Friday 9 Dec 2011

If the regime in Tehran falls, Iraq's Shia will descend into violent counter factions and some Sunni regime will be put back over them. I don't think Tehran will fall, however. Instead, NATO & the GCC are going help the Sunni opposition to crush Shia power in Syria, perhaps even Lebanon as a result, while KSA helps to hold down Bahrain & the Houthi. Boko Haram will handle the Shia in Nigeria, Lashkar e Jhangvi will assail them in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 14 Dec 2011

With China and Russia not playing ball, is the intention now to slowly squeeze Syria like how was done to Iraq in the 1990s?

Pepe Escobar seems to think so but suggests that Turkey is a true wildcard since its intentions are still not crystal clear:

It was already established (see The shadow war in Syria Asia Times Online, December 2, 2011) that NATO had set up a command and control center in Turkey's southern Hatay province - where British commandos and French intelligence are training the dodgy Free Syria Army (FSA). The target: to foment a civil war engulfing northern Syria.

Now comes the confirmation, via the website of former United States Federal Bureau of Investigation whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, that a pincer movement may be in effect, involving Jordan. [1]

Edmonds quotes local sources according to whom "hundreds of soldiers who speak languages other than Arabic" have been "moving back and forth ... between the King Hussein air base in al-Mafraq" and "Jordanian villages adjacent to the Syrian border".

Edmonds sustains none of this is being reported by US media because of a gag order from above that in theory expired this Tuesday. And don't try asking King Abdullah of Jordan about it.

The base at al-Mafraq is virtually across the border from Dar'a. A lot of action has been going on in Dar'a recently - an epicenter of the anti-President Bashar al-Assad movement. As far as the Syrian news agency Sana is concerned, security forces have been routinely killed by "terrorist gangs". As far as the "rebels" are concerned, these are patriotic army defectors attacking military supply lines.

By adopting this pincer movement, NATO in Syria is now actively diversifying into an Iraq-in-the-1990s strategy; to submit Syria to a prolonged state of siege before eventually going for the kill.

As for the Syrian opposition stalwarts - the Syrian National Council (SNC) - they are a joke. Most are Muslim Brotherhood, with a sprinkling of Kurds. The leader, Burhan Ghalioun, is an opportunist Paris exile with zero credibility (for the average Syrian) although in a recent Wall Street Journal interview he made all the right noises to appease the Israel lobby (no more ties with Iran, no more support to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza).

The FSA claims 15,000 army defectors. But it's infected with mercenaries and what scores of Syrian civilians describe as armed gangs. The SNC, in thesis, is anti-guerrilla. But that's exactly what the FSA is actively practicing, attacking Syrian soldiers and Ba'ath party offices.

NATO's tactics in Syria have been crystal clear for a while now. France, under neo-Napoleonic liberator of Libya President Nicolas Sarkozy, concentrates on turbo-charging escalation. A the same time, Paris is trying to position the rise and rise of the Muslim Brotherhood all across the Arab world as a strategic Western interest - as in curbing Iranian influence.

Then there's the ongoing economic blockade - impossible without cooperation from Iraq (it won't happen), Lebanon (it won't happen) and Jordan (it could, but to Jordan's detriment).

But NATO's wet dream is really to push Turkey to do the dirty work. Irretrievably broke as they are, NATO countries - including the US - simply cannot launch yet another Middle East war that would send oil prices through the roof.

What NATO cannot fathom is the possibility of a sectarian Sunni-Shi'ite war re-exploding in Iraq. In this case, the only safe haven would be Iraqi Kurdistan. And that would strengthen Kurdish unity - from Iraq to Syria, from Turkey to Iran. Turkey in this case would have more pertinent fish to fry than to get embroiled in a war in Syria.

Angocachi Wednesday 14 Dec 2011

Why don't they bomb Syria like they did Libya?

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 14 Dec 2011

Because they don't have any UN authorization to do so.

Angocachi Wednesday 14 Dec 2011

How is that stopping them?

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 14 Dec 2011

Because it would violate international law since there are no previous UN resolutions that allow for attacking Syria should Syria violate some resolution, even remotely.

Angocachi Wednesday 14 Dec 2011

And what would happen if international law was violated by NATO countries?

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 14 Dec 2011

It would first of all destroy international law, thus reducing America's ability to use international law as a justification for military intervention. It would also allow China and Russia to flaunt international law, thus taking away that as leverage against them by the USA.

It would also make NATO participants subject to immediate arrest on foreign soil should states seek to do so.

Angocachi Wednesday 14 Dec 2011

Been there done that.

International law is enforced by the West, not enforced on it. If it wants to bypass it, it does and will.

I believe they've held out on bombing Syria because the key policy drivers in the West are not all there. The pro-Israel camp is skeptical that a post-Assad Syria would be good for them, whether it's bad for Tehran and Hezbollah or not. There are no Western oil companies like BP or Exxon interested. For NATO it is a drive to replace a Russian client with one of their own. For the GCC it would be nice to lop off a leg of the Shia axis. But even NATO and the GCC are skeptical they can do this following the failures of their political agents in the other chimped countries to get the rebound and retain power from the Islamists. Erdogan is the only confident actor, but he can't do much more than shelter guerrillas and opposition without a NATO no-fly zone.

The Syria Analysis Thread

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