The Syria Analysis Thread

Niccolo and Donkey Monday 19 Mar 2012

Roland SweetLeftFoot SteamshipTime President Camacho nuclear launch detected Angocachi

This story needs clarification.......

Russian Anti-Terror Troops Arrive in Syria

A Russian military unit has arrived in Syria, according to Russian news reports, a development that a United Nations Security Council source told ABC News was "a bomb" certain to have serious repercussions.

Russia, one of President Bashar al-Assad's strongest allies despite international condemnation of the government's violent crackdown on the country's uprising, has repeatedly blocked the United Nations Security Council's attempts to halt the violence, accusing the U.S. and its allies of trying to start another war.

Now the Russian Black Sea fleet's Iman tanker has arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus on the Mediterranean Sea with an anti-terror squad from the Russian Marines aboard according to the Interfax news agency. The Assad government has insisted it is fighting a terrorist insurgency. The Russian news reports did not elaborate on the Russian troops' mission in Syria or if they are expected to leave the port.

The presence of Russian troops in Syria could be a "pretty obvious" show of support to the regime, according to Russian security expert Mark Galeotti.

President Camacho Monday 19 Mar 2012

Russian Anti-Terror Troops Arrive in Syria

Excellent news :thumbsup:

50 years after Vietnam and how the tables have turned.... now it is the United States that is hellbent on exporting violent "peoples revolutions" across the globe while the Russians are the only power willing to stand up for the forces of order and civilization.

Team Zissou Wednesday 21 Mar 2012

Possibly, the Orthodox Church played a hand in this. Also, if the regime falls, Russia may be where Assad ends up.

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 28 Mar 2012

SteamshipTime Roland President Camacho SweetLeftFoot

Liberals challenge Islamist grip on Syrian National Council

(Reuters) - Syrian opposition leaders agreed on Wednesday to expand and reorganize the main dissident group receiving international backing in the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, in a move that could lessen Islamist influence on the organization.

Invited by Turkey and Arab League chair Qatar to form a common front in their year-old uprising against Assad, the opposition met in Istanbul on Tuesday riven by disputes.

Under pressure from Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood agreed to form a committee of ten to restructure the 350-member Syrian National Council, around 270 of whose members are Islamists, opposition sources said.

On Wednesday they issued a declaration in which they promised to build a democratic state and to seek reconciliation once Assad is removed.

Divisions within the opposition have also undermined the revolt. Despite the formation of the committee to restructure the SNC, liberals were skeptical about the Muslim Brotherhood's willingness to loosen its grip.

"Once the SNC is left on its own again it will disunite. The deal was reached to give a basis for the 'Friends of Syria' to help the revolt," said opposition leader Kamal Labwani, who has spent ten years as a political prisoner in Syria.

Labwani, a physician, resigned from the SNC earlier this month complaining that it was a facade for the Muslim Brotherhood, and is the main force behind the proposed reforms.

The committee includes four SNC members, notably its head Burhan Ghalioun, a Paris-based academic who has been accused of being a figurehead while the Muslim Brotherhood wields the real power.

Both veteran opposition leaders and a new generation of young activists have also criticized the SNC, saying it has too few representatives of 'the Arab street' and the popular protest movement.

Tayyara, who left Syria after spending nine months in jail during the uprising, has refused to join the SNC unless it is restructured.

Bob Dylan Roof Saturday 31 Mar 2012

I find it interesting that the liberals are hostile to the MB. From what I've heard, the MB is comparatively innocuous in comparison to other Muslim political groups; and U.S. Gov isn't threatened by their dominance. The only catch for liberals is that the MB is far more tolerant of more radical Muslim parties.

Thomas777 Saturday 31 Mar 2012

The thing to bear in mind about the Muslim Brethren is that what we now know as the ideology of ''offensive Jihad'' in the Sunni world was essentially founded by Sayyid Qutb and his followers. He altered the conceptual horizon of how Moslems think about their relationship to state authority and politics, and one of the ways Qutb achieved this was by creating a genuine parallel society in Egypt and Syria that was entirely at odds with Nasserism and B'athism - he had a relatively easy time of this in Syria by the 1960s as Assad's Alawite faction became increasingly tolerant of Communist parties, which alarmed men of religion very much for obvious reasons.

There's a few different views of the MB in the West - there's the liberal and NeoCon/Zionist view that the MB is essentially a Sinn Fein type organization that is the political wing of NSAs with common purposes like Al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad; there's the Scheuer/realist view that the MB is basically a coterie of lower middle class white collar workers, university students, lawyers, and intellectuals that constitutes a think tank of sorts for Islamic thought, that its committed to a ballot box strategy and lacks the muscle of young and violent mujuhadeen in its ranks, and that its easily placated if whatever national government happens to come about in Arab countries at least nominally enforces shari'a.

Neither of these accounts seems to be entirely true, and neither really explains in any complete way why Qutb and the MB remain important in Sunni societies.

We take for granted in the 21st century that Moslem partisans will violently attack political authority in their own countries, but that's actually a major breach with precedent in the Islamic world. Qutb was basically able to convince a substantial minority of Moslems that its entirely congruous with the faith to kill off anti-Islamic elements in Arab lands if they are perceived to be threatening the continued existence of Islam through secularism, institutionalized police state brutality, and things of that sort even if these governments are allowing Moslem people to privately worship unmolested and are defending the territorial integrity of Arab lands.

Qutb in other words demanded that Moslems pursue jihad to defend the faith from not just direct violence against them but also from the ingress of jahiliyya into their societies by globalism, Western soft power, atheistic military nationalism, Communism, Zionism, and what have you.

Angocachi Saturday 31 Mar 2012

Thomas777 said: ↑

The thing to bear in mind about the Muslim Brethren is that what we now know as the ideology of ''offensive Jihad'' in the Sunni world was essentially founded by Sayyid Qutb and his followers. He altered the conceptual horizon of how Moslems think about their relationship to state authority and politics, and one of the ways Qutb achieved this was by creating a genuine parallel society in Egypt and Syria that was entirely at odds with Nasserism and B'athism - he had a relatively easy time of this in Syria by the 1960s as Assad's Alawite faction became increasingly tolerant of Communist parties, which alarmed men of religion very much for obvious reasons.

There's a few different views of the MB in the West - there's the liberal and NeoCon/Zionist view that the MB is essentially a Sinn Fein type organization that is the political wing of NSAs with common purposes like Al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad; there's the Scheuer/realist view that the MB is basically a coterie of lower middle class white collar workers, university students, lawyers, and intellectuals that constitutes a think tank of sorts for Islamic thought, that its committed to a ballot box strategy and lacks the muscle of young and violent mujuhadeen in its ranks, and that its easily placated if whatever national government happens to come about in Arab countries at least nominally enforces shari'a.

Neither of these accounts seems to be entirely true, and neither really explains in any complete way why Qutb and the MB remain important in Sunni societies.

We take for granted in the 21st century that Moslem partisans will violently attack political authority in their own countries, but that's actually a major breach with precedent in the Islamic world. Qutb was basically able to convince a substantial minority of Moslems that its entirely congruous with the faith to kill off anti-Islamic elements in Arab lands if they are perceived to be threatening the continued existence of Islam through secularism, institutionalized police state brutality, and things of that sort even if these governments are allowing Moslem people to privately worship unmolested and are defending the territorial integrity of Arab lands.

Qutb in other words demanded that Moslems pursue jihad to defend the faith from not just direct violence against them but also from the ingress of jahiliyya into their societies by globalism, Western soft power, atheistic military nationalism, Communism, Zionism, and what have you.

Great post.

The most important pieces of thought Qutb injected into the Sunni mind was that
-no genuine Islamic government exists today
-modern Muslim society is polluted with pre-Islamic and non-Islamic beliefs and practices that need to be removed by emulating the lifestyle and politics of the first generations of Muslims
-that it is OK to attack your own government if it not Islamic, without permission from phony pro-government clerics, and it's OK to attack anyone who supports your non-Islamic government, including foreign governments and their nationals

The Muslim Brotherhood started as a much more physically aggressive, militant organization... but it's most hardcore elements have been whittled away, often falling in with groups that actually make trigger pulling and bomb making a priority. To survive and for a few potemkin parliament seats the remaining members have softened their rhetoric and become a bunch of faggots who say things like "We want a system based on Islam that represents everyone" rather than the Zawahiri line of "Shariah or fuck you". That left a bunch of Salafis in between who aren't willing to compromise but are also ready to put their names on the ballot, and so we've got Noor.

The US & GCC want secular exiles to takeover in Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and anywhere else a regime falls... but the Islamists in all their variants are seizing the reigns and all they can do now is whisper promises into the ears of the most limp and watered down. Ikhwan could be to Muslim theocrats what the Republican party is to Christian fundamentalists, wooing the religious with rhetoric but never delivering. The problem for Ikhwan, however, is that unlike the US the fundamentalist demographic in the Arab countries is large and has alternatives at the booth and beyond.

Niccolo and Donkey Friday 27 Apr 2012

Niccolo and Donkey Monday 7 May 2012

Angocachi President Camacho Female Philosopher practicing normative ethics SweetLeftFoot

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood rise from the ashes

(Reuters) - At a meeting of Syria's opposition, Muslim Brotherhood officials gather round Marxists colleagues, nudging them to produce policy statements for the Syrian National Council, the main political group challenging President Bashar al-Assad.

With many living in the West, and some ditching their trademark beards, it is hard to differentiate Brotherhood from leftists. But there is little dispute about who calls the shots.

From annihilation at home 30 years ago when they challenged the iron-fisted rule of Hafez al-Assad, the Brotherhood has recovered to become the dominant force of the exile opposition in the 14-month-old revolt against his son Bashar.

Careful not to undermine the council's disparate supporters, the Brotherhood has played down its growing influence within the Syrian National Council (SNC), whose public face is the secular Paris-based professor Bourhan Ghalioun.

"We chose this face, accepted by the West and by the inside. We don't want the regime to take advantage if an Islamist becomes the Syrian National Council's head," former Brotherhood leader Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni told supporters in a video.

The footage is now being circulated by Brotherhood opponents, seeking to highlight its undeclared power.

"We nominated Ghalioun as a front for national action. We are not moving now as Muslim Brotherhood but as part of a front that includes all currents," said Bayanouni.

EGYPTIAN ROOTS
The Syrian Brotherhood is a branch of the Sunni Muslim movement founded in Egypt in the 1920s. It was a minor political player before a 1963 Baath Party coup but its support grew under the authoritarian 30-year rule of Hafez al-Assad, as his minority Alawite community dominated the majority Sunni country.

Mindful of international fears of Islamists taking power, and of the worries of Syria's ethnic and religious minorities, the Syrian Brotherhood portrays itself as espousing a moderate, Turkish-style Islamist agenda. It unveiled a manifesto last month that did not mention the word Islam and contained pledges to respect individual rights.

With backing from Ankara, and following the political ascendancy of the Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya since Arab Spring revolts broke out two years ago, the group is poised to be at the top of any new governing system in Syria .

Extending the loose Brotherhood umbrella to Syria will raise pressure on the U.S.-backed Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, where the local Brotherhood has been sidelined by laws that favor tribal politicians allied with the security apparatus.

Iraq's Shi'ite rulers could also find they have a hardline Sunni government as their neighbor, and Lebanon's Shi'ite guerrilla group Hezbollah would lose its main Arab backer.

EYEING VICTORY
Working quietly, the Brotherhood has been financing Free Syrian Army defectors based in Turkey and channeling money and supplies to Syria, reviving their base among small Sunni farmers and middle class Syrians, opposition sources say.

"We bicker while the Brotherhood works," said Fawaz al-Tello, a veteran opposition figure who is a pious Muslim while being on the liberal end of the Syrian political spectrum.

"They have gained control of the SNC's aid division and the military bureau, its only important components," said Tello, a former political prisoner who fled Syria four months ago.

"But they still have to work more do to get support on the inside. Lots of clerics, activists and rebels do not want to be linked to them."

Tello, however, acknowledged that the Brotherhood has clawed back influence inside Syria, especially in the cities of Homs and Hama and the rural province of Idlib on the border with Turkey, hotbeds of the revolt against Assad.

Bob Dylan Roof Tuesday 5 Jun 2012

West's Syrian Narrative Based on "Guy in British Apartment"

Opposition propagandist in England apartment is, and has been, the sole source cited by the Western press.

The Syria Analysis Thread

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