The Syria Analysis Thread

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 29 May 2013

Assad's removal would mean the end of Hezbollah and the turn towards Iran which would completely upend Russia and China. In short, they can't let Assad lose.

SweetLeftFoot Wednesday 29 May 2013

"The road to Tehran runs through Damascus" etc.

Angocachi Wednesday 29 May 2013

Good articles from nic.

The rebels will not be split if Qusayr remains under Assad's thumb. Even if they were to be split, it doesn't matter as each rebel held territory sits against a foreign border. The whole Euphrates and the Turkish border has fallen from Assad. Just about every majority Sunni city has gone over to the rebels, uncontested.

This war was determined by demographics.

Look at this map, it's up to date.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities..._Syrian_civil_war#Maps_of_territorial_control

These are the questions intelligent people can begin to ask;
1. How much will NATO and the GCC intervene to propel their proxies into the reigns over Salafis and Ikhwanis?
2. How much will Israel intervene to weaken Hezbollah?
3. How long until Assad's military is limited to non-Sunni majority inhabited territories?

Anybody talking about Assad taking back the country is out of his mind.

SweetLeftFoot Wednesday 29 May 2013

He may not take back the country but he can certainly regain hegemony.

And if he can change the narrative, doing so with some success now, to it being a straight fight against jihadis, then the West is painted into a corner from which it will struggle to escape.

Proscribing Al Nusra (who very few people had heard of at the time) was a strategic mistake. Far better to pretend they are just another "resistance" group.

Angocachi Wednesday 29 May 2013

Assad has painted the rebels as uniformly Al Qaeda to illegitimize NATO backing for the FSA. However, he is working off of the rules of Arab politics and how to play the Arab street. Legitimacy doesn't matter to Western governments when it comes to intervention, so while calling the rebels Al Qaeda shores up backing from secularists, Shia, and drives up opposition in the West from Obama critics and red camp sympathizers... he's not stopping NATO support for the FSA.
In fact, by playing up the threat of Salafis and Ikhwanis taking over, Assad's giving the FSA a selling point that ensures NATO and the GCC will continue to support them and even intervene for them as the only armed secular organization to counter an Islamist takeover of Sunni Syria. Iran might even get behind factions of the FSA if Assad proves incapable of holding the Shia coast and a Salafi overrun becomes imminent.

Al Nusra has no reason in the world to pretend that it is another secular rebel group. It gets its funds, arms, and recruits from Salafis and so must announce that it is Salafi and prove that it is conducting fruitful operations if it wants to be fed.
Al Nusra is also very keen on preventing Western support for the rebellion, because the West will only strengthen Al Nusra's secular rivals in the FSA and plot to install a regime of Baathist defectors and exiles in the employ of Western firms & lobbies. Furthermore, the less support the FSA has from the West and the GCC, the more it has to rely on and obey Al Nusra. This is when we begin to see FSA units flying Salafi banners and FSA spokesmen praising Jihadists for their contribution.
If Al Nusra can discourage a Western hand in the fight by announcing their presence and dominance then they increase the likelihood that they will be the sole victors in a post-Assad Syria and they will inherit governance... a Shariah governance that refuses any truce with Israel, any userous international banking, any foreign contracts that undermines nationalization of natural resources, and all of the other points of an Islamic state that drive NWO-ZOG opposition to Islamism.

Cornelio Wednesday 29 May 2013

Germany wont arm the rebel scum :thumbsup:

Stubby Saturday 1 Jun 2013

Rockets from Syria hit Hezbollah stronghold

BEIRUT (AP) — Eighteen rockets and mortars rounds from Syria slammed into Lebanon on Saturday, the largest cross-border salvo to hit a Hezbollah stronghold since Syrian rebels threatened to retaliate for the Lebanese militant group's armed support of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...-from-syria-hit-hezbollah-stronghold/2380839/

I wonder what role the Lebanese army will start playing in all this.

Niccolo and Donkey Sunday 2 Jun 2013

The vitriol directed at the Shi'a, Hezbollah, and the Sunnis is moving events towards a regional conflagration.

Fitz President Camacho Roland Angocachi Stubby SteamshipTime Byssus

Muslim Brotherhood cleric calls for Sunni jihad in Syria

The spiritual mentor of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood movement has risked further inflaming sectarian tension across the Middle East by using highly charged religious rhetoric to call for a Sunni "jihad" in Syria.

Yusef al-Qaradawi was particularly critical of the roles played by Iran and the Lebanon Shia militia Hizbollah

Yusef al-Qaradawi, who is based in Qatar and has been a leading voice supporting the Arab Spring, warned that Iranian Shia were trying to "eat" Sunni Muslims, who are a majority in the Muslim world.

He referred to Alawites, the followers of the Muslim sect to which President Bashar al-Assad of Syria belongs, as being "worse infidels than Christians or Jews". He also used the deliberately contemptuous term "Nusayris" when talking about them.

He was particularly critical of the roles played by Iran, which is largely Shia, and the Lebanon Shia militia Hizbollah whose name translates as Party of God but which he called "Party of Satan", in supporting the Assad regime.

"There is no common ground between the two sides because the Iranians, especially conservatives, want to eat the Sunni people," he said.

Dr Qaradawi himself, who is Egyptian by birth but has lived in Qatar for many years and is regarded as a key factor in the active role the Qatari royal family has played in backing the Arab Spring uprisings with arms and money, has a controversial record in the West.

However, his latest comments, made in a mosque in Qatar on Friday, go beyond his previous political sermons. He himself acknowledged he had become more radical. "People involved in reconciliation between the sects... said that I used to be the one calling for reconciliation and doctrinal unity. They asked why I don't take up that call again.

"Well, I called for reconciliation but I found it did not bring the sects closer. They benefited from it and we failed to take advantage."

He also apologised for his past words in favour of Hizbollah. "The Shia deceived me," he said. "I was less mature than the Sunni scholars who were aware of the truth of that party."

He said Sunni Muslims around the world should not wait for the West to help the rebel cause against the "Nusayris", the Iranians and "the party of God". "They are the party of Satan, the party of the tyrant," he said. "The party of God does not kill Muslims, and these people draw close to God by killing Muslims."

Stubby Sunday 2 Jun 2013

Yup, I'm curious now how long the pro-rebel narrative in the west can continue once Shia-Sunni violence reaches fever pitch in Lebanon.

Niccolo and Donkey Monday 3 Jun 2013

In Lebanon, the Sunnis are backed by the same people backing the rebels in Syria: USA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar. Hezbollah is allied with the bulk of Lebanon's Christian parties.

The Syria Analysis Thread

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