The Syria Analysis Thread

10 posts

Theo

Good to see that the all these "muslim brotherhood"/"salafi"/ FSA groups are showing their true colors siding with FSA and eventually - the western imperialist alliance. Poor fools don't understand that they are pawns, they never seem to learn, no matter how many times they are played.

There's no independent self-reliant Muslim movement. Whatever Salafi movement exists right now, exists only because Americans allow it to and prefer the "controlled chaos" in the area rather than order.

In the Muslim world any power not associated with Russia or China is by default associated with the West. Even though the US is fighting them in Afghanistan, its going to star (or already is) arming them in Syria. And there's no contradiction. Americans know that they haven't even taken the gloves off yet in A-stan and when the time is right (after Salafis outlive their usefullness), they'll get rid of the whole "salafi" menace wholesale.

Right now the West simply values Salafis for their destabilizing influence on the ME - they are the kind of force which can overthrow the balance in the ME from within (thus making a possibility of a global conflict over Syria less likely), its like a continuation of Cold War proxy wars.

Theo

I can understand what some of the "salafi" crowd think - they think they can somehow "trick" the US, take their weapons, their support, but when they end up victorious in Syria, they then rush into A-stan, Squash Lebannon and then, bam, a new Chaliphate arises and the West stands in amazement not sure what to do while these guys stomp on Iran, Israel, Saudis, Qatar, etc.

What surprises me (though, not so much), is that Saudis are always the last on the list. "Yeah, yeah, Saudis too, we'll take care of it later, right now its Assad and Hizbullah".

Why? Saudis are the bloodline of US dominance in the region and basically the overmind of the whole modern set-up in the Muslim world, with factions played against each other. And its not like you need a million man army to take on Saudis in open battle - their army is smaller than that of Assad.

Moreover, there's a long chain of uncertainities between overthrow of Assad, collapse of Hizbullah and the Chaliphate. So Assad is overthrown, so what? What exactly is the roadmap for turning this into a bigger victory vs. a major loss for everyone since the last avantpost for anti-American influence is torn down?

Angocachi
Theo , the Salafis get their money, fighters, and weapons themselves otherwise they'd have been walking all over Damascus months ago. They're fighting with funds from sympathetics in the Muslim world, guerrillas they've trained in their own camps and fronts, and weapons they've taken from looted arms depots.. whether it was Saddam's or Qaddafi's. In Syria the FSA is well-armed because they are Syrian soldiers who turned against Assad on account of their being Sunni. The FSA is fighting with the weapons and in the very uniforms Assad supplied them with. The FSA is not Salafi however, certainly not its leadership. The Salafis (al Nusra/al Qaeda) are using looted weapons, as they've captured military bases... and weapons they've brought in from Lebanon and Iraq. If the Salafis were reliant on the West they would have something more at their disposal, something more in their arsenal. They don't have helmets most of them.

Salafi Jihadists have never been played. They got what they wanted in every conflict they've fought, just not everything they've wanted. They've volunteered in conflicts, like in the Balkans, where the fate of Muslims was at stake and were then edged out by foreign-backed secularists. The reason NATO hasn't intervened in Syria as it did in the Balkans is because this time they can't edge out the Salafis. For NATO this is worst than Libya, where Salafi militias took the courthouses and the reigns of government. NATO doesn't want a repeat of that.

The US tries to crush Salafi insurgencies wherever they are, from Mali to Somalia to Yemen to Iraq, but they simply don't have the means. Take off the gloves in Afghanistan? So NATO has lost voluntarily in Afghanistan? What more could they have done to win in that country? Nobody wins there.

The Muslim world is a series of foreign proxy regimes, the Salafi insurgencies have carved out an increasing number of statelets in the least governable parts of the Sunni world. They're affiliated with neither the US, China, Russia, or any other power. They are a third way, unaligned and rejecting all non-Islamic authority.

The Salafis have been trying to overthrow Saud for decades. It's proven impossible so far because his security forces are on the ball. In Syria, Assad's military and much of his government defected. This created an opening for a Salafi insurgency to begin, particularly because they already held territory on the other side of the Iraqi border and could follow the Euphrates right in.

The Salafis intend to administer Sunni Syria by Shariah and use it as a base to move into Lebanon and Jordan. They'll also open the Golan Heights for attacks on Israel.
Stubby
I'm not really sure I understand your fantasy here. The Shia look for their time in the sun, after decades, and fight openly against the Coalition (the US) when they (the US) try to run the show contrary to their wishes. Are you forgetting the open opposition and bombings in the 80's launched by the Iraqi Shia against Western embassies and interests? If you want to make them into collaborators for taking money during the 90s, then please apply the same logic to the Sunni rebels in Syria. It's besides the point anyway, the Iraqi National Congress was never a Shia group, it was an ineffectual umbrella group, not unlike the Syrian National Council right now, whose existence I'm sure you wouldn't use to infer a sinister Sunni-Zionist conspiracy (neither would I BTW). And who actually took control after the war? Shia Islamists aligned with America's enemy #1, Iran.

This whole time the SHIA REGIME (duh duh duuuuh) was under sanctions and threat of attack by the US continuously since it's Islamic revolution, to the point of the US supporting the Sunni ran Iraq against the sinister Shia regime. What kind of silly propaganda have you been willfully buying into to imagine that there is a Western backed Shia squid oppressing the Sunni middle east? The Gulf Kingdoms, who along with the US have had a lunatic hatred of and opposition to Iran since the revolution, giving it a much stiffer opposition than any opposition to Sunni Islamism, the MB, etc.

And cut out this "good for the ummah" bullshit, I don't believe this gimmick for a second. Look to the real God, and Jesus Christ, not some fake set of rituals used to justify reactionary politics. You'll get what you want, and if what you want is to "get back" at liberals, that'll be your prize, forever.
Angocachi
Both Sunni and Shia fight against and collaborate with non-Muslims, including the US, against fellow Muslims. I'm aware that Hezbollah has slain a fair number of Americans and Israelis, that Iran has been at war with the West and Israel since 1979, and so forth.
I do consider the FSA as collaborators, the leadership anyway. That's why it's important that Al Nusra and Salafi-leaning factions of the FSA prevail over secularists and agents.

Yes, the Iraqi Shia aligned with Iran, but all the while they collaborated with the US-UK against the Sunni. The Iraqi Shia, under Sistani, gave the US-UK two options;
1. Give us the government via open elections (which we will clearly win), we will abid some contracts and let you withdraw at your own pace
2. Install your exile regime of secularists, we will have an insurgency to dwarf the Sunni insurgency, tear up your contracts, cut off your supply lines, lay siege to your military bases
This was a betrayal of the Sunni, who were already at war with the coalition. They should have launched an unconditional insurgency but they didn't because that would mean sharing Baghdad, sharing the reigns with the Sunni once the insurgency ended. The Shia wanted to take the Iraqi government bloodlessly while the US and Sunni fought it out.

You're straw manning me. I never said there is any Western backed Shia squid. The West is trying desperately to kill the Shia power for evicting their energy and defense firms and aligning with Moscow.

When did Jesus claim to be God?
Bob Dylan Roof
Angocachi
Bob Dylan Roof
Ango, admit it: you can't handle the fact that Assad is the savior of the white race

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/09/08/030908ta_talk_mcgrath
Theo
These mosques aren't some self-organized donation funds, set up by passionate Umma member.

These "sympathetics" provide funds due to Saudi control of the mosques in most of Europe and not only Europe (not long ago, Saudis offered to build such a Mosque in Moscow, covering all expenses - Russia wisely denied - and right now most central Asian republics have Saudi-built and controlled mosques too, ditto for the Caucasus - Saudis invest in Mosques and later use them as source of funding) And Saudis do that with US and European blessing. To squash mosque donation is quite easy, noone in the West is just interested in doing it because it allows them to wage hidden wars by using an ally's proxy. Saudi are an ally of the West and Salafis are the pet project of Saudis.

They are indirectly reliant on the West, simply because their funding comes from the West, regardless if its in forms of paychecks from US Senate or in form of donations from Europe-based mosques. The West is helping by providing "benign neglect", whereas it could easily terminate all funds coming from European and American mosques to the rebels. But with such a covert op tactics, the West can't be directly blamed for helping Syrian rebels and inciting riots.

If you think the West can't control what's happening in mosques in its own territory, you are one deluded child.

They got absolutely nothing. They were always the cannon fodder thrown around with nothing won in any of the engagements they participated in.

Yes, the puppet master can't defeat its puppet, you seriously believe that? Even Assad with his 20K men gave the guys a pounding.

They just don't want to defeat Salafis. Not yet. Has this thought ever crossed your mind?

Libya is a big win for the US,they got rid of Gaddafi using someone else's hands for the most part. "Controlled chaos" in action. And the repeat of that in Syria is A-OK, hey, why have a strong dictator in power, when you can have a gazillion of sects biting each other in the ass, making crushing them all a cake walk when things come to a push?

The aren't crushing them. They are doing "damage control", directing salafis there, where they want them to be. They don't want them in Yemen or A-Stan or Iraq, so they tentatively squeeze them out into the sandbox where they expect the Salafis to play - Iran, Syria, Lybia.

Your first sentence was correct. Absolutely every single regime, religious movement in the ME is someone's proxy with single exceptions being Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran is allied with Russia but is not its proxy, its an alliance of interests, since Russia doesn't want US dominance to spread any further in the ME theatre.

Saudis too are a player with its own game who on hand depend on the West to survive, but on the other Saudi and the West have become so interwined that there interests are hard to differentiate. US/Saudi is basically a single entity.

Utter crap. Not a single attempt comparable to Syria or Libya was ever taken, once again - "squeezed" into the playpen when they tried to do something. All funding for groups who try to play in Saudi Arabia is immediately cut off from "independent" Mosques.

Cut the bull. Most of the government is still the same as it was.


After they deliver a blow to Lebannon, they'll finish the project the US/Saudis have created them for - complete encirclement of Iran and removal of other centers of power in the region. And after that they are both done for: Iran and Salafis alike. Maybe another attack on some tower in the US or an explosion - as a result the US will move in in full force, guns blazing and annihilate everything that moves in a swift chain of strikes.
Mike

I can't see the world exactly as an Arab sees it, nor is Arab/Muslim history exactly analogous to European/Christian, but let me say this: As much as I'd welcome a return to piety among men of the West, I do not think I'd welcome a return of the prolonged, internecine troubles attendant to the Protestant reformation.

I think what's being ignored here is Baathism. Both the Iraqi Sunni insurgency starting in 2003 and the Assad government in 2010 found themselves besieged by Zionist-leaning Western forces (directly or indirectly), and both of these entities have Baathist sympathies. The fact that Salafis find themselves on different sides in these two fights seems to be a coincidence that the Zionist-West doesn't care much about. Judging by actions, the Z-West seems to assume that it can work with nominally Sunni regimes, but that Baathist regimes are categorically intolerable.

If there's a reason for this, my guess is that Baathism, not Salafiism is (or was) the greatest threat to the NWO within the Arab world.