The Syria Analysis Thread

10 posts

Team Zissou
niccolo and donkey Angocachi Thomas777 President Camacho

I'm talking out of my ass here, but will opine nonetheless:

Ba'athism is a threat because it unites Levantine Arabs under a secular democratic banner, which is the last thing Israel and the US want, and the secular democratic part is obviously troubling to Salafist monarchs in the Gulf.

However, I think it is very safe to say that Ba'athism is dead and buried. Nobody believes it outside the few aging Middle Eastern academics who remember it fondly from their youth. No effing way Syrians and Lebanese are going to pay taxes to subsidize Muslim Brotherhood baby-making. And if "the troubles" ever end, they're all going to remember a real clear lesson: stand and fight with your credal/ethnic brethren, or die. (Or flee into exile.)

Ba'athism is deader than ol' Hafez.
Angocachi
Nice catch on the Baathism. The West was pro-Baath during the Cold War, it kept the Marxists and Islamists in the prisons, graves, and exile. That was important because Marxism and Islamism would cut Western contractors out of any state they seized, and still would.

The West has been for removing Qaddafi, Omar Bashir, Mossadegh and the Ayatollahs as well and they aren't Baathist. The West fought hard against Aidid in Somalia, and then against Salafis across Islamic Africa from Azawad to Yemen. The common denominator in every instance is that the US and it's allies seek to overthrow and prevent the ascension of states that will cut them out; cut out their defense firms, their oil firms, their international financial firms, and discard old agreements to ensure Israeli invulnerability. They're not concerned with Baathism, but perhaps there was something in Baathism that inclined both of history's Baathist states toward conflict with the West. I'd say the absolute power it gives one man makes him unruly. The best proxy governments are not (foreigner directs dictator directs underlings) but (foreigner directs underlings directs dictator). They must control the men around the throne, as it's impossible to remote control the man on the throne alone... such men of power like Qaddafi and Saddam... and Assad.
Thomas777
Ba'athism is complicated - it was/is best understood as a form of Arab Stalinism that was tailored to unite the Arab lands under a single penumbra, deliver the Near East into the Soviet sphere of influence, and deal with an equivalent of the ''nationalities problem'', by eradicating ethnic and sectarian conflicts and preferences. Of course, the short-lived Egyptian/Syrian/Iraqi concord collapsed almost at inception, the Iraqi Ba'ath was split, the victorious (pro-Saddam) element therein permanently alienated the Syrian/Alawite Ba'ath, and the Communistic/Command Economy orientation of the Ba'ath program was thoroughly discredited. That said, the Syrian Ba'ath was and is aiming to preserve the party-state as a modernizing force and a bullwark against both Salafism and American subversion. Whether they can survive in terms like the Communist Party in China has remains to be seen, but I think its premature to write them off as dead-on-arrival.
Thomas777
The West played both sides of the aisle vis a vis the Ba'ath Party during the Cold War - America by the early 1980s (and coincidentally the East Germans and the USSR as well) considered the Saddam/Iraqi Ba'ath to be violently unmanageable and volatile to the point of unreliability. The Stasi had to actually take steps to deport Iraqi agents from East Berlin and it caused a diplomatic row of sorts when Saddam's security forces began assassinating Iraqi nationals in public under light of day on East German territory.

Concomitantly, America's relations with Saddam's Iraq were always strained and limited - the US, save for its weapons sales to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq conflict, had little actual contact with the Iraqi government and for most of the 1980s, no formal diplomatic offices with them. Both America and the East Bloc in other words had an attitude of ''wait and see'' towards the Iraqi Ba'ath - presumably both were hoping that when the war emergency with Iran abated, Iraq would normalize. This of course never happened, which was one of the catalysts for the 1991 Gulf War.
Angocachi
You need to read the Saudi and Gulf press, and then Scheuer.

The Saudi government sets up and run mosques precisely to stop the spread of Salafism and cut off the flow of funds to Salafi Jihadists.


The Saudi regime may be urging stronger international action in Syria, but it is clearly wary of the recent wave of domestic agitation calling for non-official involvement in the crisis. The Al Saud worry that the anti-reform Saudi clerics behind many of the calls to action are overstepping their bounds—and that the ruling family’s legitimacy and Saudi Arabia’s security could ultimately be at stake.
Arabic press reported on May 29 that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia summoned a number of prominent Salafi clerics to Riyadh to ban them from soliciting donations for Syria’s embattled citizenry. A number of those clerics responded by announcing on their social media platforms that they had been contacted by authorities and ordered to desist from collecting funds for Syria.
These moves come at an especially sensitive time in government-clerical relations, as King Abdullah’s struggle with ultraconservative clerics who oppose many of the government’s reform efforts heats up. The king recently dismissed an adviser to the royal court for publicly criticizing his reform agenda on a local radio station. And the head of the mutawa’in (morality police) was also dismissed because of similarly hardline views on gender relations.

Clerical Activism Ramps Up

The Syrian crisis has long animated clerical sympathies in the Kingdom. In most cases, clerical statements adhere closely to the official Saudi line on Syria, providing helpful theological cover for Saudi foreign policy. In Friday sermons, on Twitter, and in Facebook posts, the clerics have demonized the Assad regime and the Alawites, expressed solidarity with civilian suffering, and pushed for greater Gulf involvement, to include arming the Syrian opposition.
Yet, the clerics have gone too far, deviating from the government’s line and moving from rhetoric to appeals for non-official action. There have been more militant calls for jihad and humanitarian aid to the Syrian citizenry that deviate from the official line. A redline was crossed when a group calling itself the “Ulema Committee to Support Syria” announced its existence on Facebook on May 26, posting bank account numbers for prospective donors and organizing a fundraising drive at the Bawardi Mosque in Riyadh. Its leadership is comprised of seven prominent, non-establishment clerics, several of whom are well-known for their previous calls for militant volunteers in Iraq and their anti-reform views, including Nasser bin Suleiman al-Omar, Abd al-Rahman Salah Mahmud, and Abd al-Aziz bin Marzuq al-Turayfi.
From the regime’s perspective, such exhortations for non-official involvement are problematic. They skirt the limits on clerical autonomy that were formalized by King Abdullah in an August 2010 decree that confined the issuing of fatwas (religious edicts) to the officially sanctioned Senior Ulema Council. The authorities moved quickly.
The Monarchy Draws a Redline

Just two days after the group was formed, the Ulema Committee to Support Syria announced on Facebook that it could no longer accept donations and that its fundraising drive had been cancelled by the authorities. The individual social media sites of clerics affiliated with the committee posted similar notices. The website of Nasser al-Omar reported he was no longer accepting donations because of royal intervention. Abd al-Aziz al-Turayfi, who has criticized Abdullah’s decision to restrict the issuing of fatwas to the Senior Ulema Council, acknowledged that he was “stopping all donations to the brothers in Syria until further notice.” And the list goes on. The popular cleric Muhammad al-Urayfi—with the highest number of Twitter followers among clerics in the Kingdom—tweeted that he was forced to sign a pledge not to raise funds for Syria. Hassan Hamid, a cleric affiliated with the committee but not part of its leadership, specifically mentioned a visit from the mabahith ( security services ) regarding donations.
Press commentary from both independent and pro-regime sources has approved of the donation ban. Pro-regime press suggested that the ban was meant to prevent funds from reaching militant jihadist organizations, urging that any response to Syria from Saudi Arabia had to occur through “official channels.”
A column in the daily newspaper al-Jazirah obliquely condemns senior clerics who use their prestige and reputation to extract money from their constituents for uncertain purposes. It goes on to warn that “history will repeat itself,” citing parallels between the Syrian crisis and the Saudi experience in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Iraq. There, ostensibly charitable donations proved a slippery slope for the recruitment of Saudi youth to fight in these conflicts and also ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda militants who later attacked the Kingdom.
On Twitter, sources affiliated with the Ministry of Interior applauded the charitable impulse of the clerics and citizenry but emphasized that aid had to proceed through official channels. In contrast, the popular cleric Salman al-Awda tweeted an apparent criticism of the ban, arguing that donations to Syria are not dependent on a particular channel and that those who are committed to sending money will find a way.
But the regime went further still. On June 7, it followed up on its ban on donations with an edict from the Senior Ulema Council that expressly prohibited calls for jihad in Syria outside of official channels. A clerical member of the Supreme Judicial Council asserted that support to the Syrian people had to be “consistent with state policy” and that unauthorized calls for jihad were an “embarrassment to the state.”
Broader Concerns About Clerical Power

As true as those concerns may be, there are larger issues at play here. This is part of a broader struggle between the reform-minded King Abdullah and hardline clerics who oppose his efforts. For instance, Abd al-Muhsin al-Ubaykan, the ultra-conservative cleric and adviser to the royal court who criticized the king’s reform agenda on the radio, had long been a source of embarrassment to the royalty. His polarizing remarks on gender relations in 2010 were a key impetus for Abdullah’s subsequent ban on non-official fatwas.
Increasingly, anti-reform clerical figures have been using social media sites to get around those government restrictions on fatwas and sermons. The regime likely sees the call for donations and jihad as yet another venue for hardline figures to circumvent the king’s authority by appealing to an issue that has electrified the Saudi public.
Less explicitly, the ban illustrates the Al Saud’s concern that hardline, non-establishment clerics might use the Syrian crisis to critique the ruling family’s legitimacy by highlighting its passivity in the face of Syria’s mounting bloodshed. The hardliners took precisely that tack during the Iraq war and the 2006 Lebanon war. It is a situation that the Saudi government is keen to avoid.
Other events in the region may have spurred the ban. The monarchy may be concerned about the contagion effect of the Egyptian elections on Saudi domestic politics. And a number of influential clerics have posted tweets applauding the imminent victory of the Muslim Brotherhood or hinted obliquely that Egypt’s democratic experiment should be replicated on the Arabian Peninsula. The struggle is bound to continue.
http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_news.php?main_id=24707


" The Saudi Interior Ministry warned Tuesday (April 9th) of unauthorised calls to collect donations for Syrians, lest these fall into the hands of "suspicious entities", the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

The ministry said it has monitored calls on "social networking websites to collect in-kind donations, prepare locations in a number of mosques and other places, and assign trucks to carry these donations to Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey without an official permit".
The Saudi authorities have banned the haphazard collection of donations and have established special mechanisms and controls for this purpose, the news agency said."

http://al-shorfa.com/en_GB/articles/meii/newsbriefs/2013/04/09/newsbrief-04
The Saudi government bans support for Salafi Jihadists. It throws Salafi Jihadists in prison and tortures them.

Saud and the GCC supports the secularist FSA and they don't need mosques to fund anything, insurgency or super skyscraper... they have oil wealth.

Their funding doesn't come from the West but from a rather large and well networked affluent dissident class... the class OBL came from. The rest of their funding comes by selling what they loot, including arms, ransoming hostages, smuggling oil, extortion, taxing the people they administer.... it depends on where they are. Zarqawi ran a grand theft auto ring to fund his operations.

They do. Go try to make a donation to Al Nusra in an American mosque and see how fast you disappear.

First, they count it victory just to die fighting. They get paradise. Second, they get to defend Muslims, even if they fail to profit anything material or establish an Islamic state. Third, even preserving the demographic presence of a Muslim population or remove an encroaching non-Muslim population is a victory.
They've always gotten something, just never everything.

They're not puppets. What do you imagine, the US is play fighting with its own puppets?
Conventional militaries typically drive out guerrillas. In fact, Mao and Sun Tzu both said that successful insurgencies withdraw in the face of advance by a conventional military. Assad can pound whatever he likes, he's experiencing the same as the Marines in Anbar.

Yes, but it's ridiculous. If they don't want to defeat them why are they killing and arresting all of their leaders?

NATO took the capital in Libya, lost the rest to Islamist militias. Benghazi taught the US to stay out of Shariah land. In effect they have a second Afghanistan or Somalia, where their puppet has secured a bubble but can't consolidate anything such that he can sign the contracts to it.


Since 2001 the Salafis has spilled all over the map. They were playing on monkey bars in Afghanistan, now they have active militias led by veterans in over a dozen fronts. The West isn't directing anything, they're a messy faced toddler trying to eat a cake and choking on it.

Saud is an American proxy, Iran a Russian patron.

Tell me how they can overthrow Saud as Assad and Qaddafi if the Saudi military doesn't defect as it did in Syria and Libya? They need a popular uprising or a military split. A solid state with no popular uprising and a strong military is impenetrable. You seem to think they can just throw darts on a map and say 'I'm going to make a revolution here!"

Most of it is the same. But much of it defected.

niccolo and donkey Roland President Camacho Thomas777

This is an excellent source with nice graphics detailing and tracking Syria's defections.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/syriadefections/


The Salafis seem to be encircling Saudi Arabia, Israel, and North Africa sooner than they will Iran.
If the US 'moves in' again, the reaction will be more Salafi Jihadists.
Theo

Angocachi, what on Earth are you talking about? Salafism is the officially embraced teaching of the Royal Saudi family and Al ash-Skeihm and you make it look as if salafism is somehow outlawed or prosecuted.

That they want to keep tight control over who actually gets the funding, putting the lead on any uncontrolled donation gathering, i.e. punishing the less obedient salafi groups and encouraging the most servillient ones which strike in the right direction, only reinforces my point that Saudis want to remain in complete and uncontested control of all funds going to Muslim rebels anywhere around the world.

And the reason I say only "some" of it is donations s because most of it is exactly what you've mentioned - Saudi petrodollars used to overtly fund Muslim groups all over the world since at least the Afghan war. "Charity" and "Aid" has long been the easiest cover up - its virtually impossible to trace to the original "donating party" in the modern world when we are talking not about real people coming somewhere to give money, but just transfers to some bank accounts.

A bunch of transfers from non-existent "John Does" and "Muhammad Ahmads" can be easily organized by any more or less serious fund that wishes to remain anonymous.

As for why Saudis need them at all - first of all, they need the influx of fresh meat. All these mosques are just recruiting stations for the Saudi project, more meat for the grinder is harder to find and even more difficult - to make completely loyal.

Theo

Saudis are nobody's "proxy". Even Wikileaks show that Saudis play a leading role in the ME, with the US following suit a lot of times.

They play their game and it is a question worth pondering who's controlling who - the Saudis execute the will of Washington, or Washington after forging an alliance of convinience with Saudis has become consequently heavily influenced by Saudi Royal Family due to its strong economic ties with ruling elites in the US (Bushes, Cheneys being the most typical example): Or even taking it to the next level, whether such descriptive terms as "Saudis", "Washington" still make any sense - global capitalist elites have become so interconnected, that they are much closer to each other, than to their respective nations or religions.

Angocachi

The Saudi Royal family has bought Salafism. They didn't start it, but embraced it only to secure the reigns. It's somewhat comparable to the Bush family pretending to be observant Christians, or Omar Bashir courting the Sudanese Islamists and then purging them later. When Salafism proves an obstacle to Saudi domestic or foreign policy they lock up the clerics who are honest and pay the rest. The mosques they establish are distributors of ersatz Salafism meant to displace actual Salafism. If you go to their mosques and listen to them, it's clear.

The Saudi royal family is not trying to control donation gathering, they are cutting it and limiting support to secularists. In Afghanistan the Saudi family, Pakistani intelligence and the US were behind the secularist Seven Party Alliance... not sincere Islamists intent on Shariah. The Islamists in the Syrian War are Al Nusra (Al Qaeda), and Saud doesn't want any support going to them as they are the primary instrument of Salafi dissidents. Once Al Qaeda has statelets encircling Saudi Arabia; as they've been establishing in Yemen and Iraq, they will have strongholds from which to launch a campaign against Saud, from the North and South. From Syria they'll march onto Jordan and Lebanon, further encircling Saud and Israel (they've already moved into Gaza and the Sinai).

Your second post was very good, but Saud follows orders from the White House, and the White House only follows polite requests from Saud, if it likes. Saud depends on the CIA and American defense firms to maintain their grip, not the other way around. Essentially Saud is a mafia family paid off and armed by the US to safe guard American business there... and dump oil money into well connected American companies.
Theo

Ango,

Indeed, they bought the whole thing wholesale. The best way to remove a threatening movement is to lead it, this is quite clear. Whether its "ersatz" salafism and there's some "true" salafism in hiding somewhere is irrelevant. The mosques Saudis fund and establish worldwide sing to Saudi choir, not to the choir of some "the only true and real" Salafism, which exists only on paper or in Muslim history textbooks.

I still don't understand where and how you think the Salafi groups are getting their funds from and who and how sponsors their training, i.e. their was this notorious story about an American after visiting local Mosques receiving a pre-paid trip to Afghan training camps. So who's sponsoring the whole thing if not Saudis? Do you seriously believe in a movement without a leader (since you think Saudis are merely hijacking it) which just suddently "springs up" out of nowhere, on its own and gains worldwide fame in the Muslim world?

With regards to your last point, this is more descriptive of the 1960-1980's period, because right now Saudis basically control the oil market and a large fraction of US economy (with direct investments in US economy and indirect manipulations of global markets), US economically is strongly dependent on Saudis for their own economical well-being, while Saudis depend on US for military protection, so it has grown into an alliance of equals since 1990s. The reason I believe US moved against Iraq in Kuwait, is because Saudis told them to.

Angocachi

Show me a Salafi Jihadist group backed by the Saudi royal family.

The Saudi royalty is secularist and 'reformist', their news channel is head thumping secularist, the clerics they buy and the mosques they fund are watered down shit meant to neuter and gut Salafism, and they lock up and kill Jihadists and genuine Salafis/Islamists.

As for the money Saud has invested in the US, it is payment to the American networks that have propped them up... true vassalage. That the American Empire depends on Saud doesn't give Saud any more power than India had in being such a vital organ to the British Empire. Saud asked the US into the Gulf War, but that's just Uncle Sam owning the gate keeper.

The Salafi movement is funded and led by Arab dissidents like OBL. There is an entire class of wealthy Arabs who'd like to see Saud retire in Texas or die before reaching the airport, and those are the guys who funnel money into Salafi Jihadists. Otherwise, Salafi Jihadist groups make most of their money in the ways I named earlier and that's the conclusion of professional terrorism analysts. If Saud was funding them they wouldn't need to steal cars, ransom prisoners, smuggle oil and other resources, tax locals, etc. Jihadists wouldn't need to sneakily set up 'charities', they wouldn't need to fish mosques for donors... if Saud was paying them.

Saud does back insurgencies abroad. Saud is backing the FSA in Syria , because they want to overthrow Assad (and the whole Shia beast) and they want to intercept Damascus before it falls to Ikhwanis or Salafis. They want a secular government in Syria that will come over to the blue camp, NATO and the GCC, stand aside for Israel.