Given I've sat in press conferences and watched Martin McGuinness, former commander of the Provisional IRA, and sectarian baiter extraordinaire the Rev Ian Paisley talk about boring transport policy initiatives, anything is possible.
1. Not just because they're enemies of Salafis. That's the least of their concerns. When/if Assad abdicates, flees, is captured, or killed... the FSA is going to need compliant Shia or it'll forfeit the very valuable coast and have a sectarian insurgency on its hands. The "Friends of Syria Group" will dump money on Shia willing to shake hands, guarantee their security, and give them a place in the government.
2. The FSA doesn't want to genocide the Shia. Their fight is with Assad loyalists. When/if Assad falls, a deal with the FSA will be the Syrian Shia's only recourse.
3. You seem to think two sides who've fought bloody wars never reconcile. There were Southerners willing to work with the Union when the Confederacy fell, clearly. The same in Vietnam. They're more apt to cooperate because they're bloodied and weary.
Iran has elected a reformist government, with reformist clerics who are about as Muslim cleric as Martin Luther King Jr was a Christian minister. They are secular minded and desire rapprochement (lift the sanctions, give us contracts) with the US-UK. They're the type to back off support for anti-Zionist Arab groups like Hamas and Hezbollah if it means AIPAC will crawl out of a Congressman's ass and ease up on Persia. They're the type who backed the Northern Alliance against the Taliban.
The US won't arm Hezbollah. But with Assad gone and a reformist regime in Tehran, Hezbollah will either forgo Iranian and Syrian aid, which it reportedly depends on... or toe the new line. It could lead to a fracturing of the group, and/or it's usurping by compliant Lebanese Shia.
I would much rather see the ranks of the FSA defect to Salafi miltias before the leadership can secure any real military assistance from the US. Then groups like Al Nusra & Al Qaeda can consolidate Sharia court administration of the Sunni Mashriq, and simply leave the Shia, Druze, Christians with their own Bantustans. Leaving only enough Jihadis to train homegrown in running the Emirate, Jihadist veterans can begin to move into the GCC, Jordan first. They can also aid Kurdish Islamist groups against their Neo-Marxist rivals.
It's a country that started in the hands of Marxist Guerrillas resisting an American-backed anti-Communist Indonesia. Today it's a protectorate of Australia. It's an example of a red camp country going blue camp... as Syria would be if the FSA took over.
1. Assuming that Assad dies, or that the Alawi choose to surrender, both of which are unlikely, what possesses you to think that the ineffectual exiled moderates will have any say in Syria? They don't even wield control of the FSA, which is itself fragmented, and has both secular and islamic units. So the best possible outcome is the piecemeal buying off of non-integrated and unstable secular units, whose secular nature is subject to change, since there really aren't of the pro-western porn watching elements you imagine in Syria anyway. The opposition is completely mangled. Iraq was much simpler, and had the US military breathing down it's neck, and its chosen never took the reigns of power.
2. I don't see your point.
3. Actually millions of Vietnamese fled or were sent to prison camps, where many died, AND this is with the benefit of it being a war between two states, both with the same national identity and ethnicity, with a formal surrender. So it's not a valid comparison on either front. Neither is the example of the Union and Confederacy, for a whole host of reasons.
Your conjecture about the new president in Iran is noted, however there is no compelling to reason to assume any of the things you just blithely asserted are true are. It's just more fantasy from you, you take a headline, which is utterly meaningless, and run with it, in the direction of your fantasies. And what does the Northern Alliance have to do with anything? That was Iran supporting Shia against Sunni.... kind of like what the "hardliner" Iranian government has done. But you're free to think that MLK passed inspection and won an election because he's going to significantly change Iran's course, it just makes you dumb.
All of these scenarios have problems with their starting presumptions, but it's even worse to speculate on what Hezbollah will do because Iran is about to fundamentally change and become a secular Western ally and Assad is gone.
You're the guy who thinks priests being beheaded is just sunnis "returning the favor", so I know you are completely disconnected from reality.
I agree that it is unlikely that Assad will die unless his own take him out. I agree that the Western-backed leadership of the FSA is alienated and largely impotent on the ground... until they can get some Western cash & arms.
The point is that the Alawis can work with the FSA and will need to if Assad falls.
Of course many fled and died in Vietnam, I finished reading the biography of Ho Chi Minh a few months ago, which is why it came to find as an example.
What you're missing is that a country can have a civil war and the victor can secure a peace by shaking hands with the defeated, granted their old regime is gone.
The Northern Alliance was Sunni with minor Hazara support.
It matters because when Reformists control Iran, they do whatever they can to pull the country closer to the Anglo-American net.
Getting approved by the Ayatollah is only a matter of the Ayatollah understanding that if he doesn't allow such Reformists into office... the secularized Western-wannabe college youth will riot.
They kill Christians in Egypt because Egyptian Christians support the secular junta that have been killing them, in Syria also. Furthermore, Arab Christians have often been agents of the West, such as in Lebanon in the Operation Blue Bat era.
I'm not saying what will happen. I'm saying what the best scenario is for the "Friends of Syria Group". From say, Obama's point of view, he needs the FSA to deislamize its lower ranks and show its hostility to Salafist groups. He can begin to arm them when he's confident they're loyal and secularist, and he can even launch air strikes or establish a no fly zone to help them against Assad. Then he needs to build upon whatever anti-Assad Shia there are. Once Assad has fled or died, he can dangle money and arms for the FSA and Shia opposition to form a new government that will cut the country from Iran & Russia and clean out the Ikhwanis & Salafis.
It's not my fantasy, only an assessment of the aims of the parties involved.
Assad's downfall is essential to diminish Iran regional influence and preserve the pro-western petroleum order, so expect even more jihadists to join the cause and a probable US intervention. The idea that Saudi militias are going to make a deal with the regime or it's agents is improbable.
Obama doesn't need a secularist government, he needs a subservient one. As long as America is in control of the Egyptian army(the center of foreign intervention), the government is irrelevant. The Ikhwan downfall could be more understood as part of the Qatari-Saudi feud.
Disillusioned by the Islamist twist that the "revolution" in
Syria
has taken, exhausted after more than two years of conflict and feeling that they are losing, growing numbers of rebels are signing up to a negotiated amnesty offered by the Assad regime.
At the same time, the families of retreating fighters have begun quietly moving back to government-controlled territory, seen as a safer place to live as the regime continues its intense military push against rebel-held areas.
The move is a sign of the growing confidence of the regime, which has established a so-called "ministry of reconciliation" with the task of easing the way for former opponents to return to the government side.
Ali Haider, the minister in charge, said: "Our message is, 'if you really want to defend the Syrian people, put down your weapons and come and defend Syria in the right way, through dialogue'."
Mr Haider, who has a reputation as a moderate within the regime, has established a system in which opposition fighters give up their weapons in exchange for safe passage to government-held areas.
Rebel fighters have privately said that they are aware of the amnesty offer, and that some men had chosen to accept it, although they say that the numbers involved remains a small proportion of those fighting the government.
"I used to fight for revolution, but now I think we have lost what we were fighting for," said Mohammed, a moderate Muslim rebel from the northern town of Raqqa who declined to give his last name. "Now extremists control my town. My family has moved back to government side because our town is too unsafe. Assad is terrible, but the alternative is worse."
The prevalence of extremist Islamist groups in rebel-held areas, particularly in the north, has caused some opposition fighters to "give up" on their cause.
Ziad Abu Jabal comes from one of the villages in Homs province whose residents recently agreed to stop fighting the regime. "When we joined the demonstrations we wanted better rights," he said. "After seeing the destruction and the power of jihadists, we came to an agreement with the government."
Mr Haider said that he had attended a ceremony yesterday at which 180 opposition fighters rejoined the government's police force, from which they had previously defected.
Although it was not possible to verify this claim, when
T
he Daily Telegraph previously visited the reconciliation ministry's headquarters in Damascus the office was crowded with the family members of rebels fighting in the city's suburbs who said their men wanted to return.
A ministry negotiator, who gave his name only as Ahmed, was in the process of arranging the defection of a rebel commander and 10 of his men from the Ghouta district.
"It took us three months of negotiation and this is a test," he said. "If this goes well, the commander says that 50 others will follow."
He described the steps taken to allow the return of fighters willing to lay down their arms. First, he said, a negotiator must cross the front line for a meeting on rebel-held territory. "We have to hope the rebel commander orders his snipers not to shoot us."
Would-be defectors were given papers allowing them to pass through Syrian army checkpoints, and then waited in a safe house until the officials could get their names removed from wanted lists held by the more hardline defence ministry and intelligence agencies.
The rebels "did not sign up to be part of extremist Islamist groups that have now gained influence", he said. "Now they want to come back to a normal life."
In the days before the regime took the town of Qusayr last month, The Telegraph saw mediators on the Lebanese border work with the Syrian army to secure an amnesty for fighters wanting to surrender.
The phone rang with desperate calls from the parents of the rebels. "These mothers know that this is the last chance for their sons. If they don't give up their weapons now they will die because they are losing the battle," said Ali Fayez Uwad, the mediator.