The Syria Analysis Thread

10 posts

Angocachi
The US supports the FSA. The only affiliation is that AQ has heavily infiltrated the FSA and earned many sympathizers in its ranks. This is largely the reason the US doesn't support the rebellion more, and the US government has stated this.

AQ's presence is detrimental to the US & GCC cause in Syria. They wanted a regime of secular Sunnis to oust Assad and run it like the junta they have in Cairo. Because of Al Qaeda's presence, they're hesitant to see Assad overthrown for the certainty that the reigns would go to Islamists, whether Ikhwan or Salafi... and they would be shut out of Syria. What they're doing now is trying to clean out Al Qaeda so that they don't have to worry about it and can continue on trying to knock out a Russo-Iranian ally with the FSA in line to take over the country on their behalf.

They're not attacking now because Hezbollah has a defensive policy with regard to Israel. If Israel doesn't fuck with Iran, Assad, or Lebanon, Hezbollah doesn't want any part of them.

Al Qaeda doesn't have any territory on the Israeli border and Israeli security is far too tight to 9/11 them. When Al Qaeda tried to open up for business in Gaza they were quickly stomped out by Hamas. They're in the Sinai, but aside from being tied up resisting the Egyptian military it's not a position to strike Israel from unless they can get their foot in the door in Gaza.
They're crunched on by the Lebanese government whenever they try to get to work there, but even in Lebanon they're cut off from Israel by... Hezbollah and its hearty chunk of Southern Shia land.
Aside from drawing recruits and support from Jordan, they don't control anything there. Jordan is so on top of its AQ threat that other governments send their AQ prisoners there to be tortured.

In Zawahiri's vision, AQ has to do what they can to ensure that the US and other Western powers don't intervene too much to prevent the fall of their puppet regimes in the Arab and wider Muslim world. That's the point of operations in Madrid, London, Manhattan, etc in addition to targeting Western agencies in the Muslim world; soldiers, diplomats, companies and so on. Without the diplomats Western governments can't keep control of their proxy governments in the Muslim world, without the Western military presence they can't protect their puppets, and without the companies the West has no incentive to do so in the first place.
When these puppet regimes come tumbling down as a result of riots, military defections, coups, or just getting replaced by their old masters from abroad as Saddam did... Al Qaeda seizes whatever ungoverned territory there it can, opens courts, and has itself a little Emirate.
With enough resilience these Emirates will stay open, cross borders, spread, link up in much the same way the Red Territories spread like disparate rashes across China. Capitals and major cities will be the last to fall. But with whole swaths of countryside under the administration of Salafi guerrillas they too will fall as caravans of Muj pour in, black banners waving.
When the Saudi government comes down to its zealous Salafi dissidents, it will mark the end of American power (in the region) and so too its Israeli parasite.

Hezbollah would be more independent without Assad, but they would have no power in Beirut. Lebanon would go to Hezbollah's Lebanese enemies, and in the worst case scenario they could be ousted from control of their own base in the Shia regions.
Angocachi
You corrected yourself on this already. Thanks.

Aha! I see where I'm losing you now.

You don't think the group fighting ISIS is Saud backed.

OK... read on





As for Nusra siding against ISIS, in the cases that it does.
Well, Nusra's leadership is very wary of the ISIS absorbing its men, taking its funds, its territory, etc and wishes to work next to Al Qaeda in Iraq rather than under it. Zawahiri agreed with this claim. However, as I said earlier... I'm suspicious that Zawahiri has just gotten too fucking savvy and has created two AQ branches in Syria in case one of them fails. If the rebels push ISIS out, Nusra remains. If Nusra is crushed by Assad, ISIS could survive it merely by having safe havens in and routes from Iraq.
Nusra and ISIS can also play good Qaeda - bad Qaeda. Nusra agrees to whatever the locals and rebels want and plays soft, while ISIS does whatever needs to be done and gets the blame for being imposing asses.
This is the sort of thing Zawahiri would arrange having learned from the experiences of Islamist guerrillas in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Algeria, etc.

"We see them (ISIS) as nothing but another group. They see themselves as a State. They need to drop this illusion that they have come to believe as an established fact."
Hassan Aboud, the spokesperson for the Islamic Front in his Al Jazeera Interview
http://www.juancole.com/news/syria-comment/2014/01/between-syrias-militias
Stubby

I'll respond in more detail later today, but that last quote is not talking about an Islamic state, I don't see how it could possibly be construed that way either. Here's the full quote

ISIS is a group of mostly foreigners who have declared themselves a sovereign state in Syria, independent of the other Islamist factions. Nothing to do with secularism, everything to due with turf.
Longface
I think they stated this a week ago, I missed it.


Please stop calling FSA fighters as secularists. There is almost no secularism in the midlle east. These fighters are hardcore anti-Shia Sunnis, they are also anti-American, and anti-Israel, like all arabs. The only difference between them and ISIS is that we are pretty certain that they are funded by Saudis. Probably most of them hate Saudis, it just that they're ignorant enough to be fooled into this war.


Al Qaeda doesn't have territories in Madrid, London, Manhattan, etc, but they were able to bomb civilians. Many Palestinians would gladly die for Al-Qaeda, there is nothing stopping them to get in touch with them.
About your last paragraph, there is no way AQ is capable of taking out Israel.

Hezbollah survived the Syrian invasion in its early days and kept growing stronger. History proves that the movement is very resilient. Who could challenge Hezbollah in Lebanon? The army?
Angocachi
You're mostly right here.
I don't think FSA fighters are secularist and secularist sentiments are rare in Muslim Arabs (secularism is amore common attitude in Christian Arabs, Turks, Iranians, Balkan Muslims, Kurds, Turkestan). FSA fighters are just as anti-US and anti-Israel as most Arabs, that's probably right. However, the leadership of the FSA is decidedly secularist and lives/lived on NATO-GCC support.

Spain, the US, and UK couldn't keep AQ operatives from operating in their countries. Israel can, and so can Hamas.
AQ hasn't pulled athat sort of attack in Israel because it simply can't. The desire is there, of course.
Hezbollah on the otherhand clearly could let it rip and fire everything its got southward. They don't because attacking Israel is not their aim, only keeping it at bay.

But a coalition of pro-Jihadist, Islamist regimes could.. that is AQ's destination.

I don't doubt they'd hold on, but the would not have power in wider Lebanon or Beirut. Without that they could lose support from within their own base and face Shia opposition. Lebanese Shia could decide to replace Hezbollah as their representative for failing to secure their status and power in Lebanon.
Angocachi
I see what you mean.

However, the IF is dismantling the only Islamic State in Syria, which is an act of secularization. The IF's spokesman has said that the ISIS must dismantle its Islamic State to end the conflict between them, which is a demand to secularize.

Furthermore, the IF is sponsored by Saud, which opposes an Islamic state in not only Syria but has been working for decades to end the remainder of an Islamic state that exists in Arabia itself.

If the IF were fighting the ISIS over turf, why not clean out the FSA? If the IF wants to assert itself and claim more ground, more roads, more revenue... they could keep the peace with the Islamists they claim to count themselves among and go after NATO's boys. Instead they go after Saud's AQ enemy, America's AQ enemy, as Saud pays them and America works with the Shia in Iraq to clean the very same AQ wing out of Anbar.
Stubby
That's a ridiculous semantic argument, which I doubt even you believe. And you added the phrase "Islamic state", the IF never said that. Everyone agrees that ISIS overstepped it's bounds, declaring itself the caliphate against the wishes of everyone else, including Zawahiri and Al Nusra.

For perspective here's a recent video of AAS administering sharia punishment in Aleppo.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/IKbmZmXYuuA

Is ISIS secularizing by attacking the so called Islamic state of AAS? Of course not.

You claim that this is an offensive by the IF against ISIS to prevent the establishment of an Islamic state, at the behest of Saudi Arabia. This is unlikely for several reasons.

As I mentioned previously, the IF is a very recent umbrella thrown over many older groups scattered across the country. Even assuming that it's purpose is to destroy Islamism in Syria (I'll deal with that later), the fact is that the IF has no fighting men, only it's constituent brigades, which each possess their own character, and have been funded separately. As I showed previously, AAS is not Saudi friendly, it was founded with private money, the kind that is illegal to give in Saudi Arabia right now. You are not just attributing motive based on far off geopolitics, you're attributing it to groups that aren't necessarily even fighting.

You've brushed aside JN support for AAS, and their condemnation of ISIS, but if what you're saying is true, and this is a Saudi coup, then JN is complicit. For groups like AAS and JN to side against ISIS can only mean a few things. Either ISIS has alienated everyone and is facing backlash, AAS and JN have switched sides/been bought out, or AAS and JN consider the cause so unimportant they'd side with the effort to destroy Islamism in Syria 'just because'. The first is overwhelming more likely, given the solid Islamist characteristic of AAS, as I've shown, the position of JN and Zawahiri, and the precursors of this conflict coming months before the formation of the Islamic Front.

Also the Islamist brigades within the IF have cleaning out the FSA, it was all over the news months ago, them taking weapons and absorbing fighters. In fact two of the chief players against ISIS only recently 'reconciled' this last month.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Mi...back-against-islamic-front.ashx#axzz2pzOVuiAh

The IF reject all the various FSA councils, and AAS refused to meet with the American ambassador. All these references to greater regional trends are irrelevant, there's a wealth of evidence on the ground pointing to ISIS making itself a pariah, and away from the idea that this is a coup launched by outside forces.

More later on so called secular forces and other things
Niccolo and Donkey
Schmeisser

ISIS used to get along fine with the IF groups. It should be kept in mind that ISIS facilitated a lot of Islamist groups including Ahrar and Suqur in the territory they controlled. Nusra is sticking up for and defending ISIS everywhere except Raqqa, where ISIS detained the Nusra commander. For the most part, the "Islamists" who hate ISIS are Syrian fighters who joined disciplined Islamist brigades, but they hate shariah. They really are a co-opting front, and they are no doubt backed by Saud and probably Turkish intelligence (note that ISIS was only attacked in northern border towns and continued operating as usual in Damascus). Most of all, these are nationalistic Syrians who fight as Islamists against ISIS: they are targeting foreign fighters. In fact, foreign fighters in other Islamist brigades have begun defecting to ISIS en masse because foreign fighters are being targeted and attacked or detained regardless of who they are fighting with. So ISIS ranks are actually increasing now because it's where the wagons are being circled for foreign fighters and their families.

Angocachi
If a group claiming itself Communist dismantled the Red governed zones in any of the Communist guerrilla wars with funding from an anti-Communist foreign state, it would be a reactionary force indeed.
IF is taking down an Islamic State while presenting none of its own. Therefore, secularist by action.

Yes I saw this a few days ago. Thank you.

It's presented to combat the overflowing allegations against AAS by Islamist leaning Muslims pulling their hair wondering what AAS is doing botching the only Islamic State in Syria. It's to say, 'Look, we're Islamist.'
But it's not any different from the for-show Shariah punishments other secular regimes have orchestrated to combat charges of being unislamic. Saddam Hussein used to do things like this, cutting off hands of thieves and what not.
Problem is, that's not an Islamic State but the mere aping of one.

There is no Islamic state of AAS. It has no state at all. If it did, according to the spokesman for the Islamic Front, that would be cause to fight the AAS. 'No states!'

The AAS is a part of the IF. The IF is Saud paid. Therefore they are in the employ of Saud. Therefore what they're doing is on Saud's order.

I've explained what I believe is happening regarding JN and Zawahiri. Zawahiri has two AQ branches in Syria operating on different policies so that if one falls the other remains. AQ in Iraq was nearly destroyed by Sahwa because it declared an Islamic State. If Zawahiri had a second AQ branch in Iraq unattached to an Islamic State or any other brutal but necessary reputation, they would not have taken years to recover. JN is Zawahiri's insurance policy, it mustn't do anything to get it expelled from the Syrian front.

The IF has been taking FSA fighters, arms, camps, etc because Saud is replacing the FSA with the IF. The IF hasn't launched a war to crush the FSA as they have against the ISIS.