And next, Syria?
- Thread starter Idris2002
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teqniq
DisMembered
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
Inevitable I suppose.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-syra-driving-anti-assad-groups-support-isis
http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-syra-driving-anti-assad-groups-support-isis
Odds on a US alliance with an al-Qaeda affiliate against ISIL - 5:1 against, but rapidly shortening
Patteran
A nowadays excuse
Channel 4 documentary tonight (Wednesday 10 December) about British MSF/Syria Relief surgeon David Nott & his work in Syrian frontline A&Es.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
This from yesterday in the Damascus suburb of Bait al Saham, protesting against both the regime and Jabhat al-Nusra,( and i'm told, also protesting at the latters recent attacks on the FSA).
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Interesting article here on Syria, these seem to be the latest thoughts slowly making their way through the reptilian brain of US foreign policy (taken from staunch Washington Consensus bull-horn: ForeignPolicy.com). I doubt they didn't know any of it already, more likely they've grown bored of attacking Syria and now want to focus more on other targets, so this is the rationalizing process:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/18/syria-assad-ceasefires-surrender-nir-rosen-hd-centre-report/
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/18/syria-assad-ceasefires-surrender-nir-rosen-hd-centre-report/
teqniq
DisMembered
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
One things for sure. There will never be peace in Syria while Assad and his henchmen remain in power.
Sirena
Don't monkey with the buzzsaw
You seek your objective view of the Middle East in the Washington Post?
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Not sure about any of the claims there and even if true it doesn't justify Assad's brutality.
teqniq
DisMembered
hahahaha no I get my news from wherever, all over the place. As far as the Middle East is concerned quite a lot from Twitter - which is where this came from. I take your point but pretty much every major news outlet has an agenda of some sort, the original interview is on the Foreign Affairs website, make of that what you will.You seek your objective view of the Middle East in the Washington Post?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
And like assad needs a media job done on him.
Typical sirena collaboration, based on crude out dated child-like white hat black hat cowboy analysis.
Typical sirena collaboration, based on crude out dated child-like white hat black hat cowboy analysis.
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Corrected for you.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
http://m.thenational.ae/thenational...a-jihadism-in-syria-will-fuel-sectarian-fires
Just found this from 2013. Are there really more Shia jihadists than Sunni butchersapron ?
Just found this from 2013. Are there really more Shia jihadists than Sunni butchersapron ?
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4669/uk-iran-british-shiites
There's also this, seems a bit on the shrill side though.
There's also this, seems a bit on the shrill side though.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Beware of Hassan Hassan. And by saying "The number of foreign Shia jihadists in Syria is arguably greater than Sunni ones" he means Hezbollah and others that the Iranian theocracy has sent to prop up the assad regime i.e state and authority linked proxy armies rather than the goons flooding to ISIS. It's a slippery use of jihadi. Note also that was written long before the proper rise of ISIS -before the break the walls campaign had reached its culmination and before volunteers came flooding.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Ooh, how come?
I thought it seemed a bit hard to believe frankly. Sorry if that was a bit of a stupid thing to post, I don't know what are reliable sources on this issue.
Yeah it seems hard to believe there would be more shia jihadis than sunni ones. And as you say, iranian state backed proxies aren't necessarily going to be ideological jihadis a la Isis are they?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Because he argues different things depending on what audience he is talking to and whose paying. Arguing at different points that the Syrian revolution is simply jihadis, that the syrian revolution requires air strikes from the west in order to help them win,that they can't and shouldn't win, that the jihadis aren't that bad, opposing air-strikes, stuff boosting the FSA (such as it is), stuff trying to attack them and stir up trouble between them and kurds and so on. This is not simply adapting as events change (and as you fail to have seen them coming) it's saying what certain interests want to hear at certain times.
jesus.butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The regime managed to kill over a 1000 civilians in January. This whilst ramping up anti-ISIS rhetoric and moving towards the next stage of their presentation (it's now just a simple anti-fundie war) following YPG victory in the north and peshmerga pushing towards syrian border. Meanwhile the regime is also having to cut desperately needed social-subsidies (food and electricity left for now - though this is contested) across the board, impose a form of military impressment to deal with mass desertions. What a dynamic.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
A really angry Yassin Al Haj Saleh here (few months out of date but only just published):
Yassin Al Haj Saleh: I am afraid that it is too late for the leftists in the West to express any solidarity with the Syrians in their extremely hard struggle. What I always found astonishing in this regard is that mainstream Western leftists know almost nothing about Syria, its society, its regime, its people, its political economy, its contemporary history. Rarely have I found a useful piece of information or a genuinely creative idea in their analyses. My impression about this curious situation is that they simply do not see us; it is not about us at all. Syria is only an additional occasion for their old anti-imperialist tirades, never the living subject of the debate. So they do not really need to know about us. For them the country is only a black box about which you do not have to learn its internal structure and dynamics; actually it has no internal structure and dynamics according to their approach, one that is at the same time Western-centered and high-politics centered.
The problem is that their narrow anti-imperialist worldview only sees Obama, Putin, Holland, Erdoğan, Khamenei, Qatari Emir Hamad, Saudi King Abdullah, Hassan Nasrallah, and Bashar al-Assad. Possibly they see also Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. We, rank-and-file Syrians, refugees, women, students, intellectuals, human rights activists, political prisoners … do not exist.
I think this high-politics, Western-centered worldview is better suited for the right and the ultra-right fascists. But honestly I’ve failed to discern who is right and who is left in the West from a leftist Syrian point of view. And I tend to think that these are the poisonous effects of the Soviet experience, fascist in its own way. Many Western leftists are the orphans of the late father, the USSR.
Besides, what prevents them from seeing the victims of Bashar, when they see perfectly well ordinary people in Kobanê? Why wasn’t there the slightest interest in the slaughter of 700 people at the hands of ISIS thugs themselves in Deir Ezzor last August? One is forced to ask: Do victims have different values based on who their murderers are? Why, as the regime is bombing many regions in the country every day, killing dozens of people every day, are the leftists in the West as silent as the rightists? Could the reason be that the public killer Bashar and his elegant wife are symbols of the First World inside Syria, a couple with whom those in the First World identify easily?
...
YHS: To be honest, I have to admit that I do not know what leftists in the West do. I mean they are safer, they have passports, they have more opportunity to learn foreign languages, they can buy the books they want to read or at least they have access to them. So why do so many of them know nothing about Syria, feel nothing, and do almost nothing?
Again, it is not a thing they have to be making their governments do for us; it is something they have to do themselves in their countries for themselves. When they are in good shape in the United States, the UK, Germany, France, and so on, this is very good for us. They are salvaging, by standing with us in our struggle or at least by showing some understanding of our struggle, our chances to resist identity politics and victim politics in our countries. As they are now, they are only helping our local right, whether “modernist” or Islamist, by being very Western-centered and high-politics anti-imperialists.
Yassin Al Haj Saleh: I am afraid that it is too late for the leftists in the West to express any solidarity with the Syrians in their extremely hard struggle. What I always found astonishing in this regard is that mainstream Western leftists know almost nothing about Syria, its society, its regime, its people, its political economy, its contemporary history. Rarely have I found a useful piece of information or a genuinely creative idea in their analyses. My impression about this curious situation is that they simply do not see us; it is not about us at all. Syria is only an additional occasion for their old anti-imperialist tirades, never the living subject of the debate. So they do not really need to know about us. For them the country is only a black box about which you do not have to learn its internal structure and dynamics; actually it has no internal structure and dynamics according to their approach, one that is at the same time Western-centered and high-politics centered.
The problem is that their narrow anti-imperialist worldview only sees Obama, Putin, Holland, Erdoğan, Khamenei, Qatari Emir Hamad, Saudi King Abdullah, Hassan Nasrallah, and Bashar al-Assad. Possibly they see also Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. We, rank-and-file Syrians, refugees, women, students, intellectuals, human rights activists, political prisoners … do not exist.
I think this high-politics, Western-centered worldview is better suited for the right and the ultra-right fascists. But honestly I’ve failed to discern who is right and who is left in the West from a leftist Syrian point of view. And I tend to think that these are the poisonous effects of the Soviet experience, fascist in its own way. Many Western leftists are the orphans of the late father, the USSR.
Besides, what prevents them from seeing the victims of Bashar, when they see perfectly well ordinary people in Kobanê? Why wasn’t there the slightest interest in the slaughter of 700 people at the hands of ISIS thugs themselves in Deir Ezzor last August? One is forced to ask: Do victims have different values based on who their murderers are? Why, as the regime is bombing many regions in the country every day, killing dozens of people every day, are the leftists in the West as silent as the rightists? Could the reason be that the public killer Bashar and his elegant wife are symbols of the First World inside Syria, a couple with whom those in the First World identify easily?
...
YHS: To be honest, I have to admit that I do not know what leftists in the West do. I mean they are safer, they have passports, they have more opportunity to learn foreign languages, they can buy the books they want to read or at least they have access to them. So why do so many of them know nothing about Syria, feel nothing, and do almost nothing?
Again, it is not a thing they have to be making their governments do for us; it is something they have to do themselves in their countries for themselves. When they are in good shape in the United States, the UK, Germany, France, and so on, this is very good for us. They are salvaging, by standing with us in our struggle or at least by showing some understanding of our struggle, our chances to resist identity politics and victim politics in our countries. As they are now, they are only helping our local right, whether “modernist” or Islamist, by being very Western-centered and high-politics anti-imperialists.
The sound of a man meeting an outmoded paradigm.
ska invita
back on the other side
anger and frustration is about the only sane response to whats happening...
what is the best case scenario for Syria now?
The problem for the left or for anyone who cares is that there is no easy side to take - its a rock and a hard place
Did i read it right that he suggests that the western left are siding with Assad ("could the reason be that the public killer Bashar and his elegant wife are symbols of the First World inside Syria, a couple with whom those in the First World identify easily?")
Im not sure what line people on the different fronts of the UK left are taking - who out there on the left is simply defending Assad?
"As they are now, they are only helping our local right, whether “modernist” or Islamist, by being very Western-centered and high-politics anti-imperialists."
the local left in Syria im sure are also anti-imperialist amongst their many worries.
Im not clear exactly what he wishes the western left were doing or saying....any one know for sure?
what is the best case scenario for Syria now?
The problem for the left or for anyone who cares is that there is no easy side to take - its a rock and a hard place
Did i read it right that he suggests that the western left are siding with Assad ("could the reason be that the public killer Bashar and his elegant wife are symbols of the First World inside Syria, a couple with whom those in the First World identify easily?")
Im not sure what line people on the different fronts of the UK left are taking - who out there on the left is simply defending Assad?
"As they are now, they are only helping our local right, whether “modernist” or Islamist, by being very Western-centered and high-politics anti-imperialists."
the local left in Syria im sure are also anti-imperialist amongst their many worries.
Im not clear exactly what he wishes the western left were doing or saying....any one know for sure?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Have you missed everything over the last three years? Who is defending Assad? Have a look at you nearest anti-imperialist left-winger. Have a look at this thread ffs. Here is as a member of the syrian left telling you that bullshit external anti-imperialism is killing the syrian revolution and your response is that you're sure the syrian left is anti-imperialist and it should be. He talks in the article about his frustration at the western left disappearing voices like his, of their inability to see him - and bang on time, he disappears in your reply, as quiet as if sent to one of assad's murder cells.
He tells you exactly what he wants the western left to do.
Anyway,l more on that dynamic of ramping up anti-fundi stuff whilst cutting off your own support base:
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ska invita
back on the other side
why do you have to respond to everything with such anger - i really dont understand your attitude - can you see the tone of my message - it was full of questions - i wasnt dictating anything to anyone, i was looking for information - you just shut down conversation as usual - well done, youre a real man of the people
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