And next, Syria?

[butchersapron]

I feel the need to requote this

A really angry Yassin Al Haj Saleh here (few months out of date but only just published):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.

 

[Tom A]

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.

For all of its claims of belief in "internationalism", the vast, vast majority of the left has no clue what goes on outside their own small subsection of Western society. If they can't understand and appropriately respond to the rise of reactionary populism in its own back yard, how on earth can they be expected to know what makes ordinary citizens in the Middle East tick? For all they obsess about that region, they know little about the ordinary people who live there.

 

[mikey mikey]

you couldn't refute your way out of a wet paper bag, bo.

I imagine that is why you are resoerting to threadcrapping and insults.

 

[Pickman's model]

You sure feel strongly about defending the MSM, old butcher m'lad.

Here is the president green-lighting this.

Presidential Determination and Waiver -- Pursuant to Section 2249a of Title 10, United States Code, and Sections 40 and 40A of the Arms Export Control Act to Support U.S. Special Operations to Combat Terrorism in Syria

this is not a bill or act

 

[butchersapron]

For all of its claims of belief in "internationalism", the vast, vast majority of the left has no clue what goes on outside their own small subsection of Western society. If they can't understand and appropriately respond to the rise of reactionary populism in its own back yard, how on earth can they be expected to know what makes ordinary citizens in the Middle East tick? For all they obsess about that region, they know little about the ordinary people who live there.

Middle east = oil and US. That's all. The w/c don't exist. The people in these countries don't exist.

A revolution can't exist because regional powers might try to manipulate. So no there can't be revolutions for the thuggish arabs because they can't provide a pure revolution like what russia was. No revolutions ever in fact.

 

[Pickman's model]

I imagine that is why you are resoerting to threadcrapping and insults.

one of us is lying and threadcrapping and to help you work out which of us it is i'll help you: it isn't me.

 

[Tom A]

Middle east = oil and US. That's all. The w/c don't exist. The people in thee countries don't exist.

A revolution can't exist because regional powers might try to manipulate. So no there can't be revolutions for the thuggish arabs because they can't provide a pure revolution like what russia was. No revolutions ever in fact.

The bigotry of lower expectations.

 

[butchersapron]

Guerrilla it is then. If anyone thinks this is over- militarily - because of this. They're wrong. What's left of the SAA can't contain guerilla attacks. It's literally dying on its feet being held up by others. The fighters left - and they are many - esp if the SF fighters can be re-supplied re-energised (i know jordan isn't keen) can make syria ungovernable.


edit: after the possibly slow possibly fast clear out of idlib province.

 

[butchersapron]

No one's going home.

 

[CrabbedOne]

If the iraqi army had been dropping barrel bombs on mosul since the place was taken this might be worth something. It's only the last days the rats appear.

Err, we've been bombing in and around Mosul for about two years an Iraqi example airwars has more. The targets in Iraq are often things like IS Sharia courts or detention facilities. CENTCOM doesn't admit it but there's been multiple mass casualty oopsies. The Iraqi's are currently dropping large unguided bombs from helicopters; there's a post upthread on this. 500lbs of military grade explosive doesn't need to be in a barrel to be indiscriminate. A lot of this is just inherent in warfare especially when conducted with WWII style tech.

The ISF also have a bit of a record of a SAA like record shelling civilians in Is populated areas with large number of casualties. That's despite PM Abadi asking them to desist. The Pesh were also rocketing Mosul indiscriminately a year or so ago. The Pesh and Hashd do tend to disappear and displace folk in ways that upset HRW. Sunni Arab militias fighting against IS have a pretty nasty record for score setting as well. It's all a bit of a pale shadow of the civilian carnage of the largely Baathist insurgency under the Occupation which killed at a rate similar to Syria but still pretty awful and largely unreported.

I'd say the Iraqi government forces are restrained compared with the remarkably vindictive Syrian Baath and often compare well with the Israelis and their "most moral army in the world" but it is a matter of degree.

 

[butchersapron]

Err, we've been bombing in and around Mosul for about two years an Iraqi example airwars has more. The targets in Iraq are often things like IS Sharia courts or detention facilities. CENTCOM doesn't admit it but there's been multiple mass casualty oopsies. The Iraqi's are currently dropping large unguided bombs from helicopters; there's a post upthread on this. 500lbs of military grade explosive doesn't need to be in a barrel to be indiscriminate. A lot of this is just inherent in warfare especially when conducted with WWII style tech.

The ISF also have a bit of a record of a SAA like record shelling civilians in Is populated areas with large number of casualties. That's despite PM Abadi asking them to desist. The Pesh were also rocketing Mosul indiscriminately a year or so ago. The Pesh and Hashd do tend to disappear and displace folk in ways that upset HRW. Sunni Arab militias fighting against IS have a pretty nasty record for score setting as well. It's all a bit of a pale shadow of the civilian carnage of the largely Baathist insurgency under the Occupation which killed at a rate similar to Syria but still pretty awful and largely unreported.

I'd say the Iraqi government forces are restrained compared with the remarkably vindictive Syrian Baath and often compare well with the Israelis and their "most moral army in the world" but it is a matter of degree.

I think my point stands - 5 years of this unlimited, as main tactic vs a part of a single battle strategy. Was this going on for five years before? If so, then bring on the comparison.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Yes it is and that's a VERY VERY serious person writing on it. It's part of an ongoing battle to justify the YPG's failure to support the wider revolution and why they have in fact ended up siding with the counter-revolution. There are so many serious reasons why this didn't happen - he touches on many with a factual basis, but it's covered with the kurdish (PYD at aleast) imperative - get all the land and then negotiate when the regime wins. To which end, attacks the north alepo FSA when you can and smear all non SDF arabs as jihadis. The point of this piece is the PKK's focus on turkey.

I can't blame the PKK for not supporting the Syrian Arab revolt. The two struggles are fundamentally incompatible. The Northern rebel groups are largely reactionary, often Islamist, rather Arabist and backed by the PKK's main enemy the Turkish state. They have often proven hostile to Syrian minorities. The Druze also largely chose to align with the regime. Grubby but the least bad option. An interloper that became part of the revolt, IS, would have destroyed the kufr YPG but for imperialist US airpower. If the revolt had toppled Assad whatever part of it became dominant would likely would have come for Rojava just as the regime eventually will try to if victorious. Some parts of the revolt are currently facilitating the TSK's long war against the PKK rather than defending Aleppo. Parts of the SDF even look rather unreliable and likely to switch sides.

 

[camouflage]

For all of its claims of belief in "internationalism", the vast, vast majority of the left has no clue what goes on outside their own small subsection of Western society. If they can't understand and appropriately respond to the rise of reactionary populism in its own back yard, how on earth can they be expected to know what makes ordinary citizens in the Middle East tick? For all they obsess about that region, they know little about the ordinary people who live there.

Tell us what you know, tell us where we've been wrong...

 

[butchersapron]

I can't blame the PKK for not supporting the Syrian Arab revolt. The two struggles are fundamentally incompatible. The Northern rebel groups are largely reactionary, often Islamist, rather Arabist and backed by the PKK's main enemy the Turkish state. They have often proven hostile to Syrian minorities. The Druze also largely chose to align with the regime. Grubby but the least bad option. An interloper that became part of the revolt, IS, would have destroyed the kufr YPG but for imperialist US airpower. If the revolt had toppled Assad whatever part of it became dominant would likely would have come for Rojava just as the regime eventually will try to if victorious. Some parts of the revolt are currently facilitating the TSK's long war against the PKK rather than defending Aleppo. Parts of the SDF even look rather unreliable and likely to switch sides.

Not asking you to blame it, that would have been the killer blow - late 11-12. They are not fundamentally incompatible. A common anti-regime arab -kurdish front could easily have been assembled. The later drive them out of hasakeh and the rest southward

The druze aren't even in the picture.

Top down just talking about the top down stuff, who you dissappaering?

 

[CrabbedOne]

Not asking you to blame it, that would have been the killer blow - late 11-12. They are not fundamentally incompatible. A common anti-regime arab -kurdish front could easily have been assembled. The later drive them out of hasakeh and the rest southward
...

Very unlikely ever to have happened these are very different revolutions and the Sunni Arab (it's an identity movement) one isn't even coherent enough to take on an old movement as internally disciplined the PKK. They have completely incompatible stated goals even if you believe Qandil are following Apo's moderated line. Most of the effective revolt aims at imposing a fairly stern version of Sharia as the basis of law over al Sham. The PKK is actually closer to the revolutionary Baath as they were in the 60s in practice. Syrian's joke they just swap Assad's picture for Apo's. The fundamental problems is perhaps 90% of Syrians are rather fond of their very Arab nation and against federalism in any form. A large number just have an understandable problem with the rotten Baath regime ruling Damascus. Arab rebels siding with the PKK carving out their own empire in the chaos tend to thought of as traitors and it's not an inaccurate description for some of them. The nascent Salafist Emirate in Idlib and Rojava's rather feminist soviets are about as far apart as you can get apart politically. Ironically it's the last stand of the "progressive" 70s versus a rather reactionary 21st century ME.

Strange alignments do happen though. The PKK in Sinjar may soon end up allied with the Khomeinist Iraqi Hashd as both eye the Turks nervously.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

Middle east = oil and US. That's all. The w/c don't exist. The people in these countries don't exist.

A revolution can't exist because regional powers might try to manipulate. So no there can't be revolutions for the thuggish arabs because they can't provide a pure revolution like what russia was. No revolutions ever in fact.

This. I've actually been really disgusted, especially over the last few days, to see how readily and easily certain individuals, blogs and publications have flung themselves into the arms of murderous dictators, and how easily the countless testimonies of ordinary Syrians are dismissed as false and all because of an obsessisive idea that everything that happens in the world is simply down to American imperialism. American imperialism, that's it, no further explanation or analysis required.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On LWJ US airstrikes destroy 14 Islamic State tanks near Palmyra

Which would leave IS with only 30+ tanks captured at Palmyra.

 

[butchersapron]

See you down there today mikey.

 

[CrabbedOne]

In The WSJ Russian Special Forces Seen as Key to Aleppo Victory

...
The Russian Defense Ministry says it hasn’t conducted bombing raids inside Aleppo since Oct. 18. The special-operations mission there has been slightly different, Mr. Pukhov said. “They’re being used for various operations, some logistical, some combat, like taking out various rebel leaders in very targeted operations,” he said.

The deaths of three Russian military service members near Aleppo last week were a reminder to Russians that the country is playing a boots-on-the-ground role in Syria. Russia says the war has claimed only a handful of Russian casualties; after its wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya, which saw high losses, Moscow is careful to emphasize that its involvement in Syria is limited. Deploying small contingents of elite troops fits that narrative.

“Special operations soldiers are the people that are customized to neutralization” of terrorists, the Russian Federation Council Defense and Security Committee Chairman Viktor Ozerov told Interfax on Monday. “This is no military operation. This is a special operation.”

The deployment to Syria is also a way for Russian special-operations forces to gain valuable combat experience. Russia’s military has tested higher-end weapons such as the Kalibr cruise missile in Syria.

“Russia is using [the Syrian conflict] as an opportunity to test and refine doctrine for these special-operation forces,” said Mr. Bukkvoll, adding that the deployment was likely approved at the highest levels.

“Special forces are specifically defined to be a tool in the hands of political leaders,” he said.

Russian special-operations forces typically serve high-intensity operational deployments of a few months, a rotation schedule that is modeled on the U.S. military’s elite special-operations teams. The Russians have closely studied the American experience as part of a multibillion-dollar military modernization project that began earlier in the decade.
...

Looks very similar to the US SF model in Syria deployed with the PKK; forward air controllers etc. Probably out there to keep an eye on what the Iranians are up to as well.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Most notorious IRGC-QF General eyeing the real estate in East Aleppo.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Former US Ambassador really not getting that for all the tearful talk of a US defeat Aleppo essentially became a side issue for the Pentagon after Mosul fell. Previous US post-Arab Spring Syria policy crashed and burned at that point and the US policy establishment has just been dragging along the embarrassing wreckage for a couple of years. Pentagon actions in Syria became mainly about denying IS a rear area and that left little choice but to back the PKK on the brink of defeat in Syria effectively betraying both the Turks and the Syrian rebel cause. This sort of worked against IS but had a major flaw: they're the PKK a fanatical enemy of Turkey. It just took the Turks longer to get to a similar place with their very different strategic priorities. What results looks rather like the Turks selling out East Aleppo to reduce a PKK rear area and the US working up to betraying the PKK in favour of its NATO ally. Truth is both the US and Turkey lost sight of their strategic priorities in 2011 and badly misread the likely trajectory of an incoherent Syrian revolt. Other opportunists IS, AQ, the PKK, Iran and Russia all made hay as a result.

 

[mikey mikey]

this is not a bill or act

I think most people can see what it is.

 

[camouflage]

This. I've actually been really disgusted, especially over the last few days, to see how readily and easily certain individuals, blogs and publications have flung themselves into the arms of murderous dictators, and how easily the countless testimonies of ordinary Syrians are dismissed as false and all because of an obsessisive idea that everything that happens in the world is simply down to American imperialism. American imperialism, that's it, no further explanation or analysis required.

Oh ffs, the unique snowflake that is the political life of a country, its class struggles and all that is not helped by dumping a war on it as powerful foreign interests have in Syria. I doubt feeding Jihadis and guns into the country with CIA logistics and planning and petromonarch-money will have done fuck all to help the Syrian working class struggle. War is destruction and death, who knew... I don't know about Syrias class struggles like some but I know the working class there wanted reform, not the destruction, economic starvation and partition of the country. You want to Libyarize the place... yeah, because that will help Syrias working single mothers and such. Maybe on Assad-Has-Gone-day Syria wll bloom into a beautiful plethora of workers syndicates, is that the plan? christ.

 

[CrabbedOne]

In TDB In Syria, Follow the Money to Find the Roots of the Revolt

The media have paid a considerable amount of attention to political analyses that focus on the authoritarian, totalitarian, and corruptible character of Bashar al-Assad’s government. However, scarce attention has been given to one of the crucial factors that have contributed to the ongoing revolt against the police-state of Syria and other Arab states. Assad’s neoliberal policies and economic liberalization—without the political reforms to redistribute the wealth—severely exacerbated the inequality between the poor and the rich. In middle-class areas and cities, the separation was especially felt. While a small portion of the crony capitalists, business class, and loyalists to Assad were able to benefit from these policies, the vast majority of the population was disenfranchised. The regime attacked the worker and peasant unions in the country, viewing them as obstacles to the neoliberal policies, by not providing them with funds that they needed to continue to function.

When Assad, a Western-educated ophthalmologist, came to power, it was inevitable that internal clashes and tensions between him and the old guard, who were the founders of the Alawite-Baathist and socialist regime of Assad, were to occur. Men such as Ali Duba (the former head of the Syrian military intelligence and a close adviser to the Syrian president Hafez al-Assad), as well as hardliners such as Maher al-Assad (commander of the Republican Guard and the Army's elite Fourth Armored Division, and also Bashar al-Assad’s brother), held opposing views of their new leader. Bashar al-Assad favored the adoption of Western-promoted neoliberalism and economic liberalization. In order to pursue the capitalist and neoliberal agenda, he realized that political readjustments, development, and reforms were necessary to foster more popular support of economic liberalization and privatization.
...

Speaking of class war, piece from 2013. Note the rather wise reluctance of the Baathist old guard but Bashar would be Bashar. All bright eyed and still fresh from New Labour's Cool Britannia. It did create a boom but the benefits of that went mostly to a narrow urban elite. Nothing like a few well connected chaps getting ostentatiously fat at the top of the pile to rile up the lumpen proletariat. Add on top of that epic corruption, a demographic explosion, a severe drought and it's not surprising large parts of provincial Syria rose in disgust. How could things get worse? Not that many set out with the idea of a 80s Lebanon style civil war but that's the way these things go.

Very similar story in Egypt as well. I do recall another gilded son Gamal Mubarak being eagerly praised for his radical neoliberal reforms in organs like The Economist. In that case the Egyptian military essentially arrange a terminal dynastic succession crisis to get rid of the innovative little squit before he could drop into daddies shoes and spoil their rent seeking rackets.

 

[CrabbedOne]

President Barack Obama on Friday defended the U.S. approach toward the civil war in Syria, saying he understood the desire for action to end the conflict but it would have been impossible to do "on the cheap" without a full U.S. military intervention.

"Unless we were all in and willing to take over Syria, we were going to have problems," Obama told a news conference, noting that it would have required "putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, uninvited, without any international law mandate."
...

Which is probably correct and why Obama refused to be drawn in to an inconclusive regime change in the way the US was by its reckless allies in Libya. Yet he couldn't resist what's been really a pretty large fairly disastrous covert intervention.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Tricky with a full beard. I do hope none of those really fat SAA officers try this at home.

 

[rekil]

In TDB In Syria, Follow the Money to Find the Roots of the Revolt
Speaking of class war, piece from 2013. Note the rather wise reluctance of the Baathist old guard but Bashar would be Bashar. All bright eyed and still fresh from New Labour's Cool Britannia. It did create a boom but the benefits of that went mostly to a narrow urban elite. Nothing like a few well connected chaps getting ostentatiously fat at the top of the pile to rile up the lumpen proletariat. Add on top of that epic corruption, a demographic explosion, a severe drought and it's not surprising large parts of provincial Syria rose in disgust. How could things get worse? Not that many set out with the idea of a 80s Lebanon style civil war but that's the way these things go.

Very similar story in Egypt as well. I do recall another gilded son Gamal Mubarak being eagerly praised for his radical neoliberal reforms in organs like The Economist. In that case the Egyptian military essentially arrange a terminal dynastic succession crisis to get rid of the innovative little squit before he could drop into daddies shoes and spoil their rent seeking rackets.

This factor was looked at earlier in the thread btw. Eg. Page 142

 

[CrabbedOne]

My how inspiring.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Informed Comment Hard Truth: Aleppo Rebels weren’t defeated by Main Force but b/c they alienated Syrians

...
It is true that Russia has subjected the Sunni Arab rebels, many of them just Muslim Brotherhood, to intense aerial bombardment. But it has especially gone after al-Qaeda (the Nusra Front, now styling itself the Levantine Conquest Front).

Under the conditions of 2011, the other rebels would have rushed to the aid of a besieged anti-al-Assad group.

That did not happen during the past 3 years, for a simple reason. Most people in Syria don’t trust the Muslim Brotherhood and they really, really dislike the Salafi Jihadis.

The ten percent of Syrians who are Kurds are largely post-Communist leftist feminists. They aren’t going to rush to the aid of fundamentalist Sunnis led by a group with al-Qaeda ties.

And the fact is that the fundamentalist rebels have repeatedly denounced and threatened the leftist Kurds. (It is these fundamentalists that Western politicians often call “moderates.”)

The supposedly moderate Freemen of Syria put al-Qaeda in charge of the Druze villages of Idlib in 2015. Druze are an offshoot of Ismaili Shiism and are deeply hated by al-Qaeda. They were forcibly converted to Sunni Islam and nevertheless some of them were killed or their property confiscated by the Nusra Front.

So as the Syrian opposition ratcheted farther and farther to the Sunni religious right, and as the most effective fighters came to be drawn from that sector, they lost the good will and support of most Syrians.

The secular-minded Sunni Arab majority didn’t want to be ruled by people imitating the Saudi Wahhabis. The Christians didn’t want that. The Druze didn’t want it. The Kurds didn’t want it. The Alawites certainly didn’t want it.

So you get 70% of the people in the country who, having been given the unpalatable choice between the Baath regime of al-Assad and being ruled by Salafi Jihadis, reluctantly chose al-Assad.
...

A bit simplistic, PKK support among Syrian Kurds is far from universal. Lots of Syrian Kurds are religiously conservative and a fair number are Salafi. It's pretty normal for most of a population to treat any revolutionary movement with a great deal of suspicion. The US Founding Fathers some say only had 3% of the population truly with them the truth is probably larger but still a minority.

But in essence this is correct the successful hard fighting parts of the revolt often became distasteful to urban Syrians. They won hearts and minds too patchily in Useful Syria. Mostly a narrow constituency of religiously conservative Sunni Arabs with rural roots; just over a third of the population. A dominant group in place like Idlib but even there ideological divides between MB types and hardline Salafist are obvious. They entirely lost minority constituencies and had limited appeal to cosmopolitan Sunni elites.

The regime on the other hand had a solid base of urban support in the big cities. Polling suggests about 30% of the overall population but densely clustered in Damascus, Aleppo and the Med coast.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

Oh ffs, the unique snowflake that is the political life of a country, its class struggles and all that is not helped by dumping a war on it as powerful foreign interests have in Syria. I doubt feeding Jihadis and guns into the country with CIA logistics and planning and petromonarch-money will have done fuck all to help the Syrian working class struggle. War is destruction and death, who knew... I don't know about Syrias class struggles like some but I know the working class there wanted reform, not the destruction, economic starvation and partition of the country. You want to Libyarize the place... yeah, because that will help Syrias working single mothers and such. Maybe on Assad-Has-Gone-day Syria wll bloom into a beautiful plethora of workers syndicates, is that the plan? christ.

American imperialism. No further analysis required.