[Bosnjak]

@pikachu

who cares, except the aidconvoy (which was probably Sy AF), is nothing a real crime, just normal Super-Power politics.

but russia never admits mistakes, so it is hard to trust.

Litvinenko was for sure liquidated by Russia, but what would happen to Edward Snowden if Russia would not protect him?

[pikachu]

It is looking like someone, most likely Russia, had striked the Turkish-backed forces in north Aleppo as they got a little too close to the sun. No reaction followed from Turkey thus far so most likely this was wihin the bounds of the Turkey-Russia agreement. The rebels also allege that that the Syrian artillery was involved but no idea if there's any truth to it.

Obviously Russia and Syria prefer to have more of a buffer between themselves and the Turkish-backed forces, however if they have any agreement with Turkey it almost certainly includes al-Bab so this was probably just a temporary intervention to make sure that SDF stays in the game and the Turks don't have it too easy.

[Igor Antunov]

They did indeed conduct airstrikes and the trukish backed rebels were forced to withdraw. SDF made some additional gains today.

[Bosnjak]

The pic is from an anti-media outlet, commonly they print bullshit, but sometimes interesting stuff.

[roxunreal]

"It's all because of the pipeliiiiineeeeees maaaaaaan"

[pikachu]

The pic is from an anti-media outlet, commonly they print bullshit, but sometimes interesting stuff.

The Nabucco pipeline has been dead for a while by the way, instead a couple of years ago Russia proposed a new Russia-Turkey pipeline which wouldn't fit as neatly into the narrative which this image tries to convey, along with a bunch of other options that have been considered or already exist.



Obviously there are purely economic advantages to taking control of Syria, and the possibility of constructing pipelines is perhaps one of those advantages, but in the grand scheme of things they are very very insignificant, especially once you start to consider all the nuances. Like, explain to me, if let's say Qatar wanted a convenient access to the European market, why do they need specifically Syria, why not Israel? Or Egypt? And then ship at an LNG facility there (like the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline would have to). There's already an oil pipeline that does just that, going from eastern KSA to Israel! So all you have to do is build a gas pipeline in parallel to it. If not Israel or Egypt for whatever reason, why not end the pipeline somewhere near the Western side of Saudi Arabia and then ship through the Suez Canal? Still sounds like a pretty good deal. Hey, there's even a gas pipeline going there already! If that pipeline doesn't have enough capacity to carry all of Qatari gas - build a parallel line to increase it, just like what Russia is doing with Nord Stream. The question of why you specifically need Syria for that remains completely unanswered here.

Same with Iran. Iran already has a gas pipeline to Europe running through Turkey. Why do they need another route through Iraq and Syria? There's no reason why Syria would be so irreplaceable there as to dump such enormous resources in defending it. In fact, there are no direct economic advantages in exporting the Iranian gas to Europe through Syria and then through an LNG port to Europe, rather than directly through Turkey - none. Economics here is an extension of politics - not the other way around. The reason why Iran wants to construct this pipeline is not because it would be particularly beneficial economically, but because it would serve it politically - it would connect the Iranian client states with Iran economically, thus tying them to each other and reducing their dependence on potentially hostile or uncooperative states such as Turkey. In other words, the primary aim here is to solidify your regional power, thus increasing your room for political maneuver while decreasing that of your opponents. Whether that regional power will serve you economically in the end is of secondary concern here.

Oh and by the way, most of the major rising consumers of natural gas are now to the East, not the West anyway.

But yeah generally speaking, the political power and economic well-being are somewhat related to each other but for the most part those are vastly different variables. Look at Luxemburg. No one in their right mind would say that Luxemburg is a very powerful country - it is certainly anything but that. But it is one of the wealthiest places on earth! On the other hand, Russia for most of its history has been pretty backward economically - but still a great power to be reckoned with. Political power and wealth are to a large extent mutually exchangeable - you can always sacrifice one to gain the other, so in a way you could say that they are different faces of the same coin. But their mutual convertibility doesn't make them the same thing, nor do they serve you the same way. It is up to every individual country to find the right balance between the two, and that balance depends on a whole host of geographic and cultural factors.

As for the reasons for the Syrian war, like any civil war, they are primarily internal. I'd describe them generally as the inability of the Syrian regime to manufacture proper identification between itself and a large part of its citizenry, which in turn probably has to do with the slow decline of the Arab Nationalist ideology and rise of political Islam. The latter is of course too difficult of a sociological concept to be explored here, but you can see that absolutely all of the Arab Nationalist regimes without exception have had to deal with this problem one way or another, regardless of their level of economic wealth or political repression. And for all of them it either resulted in a series of coups and revolts or in outright war. At the same time, pretty much none of the non-Arab Nationalist regimes have experienced the same sorts of problems - obviously such dramatic correlation cannot be a coincidence. That's not to say that economic wellbeing, the level of political repression, or external factors had absolutely nothing to do with it - they certainly did, but given the patterns that I see and my understanding of how political power works and reproduces itself - those were not the primary factors in this.

[Rugoz]

As for the reasons for the Syrian war, like any civil war, they are primarily internal. I'd describe them generally as the inability of the Syrian regime to manufacture proper identification between itself and a large part of its citizenry, which in turn probably has to do with the slow decline of the Arab Nationalist ideology and rise of political Islam. The latter is of course too difficult of a sociological concept to be explored here, but you can see that absolutely all of the Arab Nationalist regimes without exception have had to deal with this problem one way or another, regardless of their level of economic wealth or political repression. And for all of them it either resulted in a series of coups and revolts or in outright war. At the same time, pretty much none of the non-Arab Nationalist regimes have experienced the same sorts of problems - obviously such dramatic correlation cannot be a coincidence. That's not to say that economic wellbeing, the level of political repression, or external factors had absolutely nothing to do with it - they certainly did, but given the patterns that I see and my understanding of how political power works and reproduces itself - those were not the primary factors in this.

I disagree. I see the oil wealth as the primary reason for the current state of the Arab world. Political Islam as the reactionary ideology as it presents itself would have a hard time surviving in another environment.

[pikachu]

I did not even begin to describe why political islam began to gain prominence or survived as an ideology, so I don't see how you can disagree with me.

But it's worth mentioning that the emergence and establishment of the radical reformed Islam as it is practiced now in Saudi Arabia happened all the way in the early 19th century and solidified at the beginning of the 20th century - and that was before any oil was discovered in that region. The rest of the world was already well on its way to secularism, while Arabia experienced a strong pushback. Since then, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has had to both suppress the Islamist movement and at the same time co-opt it and adopt its methods, and they definitely threw in a lot of oil money into spreading the Wahhabi ideology around. Yet it is funny that one of the first places that they actually "succeeded" in converting to Islamism is the one place that would be the most immune to it - Iran. In other words, when the Iranians installed their revolutionary theocracy, you bet that they were not using the Saudi oil-funded teachings as a guide or an example - it was an entirely separate process. So my guess is it didn't have a lot to do with oil, not in any tangible way.

[starman2003]

As for the reasons for the Syrian war, like any civil war, they are primarily internal. I'd describe them generally as the inability of the Syrian regime to manufacture proper identification between itself and a large part of its citizenry,

Yes of course. Assad's alawite minority vs the sunnis.

which in turn probably has to do with the slow decline of the Arab Nationalist ideology and rise of political Islam.

I think much of the blame should go to shrub and the neocons. The Iraq misadventure was not motivated by WMD but democratization, supposedly making the arabs tamer and Israel safer. Deluded as the necons were, as the grotesque consequences showed, the idea of democratization began to spread, just like the morons thought it would...The result was a descent into gory chaos, as disaffected people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iraq turned against their governments. Had Saddam been left alone, not only Iraq but the while region would've remained much more stable.

[pikachu]

Yes of course. Assad's alawite minority vs the sunnis.

Right. More generally, the simple way (and the only correct way) that politicians use to generate support and consent to their rule is by taking advantage of the existing social tension and helping to generate further tension to the extent of their capability. Then they throw their full support behind one of the groups and position themselves as their representative - skillfully expressing the frustrations of that group with the "other" and helping to soothe the potential tension within the group.

When Trump said that "I could shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters", he was exaggerating a little bit of course, but the basic premise is correct, and the same exact thing applies to his opponent. Hillary could come out and shoot a baby in the face, but as long as she did so while chanting the correct keywords and slogans, be it "abortion rights", "inner cities", "Putin", "police brutality", "gun control", etc - she will still retain a huge following and many people will vote for her - as long as her opponent is a Republican. She may not win the election, but the point is not in that, the point is that nearly 50% of Americans will still support her because she is "one of them" while Trump (or another Republican) is not, and vice versa. Generally people will make all sorts of excuses for brutal and horrible leaders as long as they can say "well this guy is certainly a son of a bitch, but he's OUR son of a bitch, he fights for us and we can't afford to fight each other in the face of the enemy". As a politician, you just got to find your group, find your enemy, and then position yourself correctly as the prime defender of that group against the enemy. As long as the enemy is out there and you are able to keep the flames of fear and hate going strong while having at least some measure of success against that enemy - the people from your group will tolerate all kinds of shit and abuse from you.

There was a time when Arab Nationalism united the Syrians, well, most Syrians, except the Kurds obviously - but there also wasn't nearly as many Kurds in Syria back then from what I understand. The enemy was the colonialists first - the British, French, and their American ally - and also Israel of course. Over time, the former colonialists had mostly backed off and didn't really bother with them any more, while the struggle against Israel had to be basically abandoned due to military reality deciding in Israel's favor. Thus the flame of hate had to be cooled off or it would become a danger to the very regimes which were stroking it. While the group that Arab Nationalism was supposed to represent - the Arabs, also never actually materialized geopolitically, for the Arab states never managed to unite (which was of course again largely a function of their military weakness). But now, without a clear group belonging and lacking a clear enemy to unite against, it's not exactly surprising that Arab nationalism started to wane and different ideologies started to gain more traction. So the end result was that the Syrians were much less concerned with the French or Israelis and much more concerned with each other, and the primary division within Syria is that of religion. Now this of course doesn't come close to a full explanation of why it happened but I certainly feel that it must be a big part of the problem. Notice that those Arab states which never made fighting Israel and colonialism their top priority - they also suffered the least from the Arab Spring and other Islamist problems. They had different ways to justify themselves to the population. Using the same principle of course, but doing it differently. In a sense, you could say that the defeat of Arab Nationalism as an ideology was of direct consequence of their military defeat to Israel. Had they conquered Israel, things may have gone very differently for them and the Arab Spring would not have looked the way it ended up looking.

In the end, what saved Assad from defeat is his rapid transformation from a failed defender of Arabs against Israel to an aspiring defender of Syrian religious minorities and secularized city-dwellers against Sunnism. However, that transformation also automatically denied him the rule over all of Syria - he can only claim a chunk of it perhaps. Unless he can somehow redefine himself in a way that starts to appeal to the rural Sunni masses, which he can't, the only way he can militarily defeat the opposition is by essentially ethnically cleansing them with foreign help. While he can certainly do that on a limited scale, it is not something that can realistically be applied to Syria as a whole - that's just not going to happen, so there is no purely military solution to this conflict. Ultimately some sort of compromise will have to be made with the Sunni part of the population, most of which will probably never again see Assad as their legitimate leader.

[GandalfTheGrey]

But it's worth mentioning that the emergence and establishment of the radical reformed Islam as it is practiced now in Saudi Arabia happened all the way in the early 19th century and solidified at the beginning of the 20th century - and that was before any oil was discovered in that region. The rest of the world was already well on its way to secularism, while Arabia experienced a strong pushback.

Yes but the point is that radical Islamism would have remained an irrelevant sideshow if not for the oil wealth - and certainly wouldn't have had the global reach it has today.

As for the pushback against secularism, WWI played a huge role - since before it was defeated and dismantled, the Ottoman Empire was making huge strides on the secular/liberal front - and in many ways was even ahead of the west (eg the OE legalised homosexuality before any western nation). WWI brought both a hardening of nationalist attitude within the Ottoman elite (and subsequent hardening attitudes against liberal reforms), as well as direct military threat to the regime itself by foreign powers - which included the empowerment by the west of the wahabists.

[Bosnjak]

irrelevant sideshow

it is Sunna-Islam is about 1,5-2 Billion people- officially, commonly when minority muslims do not register them as muslims, although TAKIJA is forbidden for Sunnis, we say what we think directly, is this just a teaching from ww2, not be written in a central register... If so many people just jump at once it can cause huge earth-quakes... Salafism has influence but small, Jihadi-Salafism is sideshow (it is muslim KKK with a portion of Anarchism)


Shias are just 100 million. They all are concentrated in Middle-East.

I did know the Ottomans at the End tolerated prostitution, but not just tolerate, legalize Ass diggers...
No wonder had Kemal Pasha Attatürk an easy game against a decadent and corrupted elite.

Today is the corruption, the Bakshish-Mentality still present in former Ottoman regions like Greece or North-Africa.


There are many stories against Atatürk, but he was not a Anti-Muslim rather a devoted one.



Syriaq is currently the 30-Years war, in the Muslim world, but there is no black and white, the 30-years war ended just because France intervened on the side of Protestants... the turks got rich suppling both sides with blackpowder.

The longtime effects of 30-years war was secularism and oekumenism... but i doubt this will be the result of Syriaq

[Bosnjak]

@pikachu Jihadi-Salafism not Salafi-Islam, will always occur in War zones, because it is born in war, as a mix of Theobandism (from India) and Salafism.

Political Islam (Islamism a la Muslim Brotherhood) will have always a big influence on muslim societies because it unites strict Social-Conservatism and Socialism (helping the poor).

The AKP I would classify as religous-conservative

[Rugoz]

Yet it is funny that one of the first places that they actually "succeeded" in converting to Islamism is the one place that would be the most immune to it - Iran.

Iran is a major oil producer.



I see oil wealth as one of many factors, just the most important one. Obviously without Islam there would be no Islamism.

When Trump said that "I could shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters", he was exaggerating a little bit of course, but the basic premise is correct, and the same exact thing applies to his opponent.

Democracies are pretty much fucked if this attitude is prevalent.

[starman2003]

while the struggle against Israel had to be basically abandoned due to military reality deciding in Israel's favor.

I dunnoo. While it's indisputable that Syria lost in '67, '73 and '82, all of those defeats could've been mitigated if not avoided, and Syria did not throw in the towel after any of them. Around the mid '80s, it had rebounded and was quite formidable. The collapse of the USSR did not preclude further arms purchases from Russia, and gaining Iran as an ally probably more than compensated for loss of Iraq due to the '91 war and subsequent events. Hezbollah's performance in 2006, and Hamas, demonstrate that Israeli power needn't rule out a military option, or cow arabs into submission.

But now, without a clear group belonging and lacking a clear enemy to unite against,

The arab-Israel conflict is by no means over. I've long predicted it'll again be the focus of regional attention, maybe after Lieberman begins to implement his agenda...

Notice that those Arab states which never made fighting Israel and colonialism their top priority - they also suffered the least from the Arab Spring and other Islamist problems. They had different ways to justify themselves to the population. Using the same principle of course, but doing it differently. In a sense, you could say that the defeat of Arab Nationalism as an ideology was of direct consequence of their military defeat to Israel.

The saudis can just bribe people to keep quiet. Israel has appeared unbeatable--most of the time--since at least 1967, yet baathist and other regimes maintained stability until quite recently. IMO the arab spring owed the most to neocon meddling.

In the end, what saved Assad from defeat is his rapid transformation from a failed defender of Arabs against Israel to an aspiring defender of Syrian religious minorities and secularized city-dwellers against Sunnism.

What saved him were his Iranian, Hez and Russian supporters.

Ultimately some sort of compromise will have to be made with the Sunni part of the population, most of which will probably never again see Assad as their legitimate leader.

Well, maybe if attention is focused elsewhere, as I suggest, the sunnis might effectively forgive/forget Assad. It's certainly true, though, that he'll have to get Sunni support, to help stabilize the country.

[Rich]

yet baathist and other regimes maintained stability until quite recently.

The left and their Muslim loving fascist allies really do live in a fantasy world. The last thing the Baath party bought to Syria or Iraq was stability. Try looking at a bit of history and then you might refrain from making these ridiculous assertions. Under the Baathist watches we had 2 direct wars with Israel, the Lebanese civil war, the Iran - Iraq war, the invasion of Kuwait, various Syrian backed terrorist attacks, the backing of Hamas, the execution of a third of the Iraq Baath parties leadership, wars with the Kurds, war between Kurdish groups and Syrian backing for various anti western so called terrorist attacks, including Panam 103 which later got blamed on Gadaffi.

Then there's the major Sunni uprising in Syria beginning in the 1970s and the Shia uprising in Iraq in 91. Now I realise that you average Leftie ignoramus nether knew nor cared about these hugely violent events, but they took place in the days before camera phones and social media.

[Bosnjak]

Bathism is Arab-Fascism. and fascism is not a peace loving Ideology, but the Zionists (Jew fascists) have also some guilt.

Lebanon was invaded by Israel, Syria defended lebanon... 6-days lightning war, was started by Israel...

compared the groups the US supported, in Afghanistan, Nicaragua (Million civilians got killed), Honduras, Columbia is not much.

Saddam started invasion of Iran, after the Islamic Revolution, and the call of Chomeini to topple Saddam.


Compared to this stories are Arabian Monarchies much better then Baath or Baath inspired Dictators. Democracy does not work when you have tribes, therefore it just works in Tunisia.

[pikachu]

Rugoz

Iran is a major oil producer.

Trust me, I've been aware for some time that Iran is a major oil producer, but how does that even play a role? When the revolution toppled the Shah, did the Iranians flock to Khomeini due to the amount of oil that their country produced? Did someone really think "well, normally I'd favor a liberal democracy, but given that our country produces a lot of oil I think a guardianship of the Islamic jurists is more appropriate"? You need to show a causation, not just correlation, though to be honest I don't see much correlation here either. Some of the most jihadist-infested places on the planet such are places like Afghanistan, southern Yemen, Somalia, and northern Nigeria - places which have no oil whatsoever.

I don't deny that the massive oil wealth possessed by the certain Islamist regimes helps them buy domestic stability and export their ideology abroad, but like I said, it is a secondary factor at best. Libya also has a massive oil wealth and it had developed a petro-welfare system which was intended to buy stability, just like the Saudis did. Libya was, in fact, one of the richest countries in Africa. And how did that work out for them exactly, tell me? Or what about Algeria? Not quite as wealthy as Libya, but still rather wealthy compared to most other Arab states and definitely oil-rich - how did Algeria fare in this matter? The only reason why nothing much happened in Algeria during the Arab Spring is because Algeria already had its Arab Spring, it had its bloody 10-year civil war against the Islamists that ended relatively recently - in 2002. So Algeria already "solved" its Islamist problem ahead of everyone else and the Islamists haven't had enough time to recover from that disaster. Yet the neighboring Kingdom of Morocco never had to deal with any of that, despite not having much oil and being much poorer than Algeria.

GandalfTheGrey

Yes but the point is that radical Islamism would have remained an irrelevant sideshow if not for the oil wealth - and certainly wouldn't have had the global reach it has today.

That might be, but I don't know how you can tell that. See my response to Rugoz right above. Neither the emergence nor preservation of the Islamist regimes seems to have had a whole lot to do with oil at the first glance.

starman2003

While it's indisputable that Syria lost in '67, '73 and '82, all of those defeats could've been mitigated if not avoided, and Syria did not throw in the towel after any of them.

I'm not sure why any of this matters. Does it matter that Syria did not officially give up the fight, if it was pretty clear that the fight was lost? Arab Nationalism had visibly failed in Syria on every count. Syria did not succeed at liberating Palestine, it did not succeed at building an Arab nation-state, it did succeed at building Socialism, and it lost even more territory to Israel than what it had before the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party came to power. When you experience a clear defeat and recovery doesn't seem likely in any near future, it doesn't matter very much whether or not you publicly admit it - everyone already knows it.

Israel has appeared unbeatable--most of the time--since at least 1967, yet baathist and other regimes maintained stability until quite recently.

First of all, how much have you even read about the history of Syria during that period? Syria experienced a violent Islamist uprising shortly after its defeat to Israel in 1973. The Islamist insurgency began in Syria in 1976 and ended after a massacre in Hama in 1982, and it had many hallmarks of a religious civil war. To say that it was "maintaining stability" during that period is a bit bizarre.

But you are right, of course, that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not completely settled, neo-colonialism and imperialism remains a factor, while secularism and socialism still retain some degree of popularity outside of minority groups. Which is why I'm by no means claiming that Arab Nationalism is completely dead. It is not. If it was dead, we would not have seen a counter-revolution in Egypt in 2013. If it was dead, it would be as destroyed and gone as Communism is in the former Soviet Union - not even the Communist Parties there honestly believe in it. It's not dead, and it was certainly one factor that helped Assad survive.

For example, I imagine that there were probably a lot of Sunnis and Syrians generally who were rather alienated from the rebels by the fact that the latter were being so openly buttressed by France and Turkey at the beginning, by the fact that the US and even Israel were seemingly throwing their support behind the rebels, and perhaps also by the fact that the only coherent economic policy that the rebels ever had was to advocate less government intervention in the economy. This must have helped Assad retain some Sunni support in major cities from Damascus to Aleppo. But man, the very fact that the rebels had managed to retain such strong support in the Sunni countryside despite these factors should show you just how low their faith in Arab Nationalism have come. So to reiterate - no, I'm not saying that Arab Nationalism is completely dead, but it's taken a huge hit after its series of defeats in the 20th century, and this hit allowed other ideologies to start filling the void.

What saved him were his Iranian, Hez and Russian supporters.

...which is an absolutely meaningless statement given that the rebels have also received plentiful of foreign support until recently, and in some areas (like north Aleppo) still obviously do.

[starman2003]

The left and their Muslim loving fascist allies

I'm not a muslim lover, just consider muslim states important and don't like support of Israel.

The last thing the Baath party bought to Syria or Iraq was stability. Try looking at a bit of history.... Under the Baathist watches we had 2 direct wars with Israel, the Lebanese civil war, the Iran - Iraq war, the invasion of Kuwait...

I meant relative INTERNAL stability. I don't doubt the Saddam era saw considerable internal fighting in Iraq. But nothing like the national disintegration and chaos of recent years.

Then there's the major Sunni uprising in Syria beginning in the 1970s

I don't think the uprising amounted to much until the spring of 1982. My interest in the Mideast long predates modern social media and I'm no leftist!!

and the Shia uprising in Iraq in 91.

Wouldn't have happened had Saddam's army not been battered just prior to that. Remarkably, that army put down the rebellion even after the battering it took.

[Igor Antunov]

Yet another rebel suicide run at Aleppo.

Also, BRUTAL isis documentary about the entire conflict in Syria and Iraq. No subtitles but very interesting. Beware it is beyond graphic: https://ia801509.us.archive.org/1/items ... %D8%AF.mp4

An overview.



1:30 First part is about the Syrian regime. Torture, prisons, worshiping Assad, military bases used by the regime to target/control the Sunnis.

4:30 ISIS joining the fight against the regime in Raqqa from Iraq and defeating the regime.

9:00 Raqqa was a mix of different groups muslims, democratic groups and disbelievers.

9:40 Civilians complaining about rebel groups. Stealing equipment, looting business and houses, extorting money and corruption. The regime's corruption was replaced with rebel corruption, no difference between them.

12:30 ISIS was formed to establish Shariah

13:00 Under orders by outside actors Al-nusra and thuwar al-raqqah planned to attack ISIS 6 months after defeating the regime in Raqqa.

14:20 ISIS defeated the rebels that sold out their religion .

15:40 Raqqah under ISIS. No corruption, civilian services, hisbah, Shariah, education etc.

16:40 Defeating the regime bases around Raqqa

22:30 The coalition couldn't stop ISIS. They used the Kurds and the remnants of the forces defeated by ISIS to try to stop ISIS.

23:50 The soldiers of the caliphate did not fight for group or flag. They fought to raise Allah's word and to defeat the nonbelievers.

26:00 ISIS continued to defeat the opposition despite coalition airstrikes and support.

27:30 We are victorious. We destroyed idols, stoned adulterers, beheaded wizards, cut off the hands of thieves, whipped alcohol drinkers, made women wear the hijab, established the righteous path etc. etc.

28:00 Pentagon's victory is the demolition of the cities they conquer

30:00 Executions of the agents of the regime, rebels and the coalition

33:10 The soldiers of the caliphate fought against the militias of the regime and the Russians and stopped their advances despite the Russian scorched Earth policy

34:00 Ambushes, small attacks, attacking supply lines worked to minimize the usefulness of Russian airstrikes