Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Gatestone Update :: Khaled Abu Toameh: Now They Are Slaughtering Palestinians, and more


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Now They Are Slaughtering Palestinians

by Khaled Abu Toameh
July 17, 2012 at 5:00 am
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What is clear is that this massacre of Palestinians has received little attention in the international media. Most of the Arab countries, as well, which treat Palestinians as second-class citizens and subject them to apartheid systems, do not seem to care about the ongoing massacres against Palestinians in particular and Syrians in general.
The world has become used to hearing and watching stories about massacres against civilians in Syria. But until recently, almost all the victims were Syrian citizens.
Last week, however, it turned out that in Syria, they are also massacring Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in a number of refugee camps in and around the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Earlier this week, the bodies of 16 Palestinians whose throats had been slashed were discovered in Syria.
The victims had been kidnapped while on their way by bus to their refugee camp Nairab.
According to Palestinian sources, unidentified militiamen stopped the bus, kidnapped the Palestinian men and took them to an unknown destination. A few days later the Syrian authorities announced that they had discovered the bodies of the victims in a field.
The men had been shot in the legs and chest before they were slaughtered like cattle, the Palestinian sources said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the brutal killings.
Some Palestinians blamed radical Islamic gangs operating in Syria, while others did not rule out the possibility that the murderers belonged to President Bashar Assad's security establishment.
What is clear so far is that this new massacre against Palestinians has received little attention in the international media.
Even the Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank has had little to say about the massacre. This leadership is too busy promoting conspiracy theories about the mysterious death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004.
Palestinian Authority leaders are doing their utmost to hold Israel responsible for the death of Arafat.
Palestinian Authority President Abbas, who sent condolences to the families of the victims, has no time to follow up on the latest massacre against his people. The man is busy these days trying to secure financial aid to his bankrupt government.
Abbas flew to Saudi Arabia this week to beg the royal family for money to pay salaries to 160,000 Palestinian civil servants. Because of the severe financial crisis, the Palestinian government has paid its employees only half of their salaries for the past month.
Most of the Arab countries, as well, which treat Palestinians as second class citizens and subject them to apartheid systems, do not seem to care about the ongoing massacres against Palestinians in particular and Syrians in general.
Arab leaders say they do not want to give Palestinians money because they do not trust the Palestinian Authority leadership.
The slaughtering of the 16 Palestinians is seen as an attempt to drag Palestinians living in Syria into the bloody conflict between the opposition and the government. Thousands of Palestinians have already fled to Jordan, where the government of King Abdullah II does not seem keen to help them.
Many of the Palestinians have been sent back to Syria, while others, according to Palestinian and Western reports, have been placed in ghettos near the Syria-Jordan border.
Palestinians living in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon now fear another "Black September" - a reference to the massacres carried out by the Jordanians in the early 1970s.
Related Topics:  Syria  |  Khaled Abu Toameh

Islam's Threat to Diversity

by Tarek Heggy
July 17, 2012 at 4:30 am
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There are those who claim that the Islamization of Egyptian society reflects "the will of the people." But history teaches us that the "will of the people" is not always beneficial.
Egyptian identity, like so many others, made up of several layers, begins in Ancient Egypt, a civilization that flourished for nearly thirty centuries. Further layers derive from the Coptic Age, when Egypt in its entirety was an Eastern Christian society. Then there are countless layers from the Islamic and Arabic-speaking Egypt.
There are still more layers deriving from modern Egypt, the founder of which, Mohamed Ali, ruled from 1805 to 1848, and whose kingdom continued for over a century after his death.
Finally, there are the many layers produced by Egypt's geographical location as a Mediterranean society, more specifically, as an Eastern Mediterranean country with its opulent diverseness from trade.
This complex construct, which formed over millennia, the rich and multi-layered Egyptian identity – a product of fruitful interaction and cross-fertilization among different civilizations and cultures – is today in grave peril, facing as it does systematic and deliberate attempts to destroy its very essence as represented in the many layers that make up its variegated character.
It is these layers that distinguish Egyptian society from various surrounding societies which seem to have a less-developed civilizational and cultural formation as a result of their one-dimensional composition.
The trend of political Islam is exulting as it stands poised to take over the reins of power in Egypt. However, the domination by this trend over the country's political and cultural landscape poses a real danger to the multi-layered nature of the Egyptian people. .
Because of the grip the conservative schools of thought have acquired over the minds of most Muslims today -- with the rampant spread of the ideas of ibn-Hanbal and his disciples, ibn-Taymiyah, ibn Qaiym Al-Juzeya and all the Salafi schools – the spread of a cultural wave that is opposed to the non-Islamic dimensions of the Egyptian identity is a likely – and exceedingly dangerous – development. We are already hearing ominous mutterings about the ungodliness of "pagan" relics of Ancient Egypt, and threats to destroy the pyramids and other splendors of one of the most glorious civilizations in history.
We are also likely to see the spread of values opposed to the Other -- whatever form "otherness" may take --- representing yet another very dangerous threat to Egyptian diversity.
There is also the serious fear that the Islamic trend will redesign educational programs to promote the Islamic and Arab dimension at the expense of the other layers that make up the luxuriance that is Egypt.
This possibility is far from remote in the context of a legislative assembly dominated by a single trend. The mindset of the Islamic lawmakers who preside over the education committee is certainly opposed to religious or cultural diversity. There is no doubt that this trend will focus on magnifying the importance of the Islamic and Arab dimension while downgrading all the other dimensions that make up the richness of Egyptian identity. This is all that can be expected from a theocratic Parliament claiming a divine commission.
Unfortunately the trend to foster a one-dimensional identity actually began some years back as Islamic religious thinking came to permeate the minds of those responsible for the all-important sector of education in our society. Nowhere is the success of this trend more apparent than in the way the Arabic language and the Arabic literature curricula have evolved over the last few years. Instead of presenting literary masterpieces by such luminaries as Ahmed Lotfy el-Sayed, Taha Hussein, Abbas el-Aqqad, Abdul Qader el-Mazny, Salama Moussa, Tewfik el-Hakim, Naguib Mahfouz, Youssef Idris, Nizar Qabbani, Badr Shaker el-Sayab, Mikhael Na'ema an others, Arabic language and literature courses are now virtually indistinguishable from religious courses.
The well-known Lebanese author and intellectual, Amin Maalouf, rightly describes any one-dimensional identity as "destructive." For in this day and age, a monolithic identity that attributes itself to a single source is bound to clash with the values of pluralism, diversity, analytic thinking, critical questioning, and acceptance of the Other, not to mention the recognition that the various civilizations and cultures have all contributed to the higher ideal of a common humanity.
There are those who claim that the Islamization of Egyptian society reflects "the will of the people." But history teaches us that the will of the people is not always beneficial. Eight decades ago, the will of the German people brought Adolf Hitler to power, plunging mankind into genocidal wars and massacres that claimed more than fifty million lives. This example allows us to criticize the current cultural wave sweeping over Egypt – one that threatens to sweep before it the non-Islamic components of Egyptian identity and to transform us into a society with a one-dimensional identity, like the desert societies that surround us. Even if the present state of affairs came about by "the will of the people," we would do well to remember that, as Voltaire said: Even if repeated by a thousand thousand people, a mistake is still a mistake.
Related Topics:  Tarek Heggy

The Three-State Solution

by Malcolm Lowe
July 17, 2012 at 4:00 am
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Gibraltar, Monaco, and Hong Kong are all, like Gaza, small heavily populated areas with a coastline, and all are thriving. The main obstacle to further dramatic growth is Gaza's bad habit of shooting missiles at Israel.
The future is already here, but people refuse to see it. Why? Because the world's politicians and journalists froze their minds decades ago about how to deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Every speech by Western leaders, and every pontification by a Thomas Friedman, has as its nucleus what I called – already back in 2003 – the "Dogmatic Chant."
It runs as follows: "The Palestinians must end terrorism, the Israelis must totally freeze settlement activities, then there can quickly arise a Palestinian state whose borders will approximate the 1967 lines and the Middle East will know peace at last!" Read any of those speeches and pontifications and you will find that its total thought content boils down to just this, apart from the frills.
It is a dogma, because it is impervious to any new facts, and a chant, because so many authoritative politicians and journalists chant it together. Its greatest flaw is that it pretends that the biggest issue of all – the Palestinian demand for the so-called "right of return" – is inessential.
Thus the PA itself maintains refugee camps where PA leaders routinely assure the residents that there will be no peace with Israel until they all go away to where their great-grandparents lived before 1948. Never mind that those little lost villages in Israel would have to be expanded ten times to accommodate them all.
We also have a second major flaw in the Dogmatic Chant: it ignores the advantages, indeed the necessity, for Gaza and the West Bank to be encouraged to seek independence separately. Let nobody pretend that Gaza cannot survive alone. Gibraltar, Monaco and Hong Hong Kong are all, like Gaza, small heavily populated areas with a coastline, and all are thriving. So is Luxemburg.
Even Gaza is not doing so badly: it has its Olympic-size swimming pool (2010), upmarket shopping mall (2010), beach resorts and luxury hotels. Just look at the pictures on Internet of "A Tourist Trip to Gaza." The main obstacle to further dramatic growth is Gaza's bad habit of shooting missiles at Israel.
Everyone who is anyone has declared for a two-state solution: Israel and Palestine. Including Netanyahu and Abbas. Everyone is aware that all attempts to reach that solution quickly collapse. And almost everyone argues that the only alternative would be a one-state solution.
Hardly anybody wants to know that three states have emerged, de facto, in the area: Israel, West Bank and Gaza. Or to acknowledge the advantages of this arrangement. Or to realize that only this – if anything – offers a basis for a stable future.
Let us begin by recalling what happened after Britain's Indian Empire was partitioned into India and Pakistan in 1947. Originally, Pakistan consisted of two parts – West and East – divided by 1800 km (1100 m) of Indian territory. War quickly broke out between the two states. The occasion was the province of Kashmir and Jammu, which Pakistan demanded because of its Muslim majority. But its Hindu Maharajah ruler, who was given the choice in the partition agreement, opted to join India.
The war lasted from October 1947 to December 1948. Only a small part of Kashmir had then fallen into Pakistani hands. The dispute provoked another war in 1965 and threatened to go on forever. What changed the situation was the emergence of an independence movement in East Pakistan. In 1971 India helped East Pakistan to free itself from Pakistani military control and turn into the independent state of Bangladesh.
Since there is no particular friendship between Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Kashmir dispute thereafter posed a much smaller security threat to India. Thus when armed Pakistanis infiltrated a part of Kashmir in 1999, a vigorous response by the Indian army put a quick end to the affair.
In the meantime, all three countries play cricket against each other. So also does Sri Lanka, which had its own dispute with India over its Tamil minority. In the Middle East, for whatever reason, Britain's historic role did not leave behind the civilizing influence of cricket -- a sport in which all spectators constantly applaud fine plays by either side, including their opponents. But the other parallels with Israel and the Palestinians are evident.
The Oslo Declaration of Principles (1993) and the Oslo Interim Agreement (1995) took note of the problem of maintaining contact between the two geographical areas of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Declaration envisaged "safe passage" between them on designated routes through the territory of the State of Israel. Annex I of the Agreement contained an elaborate scheme of implementation: each vehicle must have a "safe passage permit" and each Palestinian passenger must have a "safe passage card"; joint Israeli-Palestinian teams would make sure that only acceptable persons could use "safe passage" and that all who left the one area duly arrived at the other; the precise structure of the terminals and their opening hours were defined, etc.
All this quickly came to nothing. This was among the first provisions, and arguably the very first provision, of the Oslo Accords to collapse in practice. Ever since, Palestinians have had to pass through at least two Arab countries, obtaining all the necessary permits, to get from the one area to the other. As Aaron Tuckey recently noted (March 13, 2012): while there are several states with an exclave (like the US's Alaska), communication between Gaza and the West Bank is unusually problematic.
Later proposals included a dedicated fenced highway, a railway, even a tunnel. The problem, of course, was how to enable communication between the two areas without creating opportunities for Palestinian terrorism. That problem has only grown since. Letting the two areas go their own separate ways would greatly reduce the threat to Israel's security in any future Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
In the meantime, the incommunicability between Gaza and the West Bank has also become convenient to the Palestinians, at least to the two main players – Hamas and Fatah. After Hamas won the 2006 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), it briefly headed a coalition government with Fatah. In 2007 armed clashes between the two led to a Hamas dictatorship in Gaza and a Fatah dictatorship in the West Bank; the PLC has not met since that year. "Dictatorship" is the correct description: the terms of office of both the PLC and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, have long run out. The two areas are being ruled by unelected individuals via their respective security apparati.
Various agreements have been made between Hamas and Fatah to hold fresh elections and reunite the two areas, committees have been set up to implement the agreements, but it all gets nowhere. Hamas continues to detain and harass Fatah members and to punish pro-Fatah journalists, while Fatah does the reverse in the West Bank.
One of the committees is supposed to arrange the release of the mutual detainees. It has achieved nothing. Rather, there are constantly new detainees. It would be simpler to transfer all the pro-Fatah detainees and activists from Gaza to the West Bank in exchange for a transfer of Hamas people in the opposite direction.
Another committee, also getting nowhere, was charged with creating the apparatus for joint elections. It is still arguing about whether and how to update the register of voters. If they need a show of democracy, it would be simpler to elect separate governing councils in the two areas.
The Palestinian ministries, to the extent that they do any useful work, already operate separately in Gaza and the West Bank. After 2007, the Hamas and Fatah appointees to the coalition government morphed into the de facto governments in the respective areas.
The only remaining connection is that the Fatah government in Ramallah still pays salaries of its former officials in Gaza, regardless of whether they are now doing any work there. At the same time, the Fatah government claims that it is facing a desperate financial crisis. If Fatah ended those useless payments to Gaza, the crisis would be much relieved. Any shortfall in Gaza's own budget would doubtless be made up by its Islamist friends elsewhere.
For Gaza to go its own way is the easier part. The West Bank and Israel are so much more closely intertwined that here the solution, too, must be complex.
So why has nobody seen all this before, if a permanent separation between Gaza and the West Bank is so obviously the way to go? As a matter of fact, isolated commentators have thrown up this suggestion in the past. Since the beginning of 2012, their number has been growing. They have passed unnoticed for various reasons.
One reason is that the term "three-state solution" has been misused in the past in confusing ways. Another reason is that even those who used the term correctly often thought of it as merely a temporary stage, imagining that Gaza and the West Bank would eventually reunite. Thirdly, a few people did envisage this as a permanent reality, but there were weaknesses in how they made their case.
Here credit must be given to Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, an Iranian academic and long-term US resident. He may not be very popular, whether as an apologist for Iranian President Ahmadinejad or because of his unfortunate embroilment in controversies. Back in 2007, however, he wrote a prophetic short analysis entitled "The Death of the Two-State Solution." There he argued: "Call it a nightmare, a fiasco, fragmentation, but not temporary, as all the vital signs indicate that the political partition of the West Bank and Gaza is a fait accompli, unlikely to reverse short of an all-out Israeli military invasion and reoccupation of Gaza."
The first to speak of three states in this sense may have been Jamal Dajani. On June 15, 2007, while Hamas was consolidating its armed conquest of Gaza, he proclaimed on LinkTV: "The new reality on the ground is that we have three states on historic Palestine: a Hamas-run state in Gaza, a Fatah-run state in the West Bank and Israel in between." Dajani was closely, but independently, followed by Charles Levinson on June 17 in the Daily Telegraph.
More recently (March 26, 2012), the practical reality of three states was briefly noted by Khaled Abu Toameh in Gatestone. Unlike Afrasiabi, however, he envisages it as a temporary phenomenon: "The three-state solution is, for now, the only, and best, option on the table. The two-state solution should be put on hold until the Palestinians reunite and start speaking in one voice. Meanwhile, those who are trying to promote a one-state solution are just wasting their time and the time of most Israelis and Palestinians." Similar views appeared in 2010 in a blog on the Huffington Post by Chuck Freilich and a blog on CultureFuture by Guy Yedwab. But the earliest version of the "temporary" conception may be a brief opinion piece by Jacob Savage that appeared on the same day in 2007 (June 20) as Afrasiabi's article.
Even more recently (June 27, 2012), the de facto status of Gaza as an independent state was noted by Giora Eiland, a reserve general who has variously served as security advisor to Israeli governments. In an op-ed for Ynet, he argued: "Israel's policy must be premised on the understanding that Gaza is a de facto state in every way. It has clear geographical boundaries, a stable regime that was elected democratically, and an independent foreign policy."
From that premise, however, Eiland drew only limited consequences. Mainly, he wants Israel to treat hostilities of any kind emanating from Gaza as the responsibility of the Hamas government there and of the citizenry that freely elected Hamas to power.
Back in 2008, Eiland propagated a different kind of three-state solution: Israel, Jordan and Egypt. (Wikipedia currently gives a wrong link to Eiland's proposal, a link that has been widely copied on Internet; the correct link to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is here.) He wanted Jordan and Egypt to resume the responsibilities for the West Bank and Gaza that they had exercised prior to the Six Day War of 1967. His proposal was echoed in 2009 by John Bolton, A similar idea was recently floated (May 3, 2012) by Likud Knesset member Danny Doron. It is unthinkable, however, that either Jordan or Egypt would ever want such a headache, even if they did not have all their current problems.
Yet another "three-state solution" was recently proposed (March 5, 2012) by Mordechai Nisan: Israel, Lebanon and Jordan. The Palestinians, he thought, should be encouraged to migrate to Jordan and overthrow the Hashemite monarchy there. Then the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon could be evicted to Jordan as well. This would suit Israel very well, of course, but the Hashemite army would combat it with all possible means. As for Lebanon, all the factions want to evict the Palestinians, but only if they can be sent directly to Israel.
It is unfortunate and thoroughly confusing that such versions of wishful thinking have usurped the name "three-state solution." So their authors have blinded both themselves and other to the arrival of three states in reality.
Eiland, in any case, now regards the independence of Gaza from the West Bank as a convenience for tactical purposes. But it is neither this nor the "nightmare or fiasco" suggested by Afrasiabi. Nor should it be regarded as a temporary phase, to be overcome sometime in the future.
Rather, the permanent separation between Gaza and the West Bank is a necessary condition for both present stability and any future settlement of Israeli-Palestinian relations. So an "all-out Israeli military invasion and reoccupation of Gaza" would be very unwise, if it ended Gaza's current independence.
To give further credit, there have been some commentators who perceived separate independence as a beneficent prospect, such as S.C. Denney in 2008, Colin P. Clarke in 2009 and Ori Z. Soltes (who drew attention to the parallel with Pakistan) in 2010. They proposed this, however, as a new basis for negotiations. But just as the Palestinians fail to negotiate unity, they will resolutely refuse to negotiate disunity. Forget about negotiations, in this regard. Rather, note the reality of three states and reinforce it until it becomes irresistible. Something like this was recommended by Bruce Bialosky in 2009.
In a 2009 blog on the Huffington Post, Cameron Sinclair listed some advantages of creating two Palestinian states instead of one. In particular, instead of receiving outside funds automatically, they would have to compete for them on grounds of excellence. Only his choice of the names for the two states, "East Palestine" and "West Palestine," was unfortunate (yes, he placed Gaza in the East). Just "Gaza" and "Palestine" would do better, as proposed independently by Stephen I. Siller in 2011. Sinclair's data also contained some inaccuracies. Three years on, nevertheless, his momentary bright idea is all the more justified.
Related Topics:  Malcolm Lowe

The Call: A New Blog

by David P. Goldman  •  Jul 16, 2012 at 2:30 pm
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This week we are proud to present the inaugural episode of "The Call," an unconventional foreign policy round-table that will be posted regularly on Monday afternoons. Each "Call" will focus on a single subject to which panelists will bring insights drawn from their experience and contacts in the worlds of finance, investigative reporting, military operations and intelligence work. The weekly discussion will be followed by regular blog-posts.
None of the panelists adhere to any common ideological line or political affiliation, and are united simply by the fact that they like talking to each other:
Mike Breen, Vice President of the Truman National Security Project, is a former US Army officer who served in tactical and operational assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pepe Escobar is an investigative reporter based in Sao Paolo, Brazil and author of the "Roving Eye" feature for the Asia Times
David Goldman, aka Spengler, is the author of "How Civilizations Die" and the former head of fixed income research for Bank of America.
Rotem Sella is the foreign affairs editor at the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv
David Samuels is a Contributing Editor at Harper's Magazine
The Godfather IV: Shooting in Syria
David Samuels: The final days of Assad will be one of those great Godfather movie scenes where everyone watches everyone else to see who will try to shoot him first, which is why he's put every Sunni in the army command under 24 hour surveillance. So the real danger is the trusted Alawite who is in charge of Assad's security at the palace or runs the intelligence apparatus and is owned by Vladimir Putin. Which means that Assad has a perverse interest in things getting worse as a way to ensure Putin's continued backing -- since other members of his inner circle would have even less popular and international legitimacy than he does. Let's call that the Paradox of Putin's Alawite.
Mike Breen: A question for David about the script for Godfather Part IV, shooting now in Damascus. If Assad himself ends up like Sonny in that tollbooth, what difference would it make? Knowing they hang together or hang separately, and with more than enough lawyers, guns & money for a long last stand, don't the elite circle the T-72's and keep fighting? And if not, what's their way out?
Pepe Escobar: So far, defections from the Assad regime have been mostly irrelevant, but one group of people should be watched closely. If any of them defects, the Assad clan may be in serious trouble. The group includes Jamil Hassan; Abdel-Fatah Qudsiyeh; Ali Mamlouk; and Muhammad Deeb Zaitoon. These are the directors of Syria's four intelligence agencies (yes, this is an ultra-hardcore police state). And then there's Hisham Bakhtiar - the head of the National Security Council and the top Assad intelligence adviser.
The problem goes beyond the fact that Assad is gross, megalomaniac and totally inept. I'd say Putin already owns most if not all of the above. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov will have a breather of three months or so to go with this "transition" farce. If the army does not kill every FSA or mercenary Salafi-jihadist in sight, then Putin will say "let's get rid of the bastard". What Russia wants is Tartus and the weapons contracts - all the rest is cosmetics.
Assad is right on the Saudis and Turks though, and even more on Qatar. I picked up this exchange from al-Akhbar English, have friends there, I do trust them - not bought by the House of Saud:
Assad and Kofi Austin Powers in Damascus on Monday:
Annan - How long do you think this crisis will continue?
Assad - As long as the [...] regime funds it.
Annan - Do you think they are behind all the funding?
Assad - They are behind many things that happen in our region. They believe they will be able to lead the whole Arab world today and in the future.
Annan - But it seems to me that they lack the population needed for such an ambition.
[collective laughter]
Time to start considering Qatar as the next superpower...
David Goldman: Pepe Escobar wrote in Asia Times that Russia has effectively scotched the possibility of NATO intervention and that status quo simply drags on. I agree with his tactical reading but see another dimension in Russia's motives. Our Asia Times colleague M.K. Bhadrakumar wrote last month: "[The Putin-Netanyahu meeting] brings up a core aspect of Russia's "intransigence" with regard to the Syrian situation. While Western commentators look at Syria being a "client state" of Russia, they blithely overlook Russia's fear that ascendancy of radical Islam in Syria can easily spread to its extended neighborhood in Central Asia and the North Caucasus." The Israelis read Russia in exactly this fashion.
The opposition in Turkey claims that Turkey has been humiliated. Here's Yusuf Kanli writing in Hurriyet Daily News:
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu must be congratulated for being courageous enough to confess that Turkey has failed in its policies regarding Syria. It is not at all easy for a politician to admit failure of any sort. Davutoğlu has been often accused by opponents of mixing up academia and politics and trying to bend political realities to fit his "strategic depth" theory. His brave declaration of failure, anyhow, showed that he must still possess some degree of academic ethical values.
Unfortunately, Turkey made a very serious mistake in Syria. It thought that, as in Libya the regime would collapse quickly and would be replaced with the AKP's "brothers" the Muslim Brotherhood. The "Sunni brotherhood" was instrumental in embracing Sudan's bloodthirsty dictator Omar al-Bashir, but Bashar al-Assad was only an "Alawite brother."
Turkey really does seem up the creek in Syria.
Pepe Escobar: The House of Saud does not feel threatened by AKP. But in Syria they are missing the plot. Post-Assad - if there is one - will certainly be hardcore Muslim Brotherhood; good for Qatar, not good for Saudi. Most of the Sunni business elite in Syria actually is in bed with the regime - and they haven't abandoned it. Jordan is already ultra-wobbly. There are more than 150,000 new Syrian refugees - mostly poor. There are still 450,000 Iraqi refugees - mostly middle class and business owners. And 70% of the population is Palestinian - second-class citizens politically. King Playstation barely rules over the MB and the Palestinians. Well, his "security services" are among the most ruthless in the Middle East. There will be "elections" soon without any political reform. King Playstation better dust off that flat in London.
Mike Breen: Pepe is right to bring up Jordan's extreme fragility. The country is basically an overcrowded city state built on a ridiculously fragile layer-cake of sub-citizen refugees, with the huddled Palestinian masses at the base, formerly wealthy or middle class but now increasingly destitute Iraqis one layer up and the recently arrived Syrians completing the picture. Some of the "Syrians," by the way, are Iraqis who fled to Syria a few years back -- and an unlucky few are Palestinians who went to Iraq, then to Syria, and now to Jordan. Unemployment was something close to 13% last I checked, with social mobility effectively zero. The king's control is shaky, although the security apparatus has elevated keeping up appearances around Amman's international hotels to an art form.
So my question is this: what happens when the rest of the region's safety valve and buffer zone, with a seemingly infinite capacity to absorb semi-permanent refugees from its neighbors, goes belly-up itself? I'd argue that Jordan's calming influence on the neighborhood is often undervalued but will be understood as essential when it's gone -- and gone could be upon us sooner than we think.
David Samuels: The more the Muslim Brotherhood takes control of the opposition's political leadership in Turkey – which seems to be the preferred path to cohesion there in Turkey and in the US -- the more support Assad can command among Syria's minority groups.
I thought the great CJ Chivers' piece about the meeting of opposition field commanders inside Turkey was very revealing, and showed an enormous political, emotional and structural disconnect between the opposition leadership inside and outside Syria. This suggested to me that Assad is not entirely delusional when he says he can win. For the opposition to overthrow him, there would need to be some kind of major power backing for a unified opposition -- and that doesn't exist yet, and may never exist. NATO intervention in Syria seems far away in a US election year. Turkey's limits seem clear -- they will go so far to please the Saudis and control their own borders, but not far enough to trigger a direct confrontation with the Iranians and the Russians. You can see Turkish policy as simply the outcome of dueling economic priorities – Russian and Iranian energy interests versus the Turkish need for loans from the Saudis. The need to balance those two competing interests puts a ceiling on the level of political and military coherence that the Syrian opposition can achieve with Turkey serving as its sponsor.
Which again means that Assad isn't getting on a plane anytime soon, and that the short term Russian interest in Syria may be in making sure Assad's plane goes in for repairs so he can't fly to London. They can use the same technicians that they sent to start up Bushehr and to train the Iranian crews to use those S-300 missiles they keep promising to deliver.
The moral is that the Russians keep drawing more cards the longer they sit at the table, so in the game will keep on keeping on, in the absence of someone stepping in and changing the game. I don't see the US or Israel bombing anyone anytime soon, and the Iranians don't want to start a war either. So it seems worth imagining what 1914-like event could start a war that no one wants.
David Goldman: There are several possible triggers.
One is movement in Syria's chemical weapons arsenal, reportedly the largest in the world, and a prospective WMD. As long as Assad controls it no-one will care, because it's the equivalent of a hand grenade in Assad's pocket. If other people (e.g. Iran or proxies) get hold of it, all bets are off. The arsenal is reportedly up for grabs, and that is extremely serious.
A second is a sufficient intensity of Iranian subversion in Shi'ite areas of Saudi Arabia. The Iranians keep talking about the issue of alleged Saudi repression of Shi'ite but are not likely to do much right away.
The evolution of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as a global force eventually could be an issue – but the Egyptians seem to have their hands full right now with the Egyptian military. Daily News of Egypt claims that Morsi caved into the Saudis and de facto reversed the revolution:
Whether Morsy has deliberately wished it or not, his visit to Saudi Arabia, the largest Gulf state, at a time of economic difficulty, has reinstated the pre-revolution,Mubarakhabit of rushing towards Gulf riches as a first resort to counteract economic crises.Moreover, to many of the Muslim Brotherhood's critiques, Morsy's choice of the kingdom as his first destination after assuming power has further ascertained their doubts regarding the true intents of the Muslim Brothers and their intent to seek support for their narrow partisan objectives at the expense of Egypt's national interests.
I'm inclined to agree with Daniel Pipes that Tantawi is the real ruler of Egypt, but happy to be corrected.
And the last matter is the possibility of a US or Israeli strike on Iran.
Mike Breen: I suppose there's something tactically appealing about trying to time a strike on Iran to coincide with the collapse of the Syrian regime, assuming it happens. A diversion is always welcome when you're going after a predictable target set. That said, whatever the tactical advantages -- and they seem far from certain, at least to me -- they don't come close to outweighing the strategic pitfalls of rushing to strike.
In my view, the best thing out there on this remains Colin Kahl's paper from last month -- and much of my own thinking on this tracks with Colin's much more informed and considered opinion. I'd urge everyone who hasn't yet to give the report a read.
To be clear, an Iranian bomb is a disaster we must avoid. That said, why is rushing to strike such a bad idea? For starters, because it will be messy and we have enough time on the clock to exhaust other options. ISIS estimates that Iran needs a solid year to come up with an extremely crude but testable device and at least two to build something it can put on the pointy end of a missile. That timeline starts when the Supreme Leader gives the word, which the evidence strongly suggests he has not yet done. And with good reason, because an Iranian break-out attempt is very likely to be detected as soon as they start refining to weapons-grade at Fordow or Natantz. Both facilities, remember, are under IAEA observation -- not to mention the watchful eye of a rainbow coalition of intelligence agencies. This is not to say that there is no urgency to the situation. There is. But we are not yet locked in some desperate race against time in which we must strike before they finish turning screws on the bomb casing -- and there is still hope we may never be.
David Goldman: My thought about Colin Kahl's paper is the same as that of the Kansas City mob boss in "Casino," to switch movies for a moment: "Why take chances?: There's a broader reason. Neutralize Iran, and a great deal else in the region falls into line. Iran disrupted the natural balance of power of the two Ba'athist states. Both were ruled by minorities. The Assad family came from the Alawite minority in Syria and oppressed the Sunnis, while Saddam Hussein came from the Sunni minority in Iraq and oppressed the Shi'ites. As I had the ghost of Richelieu explain, if you compose a state from antagonistic elements to begin with, the rulers must come from one of the minorities. All the minorities will then feel safe, and the majority knows that there is a limit to how badly a minority can oppress a majority. Introduce an outside player who tips the balance of power, though, and everyone has to fight to the death.
Related Topics:  David P. Goldman

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