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Syria: U.S. Moving Towards Supporting Assad
The first open sign of a change of U.S. policy towards supporting the Assad government in Syria came from Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker who advised to talk to Assad. Now the former CIA chief General Hayden says that Assad winning would be the best geopolitical outcome of the conflict. The BBC, which so far acted as a reliable pro-insurgency propaganda outlet, is now asking if it is Time to rethink a future with Assad?
"Someone has got to bite the bullet and say Assad stays," says Prof Joshua Landis, Director of the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at Oklahoma University whose views are frequently sought by policy makers in Washington.
"We don't have another game in town."
Professor "Aleppo has fallen" Landis should notice that China, Russia and Iran, as well as this site, have been saying this all along. Anyway. As some regard Landis as an expert his change of mind will be noticed in the State Department and the White House.
Attempts by the U.S. to try to talk to the Islamist Front can not be taken seriously:
The Obama administration is willing to consider supporting an expanded Syrian rebel coalition that would include Islamist groups, provided the groups are not allied with al-Qaeda and agree to support upcoming peace talks in Geneva, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.
In addition, the official said, the Americans would like the Islamic Front groups to return U.S. vehicles, communications gear and other non-lethal equipment they seized last weekend from warehouses at the Syria-Turkey border.
The Americans would also like a pink pony.
Those Islamists will not agree to any conditions Washington will ask for and to request that the weapons, ammunition and cars the Front has stolen from the Free Syrian Army are given back just shows that there is no serious opening.
But while the wind in official Washington turns, clandestine efforts to further weaken the Syrian government may well continue. The Saudis are buying some 15,000 new anti-tank weapons and their current stock will be unloaded onto their Islamic Front mercenaries in Syria. It is inconceivable that this could be done without intimate knowledge and help from the CIA and U.S. special operations. It may still take several more month until such efforts, now largely done to prep up U.S. leverage in the Geneva talks, will be ended.
Supproting the new momentum the UN report (pdf) on the usage of chemical weapons in Syria is out and the results will put many more doubts on the Obama administration's allegations that the Syrian government was responsible for those:
The report said the panel had corroborated “credible allegations” that chemical weapons were used in the first reported attack — a March 19 episode involving soldiers and civilians in Khan al-Assal in the country’s north.
…
Syria also insisted that chemical weapons had been used against its soldiers after the Aug. 21 attack. The report said there was evidence supporting “the probable use of chemical weapons” in two episodes in the Damascus area — in Jobar on Aug. 24 and Ashrafiah Sahnaya on Aug. 25. In both cases, the report said, chemical weapons may have been used on “a relatively small scale against soldiers.”
Chemical weapons were used in Syria against the Syrian government and against civilians. It is not plausible that the Syrian government would attack its own troops or civilians with chemical weapons, especially not on the very day, August 21, that chemical weapon inspectors arrived in Damascus. It is much more plausible that the other side wanted to create a false flag incident to push the United States into openly attacking Syria.
Critics of the false flag thesis claim that there is no way the Jihadists could have made Sarin or used the rockets involved. They forget that those Jihadists are state sponsored, supported by various clandestine services and that some states in the area, most noticeable Israel, have chemical weapons and lobbied hard for on open U.S. attack on Syria.
Such an attack is now very, very unlikely to happen. The train towards supporting the Syrian government against the terrorists is slowly leaving the station. The Saudis, Israelis and Turks will still resist for a while but it will soon be clear that the Jihadists can not be contained in Syria and that a blow back is coming – one way or the other. Noise about the Saudis', and prince Bandar's, role in 9/11, is part of a strategy to rein them in.
Jesus, Mary’s son, is one of the 12 major prophets revered by Muslims. They also consider him the Messiah, especially involving his role in a Last Judgment. Unlike Christians, they do not consider him the Son of God (in any interpretation of that term) and they do not believe that he was crucified. The image of Jesus in many passages of the Koran and hadith is of a severe and judgmental ascetic. So, it would not be entirely surprising for a group of salafists who think that they are called to mete out some divine justice upon the impenitent to claim the name of the prophet Jesus. Posted by: Rusty Pipes | Dec 13, 2013 11:53:42 AM | 11
The original reference here to is this youtube video (in arabic) about the ‘Issa ben Maryam Brigade’. I find it slightly surprising, but then again, half these supposed ‘brigades’ are just cover names for entities which may not even exist, or may be pseudo-gangs, or whatever. But I would dispute one of your points, Rusty. I don’t think it is quite acceptable to say that Muslims “consider Jesus the Messiah.” I mean, it all depends what you mean by that term, but it really isn’t an Islamically acceptable one. He was not the last prophet, that honour goes to Muhammad pbh. He was, I think you can say, the last prophet sent to the Jews. To this extent they agree with the Christians: Jesus’ message to the Jews was, this is your last warning from ‘God’, if you don’t repent of your various iniquities, you will forfeit your supposed Divine election, eg, you will no longer be regarded On High as ‘The Chosen People’, and then next prophet will not be sent to you but to another people. This in the Muslim narrative is exactly what happened: the Jews persisted in their iniquity (and indeed tried to crucify Jesus, but were deceived by a Divinely sent hallucination and ended up crucifiying someone else instead, a view also held by certain early Christian heresies, from whom it may have come).
But ‘Messiah’ (literally meaning ‘Anointed One’) is a Jewish eschatological term, referring to Divinely sent King who will restore the Jewish Kingdom, rebuild Jayloomia, etc. And of course Christians read it in their own sense, as Jesus being the King of the Jews by right (and by descent, though the Gospels differ on the exact details) but proclaiming the Kingdom of God universally, this in effect disqualifying the Jews as ‘Chosen People’, but Paul is not happy with this and tries to give the Jews a sort of ‘elder brothers in faith’ status, with which Christians have been wrestling ever since because it is thoroughly ambiguous.
As to the Muslim view of the End Times, it is briefly this: the Mahdi will appear to declare the final war on unbelievers (not Jesus, and nb, this concept of the Mahdi is not an exclusively Shi’ite one). Then Jesus also will return, but he is #2 to the Mahdi. The two of them, at the head of a vast army of Muslims, will confront the Dajjal (a most interesting figure) somewhere near damascus, and Jesus will slay the Dajjal with the breath of his mouth (a useful trick if you can do it). Then the Mahdi (not Jesus) will lead the Muslims to victory, assumed to be effectively worlwide and final. At length, Jesus will die again, in the natural way of humans, of old age. It is presumed that he has not aged in the interim since 33 CE, but been preserved in a Divine limbo of some sort without ageing. Stress on the fact that he finally dies, proving he is nothing but a human after all. Here is a really excellent round-up of hadiths etc on the End Times:
http://www.rexresearch.com/prophist/phf5mos.htm
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Dec 14 2013 8:29 utc | 54
Damascus, (SANA) – Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said that the foreign aggression which employs terrorist groups against Syria targets all Syrians and all areas indiscriminately as it targets all components of the Syrian state, which includes its people.
In an interview given to the Syrian TV on Saturday, al-Zoubi said that the crime committed by terrorists recently in Adra didn’t simply target a specific group of Syrians as some suggest; rather it targets all Syrians, opining that those who adopt the idea that a specific group or sect was targeted are achieving the goal the terrorists set out to realize.
He said that Syrian national media focuses on verifying facts and information, noting that it criticizes other media outlets for their failure to do so as they often broadcast information that turned out to be false later, adding that what is known regarding Adra so far is that a big massacre was committed there, while the details, number of victims and circumstances are still unknown.
Al-Zoubi noted that stories, details and information about this massacre that were circulated on social networking sites, and at the same time it’s not possible for a media team to enter the area, so one can’t broadcast official news about this massacre because of the lack of verified information.
The Minister said that Syrian national media only adopts news stories after the army enters an area and conducts investigations, noting that a news team has been on the ground near Adra since Friday night accompanying the armed forces and are waiting for clearance to enter and perform their duty.
He explained that there are circumstances on the ground that prevents national media from reporting some stories until the armed forced finishes carrying out specific tasks in a given area, like surrounding it and gathering information about the enemy and the possibility of civilians being present.
Al-Zoubi said that Syrian media never claimed to be perfect or infallible, urging youths not to adopt the sectarian discourse which terrorists want to promote, stressing that all areas in Syria suffered terrorist attacks which didn’t spare any specific group of Syrians.
He pointed out that armed forces can’t be deployed everywhere at the same time, yet they continue to carry out their duty and confront terrorists, achieving victories on the ground while taking care to protect civilians, establishments and infrastructure.
The Minister emphasized that 75% of terrorists in Syria aren’t of Syrian nationality, and that some Syrians sometimes want to turn in their weapons but non-Syrian terrorists threaten to kill them if they do so, adding that despite that, he urges armed Syrians to turn themselves in to the army or security checkpoint to return to their normal lives.
On Saudi Arabia, al-Zoubi said that it tries to appear as differing in opinion with the US while in fact the US is giving it leeway because it wants to inflict as much destruction on the Syrian state as possible, asserting that the idea of Saudi Arabia disagreeing with the US is preposterous.
He went on to say that while the US doesn’t want Al Qaeda to control Syria, but it wants Syria to be weak and incapable of confronting Israel, and the task of weakening Syria was delegated to Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf countries like Kuwait where MPs fund terrorists in Syria with billions of Dinars.
Al-Zoubi pointed out that Saudi Arabia is now funding attacks on the Syrian army which once entered Hafr al-Baten area during the invasion of Kuwait to protect the people of Najd and al-Hijaz, saying that this is how Saudi Arabia repays the Syrian army.
He said that the national and pan-Arab identity of Syria doesn’t satisfy Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US, although the Americans and Europeans are now reassessing their situation after they began to worry about the spread of Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria, and this is out of fear for their own security and the security of their oil and gas resources.
The Minister said that the main articles on the agenda of the “Geneva 2” conference are combating terrorism in all its forms and reaching an agreement among Syrians to combat terrorism which all countries support, and that all other details wouldn’t be an issue when one puts reason, conscience and national interest above personal considerations.
He said that the allegiance of some sides in the opposition abroad lies with Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Turkey, and therefore don’t want and cannot be partners in combating terrorism, although the Syrian government wishes that they would become partners in this for Syria’s sake.
Al-Zoubi hoped that the international efforts for holding Geneva 2 will pressure Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and all those who fund and support terrorism to cease their actions which make them accomplices in bloodshed as per international law and counter-terrorism agreements, adding that the international community must directly label those who support terrorism as criminals.
He reaffirmed that Syria’s position on going to Geneva without preconditions was clear from the start, but the opposition abroad is still not ready and hasn’t made up its mind because the countries that support them haven’t done so yet.
Al-Zoubi concluded by saying that if Geneva 2 is held and produced results in terms of combating terrorism, that would mean that Syria has made significant progress towards resolving the crisis while the remaining details about the government, elections the constitution or laws will be put to discussion and decided upon by the Syrian people later through ballots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-IB0GBUxXg
Posted by: brian | Dec 15 2013 2:09 utc | 61
interesting analysis:
Something Curious is Happening to Sunni Islam
By: Alastair Crooke
Published Wednesday, November 14, 2012
‘The first episode of this Salafis-Brotherhood collaboration essentially dates back to the 1954 assassination attempt on President Gamal Abdul-Nasser – an attempt which the then Egyptian government said had been carried out by the Brotherhood; and which resulted in the organization being banned, its leaders arrested and many thousands of its supporters imprisoned. Persecution, imprisonment, torture, and execution of the Brotherhood continued in Egypt, with growing ferocity, through the 1950s and 1960s. During these years of persecution, many among the Brotherhood’s leadership, went into exile; significantly, many went to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, where they were generally welcomed.
The first episode of this Salafis-Brotherhood collaboration essentially dates back to the 1954 assassination attempt on President Gamal Abdul-NasserThroughout this same period, Saudi Arabia, now profoundly at odds, even at ‘cold’ war, with Nasserist Egypt, was emerging as a new force in the region. Drawing on its gathering wealth, Saudi Arabia, in the 1950s, first began its efforts to counter and to undermine the Nasserite socialist, anti-monarchical discourse that the kingdom found so threatening, by spreading its own Wahhabi orientation of complete obeisance to traditional authority across the Muslim world.
In 1962, Saudi Arabia established the Muslim World League (Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami): the intention being to establish an ‘Islamic bloc’, in which the Brothers were represented, to stand “against Baathist regimes”(Reinhard Schulze and Gabriele Tecchiato, Muslim World League, in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, Oxford Islamic Studies Online). Backed by almost unlimited funds, the Saudis responded to Nasser’s socialist discourse with a barrage of rhetoric and criticism directed at him personally, and at his government – in the hope ultimately, of seeing him overthrown. In Syria, however, the Brotherhood animosity toward the Baathist government moved well beyond propaganda, and by 1964 had already flared into something like a religious war.
The Saudi counterblast against secularist Baathism insisted vociferously that Islam, and not socialism, can form the only ground of identity among Muslims, and that Muslims should anchor their identities in political activism in Islam alone. To an important extent however, the League was only able to pursue its goals by drawing on the skills and manpower of the Brothers who had come to Saudi Arabia to escape persecution in Egypt.
It was thus often members of the Brotherhood who, backed by the League’s resources, who now oversaw a tsunami of rhetoric, disseminated through pamphlets and the media, whose broad objective was that of undermining and discrediting Egypt’s ‘irreligious’ president – much in the same manner as these two forces are today allied with Doha and Riyadh in seeking the overthrow of President Assad of Syria.
Thus present turmoil in Syria should be seen as only the latest, if by far the most violent, episode in the long war between Islamists and nationalist-secular Baathists, which dates back to the founding of the Syrian Baath party in 1947. Again today, the Brotherhood and Gulf States’ ultimate aim in Syria is the taking of power – with a reconstituted Syria becoming a key building block for a new, Sunni bloc, just as originally envisaged in the founding objectives of the Muslim World League. The main difference between now and then is the sectarian focus on President Assad as a ‘minority’ Shia, and the threat arising from a prospective Shia bloc (President Assad and the Alawites belong to a Shia orientation), led by Iran, rather than the secularism of the government, which was the issue in the 60s and 70s.
These deep roots to the present conflict in Syria – reaching back through three major episodes of Brotherhood violence: firstly, during the late 40s; secondly, in Hama in 1964; again in Hama in 1982, and now climaxing with an epic struggle to depose President Assad – inevitably must put into the question how truly committed the Brothers are to ‘big tent’ pluralism – given the deep hostility to secularism evinced by the Brotherhood in Syria over 60 years.
We see here, in this latest manifestation, the progressive shifts in the way Sunni Islamism has been defining itself: Originally this new Islamic identity – a joint effort by Saudi Arabia and the Brothers – was to be defined in terms of its polar opposition to the western paradigm; then it was in opposition to the ‘irreligious, secular socialism of Nasser’ and the Baathists; but under the influence of Saudi and Gulf sectarian rhetoric aimed at Iran, it seems that the Sunni Islamist identity increasingly is being defined in terms of an oppositional pole, which is no longer to be western secular ideology as symbolized by the Socialist Arab Republics, but simply to Shiism in the round.
When the 1973 Arab oil embargo sent oil prices into a sustained soar, Islamist scholar, Gilles Kepel has remarked, the sustained flow of petro-dollars suddenly offered the Saudis the vast means to pursue its “ancient ambition” for establishing hegemony over the Muslim world; and of spreading its Wahhabi orientation to the world (Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, trans. A. Roberts, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Mass., 2000, p 69). After 1973, the activities of the League grew exponentially: Saudi zeal now embraced the entire world. The Saudi objective, Kepel observes, was to ‘Salafize’ Islam, thereby reducing the “multiple voices within the religion” to the “single creed” of Saudi Arabia (Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, p 70-73). In short, the aim was to limit Islam to a restricted array of symbols drawn from the early communities, which would then be invested in a solidly organized dogma and ritual, under the authority of the Saudi King.
So it was, that everywhere throughout the Muslim world, the building of mosques was accompanied by the distribution of texts and teachings promoting Salafism. The irony of this massive effort is that, as it was being disseminated across the world, so this teaching was being significantly inflected by with the teachings of Sunni Islamism, and most particularly by those of the Brotherhood, whose members were essential to the spread and advancement of Saudi Arabia’s global project. In Kepel’s words, “the Muslim Brotherhood [had] grafted their political interests onto the Saudi oil pipeline.” (Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, p 173)
As Kepel describes it, it was largely through the Brothers resident in Saudi Arabia, working through the international organizations which they controlled on behalf of the kingdom, that the Brothers quietly carried out their own program of global expansion, whilst at the same time quietly giving the Saudi insistence on a return to the ‘purity’ of the first Salafi communities, a twist towards the primacy of ‘society’, which fitted with their own ideological need to offer people the trappings of contemporary democracy. It was a ‘twist’ however which ruthlessly undercut the interests of their employer!
Of course, the Saudis recognized the dangers to themselves inherent in the Brotherhood’s manipulation; but possibly the profundity of the danger has been grasped too late.Of course, the Saudis recognized the dangers to themselves inherent in the Brotherhood’s manipulation; but possibly the profundity of the danger has been grasped too late. It may be too late for Saudis to stop the Muslim Brotherhood’s appropriation of the present Arab ‘awakening’ from lapping at the feet of the Gulf autocrats – in spite of today’s imprisoning by Saudi Arabia of many of these Brotherhood intellectuals, in an ironic reversal of events in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Some 26,000 political prisoners are said to be held in Saudi goals today.’
etc
http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/13622
Posted by: brian | Dec 15 2013 9:35 utc | 67
Re #67: once an MI6 man, always an MI6 man, I think. Alastair Crooke, formally an “ex” MI6 man, manages to get through that whole article on the origins of the MBs without mentioning the British (his own MI6) or the USAians (obviously, the CIA). I have a much better account of the origins of the MBs, which comes from the great Palestinian author, recently deceased, Said Aburish. It’s so good I shall offer you all a big chunk of it (apologies to those who have seen it before). It is distilled (by me) from his Nasser biography. I posted this on my blog back in Apr 2011.
Said Aburish, “Nasser: The Last Arab” (2004) pp 162, 157:
Saudi Crown Prince (later King) Faisal (not to be confused with then-King Faisal II of Iraq, a Hashemite) took over effective power in Saudi Arabia from his brother Saud in 1958. To gain support among the Arabs, Faisal’s appeal incorporated two pet hates. “Communism and Zionism are the same” became the cornerstone of his anti-Nasser policy. Nobody took this ideological absurdity seriously, but his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, other Muslim groups, and religious teaching institutions throughout the world was successful. Later he went further afield and built bridges with anti-Communist Muslim countries such as Iran and Turkey. Saudi money was spent sponsoring Muslim groups in Africa, on many occasions in cooperation with the Israelis, who had a vested interest in limiting Nasser’s influence on the continent. Because of Nasser’s personal qualities and the potency of using Muslim fundamentalism against what America had decided was the Nasser menace, America threw its weight behind Faisal, and there was a tacit agreement on the use of religion against Nasser, which eventually became a joint policy. Both sides supported the anti-Nasser Muslim Brotherhood and emphasised the Communist threat to Islam and the Arab world. America could not join Faisal in equating Communism with Zionism for fear of offending Israelis and Jews, but it looked the other way while he derived benefit from this absurd association. Modern Islamic fundamentalism began with King Faisal, with solid American support. It was created to fight the enemies of Allah, at the time Nasser and the Soviet Union; but as we have seen, this movement has turned into a monster of its own.
As to the Brotherhood: (pp 96, 113, 126, 133, 141):
In 1956, the British established contact with the Muslim Brotherhood aimed at overthrowing Nasser … The only success the British propaganda machine achieved was to entice the Muslim Brotherhood to direct broadcasts against Nasser from Cyprus and to accuse him of dragging Egypt “into an abyss.” This was the one thing Nasser feared most; he was convinced that Eden would use the Brotherhood’s network within Egypt to carry out a coup against him. But the nationalisation of the canal was so popular that even the Muslim Brotherhood suffered because it opposed it. Later the pro-Nasser Arab employees of British Broadcasting in Cyprus walked out in protest against London’s policies, and the station, which was financed by the Foreign Office and was not part of the BBC, had to run a reduced service … Later still, (but only briefly) the CIA funded a Muslim Brotherhood office in Geneva, the Islamic Center, which was entrusted with the planning of Nasser’s assassination, codenamed Operation SI/PONY. According to former CIA regional director James Critchfield, Kamal Adham, head of Saudi intelligence and Faisal’s brother-in-law, was a key player in this operation. SI/PONY was aborted at the last minute because the decision on how to assassinate Nasser kept changing. On one occasion the protagonist was arrested, a second would-be assassin failed, and the third gave up … The US prevailed on Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria to give refuge to the Muslim Brotherhood and on Saudi Arabia to give the Brotherhood money. Once secret, these facts about the Brotherhood were revealed in a television interview by Tariq Ramadan in Nov 2001. In fact, for thirty years the Brotherhood was the only legal political party in Jordan, and for most of this time it was the beneficiary of US support. Some of the militant Islamic groups operating in Jordan today go back to that period … It is well to note that in Africa, Israel could count on the support of the Brotherhood against Nasser (Dr Zaki Badawi, interview, London, Jun 2000).
Here’s some more (pp 256-7, 303, 265)
In 1964, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a fatwa against Arab nationalism that condoned the idea of assassinating Nasser. A year later it almost succeeded. And at the outbreak of the 1967 War Egypt was still recovering from the most serious attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow the Nasser government. There were numerous attempts, according to Heikal at least fourteen, including an ambitious one to blow up the Alexandria-Cairo train carrying Nasser. At one point during its campaign the Brotherhood did manage to blow up sixteen bridges. The Brotherhood went further and recruited members of Nasser’s Special Forces. Saudi Arabia acted as financial backer, and the Saudi government and the CIA were cosponsors of the Brotherhood and other Islamists. Saudi Arabia managed to smuggle light arms through the Sudan to the Brotherhood’s Special Apparatus. The US-Islamist alliance created an odd situation which was to repeat itself in later US dealings with Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. Then as now the Americans were acting against Arab leaders who exploited popular Islam against the political Islam backed by the House of Saud, the CIA, and the State Department. Even with Qutb’s books and other writings available to everybody and advocating an unmistakably anti-American Islam, the Americans saw Nasser as more immediately dangerous to their Middle East position and so backed the Islamists against him. The same shortsightedness led the Americans to support Osama bin Laden years later. By the end of the 1960s, US financial aid to the Brotherhood had reached unprecedented levels, with tens of millions of dollars transferred into the Swiss bank account of Said Ramadan, the Brotherhood’s supreme guide. Saudi Arabia joined the US in this policy, and King Hussein of Jordan succumbed to American pressure and provided the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood with logistical support, which included giving them diplomatic passports … Feisal of Saudi Arabia and Hussein of Jordan cooperated more with, and contributed more toward the growth of Islamic fundamentalism than any other leaders in modern Arab history.
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Dec 15 2013 17:45 utc | 71
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