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Syria: White House Accepts Reality
The Wall Street Journal has a quite interesting piece about the changing U.S. policies towards Syria: Behind Assad’s Comeback, a Mismatch in Commitments (the piece is paywalled but you can access it via a search engine):
In the early days of the Syrian rebellion, U.S. intelligence agencies made a prediction: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s days were numbered, an assessment repeated publicly by President Barack Obama and top U.S. intelligence officials.
That assessment was obviously wrong and has been changed to a likely similar wrong one:
The intelligence assessments that once showed Mr. Assad on the verge of defeat now say he could remain in power for the foreseeable future in key parts of the country bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast. The U.S. doesn’t think he will be able to retake the whole country again, U.S. intelligence agencies believe.
The now Al-Qaeda led insurgency in Syria and Iraq depends on money and other support it is getting from the outside, especially from Saudi Arabia. As soon as that support stops the insurgency will be on the verge of dying off. The U.S. has so far continued a quite contradictory policy of supporting the insurgency in Syria while providing weapons to Iraq to fight the same insurgents there. That can not and will not work. If it wants to rein in the takfiris, as it should, it will have to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to end its support. A sign that such may eventually happen from the WSJ piece:
Saudi officials fumed at the U.S. for failing to launch strikes against Mr. Assad over the chemical weapons attack, and Prince Bandar threatened to scale back cooperation with the CIA.
The frustration was mutual. In private meetings with U.S. officials, Mr. Kerry singled out Prince Bandar as “the problem,” complaining about his conduct, according to meeting participants.
…
A former senior Obama administration official said Saudi leaders misread U.S. sentiment. The White House, the former official said, had no obligation to come to the rescue “when they picked a fight they couldn’t win.”
U.S. support for the insurgency, even the “moderate” one, has mostly stopped and reality has set in:
A longtime American diplomat in the region said that, for now, it looks like Messrs. Assad, Nasrallah and Soleimani have “won”.
We shall now be on the look out for some public signs of U.S. misgivings towards the Saudis if only to convince king Abdullah to send the by now rather hapless prince Bandar back into the desert.
@51 -Tom you have asked a very good question, which has got many dimensions and angles to it and entire books can be written on each angle. I will keep it short and brief:
In essence, there is no full scale Sunni-Shiah war going on in the Muslim World – its more a struggle between the Saudis, who are trying to spread the Salafi/Hanbali/Wahabi school of thought in to the Levant and make it the dominant Islamic world viewpoint of the locals there VERSUS – in the case of Syria – is the Syrian govt. which is headed by a president, who is of Alawite background, and is an strategic ally of Iran. The Saudis and the backers of the rebels, expected a quick victory, via the armed groups. The Saudis fall back position, if they fail, is enticing the US/EU to bomb the govt. out of power allowing rebels to take over key cities – ala. Afghanistan, when US bombed Taliban and Northern Alliance fighters moving in OR what happened in Libya. Both of these Saudi position has not worked in the 2st point and, thanks to Russian/Iranian diplomacy, 2nd did not happen.
Now, you must understand that within Sunni Islam, there is a intellectual/theological battle going on as to what is Sunni Islam and who are the religous leaders of that understanding. The Saudis, who follow Wahabism, which originated in the desset of Najd, want Wahabism – a.k.a Salafism – which is an form of Hanbalism, to be THE Islam of the masses. According to their dawah/propogation, most Sunni Muslims in the Muslim World are not following “true Islam”. Due to them not following “true Islam”, Islam became weak and defeated, the Ottoman Sultan been part of that. They think, due to the sudden oil wealth they have, God has blessed them with this as they are following true Islam, as propagated by Ibn Abdal Wahab in the 18thC. The Al-Sauds made a pact with the Al-Sheikhs (Ibn Wahabs clan), where the Al-Sheikhs will give religous cover to the Saudis political ambitions. This is symbolised in the 2 swords under the date tree, which is the national symbol of KSA. They are very quick to accuse others of innovation (bidah), polythiesm (shirk) and heresy/unbelief (kufr). They reject the concept of Sufism, reject the 4 legal school of thoughts (madhabs), and they only accept the Quran and Sunnah as the sources of Shariah Law and reject philosophy and logic and they tend to follow the preaching and works ob Ibn Taymiyyah. Anyway on the other side, Islam as understood and taught by Al-Azhar University, and other major Muslim centre of learnings, consider Sunni Islam, to be somebody, who follows one of the Sunni legal schools (Hanafi, Shafi, Maliki, Hanbali) in terms of the Shariah and beliefs in either the Ashari or Maturidi theological schools. Sufism is accepted as an Islamic science and Sufi shaykhs are honored and reverred. They also expect that one must be qualified in the various Islamic sciences to teach/speak about Islam and there is a certification system for this called ijazahs when one has mastered one of the sciences. They tend to follow the works of Imam Ghazzali. This can be called “traditional Islam” as opposed to “wahabi Islam”.
The Saudis are trying to legitimise themselve by being the “champions” of Islam by spreading Wahabi Islam to other countries over the last 40years – they have had some traction. Wahabi/Salafi preachers are now everywhere spreading Islam they understand to masses. The Saudis literally have spend billions on Wahabi Islam propagation, under the guidance of the Al-Shaykh familily. This includes building new msoques, madrasahs, providing free literature – via publishing houses like Dar as-Salam, re-editing and dsitributing classical Islamic texts, translating classical islamic texts which are heavily edited and have long introductions on Wahabism by their senior scholars, holding international conferences in Mecca, etc. Unfortunately, Salafism/Wahabism tends to make its adherents very angry young men, there are many reasons for this and since they do not respect national borders or authorities, will tend to graivtate towards violence to purify the govt. and will have animosity towards other Muslims who do not follow their way. The Saudis view that by controlling Islam and the holy places, will give them religious legitimacy and keep them in political power. See how they got their scholars to pass a death fatwa on the Syrian producer of a film about Ibn Saud – as they believe he is a hero of Islam and untouchable. They also do not want political opposition to their world view hence they oppose the Muslim Brotherhoods political outlook and aslo oppose Shiasm, not because they are Shias per-se but because of the political doctrine of Velyat-al-Faqih.
In Syria, Shaykh Ramadan Al-Bouti – who was a very very senior Sunni scholar, opposed the so called uprising as he saw what it was all about and preached against fighting the Syrian govt. Before the Syrian crisis erupted, he was one of the senior scholars who challenged Wahabism and warned Sunni Muslims about it – debating the Wahabi senior scholars, including the late Shakyh Albani. He was a deep thorn in the side of the Wahabi project in the Levant. Hence they murdered him – but his position has been filled by his son, who is a senior scholar in his onw right.
From looking at the statements of Syrian and Iranian religious and political officials, they will not only militarily fight to get rid of the takfiri militants, but they will now fight Wahabism/Salafism on the religious and ideological level, by giving space to traditional Sunni Scholars to win back the everyday people away from Salafism via theological/religious arguments and also, the hell the various Salafi/Wahabi/Takfiri groups have created for general people whereever they have been or controlled.
Anyway I have covered a the religous/theological angle – I think its best, if you live in America to contact Prof Assad Abu-Khalil (Angry Arab), Prof. Hamid Algar, Dr Umar Faruq Abd-allah who can give a more advice. Also, look at the writings of Prof. T.J. Winters from England, aka Abdal Hakim Murad. And check out Col. Pat Langs blog as he has talked about this after the Boston bombing. Also ask this question at goingtotehran.com – you will get some very good responses (response here are good aswell).
Posted by: Irshad | Jan 3 2014 17:18 utc | 60
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