THE ROVING
EYE Syrian blood etches a new line in
the sand Pepe Escobar
Once upon a time, early in the previous
century, a line in the sand was drawn, from Acre
to Kirkuk. Two colonial powers - Britain and
France - nonchalantly divided the Middle East
between themselves; everything north of the line
in the sand was France's; south, it was Britain's.
Many blowbacks - and concentric tragedies
- later, a new line in the sand is being drawn by
Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Between Syria and Iraq,
they want it all. Talk about the return of the
repressed; now, as part of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization-Gulf Cooperation Council
compound, they're in bed with their former
colonial masters.
Blow by
blow No matter what militarized Western
corporate media spins,
there's no endgame in
Syria - yet. On the contrary; the sectarian game
is just beginning.
It's 1980s Afghanistan
all over again. The over 100 heavily armed gangs
engaged in civil war in Syria are overflowing with
Gulf Cooperation Council funds financing their
Russian RPGs bought on the black market.
Salafi-jihadis cross into Syria in droves - not
only from Iraq but also Kuwait, Algeria, Tunisia
and Pakistan, following enraged calls by their
imams. Kidnapping, raping and slaughtering
pro-Assad regime civilians is becoming the law of
the land.
They go after Christians with a
vengeance. [1] They force Iraqi exiles in Damascus
to leave, especially those settled in Sayyida
Zainab, the predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood
named after Prophet Muhammad's grand-daughter,
buried in the beautiful local mosque. The BBC, to
its credit, at least followed the story. [2]
They perform summary executions; Iraq's
deputy interior minister Adnan al-Assadi told AFP
how Iraqi border guards saw the Free Syrian Army
(FSA) take control of a border outpost and then
"executed 22 Syrian soldiers in front of the eyes
of Iraqi soldiers".
The Bab al-Hawa
crossing between Syria and Turkey was overrun by
no less than 150 multinational self-described
mujahideen [3] - coming from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates,
Chechnya and even France, many proclaiming their
allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM).
They burned a lot of Turkish
trucks. They shot their own promo
video. They paraded their al-Qaeda flag. And
they declared the whole border area an Islamic
state.
Hand over your terrorist
ID There's no way to understand the Syrian
dynamics without learning that most FSA commanders
are not Syrians, but Iraqi Sunnis. The FSA could
only capture the Abu Kamal border crossing between
Syria and Iraq because the whole area is
controlled by Sunni tribes viscerally antagonistic
towards the al-Maliki government in Baghdad. The
free flow of mujahideen, hardcore jihadis and
weapons between Iraq and Syria is now more than
established.
The idea of the Arab League -
behaving as NATO-GCC's fully robed spokesman -
offering exile to Bashar al-Assad may be as
ridiculous as the notion of the CIA supervising
which mujahideen and jihadi outfits may have
access to the weapons financed by Qatar and the
Saudis.
At first, it might have been just
a bad joke. After all, the exile offer came from
those exact same paragons of democracy, the House
of Saud and Qatar, who control the Arab League and
are financing the mujahideen and the anti-Syria
jihad.
Baghdad, though, publicly condemned
the exile offer. And the aftermath - in fact on
the same day - was worthy of The Joker (yes,
Batman's foe); a wave of anti-Shi'ite bombings in
Iraq, with over 100 people dead, duly claimed by
the Islamic State of Iraq, al-Qaeda's local
franchise. Spokesman Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
energetically urged the Sunni tribes in Anbar and
Nineveh to join the jihad and topple the "infidel"
government in Baghdad.
The
mujahideen/jihadi back and forth between Syria and
Iraq has been more than confirmed by Izzat
al-Shahbandar, a senior member of Iraq's
Parliament and close aide to Prime Minister
al-Maliki. Baghdad even has updated lists. The
crossover could only spawn more frenetic Orwellian
newspeak, nailed by the website Moon of Alabama.
[4]
Mujahideen and jihadis active in Iraq
are now "Iraqi insurgents". And mujahideen and
jihadis active in Syria remain the usual "Syrian
rebels". They have been all decommissioned as
"terrorists". Under this logic, the Colorado
Batman shooter may also be described as an
"insurgent".
Follow the money
As it stands, the romanticized Syrian
"rebels" plus the insurgents formerly known as
terrorists cannot win against the Syria military -
not even with the Saudis and Qataris showering
them with loads of cash and weapons.
Nor
is there any evidence the regime is contemplating
a retreat to the Alawite mountains in northern
Syria, as evoked by this collective foreign policy
blog
discussion. After all the "rebels" do not
control any territory.
What's certain is
who would profit from Syria being progressively
balkanized. The House of Saud and Qatar would love
nothing better than to have the civil war exported
to Iraq and Lebanon; in their very narrow
calculations, that would eventually yield fellow
Sunni regimes.
So expect Saudi and Qatari
funds buying every well-connected Syrian regime
apparatchik in sight - even while the urban Sunni
bourgeosie still has not abandoned the ship.
And as the civil war spreads out, a
tsunami of weapons will keep inundating Jordan,
Lebanon, Iraq and of course Turkey, boosting
assorted guerrilla outfits, Kurdish included - yet
one more facet of now ostracized neo-Ottoman
Turkey impotently watching nation states carved
out of that 1920s colonial line in the sand being
smashed.
Strategically, this will always
be a war by proxy; essentially Saudi Arabia vs
Iran - with the House of Saud behind hardcore
Islamists of all colors compared to Qatar
supporting "its" Muslim Brotherhood. But most of
all this is the US-NATO-GCC vs Iran.
Israel's motives go way beyond the
Saudi/Qatari sectarian lust. Israel's Prime
Minister Bibi Netanyahu has just excavated a
Bushism - calling Iran-Syria-Hezbollah an "axis of
evil". What Tel Aviv wants in the long run is
clear; for Washington, Obama administration or
not, to bring down the axis.
Meanwhile,
this long-term goal does not prevent Defense
Minister Ehud Barak from getting crazy -
speculating on an invasion of Syria based on a
hypothetical transfer of Syrian anti-aircraft
missiles or even chemical weapons to Hezbollah.
Washington for its part would love at
least a pliable/puppet Sunni regime in Damascus to
turbo-charge the encircling of Iran - without
increasing Israel's substantial fears. Meanwhile,
what passes for "smart power" is no more than
glorified wishful thinking. Here in detail is how
pro-Israel functionaries in the US are designing
post-Assad Syria. [5]
Meet the new
Bane For all its production values, NATO's
jihad - in conjunction with al-Qaeda affiliates
and copycats - still has not delivered regime
change. UN Security Council sanctions won't be
forthcoming, as Beijing and Moscow have already
stressed three times. So Plan Bs keep surfacing
all the time. The latest is straight from the Iraq
playbook; Damascus will attack civilians with
chemical weapons. This lasted only for a few news
cycles.
Russian President Vladimir Putin
has already made it clear; regime change is
anathema, especially for a reason that eludes most
in the West - jihadis at the gates of Damascus
means they are a stone's throw from the Caucasus,
the possible new pearl in a lethal collar bound to
destabilize Muslim Russia.
Blowback
meanwhile is ready to strike like the Medusa. What
is for all practical purposes NATO-GCC
mujahideen/jihadi death squads will be more than
happy to bleed Syria across sectarian lines - in
the sand and especially in urban areas. It's
hunting season now, not only for Alawites but also
Christians (10% of the population).
A
foreign policy that privileges Sunni jihadis
formerly known as terrorists to create a
"democratic" state in the Middle East seems to
have been conjured by Bane - the Hannibal Lecter
meets Darth Vader bad guy in The Dark Knight
Rises, the final chapter of the Batman
trilogy. And yes, we are his creators. While the
best lack all conviction, and the worst are full
of passionate intensity, a masked Sunni jihadi
superman is slouching towards Damascus to be born.
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