Page 2 of
2 World
braces for Syrian trainwreck By
Peter Lee
Anbar Province, which resisted US
pacification for four years, became one of Iraq's
safer places after a few months of "Awakening".
The US component of this effort was JSOC, the
no-holds barred assassination initiative. JSOC was
described by Bob Woodward while promoting his Iraq
War book, The War Within:
Beginning in the late spring of
2007, the US military and intelligence agencies
launched a series of top-secret operations that
enabled them to locate, target and kill key
individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq,
the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias,
or so-called special groups. The operations
incorporated some of the most highly
classified techniques
and information in the US government.
Senior military officers and officials
at the White House urged against publishing
details or code names associated with the
groundbreaking programs, arguing that
publication of the names alone might harm the
operations that have been so beneficial in Iraq.
As a result, specific operational details have
been omitted in this report and in The War
Within.
But a number of
authoritative sources say the covert activities
had a far-reaching effect on the violence and
were very possibly the biggest factor in
reducing it. Several said that 85 to 90% of the
successful operations and "actionable
intelligence" had come from the new sources,
methods and operations. Several others said that
figure was exaggerated but acknowledged their
significance.
Lt Gen Stanley McChrystal,
the commander of the Joint Special Operations
Command (JSOC) responsible for hunting al-Qaeda
in Iraq, employed what he called "collaborative
warfare," using every tool available
simultaneously, from signal intercepts to human
intelligence and other methods, that allowed
lightning-quick and sometimes concurrent
operations.
Asked in an interview about
the intelligence breakthroughs in Iraq,
President [George W] Bush offered a simple
answer: "JSOC is awesome." [6]
Looking at Syria
through the lens of what happened next door in
Iraq, it would appear that the best way to bring
order to the country would be for a transition
that would reach beyond intransigent but
incapable anti-government emigres to ally
in-country moderate Sunni elements with the
dominant local military force - in this case,
the Syrian Army - and kick off the national
reconciliation exercise by a purge of Salafists.
It appears that there were glimmerings
of a "negotiated transition", aka deal cutting,
with the Assad regime in the early stages of the
SNCORF process but unsurprisingly the maximalist
"Assad must go/no negotiations" approach
prevailed. This is regrettable - at least to
people who would like to see a negotiated end to
the inconclusive butchery - but understandable.
Flip-flops have their
limits The US and the
West are heavily vested in the "Assad must go"
position. Presumably, the US could only flip-flop
in response to a unanimous declaration in favor of
negotiations by the Syrian opposition, but this
was not to be:
Some of the last holdouts said they
suspected that the agreement was a sly way for
the international community to negotiate with Mr
Assad about a transition to a new government. So
one clause in the agreement specifically bars
such talks. [7]
One might speculate
that the "last holdouts" for the maximalist
charter are not only motivated by overwhelming
moral scruples and/or irrational rage against
ending Syria's carnage by dialogue with Assad;
they are also opposing an attempt to marginalize
and subsequently purge extremist Islamists from
the redefined movement.
Amidst all this,
there was the usual tired effort to shame Russia
and the People's Republic of China into solving
the West's self-created Syria problem by
pressuring Assad.
The PRC's four-point
proposal for supporting the UN peace process was,
not for the first time, shoe-horned into a
West-gratifying narrative of China trying to
repair damage to its global reputation caused by
Beijing's obstruction on Syria at the UN Security
Council. [8]
There are a couple big flaws
in this tale of Western neo-liberalism tutelage of
the morally obtuse PRC. First, since July 2012 the
United States has been exploring the "Yemen
solution", ie Assad hands over power to a
carefully chosen group of supporters and opponents
who perpetuate the status quo albeit in a
modified, more democracy-friendly form. Does
anybody remember Manaf Tlass, the Syrian military
princeling/defector unsuccessfully touted as the
great uniter of the loyal and insurrectionist
opposition this summer? Maybe not. [9]
US
equivocation on its own stance - and drift toward
the Chinese position - not only from four months
ago but also in the days of haggling leading up to
the formation of the SNCORF is not an example or
incentive for a Chinese flip-flop on Syria.
Also, as patient and retentive readers of
Asia Times Online will also recall, the PRC has
been pushing its Syria initiative since early
2012, with the sound, if as yet unrewarded,
calculation that its most persuasive Middle
Eastern role is as the alternative to democratic
chaos for authoritarian governments - aka Saudi
Arabia - and managed democracies - aka Iran - in
the neighborhood: in other words, leveraging its
role as the world's biggest customer for Saudi and
Iranian oil to act as the guarantor of economic
development and supporter of political stability
in the region. [10]
This is a relatively
sound geopolitical strategy, especially since the
United States is successfully weaning itself off
Middle Eastern oil - and the need to share fully
and deeply in Saudi Arabia's local security
anxieties - thanks to domestic fracking and a
coming boom in oil sand crude imports from Canada.
Judging from the journalistic tea leaves,
there is no sign that China is abandoning its
Middle Way strategy in order to act as the West's
clueless trained ape, mindlessly endorsing the
merits of externally promoted regime change to its
own detriment, a role that that foreign observers
for some reason believe Beijing will happily fill
in order to gain the approval of the US and
European Union.
Unsurprisingly, Xinhua's
analysis sniffed that SNCFOR was "dubious",
commented unfavorably on its rejection of
"dialogue", and also reported on some pushback
in-country members of the Syrian opposition who,
Xinhua implies, are more qualified to discuss
Syria's fate that the emigres in Doha:
Luai Hussain, head of the opposition
Building Syria State party, said his party
rejects everything that comes out of the
overseas-based opposition.
"We reject
the formation of any transitional government
abroad and any other decision ... and we regard
such act as direct and real aggression on
Syrians' right to choose their leadership and
determine their destinies."
He said his
party will mobilize Syrian public opinion to
thwart efforts to form a government abroad. "The
formation of any interim government abroad would
be conducive to increasing division in the
Syrian society, and thus would widen the
platform of a civil war," he added.
Along with other leading opponents,
Hussain did not take part in the Doha meeting
apparently because he was not invited. [11]
Xinhua interviewed Luai (who spent
seven years in Syrian prison) in Damascus; while
Western outlets confide themselves largely to war
reporting, war tourism, atrocity journalism, and
deriding the Assad government, Xinhua has stepped
up its in-country presence in an attempt to
promote the visibility and credibility of the
PRC's proposed political solution.
Luai
advocated "international consensus" to solve the
crisis; in Syria-speak, this is the Chinese
position of foreign powers ceasing aid to the
rebels and switching the international focus from
regime change to compelling dissidents to enter
the political dialogue track preferred by Russia
and China.
If, as appears likely, Saudi
Arabia is chafing at the snub administered by
Qatar and the United States, the PRC has a chance
to present itself as the Kingdom's understanding
buddy and redirect King Abdullah's vision toward
economics and his country's future as China's
energy partner. Perhaps Saudi Arabia will decide
its anti-Shi'ite/anti-Iranian crusade has yielded
most of the benefits that can be expected, and it
is time to ring down the curtain on the
extremist-Sunni escapade inside Syria.
However, the idea of imploding Assad's
regime is probably irresistible to Riyadh, and in
any case the window for happy-talk political
solutions is rapidly closing.
Assad's
government has lost control of a lot of territory.
Judging by its increasing reliance on air power,
the government has determined that the battered
Sunni conscripts of the regular army and the
dubious shabiha paramilitaries are not up to the
job of fighting street to street and house to
house to get territory back, and the regime is
mainly interested in denying key assets and
strongpoints to the insurgency by use of jet
bombers and attack helicopters. That's not a good
augury for the city of Damascus if and when the
mayhem moves to the capital from Aleppo.
The initiative in the insurgency appears
to lie with aggressive, opportunistic and
none-too-popular militant outfits, whose efforts
to destroy the Assad regime are frustrated by
suspicious Western governments unwilling to give
them the money, arms, and support needed to finish
the job - and Syria.
Under these
circumstances, a political settlement, however
desirable, seems unlikely unless a major force -
probably not SNCORF, more likely a new Sunni
strongman with a taste for order emerging from the
Syrian army - tips the scales one way or another.
For the United States and the West - which
are primarily interested in finessing their way
out of a Syria mess that they, to a significant
extent, helped create - the end will come soon
enough.
For the PRC, which, for reasons of
energy security, is committed to playing the long
game in the Middle East, bloody chaos in Syria is
just another challenge and opportunity for Beijing
to advance its interests in the world's most
dangerous neighborhood. For the people of
Syria, it must feel as if the agony will go on
forever.
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