http://portside.org/2013-06-08/dangers-associated-syrian-proxy-war
Dangers Associated With The Syrian Proxy War By Bill Fletcher, Jr June 6, 2013 Black Commentator The USA should have learned from its experiences in Iraq, and later Libya, that fishing in troubled waters can bring with it very profound consequences. By Bill Fletcher, Jr, , The African World While it is positive that the USA and Russia have been discussing a peaceful resolution to the Syrian civil war, the reality is that this conflict may grow and spread. Although the US media speaks about this conflict in religious terms, i.e., Sunni vs. Shia, such a description is far too simplistic and does not help us better understand what has been unfolding. The Syrian civil war started in the context of the so-called Arab Spring. There was a peaceful pro-democracy rising that had little to do with what sect within Islam someone found ones self. It was a rising against a despotic, quasi-monarchy [the regime of President Bashar al-Assad] that made frequent use of progressiveand even anti-imperialistrhetoric while it was suppressing its citizenry. The social base for the leadership clique of President Assad was among the Alawites, a Muslim sect related to the Shiites, but it would be incorrect to see the Syrian regime as anything approaching an Alawite theocracy. The Syrian regime, founded by Bashars father, Hafez al-Assad, was not very different from many of the nationalist-military regimes that took power in the Arab World in the 1950s and 1960s. They were generally anti-imperialist in orientation and aligned themselves with the then Soviet Union. These regimes tended not to be democratic internally and were intolerant of dissent. They were not religious in any particular way, though in the case of Syria, the long-standing persecution of the Alawites ended with the assumption of power by Assad. The Assad regimeboth father and now the sonsuffered from the same crisis that Egyptian theorist Samir Amin has referenced regarding many efforts in the global South. These nationalist-populist projects worked to transform and modernize their respective countries, but only so far. Though aligned with the Soviet Union, and in some cases China, they were not committed to a thorough transformation of their respective states, and certainly not a democratization. One could also see this in Qaddafis Libya, for instance. The rhetoric of these regimes, however, frequently confused outsiders, leading many progressives in the global North to assume that regimes, such as Assads, were on the side of progressive change whereas they were increasingly repressive. With the collapse of the USSR, Syria found itself in an ever more complicated situation. It retained an alliance with Russia, through which they were supplied advanced weaponry. They had also constructed an alliance with theocratic Iran against Saddam Husseins Iraq in the 1980s, the latter having been a bitter rival of Syria for leadership of the Arab World. Much as with Saddam Husseins regime, ideology drained away from the Assad despotism as time went on, leaving only a regime seeking to retrain power. It is this regime that was confronted by a pro-democracy movement in the context of the Arab Spring. It is quite possible that Assad could have come to some sort of compromise with the pro-democracy movement. The Syrians, having witnessed the Lebanese civil war, had no particular interest in a turn toward armed struggle. Instead, much like Qaddafi, Assad assumed that he could squash the protest movement, and he attempted to do so quite violently. Try as they might, the pro-democracy movement, which was never under the leadership of any one organization, found it difficult to retain a commitment to non-violence. This was especially the case once a new factor entered the picture: Saudi Arabia and Qatar. As part of an effort by ultra-conservative Sunni theocracies to both crush a secular nationalist regime plus thwart the alliance between Syria and Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar began to supply militaristic elements within the anti-Assad coalition. As Assad upped the ante through repression, the military option became increasingly acceptable to elements within the anti-Assad coalition. In time various European countries entered the picture, supporting the anti-Assad coalition and calling for the introduction of military assistance. The USA was, formally at least, slow to enter the picture, though elements, largely in the Republican Party, have been encouraging direct US military intervention (at a minimum through a no-fly zone). Ironically, the other force to enter the picture against Assad have been the Sunni jihadists, some of which are associated with Al Qaeda. On the other side of the equation, Assad, increasingly isolated at home, turned outward for support, including to Iran, Russia, and more recently, the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon (the Shiite movement known for its successful war against Israeli invaders in 2006). Reports have circulated that both Assad and the anti-Assad forces have used chemical weapons. Israel, nervous about instability on its northern borders, has launched at least one attack against facilities under the control of Assad allegedly due to the suggestion that weaponry was being transferred to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Which way is up? The Obama administration has expressed an increasing amount of pro-interventionist sentiment. This has included recognizing the anti-Assad forces as the legitimate leaders of Syria, followed by alleged non-lethal assistance to the anti-Assad forces. Republican Senator John McCain, no surprise, has insisted that the USA should do more, though no one is currently suggesting the deploying of US troops, apparently having learned some lessons from the Iraq debacle. In either case, the USA is certainly not an honest broker in the conflict and is working covertly to oust the Assad regime. At the same time, they and Russia are discussing the possibilities of some sort of peace agreement, though Russia continues to arm Assad. Syria, then, has become something like Spain in its 1936-39 civil war, i.e., a country that is not only carrying out a domestic struggle but has become a focal point for a much larger conflict. The USA should have learned from its experiences in Iraq, and later Libya, that fishing in troubled waters can bring with it very profound consequences. The relatively sudden collapse of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, for instance, with the direct involvement of NATO, resulted not only in destabilization, but also the flooding of North Africa with advanced weaponry from the Libyan armories. Right-wing jihadists enjoyed the benefits of the collapse of Qaddafi in ways that were absolutely predictable, but were ignored by US policy makers. The situation in Syria is Libya on steroids. Iran sees itself a target of isolation by both the USA and Europe, but also by the Sunni theocracies in the Arab/Persian Gulf region, and thus continues to support Assad. Efforts to overthrow Assad are interpreted by the Iranians as efforts to further that isolation. Russia sees efforts to remove Assad as weakening its own influence in the region, including weakening its ability to have any impact on the final resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The Sunni theocracies, and their jihadists allies (and sometimes shock-troops) see this situation as an excellent opportunity to not only isolate Iran, but to also crush progressive, secular democratic mass movements, which would actually be the net effect of a victory by either side, ironically enough. The USA needs to pull back; it is already too involved. To the extent to which it can work with Russia towards a negotiated settlement of the conflict, that would be positive. But further actions on behalf of the anti-Assad coalition run the risks of additional blowback. As I have noted elsewhere, interventions in civil wars are very risky propositions. A foreign intervention into a civil war brings with it the peril that one side wins not because it has a stronger base but because of outside assistance alone. The result can be a very unstable political arrangement that is entirely dependent on outside forces in order to sustain itself. Civil wars can be very bloody, and in fact be among the most bloody of conflicts, but they ultimately must be resolved by the people themselves. Short of actual genocide, e.g., Rwanda, foreign intervention must be restrained and all sides need to be encouraged to get to the negotiating table. We, in the USA, must not allow ourselves to be whipped into a frenzy whereby we accept, if not encourage, greater US involvement in the Syrian civil war. To say this does not suggest that I am taking the side of Assad. To the contrary, Assad must go, but he must go as a result of the actions of the progressive forces within Syria rather than through a coalition more akin to a rogues gallery of nefarious forces. ____________________ BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum, and the author of Theyre Bankrupting Us - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. He is also the co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice, which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA ------------------------------------ https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/reportsfeatures/the-curious-case-of-flight-syr602 The curious case of flight SYR602A SyrianAir flight not listed on the departures board may regularly leave for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia [image: SyrianAir] Every other day for at least the past month, SyrianAir flight number 602 departs from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in the middle of the night. Its not listed on the airports departures board, nor could any of the half-dozen travel agents that NOW contacted book an interested passenger a seat. In fact, only SyrianAirs representative in Beirut could find a record that the flight existed. Other travel agents were simply stumped. Im sorry, sir, there is no flight 602. But I see it, NOW kept replying. NOW first noticed the flight on the website Flightradar24.com<http://www.flightradar24.com/> (call sign SYR602). According to the how it works section of the webpage, the sites operators have a network of about 500 ADS-B receivers around the world that receives plane and flight information from aircrafts with ADS-B transponders. [It then] sends this information to a server and displays this information on a map posted to Flightradar24.com<http://www.flightradar24.com/> . Asked about the accuracy of the sites information, an employee who only identified himself as Mike told NOW in an email exchange: if it shows up in Jeddah, it has been there. The flights destination is unknown, but NOW has repeatedly monitored (on the webpage) the plane travel north over Saudi Arabia before disappearing near the Jordanian border. Flightradar24.coms FAQ section explains that in most cases, the reason [a flight seems to disappear] is that the coverage from the surrounding receivers has been lost. It can also be a technical problem somewhere. To find out more, NOW contacted the General Authority of Civil Aviation in Saudi Arabia last month. Spokesman Khaled Diabry at first was very helpful when NOW asked for details about the flight. Diabry took the flight number but said he could find no record of the flight. He said he would check with the airport and asked NOW to call back. He has since stopped answering his phone, and NOW has been repeatedly told that he is simply unavailable. Yaser al-Yousef, SyrianAirs regional manager in Saudi Arabia, responded to our email inquiries. He told NOW that yes, SYR602 is a regular commercial flight. Asked why it never shows up on the departures board, Yousef said: Because [its an] *umrah* flight, which he later clarified to mean a flight specifically for pilgrims visiting Mecca outside of the *hajj* season. Pressed on why a normal commercial flight would not be registered on the departures board, Yousef said, I dont have more [information]. He referred NOW to SyrianAirs Damascus office, which has neither returned our emails nor answered the phone. Travel agents in both the UK and Beirut who could find no record of the flight and asked not to be named told NOW that typically when a flight is unlisted, it has been privately chartered. Agents could book NOW a ticket on other flights out of Jeddah operated by SyrianAir, but repeatedly said they found no record of flight 602. In a final attempt for more information, NOW contacted the SyrianAir office in Beirut in order to try booking a seat on the flight. NOW learned that commercial flights between Jeddah and Damascus are available in the afternoon, but the agent who was uniquely able to find flight 602 in his database could not book a seat for the flight's middle-of-the-night departure. Its closed, he said. Why, NOW asked. I dont know. https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/interviews/the-syrian-opposition-in-moscow The Syrian opposition in MoscowTalking to Dr. Mahmoud al-Hamza, head of the Syrian National Council in Russia [image: Syrians in Qatar protesting.] Dr. Mahmoud al-Hamza<http://www.syriancouncil.org/en/members/item/425-mahmoud-hamza.html> is the head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) in Moscow. He was born in Hasaka, Syria, but moved to Moscow to obtain his PhD in Mathematics. Al-Hamza worked as the Chief Researcher in the Department of Mathematics at the Institute of Science and Technology, a division of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. However, he was fired soon after becoming an active member of the Syrian opposition, where al-Hamza helped to organize a series of meetings between SNC members and officials from the Russian foreign ministry. NOW talked to al-Hamza about his meetings with Russias Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in addition to how SNC representatives tried to persuade the Kremlin that its interests in Syria would not be harmed. * * *NOW: How many meetings were held between Syrian opposition members and the Russian government? * * * *al-Hamza*: I was part of all four committees that came to Moscow to meet with the Russian Foreign Ministry. I also coordinated all the visits. The first one was led by Radwan Ziadeh, Director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies. The second one was led by Dr. Ammar Qurabi, President of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria. The last two meetings were between the Syrian National Council (led by Burhan Ghalioun) and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. * * *NOW: What happened during these meetings?* * * *al-Hamza:* The first two meetings were informal, and we spoke to a representative of President Vladimir Putin. The last two meetings were with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. All of the meetings were about the situation in Syria. We requested the meetings in order to clarify to the Russians that what was occuring in Syria is a revolution - that the people are against the regime. We explained the brutality of the regime, and what our goals are. We presented our demands and told the Russians that we want democracy and freedom. We stressed that we are neither against other minorities in Syria, nor against Russia itself - in fact we consider Russia a friendly country. We told Russian officials that they should stand by the people, not the regime. * * *NOW: What did the Syrian opposition delegation offer in terms of Russias interests in the region?* * * *al-Hamza:* The Russians know everything thats happening in Syria - to the smallest of details. We were there to guarantee that Russia's interests in Syria would not be harmed. We offered guarantees that we would cooperate with Russia to build a new army and economy. But the officials responded that they are against any international interference, including multinational armies and fighters. We asked them to help us topple Bashar al-Assad, but they countered by asking us to pursue negotiations because they dont want to interfere. When we asked them to stop supporting the regime with weapons, the Russians replied that there were existing treaties between the two governments that they were forced to abide by. I found them to be extremely rude. Lavrov was trying to convince us that we should negotiate. He asked the SNC delegation: Are you with negotiations or with the revolution? When a representative replied that we are with the revolution, Lavrov said then expect a sea of blood. We told him not to give up on Syria, that we wanted Russia by the oppositions side. We asked, We are not enemies, why you are pushing the Syrians to burn the Russian flag? * * *NOW: What were your thoughts on Russias political stance?* * * *al-Hamza:* They refused to recognize any massacre caused by the regime. But I was always hopeful, I believed in the need to cooperate with the Russians. * * *NOW: Do you think the Russian government is really pushing for a negotiated settlement?* * * *al-Hamza:* I am convinced that the Russian government is trying to buy more time for the regime - they do not believe in a political settlement to the conflict. They want to destroy the revolution and the people, and they are doing nothing other than supporting the regime. * * *NOW: What is the situation like for Syrian opposition members in Russia?* * * *al-Hamza*: I stopped all contact with the Russian government. After these meetings, I felt unsafe in Moscow. A year and a half ago, I was also fired at the request of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Syrian opposition supporters in Moscow are under threat - they are being followed and investigated. Plus, the Syrian embassy is allowed to do whatever it pleases to its nationals in Russia. * * *NOW: Most European countries have restricted visas for Syrians, fearing that they may seek asylum within the European Union. Does Russia have the same policy?* * * *al-Hamza*: The Russian authorities are selling visas, each for hundreds of dollars. The refugees who are coming here are regular people. We have around 1,500 registered refugees in Russia. However, Syrian regime supporters do not register as refugees. They live in big houses where everything is provided for them. Over 50 Alawite students recently came to universities in Moscow, all of them holding Russian passports. *Yara Chehayed and Vivianne el Khawly contributed with translation.* Syria Today: Opposition Repeats --- No Participation in International "Peace" Conference<http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2013/6/9/syria-today-opposition-repeats-no-participation-in-internati.html> inShare Sunday, June 9, 2013 at 13:15 | Scott Lucas<http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/author/scott-lucas> in EA Live <http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/category/ea-live>, EA Middle East and Turkey<http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/category/ea-middle-east-and-turkey> , Middle East and Iran<http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/category/middle-east-and-iran> <http://twitpic.com/cw90pd> *Government forces move through Qusayr, captured by the Syrian military last Wednesday* *Syria Feature: Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State of Iraq<http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2013/6/9/syria-feature-jabhat-al-nusra-al-qaeda-and-the-islamic-state.html> Middle East Today: Libya --- At Least 25 Killed in Clashes Between Protesters and Government-Backed Militia<http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2013/6/9/middle-east-today-libya-at-least-25-killed-in-clashes-betwee.html> Saturday's Syria Today: UN Appeal on "Record" Aid for Syrians --- Significant Step or Meaningless Gesture?<http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2013/6/8/syria-today-un-appeal-on-record-aid-for-syrians-significant.html> <* ------------------------------ * The opposition Syrian National Coalition has reiterated its refusal to participate in a proposed international conference. "What is happening in Syria today completely closes the doors on any discussions about international conferences and political initiatives," George Sabra, Coalition, told a press conference in Istanbul. "The war declared by the regime and its allies in the region has reached a level we cannot ignore." Last week, regime force and Hezbollah allies captured the town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, after a three-week siege and then re-claimed nearby villages. Sabra said just before those developments that the opposition would not attend a peace conference while Iranian elements and Hezbollah were supporting Syrian troops on the ground. Before that, the Coalition had set the departure of President Assad as a pre-condition for any talks about a political resolution and transitional government. * ------------------------------ *Photo: Pro-Hezbollah Demonstrators Attack Bus In Beirut* Following our earlier report<http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2013/6/9/syria-today-opposition-repeats-no-participation-in-internati.html#lebanon> about clashes on Sunday near the Iranian embassy in Bir Hassan, southern Beirut over the roles of Iran and Hezbollah in Syria image from an incident, the image below show pro-Hezbollah demonstrators attacking a bus carrying anti-Hezbollah demonstrators in front of the embassy. *Insurgents Kill Iraqi Border Guard* Iraqi officials say that Syrian insurgents on Sunday opened fire<http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/73563.aspx> on two Iraqi border posts, killing one guard and wounding two others. Colonel Nayif Zaili said Syrian rebels fired on two posts which lay two kilometres from the Al-Waleed border crossing. The Syrian side of the crossing remains under the control of the regime, despite attempts by insurgents to seize it for several months. *State TV: Documents Show Qatar Asked Insurgents to Defend Qusayr to Protect Israel* *1 Dead Amid Anti-Hezbollah Protests in Beirut* An unarmed Lebanese man has been killed<http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2013/Jun-09/219818-several-injured-outside-iranian-embassy-in-beirut.ashx#axzz2ViKdJl6e> after groups clashed in southern Beirut following a protest over the roles of Iran and Hezbollah in Syria. The incident happened at about lunchtime near the Iranian embassy in Bir Hassan, where demonstrators had gathered to challenge the Iranian and Hezbollah support of the Assad regime. Five others are said to have been injured in the shooting. It was not clear who started the gunfire; however, a journalist for Beirut's Daily Star on the scene reported "men in black shirts with yellow ribbons around their arms" --- indicating they were from Hezbollah shoving protesters away from the site as they exited buses. The protesters had little time to raise their banners before they were beaten up with sticks. The men in black shirts then opened fire in the air to disperse the demonstrators. Al Jazeera reported<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/06/20136910330195585.html> that the protesters against Iran and Hezbollah belong to the party of Ahmad Asaad's party, a Shia politician who is anti-Hezbollah and belongs to the March 14 Movement. The Lebanese army is now reported to be in control of the area around the embassy, with barricades set up on the road. *Casualties* The Local Coordination Committees claim that 33 people have been killed today , including 20 in Damascus and its suburbs. *Casualties* The Violations Documentation Center <https://www.vdc-sy.info/index.php/en/>reports that 63,071 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since March 2011, an increase of 98 from Saturday. Of the deaths, 48,690 were civilians, a rise of 60 from yesterday. 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