Not 'just' a civil war
What's going on in Syria is not 'just' a civil war. It's also the revival of an
ancient ethnic conflict between the Sunni and Shia schools of Islam. And it is spreading far beyond Syria.
Renewed sectarian killing has brought the highest death toll in Iraq in
five years. Young Iraqi scholars at a Shiite Muslim seminary volunteer
to fight Sunnis in Syria. Far to the west, in Lebanon, clashes have
worsened between opposing sects in the northern city of Tripoli.
In Syria itself, “Shiites have become a main target,” said Malek, an
opposition activist who did not want his last name published because of
safety concerns. He was visiting Lebanon from a rebel-held Syrian town,
Qusayr, where his brother died Tuesday battling Shiite guerrillas from
the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. “People lost brothers, sons, and they’re
angry,” he said.
The Syrian civil war is setting off a contagious sectarian conflict
beyond the country’s borders, reigniting long-simmering tensions between
Sunnis and Shiites, and, experts fear, shaking the foundations of
countries cobbled together after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
For months, the fighting in Syria has spilled across its borders as
rockets landed in neighboring countries or skirmishes crossed into their
territories. But now, the Syrian war, with more than 80,000 dead, is
inciting Sunnis and Shiites in other countries to attack one another.
“Nothing has helped make the Sunni-Shia narrative stick on a popular
level more than the images of Assad — with Iranian help — butchering
Sunnis in Syria,” said
Trita Parsi,
a regional analyst and president of the National Iranian American
Council, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. “Iran and
Assad may win the military battle, but only at the expense of cementing
decades of ethnic discord.”
...
Many devout Shiites have also come to view the Syrian civil war as the
fulfillment of a Shiite prophecy that presages the end of time: a
devil-like figure, Sufyani, raises an army in Syria and marches on Iraq
to kill Shiites. Abu Ali, a student in Najaf, Iraq, said that his
colleagues believe the leader of Qatar, a chief backer of Syria’s Sunni
rebels, is Sufyani. They are flocking to Syria “to protect Islam,” he
said.
Days after pro-government militias killed scores of civilians last month
in the Sunni village of Bayda near the Syrian coast, one Sunni resident
declared in an interview: “Starting today, I am sectarian. I am
sectarian! I don’t want ‘peaceful’ anymore.” Composing himself, he
added, “Sister, forgive me for talking this way.”
Bret Stephens wonders whether we would all be
better off letting them kill each other.
The theory is simple and superficially compelling: If al Qaeda
fighters want to murder Hezbollah fighters and Hezbollah fighters want
to return the favor, who in their right mind would want to stand in the
way? Of course it isn't just Islamist radicals of one stripe or another
who are dying in Syria, but also little children and aging grandparents
and every other innocent and helpless bystander to the butchery.
But here comes the whispered suggestion: If one branch of Islam wants
to be at war with another branch for a few years—or decades—so much the
better for the non-Islamic world. Mass civilian casualties in Aleppo or
Homs is their tragedy, not ours. It does not implicate us
morally. And it probably benefits us strategically, not least by
redirecting jihadist energies away from the West.
Wrong on every count.
Similar thinking was popular in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War.
The war left as many as 1.4 million corpses on the battlefield,
including thousands of child soldiers, and caused both countries
billions in economic damage. And how did the West benefit from that?
It's true that the price of crude declined sharply almost every year of
the war, but that only goes to show how weak the correlation is between
Persian Gulf tensions and oil prices.
Otherwise, the 1980s were the years of the tanker wars in the Gulf,
including Iraq's attack on the USS Stark; the hostage-taking in Lebanon;
and the birth of Hezbollah, with its suicide bombings of the U.S.
Marine barracks and embassy in Beirut. Iraq invaded Kuwait less than two
years after the war's end. Iran emerged with its revolutionary fervors
intact—along with a rekindled interest in developing nuclear weapons.
In short, a long intra-Islamic war left nobody safer, wealthier or
wiser. Nor did it leave the West morally untainted. The U.S. embraced
Saddam Hussein as a counterweight to Iran, and later tried to ply Iran
with secret arms in exchange for the release of hostages. Patrolling the
Strait of Hormuz, the USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down an Iranian
jetliner over the Gulf, killing 290 civilians. Inaction only provides
moral safe harbor when there's no possibility of action.
Stephens goes on to argue that the US should have intervened a long time ago in Syria - which it probably should have. The question is whether intervention now is going to accomplish anything, or whether we are in for another decade like the 80's - much of which happened on the watch of Obama's Presidential idol, Jimmy Carter.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Hezbullah, Iran, Iran-Iraq War, Iraq, Lebanon, Nusra Front, Shiites v. Sunnis, Syria, Syrian uprising
Freedom of the press, 'Palestinian' style
Extensive testing shows that the 'Palestinian Authority' is blocking websites that are critical of it or of its leader, '
moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen.
The testing was conducted over four weeks by Ma'an and the Open Observatory of Network Interference, a new project by Web security experts Arturo Filasto and Jacob Appelbaum to track censorship around the world. Using a tool called an OONI probe, they scanned 1.1 million websites for a specific type of blocking.
"The technique being used to restrict access is a transparent HTTP proxy," Filasto said, meaning the company is intercepting attempts to reach blocked websites and returning a different page. Testing a connection in Bethlehem demonstrated that Hadara was blocking access to eight websites, while others blocked between four and six. The method being employed by Hadara is relatively basic, Filasto said.
Experts who have analyzed the data say the company configured an open-source software called Squid to detect the blocked sites and redirect users. Squid was originally developed with funding from two US government agencies, but neither one has any control over its distribution today.
Syria and Lebanon also use Squid for Web blocking, according to experts. Its appearance now indicates that while the Palestinian Authority may be more determined than before to censor the Internet, it is less willing to spend much time or money doing it, they said. The software is free and easy to alter for censorship.
"It’s a pretty common approach," says Danny O'Brien, Internet advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, a US press freedom group. “Instructing ISPs to block a few websites can be so tempting, and it's usually how a government’s Web censorship program begins," O'Brien says.
"The big problem is no one willingly hands over the list. It would provide a map of places the government doesn’t want to you to see. When you can’t see the list, there’s no accountability from the public."
The new program's timing may also embarrass the Palestinian Authority's financial backers in the United States and European Union, both of which are considering legislation to curb the export of Western technologies used to censor political speech in the Middle East.
In Washington, a spokeswoman said the State Department was "concerned about any reports regarding the use of technologies to restrict access to information. The United States advocates Internet freedom."
I'm sure you're all shocked to hear this.
The problem with Western foreign policy in the Arab world has for years been a naive belief that if only we give them a free election, they will suddenly become democrats and recognize the value in the freedoms that we recognize. Time and again that has been proven false. Remember the optimism we all felt the day that Iraqis risked their lives to get in line to vote? Well, look at the
results.
"The Republic of Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran as two Muslim countries and with rich cultural and historical background have friendly and brotherly relationships," Maliki said in a meeting with Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani on Sunday.
He also said that Iraq and Iran are enjoying good and friendly relations in political, parliamentary, economic and cultural areas.
Referring to numerous commonalities for further expansion of relations between two countries, he said that enhancement of regional and international cooperation between Tehran and Baghdad is of prime importance for Iraq.
Larijani, for his part, said that the presence of a stable Iraq in neighborhood of Iran will help to tranquility and peace in the region.
Isn't that great? How many Americans died so that Iran and Iraq could kiss and make up?
Natan Sharansky's ideas about democracy - adopted by George W. Bush and to a lesser extent by Hussein Obama - only have a chance of working if the West is willing to do what it did with Germany and Japan after World War II: Occupy until they're ready to run it themselves. Otherwise, the best thing the West can do is to stay out, keep developing its own oil supplies so that it's not dependent on the 8th century Sheikhdoms, and keep the oil flowing to the extent that it still is. And leave off Israel. Because left to our own devices - without Western interference on behalf of the 'Palestinians' and Iran - we will survive here just fine God willing.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: freedom of the press, Iran-Iraq War, Palestinian Authority
Saddam saw Israel behind all his problems
The United States has released a small number of documents taken from an Iraqi archive during the 2003 invasion. The documents reveal that Saddam Hussein could not believe that Iran was as strong as it turned out to be, and thought that he was being
attacked by Israel.
Mr. Hussein so grievously underestimated Iran’s military that he wrongly assumed Iran’s initial airstrikes in the war had actually been carried out by Israeli warplanes. He personally selected the rockets to use on one attack against an Iranian city, and he boasted that Iraq had a chemical weapons arsenal that “exterminates by the thousands.” He felt threatened enough by the rise of fundamentalist Islamic groups that he discussed his desire to “trick” the public, into thinking that his government, too, endorsed Islamic values.
From a historical perspective, Mr. Hussein’s decision to take on Iran and his reaction to the Iran-contra affair are two of the most intriguing areas in the papers.
Mr. Hussein set the stage for war with Iran by repudiating a 1975 agreement that had settled a disputed over the Shatt al Arab, the strategic waterway along their border. According to Amatzia Baram, an Israeli expert on Iraq who has studied the archive, the pivotal decision appears have been made in a meeting on Sept. 16, 1980, when Mr. Hussein took the optimistic view that the Iranians, fearing the Iraqi forces massed near the border, would give in without much of a fight.
A top secret report from the Iraqi General Military Intelligence Directorate supported Mr. Hussein’s assessment. “It is clear that, at present, Iran has no power to launch wide offensive operations against Iraq or to defend on a large scale,” the report noted. It also predicted “more deterioration of the general situation of Iran’s fighting capability.”
But the war, which ultimately lasted eight years and resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties, turned out to be far more difficult than Mr. Hussein had expected. Soon after it began, Iranian aircraft bombed a series of targets, including Iraqi oil refineries and the Osirak nuclear plant south of Baghdad. The feat so surprised the Iraqis that they assumed the attack could not have emanated from Iran.
“This is Israel,” Mr. Hussein exclaimed in an Oct. 1, 1980, meeting. He then complained that Iraqi officials had not followed his suggestion to bury the nuclear facility under the Hamrin Mountains north of Baghdad, before approving a plan to fortify the complex with millions of sandbags. But those sandbags proved to be of little use when Israeli warplanes actually did strike the site, in June 1981.
Later, Mr. Hussein said he was not surprised that Israel felt threatened by Iraq, which he asserted would defeat Iran and emerge with a military that was stronger than ever. “Once Iraq walks out victorious, there will not be any Israel,” he said in a 1982 conversation. “Technically, they are right in all of their attempts to harm Iraq.”
...
The notion that Israel and the West had joined forces to undermine his government persisted well after the Iran-Iraq war ended. In 1990, Mr. Hussein himself intervened to ensure the execution of Farzad Bazoft, an Iranian-born journalist working for The Observer, a British newspaper. Mr. Bazoft was investigating a mysterious explosion at a military complex south of Baghdad when he was arrested and charged with spying for Israel. The Bazoft case drew worldwide attention, and the British government appealed for clemency. Mr. Hussein was unmoved. Told that it would take a month for the Iraqi legal process to be completed, he took charge of the matter.
“A whole month?” he exclaimed. “I say we execute him in Ramadan, and this will be the punishment for Margaret Thatcher.”
Mr. Bazoft was hanged on March 15, 1990, six months after his arrest and shortly before Ramadan began. In response, Britain recalled its ambassador. Less than five months later, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait.
I suspect that if we got the same types of documents from other Arab countries, we would find that they too suspect Israel as being the root of all their problems. The paranoia is a primary characteristic.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Arab obsession with Israel, Arab paranoia, Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein
