No End in Sight: On the Ground in Syria
Dr. Jonathan Spyer, senior fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, recently visited Syria and traveled in rebel-held territory. Here are his observations, given in an interview with PJ Media Middle East Editor Barry Rubin.
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– This is your second trip to Syria to observe what’s happening there. How have things changed since your earlier trip?
The first and most immediately noticeable change was that in the northern governates of Aleppo and Idleb, the Assad regime no longer really exists on the ground. In February, making the border crossing from Turkey was potentially quite dangerous because the Syrian regime troops were still patrolling across the border. And the rebels in Idleb travelled only at night, avoiding the main roads and using side roads and smugglers’ tracks to reach the various towns over which they exercised a precarious control.
Today, because of a lack of reliable manpower and rebel harassment, the regime has abandoned these areas and the rebels are in full control on the ground. The Free Syrian Army now operates the border crossing at Bab el Salam in cooperation with the Turks. The FSA operates checkpoints at regular intervals all the way from the border to the entrance to Aleppo city, two hours drive to the south. Only in the city itself is the regime still deployed on the ground. So this is a very notable difference.
One should qualify this picture, however, by noting that the regime still has 100% control of the airspace above these areas and uses this to carry out air raids on both FSA and civilians in this area. The regime army also still holds a number of isolated positions in Aleppo governate, including a military airfield and an officers’ training facility.
– Please describe the situation in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. How important are the Salafist groups, how well are they organized, and from where are they getting their weapons?
The media has paid great attention to the Salafi jihadi groups fighting in Aleppo city, but in my view they are of only secondary importance both militarily and politically. The most significant of the Salafi-oriented groups is the Ahrar al Sham organization, which is backed by Saudi Arabia. This group is quite visible at significant points in rebel-held parts of the city. They are very visibly Salafi, both in their mode of dress and in the black, white, and green Koranic banners which fly over their positions instead of the Syrian rebel flag. They are thought to receive arms and support from the Saudis. But they are not particularly noted for their military effectiveness.
While the report is indeed chilling and detailed in scope, its contents yet to gleaned from the regular media, there is still a huge elephant in the room.
The point being, Islamic savages are in place on both sides of the fence. Now, one glaring difference is that Iran’s Hitlerite regime (and their surrogates) is championing one outcome, and the other Islamic devil – the Muslim Brotherhood Mafia – is championing the other.
Same difference – at least for the west! One Islamic barbarian, or the other, will come out on top.
Therefore, please bear in mind – http://www.shoebat.com/2012/10/05/exclusive-innocence-of-muslims-a-game-of-predators-and-scapegoats/
I know…I know…it is mind boggling to watch so many innocents being killed…children too. But keep in mind, it is their own who are executing the carnage!!
I agree with you mostly, but it appears to be an example of a larger war. The Russians, China, Iran, Hizboallah, and the PLO vs the global government, I mean NATO. I bet Turkey is helping the so called rebels with someone elce’s money, and the House of Saud supports their brand of following Muhammad world wide.
For whatever reason the Muslim Brotherhood is being supported all across region 4 of the WTO by NATO. Turkey’s government has almost gone full scale Muslim Brotherhood. We might as well call region 4 the reborn Ottomon Empire.
Money, and power drive this mess in Syria, and the women, and children are being murdered by this global system of paganism. A long time ago the Saxons impaled slaves on Ceder trees on the longest night so the blood would insure a good spring harvest. I guess, this world system of worshiping the creation can’t get enough human blood to futher it’s Father’s agenda within region 4.
the “global government”? Is that who you signed up to fight for as a Marine? I thought oath to defend AMERICA. Maybe not. I hope the global government is overthrown.
Stay out of Syria. What those barbaric Semites do to each other is none of our concern. TO the extent I”m rooting for one side, it would be Assad whom the Assyrian Christians support.
I support your right to freedom of speech. Even if you are a wanker.
Global government? I’m surprised that got thru the PJM filters.
I’ve had a hardcore Republican friend, a lifelong family friend of mine. He’s always hated Putin and the KGB with a passion but now says he’d shake Putin’s hand for sending guns to Damascus to fight the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi/Qatari backed Salafists. That tells you all you need to know. Frankly given the desire on the part of the hardcore neocon elites in D.C. to keep everyone in line I’m amazed honest Israeli opinions suggesting Assad might be the lesser of two evils actually get through the Anglo-American elite media filters.
A most important link was meant to be added to further the discussion – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/31/islamists-whatever-their-stripes-are-bloodthirsty-assads-butchers-his-opponents-too-six-of-onehalf-dozen-of-another-addendum-toislam-blood-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
When Muslims are killing Muslims I don’t exactly have any powerful hankering to interfere.
Exactly.
I’m in total agreement. Also, we have precedents now in Iran, Egypt and Libya (with more to follow) showing that these “democratic revolutions” result in (dare one say repressive) Islamist takeovers which are not to the advantage of the non-islamic world or even the local “moderate muslims’ (if you believe there are such things).
Anyone else notice that the continuing Carterbama foreign policy is to abandon allied authoritarian moderates in favor of hostile authoritarian Islamists? You get three guesses as to which is more dangerous to the western world and American interests.
I must disagree. If they are determined to kill each other, it is incumbent upon us to make sure both sides have plenty of guns and ammunition. Wouldn’t want them to have to stop because they’ve run out of bullets.
Cynical bastahd! And I completely agree with you.
All over the World Muslims are attacking and killing Christians, Muslims are attacking and killing Buddhists , Muslims are attacking and killing Hindus, Muslims are attacking and killing Jews,Muslims are attacking and killing each OTHER.
But all we get from Muslims is HYPOCRITICAL cries for their PROTECTION and RESPECT for their CULT when they themselves display NEITHER of these qualities to anyone else on the planet .
What do we get from the USURPER and his Regime , craven APOLOGIES to Islam is what we get even when MUSLIMS attack and kill Americans . The Islamophile Lame Stream EneMedia and Left wing moonbats who care not a jot if they blaspheme and attack Christianity run scared of Islam.
There may be moderate Muslims , it is THEY who are the real misunderstanders of Islam, but there is no such animal as ‘Moderate’ Islam.
What disgusts me is the tacit acceptance by far too many Governments and indeed Religions plus the Lame Stream EneMedia and Islamophile, Anti Semitic, Left wing moonbats that the violent , oppressive, blaspheming Muslims are the ones who need SPECIAL protection and respect over and above what is on offer to anyone else. It illogical , unjustified and pathetic, we have become DHIMMIEFIED (look it up, DHIMMIES are what Islam DEMANDS we all turn in to if we refuse to convert ,or as they put it ‘REVERT’ as Islam also claims EVERYONE is born a Muslim and we are simply led astray) if we are to survive MUSLIM world domination which is their CULT’s aim. Its all there in the Koran and the aHadith and is pumped in to willing minds at every Mosque.
I am sick and tired of being lectured by dim witted Left Wing moonbats who have never even looked at the Koran or the aHadith yet seem to think they know all about Islam.
Thank you Mr. Spyer for your intrepid reporting. Since most ‘professional’ media outlets feel they need to frame highly ambiguous situations in the Middle East in terms of good guys and bad guys or other distortion, political or cultural, it is refreshing to get a first person account that does not tell us what to think. Like me you must have gone to university in that regrettable time before all human knowledge was pre-mapped for ideological safety. That said, I can’t help but think that this stalemate is putting more pressure on Iran’s dollar reserves at a time when it is has some serious economic problems.
“How dreadful are the curses which Islam lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property‹either as a child, a wife, or a concubine must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
Far from being moribund, Islam is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -the science against which it had vainly struggled -the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
~~ Sir Winston Churchill~~
This was great and brave reporting by Dr. Jon Spyer. Jon does a great job of illustrating the complexity of the motives and allegiances of the various rebel forces.
Thanks also to Dr. Barry Rubin for publishing this important piece.
Too bad some other only look for a one dimensional PoV.
Thank you for the update.
I think Henry Kissenger once said about the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, “It’s too bad they both can’t lose.”
These are tribal and religious battles that have been fought now for over 1,000 years. The United States should just stay out of it and let these people do what they do best, and that is slaughter each other. We will win no friends and no battles here. We will always be seen as outsiders and “infidels,” so let them have their civil war and good luck to them. Maybe in 10 years or so they will come to their senses and stop the killing, just like the did in Lebanon after their horrific civil war. The only country worth defending in that whole area is Israel and that is the key to it. Everything else will be in constant turmoil so long as you have radical Islamists running countries in the region. And, unless you want to literally invade those countries and force regime change in all of them (like we did in Libya and Iraq), you will be dealing with radical Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood or the salafists for years, maybe generations, to come.
Just stay out of the mess and support Israel. That’s about all you can do with any measure of success in that part of the world.
The conflict in Syria, as is/was much of the conflict of other “Arab Springs” is not much different than that of Hitler vs. Stalin.
Two monsters trying to destroy each other and the ultimate victim being the citizenry and of course, world stability and world peace.
No matter who wins, the average arab citizen will get totally screwed; tens of thousands will be exterminated by the “victors,” and an arab Stalin will be replaced by an arab Hitler.
So, in the end, the situation in the ME will not change at all and perhaps just get more unstable.
In the end, as history as amply demonstrated, the group that is the most persistent and organized will prevail, irrespective of the will of the majority. As in all internal conflicts the “majority” basically just watches from the sidelines as the much smaller minority groups – the ones with the guns and determination and organization – duke it out and one of which will ultimately prevail.
My guess is that the MB will win this one in Syria because they will have the support of the big boy in town, Turkey (all sunni).
Turkey will not sit tight and allow shia Iran and Iraq to rule the ME.
Turkish fundamentalists who now control Turkey have not forgotten the days of the Ottoman Empire and, foremost, their contempt for the Persians (Iran).
Turkey is also deeply worried about any Kurdish independence movements in Syria (and Iraq and Iran) for obvious reasons. The Kurds constitute one of the largest ethnic groups in the world (with their own language and culture) that does NOT have their own country and the large Kurdish population of Turkey is very troublesome for the Turks.
All in all, the ME, far into the foreseeable future will be a volatile mess.
All the more reason for the USA
The conflict in Syria, as is/was much of the conflict of other “Arab Springs” is not much different than that of Hitler vs. Stalin.
Two monsters trying to destroy each other and the ultimate victim being the citizenry and of course, world stability and world peace.
No matter who wins, the average arab citizen will get totally screwed; tens of thousands will be exterminated by the “victors,” and an arab Stalin will be replaced by an arab Hitler.
So, in the end, the situation in the ME will not change at all and perhaps just get more unstable.
In the end, as history as amply demonstrated, the group that is the most persistent and organized will prevail, irrespective of the will of the majority. As in all internal conflicts the “majority” basically just watches from the sidelines as the much smaller minority groups – the ones with the guns and determination and organization – duke it out and one of which will ultimately prevail.
My guess is that the MB will win this one in Syria because they will have the support of the big boy in town, Turkey (all sunni).
Turkey will not sit tight and allow shia Iran and Iraq to rule the ME.
Turkish fundamentalists who now control Turkey have not forgotten the days of the Ottoman Empire and, foremost, their contempt for the Persians (Iran).
Turkey is also deeply worried about any Kurdish independence movements in Syria (and Iraq and Iran) for obvious reasons. The Kurds constitute one of the largest ethnic groups in the world (with their own language and culture) that does NOT have their own country and the large Kurdish population of Turkey is very troublesome for the Turks.
All in all, the ME, far into the foreseeable future will be a volatile mess where the inability of Arab tribal societies to govern themselves will be manifest.
All the more reason for the USA fully develop our own , home-grown energy resources and, combined with the energy resources of Canada (and a few others) we can become totally independent of Arab oil.
Then we can literally get the hell out of there, bring home ALL or military in that rat-hole of a region, and let the Arabs just kill themselves.
Good riddance to the culture that gave us suicide bombers, airplane hijacking, targeting for mass murder SCHOOL BUSES AND SCHOOLS !!!, and, still TO THIS DAY !!! institutionalized and legal discrimination against women and forced marriages of juvenile girls to adult males.
Oh, by the way, just provide Israel all the weapons they need – even nukes – and tell them, you are on your own; do what you think you must; but we American taxpayers will no longer send the money of our citizens into that black hole of a vipers nest of the ME.
Good riddance.
I would be interested in knowing whether anyone he spoke in Syria knew he was an Israeli and what their reaction was.
I suppose that nobody knew, otherwise it could spread and end BADLY.
What’s happening in Syria is just the tip of the iceberg. Sooner rather than latter the fire will spread. Most likely into Turkey. We just saw the border shelling between Syria and Turkey. As I said it before pay close to Turkey, and U.S.A election. I’m sure Syria, Russia and Iran are waiting for the next WH occupant. The question is What Obama or Romney do? when Turkish Kurds a.k.a PKK step up the attacks inside Turkey with the help of Assad and Putin. I’m sure Obama will try to help his body Erdoğan, As for Romney I have no idea, but I assume he has learned the Bush lesson. None of those people are America’s friends, and America does not have to clean up U.K’s WWI middle east mess.
Turks will get what they deserve if Putin makes sure their billion dollars or so worth of produce bound for Ashan and Perekrostiks in Moscow rots at the pier. You want to be NATO’s big man on the spot Erdogan be prepared to pay the price. Russian tourists can go to the Crimea or anywhere else besides Antalya.
And globalists who think you’re going to fight Assadists to the last Turk — the Turks aren’t that stupid to serve as your cannon fodder. They’ll revolt in liberal Instanbul as soon as the body bags start coming home from the Syrian border.
What’s happening here is what happened in former Yugoslavia in the 90′s. We are letting the world see what happens when the West (in truth the U.S.) decides to take a break from being Mommy and Daddy. Hard for the Syrians, but it’s proof that the old parable about the frog and the scorpion is the reality of politics in the Middle East.
Nope. The West is actively training and arming the rebels in Syria and obstructing negotiations by supporting extreme demands that Assad has to leave even before the negotiations start. With Western and Gulf support the trouble in Syria would have ended long ago.
The West played an important role in the Yugoslav conflict too. One of the main reasons some republics wanted to secede were promises of Western aid and EU membership. What made things even worse was an IMF cure so severe that the government couldn’t pay its salaries.
Why should we get involved: let them fight to exhaustion or extermination then see who has the true claim to legitimacy won by force of arms.
I am afraid the US likes mascots more than allies.
There is a big confusion in the above comments.People are mixing different ethnies, different branches of Islam under one banner.To state that they should all slit each other throat is stupid .We have to clearly identify our ennemies .The iran-backed shiites are our main ennemies .The shiite crescent is holding its ground in Syria.All the saudi-Quatari money does not make a big difference on the military balance wich is still heavily in favor of Assad.In front of them you see a coalition of fighters who are of all kinds.You can’t expect them to be Ivy league students .They belong to this area half tribal half urban, very backward in many aspects and that’s what allowed them to survive for 40 years the Assad brutality and that’s what now push them to fight .The inertia of Obama is flagrant despite having Saudi arabia its main ally plus Turkey deeply involved.I hope that once Romney is elected the USA will put more ressources against its number one ennemy the iran-backed shiite crescent.If Assad regime crumbles it will be a liberation for most of the syrians, most of the lebanese, most of the kurds,and it will show Teheran they are not the gorilla they imagine to be.
The main enemy are Arabs (sunni and shia), period, and increasingly Turkey (sunni). Recall that the muslim brotherhood is sunni as was OBL. Also, the PLO is sunni too.
Right now shia Iran and its proxies are duking it out in Syria vs. the sunni Arabs and Turkey.
This is merely a brief blip in the ultimate goals of the sunni or shia; the spread of radical islam across the entire world.
It can sort of be looked at like Hitler vs. Stalin; there were NO GOOD GUYS, NO friends of the USA – and that is the situation in the ME.
Frankly, it would be best if they all wage war on each other (it will come down to Turkey vs Iran) and they simply annihilate each other.
Turkey is no longer a friend of the USA and ALL the arab people and the Turks hate the USA with a passion.
Lets not repeat the mistake of WWII where the USA provided invaluable aid to the USSR instead of letting Stalin and Hitler destroy each other.
Let’s not help Turkey or Iraq (they hate us too), or anyone there (excepting Israel).
Let them just kill each other and good riddance.
Mr Rubin (hope things aren’t too bad BTW), it’s becoming difficult to know whom to support in Syria. The sanctimonious outrage from the sunnis, including Turkey, seems to be solely sectarian and political, not moral, and as in other newly-liberated arab states the cure is shaping up to be worse than the disease.
I can’t believe I’m suggesting this, but could Baby Assad, brutal grub and murderer that he is, be a better long-term shot than the unclear alternative? Assad and his alawites, for all their murderous brutality and cynical support of Iranian-style terrorism, were at least a known quantity, and he kept the lid on sectarian tensions.
When he is toppled, and the sunnis take over, won’t we see some score-settling with the alawites on a genocidal scale, followed by the dismal prospect of an islamist government?
Re:
” it’s becoming difficult to know whom to support in Syria.”
It’d seem that after the last decades of our very bloody and slowly more apparent futile involvement in Iraq/Afghanistan/Kuwait/Lebanon et al that we’d best stay away from direct ground support of any of those diverse factions of tribal/ethnic/religious animosities in West/Central/South Asia….as in the end we’re only temporarily of any use to any of those.
“Use”, of course, has its negative value as far as we Americans become involved because our fleeting utility depends solely upon that Dollar Hose and Open Spigots, and the flow-quantity therefrom.
Where is the gratitude, any word of genuine taqiyya-free “Thanks”,any…..pause for effect here…reciprocal benefit for us Americans?
The Brits were forced out, the French, then the Russians….next due out is our own youth.
Turkey as a N.A.T.O. ally is now out of the question after their refusing passage-routes over their land mass en route to our Central Asian deployments…..on and on and on.
So, “who to support” in Syria should be completely out of the question. We’ll never change the past centuries, nor the very bloody antagonisms of today. We’re spinning our wheels out there, and spending our most precious blood…..for what?
Completely agree, I was using the term “support” in a very abstract sense, more speculating whether Baby Assad, grub and murderer that he is, would be better than a dismal bunch of fanatical Sunni Islamists.
Iran Confirms It Has Troops On The Ground In Syria Michael Kelley | Aug. 28, 2012
http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-confirms-they-have-troops-on-on-the-ground-in-syria-2012-8