MENA, MENA, Tekel, Parsin (Middle East, North Africa & other Geopolitical Hotspots) 2018

i don't disagree w/ you and i'm also skeptical of what a sunni ruling coalition would look like but it's a bit reductive to describe the entire rebellion as Al-Q or ISIS. especially earlier in the war we had other options if we wanted to promote them. the war didn't start because of religious protests, it started bc of secular protests demanding democratic reforms.

― Mordy, Wednesday, April 11, 2018 2:05 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh yes I take your point, but it seems like it quickly evolved into something that was dominated by Sunni Islamists. You read reports of the FSA - which was the putative moderate rebel force in western imagination - having sharia law police in areas they control, and, such as in that Cockburn piece I posted upthread, calling (Sunni) Kurds "infidels" because they're not radical islamists

I think you might have read the wrong things, jiv. And that Cockburn piece described things that happened this January.

I think you might have read the wrong things, jiv.

Helpful !

And that Cockburn piece described things that happened this January.

― Frederik B, Wednesday, April 11, 2018 2:26 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, I am using it as a possible example of the FSA as it currently operates.

I don't know what you've read. But I have a cousin who worked with Syrian refugees, and what you're saying doesn't fit the stories I've heard. You're saying that article shows how the FSA currently operates, sure, but that doesn't mean it 'quickly evolved' into that, nor that it was inevitable that it would turn out that way. Except that with the West refusing to help anyone while support flowed in from Saudi Arabia and Iran, it should be no surprise that religious fanatics came to dominate both sides. I'm not certain that's a compelling argument against western involvement, though.

Me: I've asked you several times for your own ideas about what sorts of actions would be effective to stop or mitigate the situation?

Fred's first idea of what to do:As to what Obama should have done differently...he should have retaliated militarily.

So, your first step would be to alter the past?

Fred's second idea of what to do:Things that should be part of leftist foreign policy: First and foremost financial reform aimed at limiting the ability of dictators and kleptocrats to move assets out of their own country.

This would be nice. It has very little to do with the Syrian War under discussion, and it would never have prevented Assad from using chemical weapons, but it is a nice thought.

Fred's next suggestion: With regard to Syria, among things that should be on the table is putting pressure on Turkey and Russia to limit their involvement, and support to the Kurds in their fight for autonomy.

Ah! Putting pressure on Russia! Why has no one thought of that? And on Turkey, too! And, I might point out that "limiting their involvement" is a great goal. Seeing how any limit would qualify, I think we've already attained that end. Victory is ours.

Oh, and 'supporting Kurdish independence' gets a nod. In Iraq? In Iraq and Syria? In Iraq, Syria and Turkey? Or some other combination? And I guess you're fine with Turkey leaving NATO and cultivating closer ties to the Putin, too. Or perhaps we should intervene militarily to prevent that, too?

All in all, as fine a set of irrelevant solutions to the Syrian Civil War as I've seen anywhere. Because the chances are damn good that none of these would make a dent on that war aside from massive military intervention on the scale of Iraq, or even greater, since under 200,000 boots on the ground were insufficient to pacify the country.

Well, at least I guess I should be thankful for your bullshit response instead of just straight up lying about me having written anything.

I don't know what you've read. But I have a cousin who worked with Syrian refugees, and what you're saying doesn't fit the stories I've heard. You're saying that article shows how the FSA currently operates, sure, but that doesn't mean it 'quickly evolved' into that, nor that it was inevitable that it would turn out that way. Except that with the West refusing to help anyone while support flowed in from Saudi Arabia and Iran, it should be no surprise that religious fanatics came to dominate both sides. I'm not certain that's a compelling argument against western involvement, though.

― Frederik B, Wednesday, April 11, 2018 3:17 PM (forty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've read widely, mainly academic journals, broadsheets and magazines. And eschewing the RT, Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek side of things. The islamicization of the opposition is at least several years old by now as far as I can tell. But I'm glad you have heard some things.

x-post: It's mostly sophistry and facile objections, but yeah, at least not straight up lies. Except for the 'supporting Kurdish independence' in quotes, as if I wrote that. No, I said support the fight for autonomy, obviously I meant in Syria. What, you think we should throw them under the bus and let them be massacred because of different fights in other countries? And yeah, if Turkey leaves NATO, that's probably for the best in the long run. The musketeer oath doesn't really work with autocratic regimes with a tendency to invade neighboring countries and oppress ethnic minorities. The reason we're not doing that, throwing Turkey out of NATO, probably has a lot more to do with the fact that Turkey helps with keeping refugees out of Europe in nefarious ways, not really a noble nor leftist goal anyway.

And yeah, the Islamization is several years old, but the war began in 2011, jim. You're not really making a case for me trusting you over people who work with Syrians.

I'm not asking you to trust me, I'm asking you to maybe do some reading.

sadlol. I assure you, neither widely reading, watching documentaries about Syria for work, nor talking to family members who work with Syrians, has led to any at all credible suggestions that there was 'sharia law' in places like Aleppo.

You'll be telling us next you are Syrian.

Except if with 'sharia law' you mean stuff like islamic inspired divorce courts, which, yeah, sure, I guess that could have been happening.

BREAKING Greek fighter jet crashed in Greece on its way to airbase after dog fight with Turkish aircraft https://t.co/sk3WeN5u1J

— AIRLIVE (@airlivenet) April 12, 2018

Hellas Kipris! *dons armour, books flight to Larnaca*

sadlol. I assure you, neither widely reading, watching documentaries about Syria for work, nor talking to family members who work with Syrians, has led to any at all credible suggestions that there was 'sharia law' in places like Aleppo.

― Frederik B, Wednesday, April 11, 2018 4:36 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/islamic-law-comes-to-rebel-held-syria/2013/03/19/b310532e-90af-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8e05265c316d

Introduction of Islamic courts common in areas taken over jointly by FSA and Nusra, since 2012.

The fact that you use 'sharia law' to describe what that article says mostly just makes me think you're a bit islamophobic, honestly.

Simply put, 'sharia' is half of Islam ('sufi' being the other part) and just relates to rules on how to live your life. It's absolutely unsurprising that an oppressed Sunni majority would turn to religious principles to help govern once secular law breaks down. The uproar over it was really, really islamophobic.

As I said:

Except if with 'sharia law' you mean stuff like islamic inspired divorce courts, which, yeah, sure, I guess that could have been happening.

― Frederik B, 12. april 2018 01:39 (fourteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Juan Cole's take-- here's part of it

https://www.juancole.com/2018/04/reverse-syrian-gloating.html

The Trump administration and the May government in the UK seem poised to launch missile strikes on Syria in the near future. It probably won’t matter.

The Syrian regime figures it can take the punishment, which is likely to consist of another set of one-off missile strikes similar to those launched on the Shuayrat Base in spring of 2017 after a chemical weapons attack by the regime in Khan Sheykhoun. Syrian and Iranian troops are said to be quietly deserting major air force bases, temporarily relocating outside them, in anticipation of the strikes.

The Syrian regime has all but won the civil war. It has all the major cities–Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia, Homs, and even Hama. It controls what the French colonialists used to call “useful Syria,” the band of fertile land stretching from Damascus to the north in the west of the country. While it has lost the ten percent of the population that is Kurds in the northeast, the Syrian Kurds are not regime enemies and likely will be forced into an alliance with Damascus over time in the face of attacks by Turkey and by fundamentalist Arab militias backed by Turkey.

ISIL has been largely defeated as a territorial force, though it holds out in some small pockets in the east.

And it reveals Syrian, Russian and Iranian thinking. The war aim has been achieved and the lives of Syrian special operations forces (who are limited in number) were preserved. The little kids with white foam around their mouths, eyes staring lifelessly, were collateral damage.

it's not collateral damage when they are the intended target. the point of chemical weapons is to break the resistance. collateral damage is when you're targeting soldiers and hit civilians. the "little kids with white foam around their mouths, eyes staring lifelessly" is the intent.

i guess i'm not surprised juan cole is confused on this point. he never really seemed to understand the difference between incidental/regrettable civilian loss of life and intentional targeting of civilians (or if he did he never really seemed to think it constituted a real distinction).

The fact that you use 'sharia law' to describe what that article says mostly just makes me think you're a bit islamophobic, honestly.

― Frederik B, Thursday, April 12, 2018 7:39 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sha·ri·a
SHəˈrēə/Submit
noun
Islamic canonical law based on the teachings of the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet (Hadith and Sunna), prescribing both religious and secular duties and sometimes retributive penalties for lawbreaking. It has generally been supplemented by legislation adapted to the conditions of the day, though the manner in which it should be applied in modern states is a subject of dispute between Islamic fundamentalists and modernists.

you fucking imbecile

i used the word sharia to refer to something which is referred to by the people who run it as Hayaa al-Sharia. what an islamophobe i am. fuck me

Lol. You're trying to prove your not an Islamophobe by proving you use an English definition of an Arabic word. Good on you.

And the islamophobic part was you using the term in all it's negative connotations.

you are beneath contempt

And oh yeah, only listening to what extremist Muslims say Islamic terms are is often a sign of islamophobia as well. There is nothing inherently negative in 'sharia'. It's like saying talmudic law or something.

I know what sharia is, you clod. I'd suggest that maybe the version of sharia meted out by a literal Al-Qaeda affiliate may be extreme, but that's just a crazy hunch

there are also some elements that are present in all version of islamic law which are inherently negative tbh.

i think calling ppl islamophobic is kinda shit arguing and i do think that pointing out that religious law is indicative of general trends is not irrelevant when weighing the fundamentalism of a movement against potential secularism (and i'd say the same about a militant jewish movement that established beis din courts) but fred has a[n important] point in that using muslim legal code does not in itself make a group synonymous with Al-Q or ISIS. they could use elements of Sharia Law and not be fundamentalist terrorists (and really expecting a total repudiation of religion is a bit of a reach for any group, even if you'd hope - as i would - that with early Western intervention secular proponents could've spearheaded the resistance). it's relevant but it's not dispositive.

jim you were the guy flirting with the idea that chemical attacks were false flags by the civil defense. you also seemed to take some bullshit realpolitik stance because you don't want your family bombed by islamist terrorists? and you're smearing the entire opposition movement as bloodthirsty dangerous islamists when the regime forces have killed two orders of magnitude more people Syria. I'm comfortable calling you an islamophobe.

but please post more patrick cockburn & give us more of your reasonablist analysis

go fuck yourself

jim you were the guy flirting with the idea that chemical attacks were false flags by the civil defense.

Assad has chemical weapons, he likely used them on civilians the other day, as he has in the past. I would prefer some sort of independent verification, if possible, before escalating western military activities in response to this, especially given that the evidence for these attacks having happened was at first purely videos created by groups that operate under the aegis of Nusra.

you also seemed to take some bullshit realpolitik stance because you don't want your family bombed by islamist terrorists?

umm, not being sure that we should actively aid groups that want to kill us is, i dunno, a really defensible stance imo?

Smearing the entire opposition movement
by referring to the fact that islamist groups have been an integral part of the opposition since at least 2012 and that the FSA - a protean group made up of many rival factions with no effective central command and which has collaborated with Nusra since the latter's inception - has islamist components? These things are just true.

Also: im an islamophobe for, in your eyes, being unfair to the syrian opposition. the other side in this war are also muslims, including large numbers of Shia islamists

is Obama an islamophobe? As it's likely that he didn't directly intervene in the conflict, or do more to arm the opposition, largely based on these same considerations

bamcquern obviously otmimo. But jim's freudian slip was when he wrote this: The islamicization of the opposition is at least several years old by now as far as I can tell. Islam in and of itself is scary.

fuck up, frederik. isn't there an american politics thread for you to lecture the americans on? or give the viewpoint of women and POC? worst fucking wank on here since Gabbneb was banned.

I think accusing other ILXors of Islamophobia, or disabilism, or whatever, is really nagl.

It also really couldn't be further from the mark.

But yes jumping on my use of "Islamicization", rather than "Islamization" - which I've seen pro-opposition writers from Syria use - is a real gotcha. Well done.

ah yes, the dreaded Freudian slip, where one's inmost secret opinions are suddenly revealed by substituting an entirely different word from what one intended. except that's not what jim did. he used a word and fred interpreted it in the most prejudicial way possible and used this interpretation to attribute motives and opinions to jim that it is in no way clear jim holds. good work there.

A Fredian Slip.

It also really couldn't be further from the mark.

Resorting to, I should have said.

you fuck yourself, JIM IN VANCOUVER. you've made yourself clear you're more worried about islamic terrorists than you are about the hundreds of thousands killed by regime forces and the millions displaced by the war. Are you worried about refugees, too? Are you worried that among the quarter of the total Syrian population who are displaced outside its borders that there will be a terrorist who kills your family members?

We know who is killing whom from tabulations by the VDC, the syrian network for human rights, HRW, et al. We also have a pretty good idea who is fighting ISIS, and by percentages of engagements the regime seems to lag significantly behind both the kurds and the opposition forces.

B-b-but terrorists. B-b-but Sharia law.

who cares if there are "islamist" components of fuckall? I'm more worried about war crimes, genocide, murderous sieges than I am about "islamism." Do civilians not matter? Do the disappeared? Do the tortured? Do you only recognize military forces and their compromises, their (completely disproportionate) crimes, their ideological impurity, their jockying for position?

anyway, yes, you are an islamophobe and your weird ass sectarian appeals don't change that. you're making bizarro neocon arguments, but from the left. because you argue non-interventionism, you think you've put forth a rational position that stakes out some panglossian nightmare future for Syria, like, welp, what can you do, a few million refugees, a few hundred thousand killed, what better outcome could we have expected?

suggesting that the civil defense fakes evidence is NAGL

or that they're basically al nusra? or whatever the fuck jim believes?

you're a fucking idiot

i grew up in a refugee household, my dad was a torture victim, and some of his friends were murdered by the dictatorship in his country. i more than empathize with people who are victims of the Assad regime - which is far worse than than the regime my dad fled.

I haven't written one single line which has said that the Assad regime isn't really fucking awful, or that they aren't responsible for the majority of the deaths in Syria. I have only written the most basic fucking obvious things that one should think about when talking about intervention: what is the outcome going to be? What is the end-game? Your emotional screeds aren't going to change that, you sack

Can we stop calling jim in vancouver an islamophobe plz