Category Archives: Israel

ISW – Comment on Saudi Arabia’s Heightened Profile in the Syrian Theater

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Qatar, Regions, Religion, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey

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(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia, a staunch opponent of President Bashar al-Assad since early in Syria’s conflict, began supplying anti-aircraft missiles to rebels “on a small scale” about two months ago, a Gulf source said on Monday.

Bakr, Amena.  “Saudi supplying missiles to Syria rebels: Gulf source.”  Reuters, June 17, 2013.

For those who value stability in the middle east, the least honest and most ruthless appear to be winning.

As the above quote suggests, Big Sunni Money plus the cultivation across many years of strategic and trade relationships in Great Britain, Europe, and the United States have put King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia not only into the fight in Syria but remarkably behind the NATO wheel.

Of course, this recent news (surfacing in the news) isn’t news at all to the businesses and states involved in Syria’s civil war, and it should be apparent to all onlookers that this double-track, double-story business of telling the public one story while facilitating another in private has brought us to the brink of a NATO vs. Russia confrontation in which Russia may now present a devilish gambit: better Assad and the continuing misery to be imposed by the dictatorship than the expansion of either Al Qaeda or Wahhabi Islam and the certain diminishing of nascent democracy, human dignity, and secular values in Syria accompanied by the heightening of tensions in Lebanon and,somewhere in the future, with Israel and the Jewish People.

To offset that impression, King Abdullah may have to back up the money with some combination of reassuring mouth and evidence of cultural and social evolution toward the contemporary in the Kingdom, certain injunctions of the Quran either notwithstanding or interpreted or aligned with a more free and liberal and greater western world.

Outlook

For the moment, if Iran’s nuclear program and global ambitions are the true target of the conflict in Syria, then the conflict and the human suffering plus political confusion driven by it, have yet some months to years to go.

In fact, the focusing of issues in the Syrian theater of a great portion of the drivers of the Islamic Small Wars  — i.e., rivalries of various sort: Al Qaeda and Wahhabi Islam; Sunni and Shiite Islam; democracy, secular dictatorship and theocracy; Iranian and Saudi Arabian competition for greater spheres of influence; even Putin’s possible issues with aggrandizement, control, and wealth on one hand and his own humanity, moderation, and strength in restraint on the other– bodes ill for constituents — worldwide — whose concerns may be more with family, security, and employment scaled down to a common denominator in the common humanity than with the triumph of a king or an ayatollah.  

It has been said that with the onset of war, nobody wins, and nowhere else across the killing fields of the Islamic Small Wars does that cynical sentiment seem more likely to be proven true than in Syria this day.

Reference

Al Arabiya.  “Saudi King Abdullah cuts holiday short due to ‘events in the region’.”  June 15, 2013.

Chulov, Martin.  “Threat of sectarian war grows in Syria as jihadists get anti-aircraft missiles.”  The Guardian, June 15, 2013.

Deasy, Kristin.  “Al Qaeda in Iraq defies global leader over relationship with Syria’s Al Nusra: Reports.” Global Post, June 15, 2013.

Henderson, Simon.  “Bahrain Rounds Up Organizers of Antigovernment Violence.”  Policy Alert, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, June 14, 2013:

Initially emulating uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world, the protests quickly divided along sectarian lines, pitting members of the majority Shiite population against the Sunni ruling family’s security forces. Since then, February 14 members have apparently engaged in near-nightly clashes with police, resulting in more than 100 dead and 2,000 injured among civilians and security personnel.

Osborn, Andrew and Amena Bakr.  “Putin, Obama face off over Syria; rebels get Saudi missiles.”  Reuters, June 17, 2013.

Reuters.  “Russia says it will not allow Syria no-fly zones.”  June 17, 2013.

Starr, Barbara, Holly Yan, Chelsea J. Carter.  “Analyst: Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria now best-equipped of the group.”  CNN, June 17, 2013.

Wintour, Patrick.  “Syria: Putin backs Assad and berates west over proposal to arm rebels.”  The Guardian, June 16, 2013.

Syria – Hezbollah at Qusayr

29 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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Additions

Item: Britain’s The Guardian appears to maintain a daily and continuously updated brief rolled out as a blog: “Rebel leader accuses Hezbollah of invading Syria — as it happened.”  Syria, Middle East Live, The Guardian, May 29, 2013 to midnight BST.

Item:

The talks have been marred by disagreement within the coalition over expanding its membership and appointing a new leadership. Lack of unity has threatened to rob the Islamist-dominated alliance of international support.

Oweis, Khaled Yacoub.  “Syrian opposition says peace talks must mean Assad exit.”  Reuters, May 29, 2013 at 1931H EDT.

Main

Gen Selim Idriss said that more than 7,000 fighters of the Lebanese Shia movement were taking part in attacks on the rebel-held town of Qusair.

The French foreign minister has estimated the number at 3,000-4,000.

BBC.  “Hezbollah fighters ‘invading’ Syria – rebel chief.”  May 29, 2013.

Have you ever felt like you were watching choreographed news after other news has swept the page?

WASHINGTON – The US State Department called on Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia on Wednesday to withdraw its fighters from Syria immediately, saying their involvement on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad signaled a dangerous broadening of the war.

Like, Dude, man, where’s the news?

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“Qusayr, Syria” will join the list of head-nodding names coming out of Syria’s civil war: “In addition to being capital of the al-Qusayr District, it is also the administrative center of the al-Qusayr nahiyah (“subdistrict”) which consisted of 60 localities with a collective population of 107,470 in 2004,” says Wikipedia.

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This split between war reporting and journaling and the clumsy efforts of governments to management perception has gotten a bit nutty.

Dude — I am so having  a Jeff Bridges kind of day . . . let’s call it The Big Lebowski meets Arlington Road  . . . plus maybe a little bit of Gonzo and ol’ Hunter — but we KNOW Hezbollah has joined the fray in Syria, that Israel, probably, has intercepted arms shipments (rockets, actually), and put out a hospital in the Golan:

The denunciation of health conditions on the Golan is particularly surreal: Syrians in Syria, where medical care of any kind is often simply unavailable, would be thrilled to get the same state-of-the-art care as their brethren on the Golan–where, as in East Jerusalem, Israeli law applies, entitling residents to the same services as all other Israelis.

But thanks to Israel, some of those Syrians actually are getting such care–which is doubtless Syrian President Bashar Assad’s real gripe. Israel has quietly set up a field hospital on the Golan where dozens of Syrians wounded in the civil war have been treated; others, who need more intensive care, have been transferred to regular Israeli hospitals.

Gordeon, Evelyn.  “Israel Treats Palestinians and Syrians–Over PA and Syria’s Objections.  Commentary, May 24, 2013.

That is just all so five days ago!

It’s nice, I suppose, for Washington to tell Hezbollah to get lost, but it’s like a bad movie with a British war ship announcing and firing a warning shot: you know it’s just for show and the ships will close, the canon will fire, and somebody’s going to be boarded.

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This hit the news two hours ago:

The Syrian army said it had seized the disused Dabaa military airfield north of Qusayr, giving pro-Assad forces control of all roads out of the town in a major setback for the besieged rebels.

A military source told AFP the battle for the airfield was fierce and lasted several hours. “The operation led to the liberation of the airport and the deaths of several men who were inside.

AFP.  “Hezbollah-led attack cuts off rebels in Syria’s Qusayr.”  Google, May 29, 2013.

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Syria – The Damage Done Uncovers New Themes

28 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Syria

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The Soviet Union had strategic interests in Syria ever since the mid-1960s. So does modern Russia. It is the largest advance base that Russia still has in the Middle East, and someone like Russian President Vladimir Putin would never give it up, certainly not for “humanitarian reasons,” and even more certainly when the Russians see a certain symmetry there, and believe that Israel is the most important US advance base in the region.

Eldar, Shlomi.  Al-Monitor, May 19, 2013.

Any still wearing rose-colored glasses will have taken them off after reading Shlomi Eldar‘s piece in Al-Monitor, which approaches the conflict in Syria with grim insight and fortitude.

The Christian Science Monitor heads its latest, “Why US must stop Russian missiles for Syria” with the after-the-colon remark, “Putin’s decision to send S-300 missiles to Syria shows an amoral strategic move by Russia.  It also shows up a lack of Western moral concern for the slaughter in Syria” (May 28, 2013).

I don’t agree with that last note — it’s not the lack of “Western moral concern” underscored by Putin’s decision to strengthen Assad’s defensive array, but rather the first conclusion spelled by the Monitor’s editorial board, the authors of the piece: “amoral strategic move by Russia.”

Even with that I’m going to niggle, for with Putin, “amoral” may mean also for Putin “asocial” — neither for nor against others but without feeling.  Further along that axis one bumps into another Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) classification — “Antisocial Personality Disorder“, not that I wish to go there on this.

Call them autocrats, dictators, “kleptocrats”, presidents-for-life, appeals to true or genuine ethical and moral concern fall flat, for the sufferers and their suffering may be for the Mugabe types emotionally invisible: the dead, displaced, and injured may have presence, but that presence registers would seem overlooked in policy, the overt aim of which may be to sustain control — the “upper hand” as it were — in a political or social situation while defending the combined emotional and social region in which the personality lives and the supply it obtains from it.

Among the great templates in literature laying out for adults and children the character of the power weilded by a narcissistic personality, I would perhaps place “The Emperor’s New Clothes” first and foremost.  While impressions easily focus on the power of the emperor to inspire pandering and elicit outright lies (about this “clothes” sewn with invisible threads), one might note also the emperor’s need for that level of adulation, attention, and control.

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Wikiversity.  “Dissocial personality disorder”.

Note: the deeper the swimming, the more complex and sophisticated the science, but perhaps also the less applicable to casual discussion in political science.  I’ll take conjecture on this theme a littler further: psychology focuses on mind in the individual experience and life.  That’s enough for scope — and it’s certainly territory rich enough for tens of thousands of lifetimes spent in research and clinical service.

Psychology proper may leave outside its domain the cultural, political, and ramifications of the expression of individual character, condition, and personality.

Here on the World Wide Web, it may be enough to note that being a broadly empowered witness to the destruction of 92,000 lives and the substantial disruption of 3.5 million lives (those internally displaced or made refugee by way of Syria’s conflict) has elicited a very different global response not only from Russia and NATO, which constituent cultures have a great deal in common today, but also a sharp difference in global expectations about each: while Russia attends to the defense of a brutal dictatorship and NATO drags its heels on intervention on behalf of an Islamic culture laced with Al Qaeda types, the world seems to put the onus for Syria’s tragedy on NATO, and that may be because it knows that the NATO states and leadership in general care deeply for the humanity involved, and it does so with less regard for its own interests — so children whine to the parent who might do them some good.

Hidden behind the conflict in Syria is not a Cold War conflict with remnant Soviet totalitarian ideology or even with Russian culture and its zeitgeist except in this one dimension repeated in history, from czars to commisars: the ascendance of permanent authorities with sweeping powers and a minimum of concern for the despairing and subjugated within their constituencies.

Are either callousness or caring within persons and communities “motivated” by biology and evolution, or are they emphasized in culture and through language behavior within families passed from one generation to the next?

Stay tuned.

We’re going to find out because with the Internet full up and a war on, Russians are here too and may be counted on to weigh in with their ethical outlooks, perceptions, and wishes in regard to the unfolding Syrian Civil War.

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Additional Reference

Carbonnel, Alissa de.  “Disputes over arms for Syria cloud Russian peace drive.”  Reuters, May 28, 2013.

Erlanger, Steven.  “Europeans Say Lifting Syria Arms Embargo Puts Pressure on Russia.”  The New York Times, May 28, 2013.

Hausmann, Joanna.  “Israel to Strike Russian Weapon Shipments to Syria: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.”  Heavy, May 28, 2013.

The Voice of Russia.  “Moscow says message exchange between Putin, Obama gave impetus to missile shield consultations.”  May 28, 2013.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees.  “UNHCR Turkey Syrian Refugee Daily Sitrep 20 May 2013.”  Reliefweb, May 20, 2013.

Syria – Phantom Ghost of the Cold War

26 Sunday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, Regions, Syria, Turkey

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One of the Middle East experts that has disappointed me was Daniel Pipes, who has suggested overlooking the bloodbath in Syria and allowing both sides to destroy each other. In a TV interview, he restated his policy, suggesting that the West should back Assad, and keep Syrians killing each other.

Tezyapar, Sinem.  “Turkey and Israel Should Intervene in Syria.”  The Jewish Press, May 26, 2013.

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While many following Syria’s destabilization focus on NATO and Russian military exercises in the region and their relationship to Iran’s looming nuclear capability, few, it seems, care to focus more exclusively on Russia’s Soviet and post-Soviet relationship with the Assad regime, President Putin’s partial realignment with Israel — alternatively, a shifting away from Iran — and his commitment to the fulfillment of Russian defense deliveries, including, recently, surface-to-air and surface-to-ship missiles, that sustain the Assad military while keeping NATO at bay in Syria.

Syria presents a difficult puzzle, one whose possibilities include Obama and Putin (Pipes may only watch) colluding to drain through Syria Iran’s financial and military strength.

Whether that’s what they’re doing while reprising Cold War posturing, I have no idea, but whether so or not, that’s what’s happening: Russian defense contracts have been fulfilled with Iranian financial support; Hezbollah has mobilized in Syria; and Syria as the state it was two years ago has failed and can never return to its former state of affairs, and that partially guaranteed by Maher Al-Assad’s propensity for shooting, bombing, and perhaps gassing noncombatants; and such as Qatar have already replaced Syria’s embassy with a compound ready for revolutionaries who make it.

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Syria may also be surveyed from the future: what’s in it for whom among the outside forces?

If Qatar picks up a state under Sunni sway, where would that leave Putin who, in light of the experience in Chechnya, has zero interest in allowing or encouraging other than a predominantly secular state on his flank? What’s in the Syrian rebel mix today certainly isn’t working for Vlad.

Given the U.S. experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, an enthused NATO intervention, much less one irritating Russian forces (again, if they’re genuinely deployed for Russo-NATO confrontation), may not have much to recommend in relation to the mixed results associated with experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

Israel and NATO may have broad democratic and humanitarian interests in ameliorating the disaster in Syria, but, as suggested elsewhere on this blog, I think the true target in the region is Iran and its nuclear weapons program, and while the Obama Administration on the surface seems to be urging Putin to pressure the Assad regime out of business, it’s Putin who, colloquially, holds the cards, starting with Syria’s status as a Russian buffer and client.

Only God knows how Putin’s going to “work Syria” so that it works not only for Russian long-term interests but for his own greater glory and historic reputation as well.

* * *

I’m leaving the whole video alone here, but remarks on the Syrian Civil War start at about 14:00.

Daniel Pipes: “I don’t want to see anyone win here.  They’re disastrous, they’re horrid.  They’re both engaged in war crimes . . . I shudder to think what it would be like were the rebels to take over Damascus . . . it would be as bad if not worse than the Assad regime.”

Pipes to Newsmax on Syrian Civil War: ‘I Want Both Sides to Lose’.  NewsmaxTV, April 3, 2013.

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Russian S-300s Reach Syria – So?

22 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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1. Russian diplomats leaked to the London-based Arab press a report that the S-300 missiles had already arrived in Syria. According to Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Moscow had delivered 200 launchers (probably missiles) and the Syrian missile teams already knew how to use them.

By this leak, the Israeli prime minister was being informed that his journey to Sochi was a waste of time and that the use of S-300 missiles for shooting down Israeli Air Force planes was no longer controlled by Moscow but by Damascus.

DEBKAfile.  “Putin again warns Netanyahu hands off Syria.”  May 14, 2013.

Guilt of parlaying and recycling old news myself, I’m tiring of continuing, but then again, this may be the fate of bloggers watching the world from the Internet’s Second Row Seat to History.

The cool thing: we can gather a lot awfully fast.

Israel Hayom reports an S-300 missile range of 200-Km.

Obama’s attempts to lure Putin into Syria by threatening him with a strengthened Islamist presence on his flank — another Chechnya in its anarchic potential — have gotten an answer by way of the fulfillment of the S-300 procurement: without “stepping in it”, Putin’s latest delivery of surface-to-air missiles to the Assad regime discourages the greater encouragement of revolutionary fervor and anarchy in contested Syria.

If the Assad regime holds out, consolidates its military’s control of military assets, and blocks or destroys its adversaries, democratic revolutionaries and Al-Qaeda types both, Putin wins, sort of — he’ll have to live with history noting him as one who chose to continue supporting a brutal dictatorship; if the Assad’s hold on power continues to fall apart, ah, then those SAMs may fall into hands swayed by the deepest animus toward Israel and the west.

In chess — along with wine, another of Persia’s great refinements — this would be known to the party confronted by the move as a “fork”, which I should think not far from the other “F” word.

FTAC – Fast Note on Syria Dark Star

14 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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One alternative hypothesis: NATO has been trying to goad Putin into taking ownership of what is a long-neglected Russian client, i.e., update the relationship in the post-Soviet era. That didn’t happen. Instead, with the gates to an unbridled capitalism open, the family picked up all the chips it could get and Russian business and military plus oligarchs got something out of the new deal too — just the people got screwed.

Cultural attitudes and beliefs have independent political effects. Whether with the Baloch or Syria, altruistic intervention and sacrifice demand a goodness within and an outcome in goodness achieved as perceived by those who would help. For both Russian and NATO interests, outcomes leading to continuing dictatorship or religious fascism, the prospect of either, keep the superpowers both at bay and apart. Where are the people other people would want to put into power?

That’s where the hesitation is.

The world would rather put $1 billion in the pot for UNHCR than produce a unified response in Syria. However, the conflict is so awful and wrong in so many ways, it’s sucking energy into it — first the wave of democratic revolutionaries, then the sectarian fighters and extremists, then the more powerful states of the world who can’t figure out how to approach it or organize it or help it organize itself in a way that has more positive effects for Israel, frankly, and the region in its totality.

In its most dismal aspect, Syria is reflective of a war in the head, essentially, and of its integration in regional and international states of affairs. A disaster, a dark star, a sucking black hole that holds and pulls in killers while displacing its population (82,000 casualties to date; 3.4 million IDPs and refugees to date).

I don’t know if any of this expressing make any difference at all.

Six million dead in the Holocaust (please, don’t deny it).

Three-point-four million homeless today in relation to Syria’s civil war.

Those are big numbers around which to wrap our heads.

I can barely imagine what it must feel like to wake up as, say, UNHCR staff responsible for drawing up plans and a budget for some portion of the millions of souls for whom Syria has failed to provide basic security.

The Jews know every life has its legend and know this no less so for Syrians, but heroic altruism necessarily stalls at the wall of hate and cannot do much beyond attending to the closest injured.

http://unitedwithisrael.org/seven-syrian-refugees-treated-in-hospital-in-northern-israel/

Humanity has fled Syria.

One hopes it will rediscover its better aspects soon, but then I type naturally with rose-colored glasses.

ICG Latest Report – “Too Close for Comfort: Syrians in Lebanon”

13 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Israel, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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Syria’s conflict is dragging down its neighbours, none more perilously than Lebanon. Beirut’s official policy of “dissociation” – seeking, by refraining from taking sides, to keep the war at arm’s length – is right in theory but increasingly dubious in practice. Porous boundaries, weapons smuggling, deepening involvement by anti-Syrian-regime Sunni Islamists on one side and the pro-regime Hizbollah on the other, and cross-border skirmishes, all atop a massive refugee inflow, implicate Lebanon ever more deeply in the conflict next door.

http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/egypt-syria-lebanon/lebanon/141-too-close-for-comfort-syrians-in-lebanon.aspx

Full report PDF

Also in the news this morning:

DAMASCUS — The Syrian information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, said Sunday that President Bashar Assad’s troops have the right to enter the Israeli-occupied Golan whenever they wish, a veiled threat toward Israel to stay out of Syria’s conflict.

‘‘The Golan is Syrian Arab territory and will remain so, even if the Israeli army is stationed there,’’ Zoubi said at a news conference. “We have the right to go in and out of it whenever we want and however we please,’’ he said.

Fightin’ words!

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2013/05/12/syria-warning-israel-declares-troops-have-right-enter-golan/Q9ePJVWpn6ZJpphLauzNJK/story.html

Assad has lost Syria, for these overtures signal a madness that knows it cannot do good — cannot take care of the country, the countryside, the economy, or the people — but it might feel better if it could destroy something even as it destroys itself.

With that last sentence, I have not been merely rhetorical.

On the world map, Syria remains a country. On the ground, it has devolved into a battlefield warred over by sectarian fiefdoms, guerrilla outfits, extremist militias, criminal gangs and a regime clinging grimly to its dwindling sources of power and legitimacy.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/03/15/the-destruction-of-a-nation-syrias-war-revealed-in-satellite-imagery/#ixzz2TC2ioknb

If you click on the above URL, you will see what war looks like on the face of the earth when viewed from outer space.  Included in the remote sensing comparisons: Damascus, Homs, Daryya, Aleppo.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Source: Wikipedia. “Ozmandias”.

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