Category Archives: Middle East

As Pearl Around a Grain of Sand

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Regions, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Video on how pearls are formed Naturally – YouTube – 1/3/2012.

” . . . a tapestry of light and color.”

Keep that in mind.

______

“With its actions and way of thinking, the ISIL proved to all Arabs and Muslims that it is just a collection of sick individuals who love murder and blood without thought or specific identity,” said political analyst Zuhair Abbas al-Anzi, professor at the University of Anbar in Ramadi.

Al-Qaeda brings suffering, hardship to Syrians and Iraqis: activists | Al-Shorfa – 1/14/2014.

Related: Fallujah residents set to return: Anbar governor | Al-Shorfa – 2/5/2014.

Today’s notice in al-Shorfa leaves much to be desired even if “clear, accurate, and complete”: it’s a little ahead of the story, perhaps as cocky as it may be encouraging.

Related: Al-Qaeda affiliate’s tactics in Syria reminiscent of Afghanistan’s Taliban | Al-Shorfa – 2/5/2014.

That last citation goes on to this contemporary sentiment:

The group’s statements distort Islam and alienate people from the religion, she said.

“With statements like these, ISIL is killing the revolution, for Islam is a religion of forgiveness, tolerance, amity, acceptance of others and respect for all religions,” Nawfal said. “It was never a religion of killing, intimidation or restriction of worshipers’ livelihoods and freedom, nor is it a religion of slaughter, hate or deception.

“It is a religion for all mankind, not a particular group,” she added.

I’ve chosen to respect the sentiment even though a host of anti-Jihad sites like Answering Muslims: The Islamoblog of Acts 17 Apologetics remain but a mouse-click distant in time.

The way one feels about a religion, especially one’s own, may differ from the expression in history of it, but the contemporary personal interpretation nonetheless would seem to express the attitude and beliefs possessed today and put to the test by Muslim security forces throughout the range of the Islamic Small Wars, essentially confirming the presence and strength of modern views.

Alternatively stated: the various flavors and strains of Islamic legacy have their sway if not in scripture and tradition as promoted or enforced by zealots then in the actual preferences in behavior and tastes embraced by greater Muslim societies according to other cultural legacies (like the Pashtunwali) or aesthetic or sentimental values (e.g., Sufism and the poetry of Persian theologian Rumi).

On this blog, I continue to endorse “shimmer“, the idea that the conflict table — the basis for moral entrepreneurship — may loom large, but the assembly developed on top of it is actually small, by comparison, and largely rejected, or most Muslim-majority states would be strict sharia states instead of confused amalgams of autocratic and archaic practices and contemporary make-do laws.  While the personifications of excessive pride and vanity in malignant leaders and their followers attempt to leverage the Qur’anic script (see this blogs comment on programming and scripting) for themselves, or, more accurately, use the template to deal themselves their own self-aggrandizing and glorious role in lives, those caught unluckily in their path struggle mightily to repulse or contain them.

Not the first time have I used this metaphor: as a grain of sand may be to an oyster, so “the terrorists”, so hard to define at times, so painfully present at times, may inspire their own worlds to work around them, envelope them, and vanish them in another more formidable, more beautiful, more radiant peace.

# # #

“How to Build the New Syria” – Two Videos

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Teenage refugee won’t give up on Syria – YouTube – 2/4/2014

CNN Source: Teenage refugee won’t give up on Syria – 2/4/2014.

* * *

Syria’s Lost Generation: The Plight of the Youngest Refugees – YouTube – 15:00 – 1/24/2014.

* * *

Syria offers a three-front conflict zone, and it’s all a bit clouded: Assad vs Idris vs ISIS (more or less).

What appears to be missing, although we know where the displaced and refugee may be in general terms, is the military force of the humane, moderate, and reasoning.  That category was to have been filled by General Salim Idris, but such a conceptual slot seems not to have translated well to the Syrian country-wide realpolitik of autonomous bands and militia — “loose and roaming energy” one might call that.

The two videos presented tell a side of the Syrian Civil War evident in political reality but absent of military representation while the field features “the brutal dictator” on one side and the horrifying al-Qaeda affiliates (in spirit if not in organizational fact) on the other.

With perhaps Putin’s input, to which none in the snoopy notebook class have privy, Assad holds the anti-al-Qaeda position and despite the regime’s own horrific spree of bombings and assaults on noncombatant Syrians, and may find favor on that most morally twisted (wrong actions, right direction) “high ground”.

It’s hard to imagine Assad staying given what millions of Syrians must know about him by way of their own personal losses — and the manner of those losses — but it has yet to dawn on the suffering that Syria may (must) be their fight too: the UN may step in only with the familiar “humanitarian assistance”; NATO and the west haven’t much truck with Assad and can’t seem to get Idris to steal the show; Putin doesn’t seem to care about humanity so much, but he could intervene, making a great grandstanding play of magnanimous post-Soviet Russian humanism during the Winter Olympics at Sochi (wait and see but don’t hold your breath); and “the Islamists” have quite a program — the most dismal on earth — in store for all who fail to impede them.

Additional Reference

Understanding Syria: From Pre-Civil War to Post-Assad – William R. Polk – The Atlantic – 12/10/2013.

# # #

Fallujah – Waiting; Baghdad – Hit Again

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

When the Iraqi Army withdrew from the major cities of Anbar in December in the wake of continued protests against their heavy-handed tactics, ISIS insurgents predictably poured down their familiar rat lines from Syria to join local insurgents in capturing the strategic cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. The horror that al-Qaeda has thrived on in Syria now constitutes its vision for Iraq.

Can Another ‘Anbar Awakening’ Save Iraq? – Defense One – 2/3/2014.

* * *

Analysts say that after a year-long crackdown by Maliki’s forces, tribal leaders in overwhelmingly Sunni Anbar province have set aside deep-rooted grievances with the Shiite-dominated regime to help Maliki crush the jihadists, possibly because he has promised some political concessions.

Given the increasingly autocratic Maliki’s track record of refusing to give the minority Sunnis a stake in running the country, imprisoning their political leaders or driving them into exile, he’s now asking them to help him to sort out a crisis for which he is at least partly to blame himself.

Maliki Girds for Fallujah Assault, Stakes Are High for Iraq – 2/4/2014.

It appears that while Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki may have the reflexes of a dictator, and so expressed those through his manner of using force in the past year, he may not have the want of power, callous and self-aggrandizing, as a dictator would have it.  He has perhaps found the weakness in the role of elected official but also discovered the opportunity for greater strength in meaningful and committed coalition.

______

(CNN) — At least 25 people were killed and 30 others injured in three bombings that hit the Iraqi capital on Wednesday morning, Baghdad police officials said.

Iraq: Deadly car and suicide bombings rock Baghdad – CNN.com – 2/5/2014.

“While CNN is departing its current brick-and-mortar location in Baghdad, the network continues to maintain an editorial presence in Iraq through a dedicated team of CNN stringers and correspondent assignments as news warrants,” a CNN spokesperson confirms in a statement.

CNN Shutters Baghdad Bureau, the Last U.S. TV News Bureau in Iraq – TVNewser – 5/30/2014.

While I / we — or perhaps just me, it’s hard to tell — wait for news of an Iraqi military assault on ISIS fighters inside Fallujah, one might ask what happened to the “big media” news

CNN pulled it bureau out of Iraq in this still tense sector of the Islamic Small Wars.

That American troops have returned from the war zone might well demote the relevance of coverage to Americans, who in any case may be wondering what’s next now that the Superbowl is over and it’s still a long way to springtime, but the war persists and remains relevant to the world and a now worldwide readership for whom state boundaries may mean a lot less than the ethical, moral, religious, and political fissures that cross-cross our “small blue dot” of a planet.

* * *

In his weekly speech on Wednesday, Maliki said “We do not want to harm the civilians and wish them to come back home soon where the battle with terrorism will end soon” . . . .

Maliki assures end of military operations in Fallujah soon – IraqiNews.com – 2/5/2014.

What battle?

Which is not to say that the al-Maliki’s comforting words need to presage conventional fighting or that the same needs to be seen: arrests may take place quietly; fighters may refuse the fight offered; in fact, the mafia processes — “God mob” tactics — on which such as ISIS rely do “the battle” in minds, not fields, consigning so much state-owned firepower and manpower to at least temporary irrelevance.

* * *

(Baghdad) – The execution-style killing of four members of Iraq’s SWAT forces, apparently by the ISIS armed group, is the latest atrocity in a campaign of widespread and systematic murder that amounts to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today.

Iraq: Execution of SWAT Forces Furthers Crimes Against Humanity – 2/5/2014.

Related: Iraq: Execution of SWAT Forces Furthers Crimes Against Humanity | Human Rights Watch – 2/5/2014

The story dates back to a January 20, 2014 incident near Ramadi.  The breaking story appears to be about what Human Rights Watch has to say about it.

* * *

As noted the last time I blogged, as a casual web-based observer, “Fallujah is dark” — not the spy novelist’s phrase for destroyed (e.g., ominously, “Moscow is dark”) but rather a comment about information: we know from common online news coverage that Fallujah has been ringed by state military, that some 35,000 families have been displaced, probably temporarily for once, that war machinery and materiel have been delivered to Iraqi forces, and that some kind of invasion of Fallujah is imminent but, perhaps, also difficult in design and navigation: any irregular at any time may cache his weapons, exchange his costume, and swim as Mao Zedong advised, moving among the people “as a fish swims in the sea.”

So we wait, read about car bombs elsewhere, and watch the grim statistics.

* * *

The most violent blast today took place across the street from the Iraqi foreign ministry, on the edge of the international Green Zone. Soon after, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt at a nearby falafel restaurant, the Associated Press reports. Another car bomb was detonated in Khilani Square in the city’s commercial center. Authorities managed to diffuse the fifth bomb near the oil ministry before it went off, according to the Agence France-Presse. At least 24 people died.

Iraq’s insurgency shows staying power – CSMonitor.com – 2/5/2014.

Additional Reference

Reflections on Falluja and the Impermanence of Victory – NYTimes.com – 1/28/2014.

Heavy clashes as Iraq fighting sparks rights worries – Yahoo News – 1/9/2014.

As Iraq battles Al Qaeda in Fallujah, Pentagon takes note. Will Afghanistan? (+video) – CSMonitor.com – 1/7/2014.

Fall of Fallujah reverberates in Washington. But will US help Iraq? (+video) – CSMonitor.com – 1/7/2014.

Who Are the Foreign Fighters in Syria? An Interview With Aaron Y. Zelin – Syria in Crisis – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – 12/5/2013.

Hidden memories of Iraq – Correspondent

# # #

FTAC – A Comment on Yarmouk Camp and Turkish Airstrike Against ISIS

30 Thursday Jan 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

You have asked a difficult question. The sentimental guidance offered by Hillel the Elder seems insufficient in the face of immense suffering, not only in Syria, but in Burma (genocide targeting a tribal Muslim people), in Congo (the land of child slaves and child soldiers), and a thousand other places (probably fewer, but still, it’s pretty bad): “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I?”

What is our humanity? What is our obligation as regards the humanity of others?

Gaza officialdom may bleat, hate, and whine about Zionists, but Gaza business and labor and basic service providers work every day with Israel in the interests of commerce and development.

Jews go everywhere — even to the other side, lol — where need exists.

With everyone else, we / Jews / Israel are helping Syrians with emergency medicine and supplies — not leading the pack (I don’t know who is) but there even with a minimum of recognition.

The remaining residents of the Yarmouk Camp, kept separated from Syrian, used as tools for some future Arab war of annihilation to erase Jewry and Judaism (the better to claim originality for Islam, I guess), are starving — being made to starve — between armies. What did they — now women, children, and old men — do to deserve or bring on that fate?

No one has intervened militarily in Yarmouk Camp because no one outside of the Syrian conflict knows how to play a rescue operation, much less coordinate one with so many parties ringside.

In 2007, Lebanese Defense Forces managed to evacuate Nahr al-Bared, another refugee “camp”, by checking through residents at one gate and busing them away to another camp. By agreement with other Arab states, they were forbidden to enter Nahr al-Bared, so they got the residents out, left the foreign fighters in, and using tanks razed the entire city, once of 30,000 souls, to the ground — and then they bombed what was left of resistance in tunnels.

Yarmouk? It’s like watching people drown and no one can get through the sharks surrounding them to save them.

Since day one of live fire, Syrians on the receiving end — now millions either dead, maimed, displaced, or refugee — have begged the world for help, and the great politicians surrounding have played like gamblers at a felt table: one wants things to be as they were, primarily because the money was very good with the way things were — and it’s still very good with the way things are; another wants a moderate messianic miracle, i.e., an Arab democracy, capitalist, open, and in love with Israel.

Some 130,000 casualties later plus six million souls robbed of their former lives and their businesses, jobs, and homes, business seems to be booming around the care of the victims of war, not that it’s making money, but it seems easier delivering tents, clothing, food, and water, and some medicine to those bereft than it does producing sufficient international cooperation to remove Assad, shut down the al-Qaeda affiliates, and freeze Syria (no pun intended) into a state (of existence) approachable for constitutional and physical reconstruction.

* * *

In an unprecedented incident yesterday, Wednesday, Turkish jets attacked a Jihadist convoy on Syrian soil after 2 of their own military vehicles had been fired upon near the Turkish/Syrian border.

The incident happened near the Cobanbey border crossing in the south of Turkey. The jets reportedly destroyed a pick-up, a truck and a bus all belonging to the extreme Jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL or ISIS). There were no casualties on the Turkish side.

IN UNPRECEDENTED MOVE TURKISH JETS DESTROY ISIS CONVOY IN SYRIA AFTER ITS MILITARY COMES UNDER FIRE | altahrir, news of Islam, Muslims, Arab Spring and special Palestine; SYRIA NEWS | Peter Clifford Online – 1/30/2014.

I don’t know whose using money to sew so much chaos in the middle east, but now pressured by an immense refugee challenge, the want to get at its sources all around may be quite high.

It appears yesterday’s strike by Turkey involved a clear tit-for-tat exchange of fire, but the Turkish military, which has traded with Israel for its hardware, more a while ago, I’m sure less today, and has NATO cooperation in the region, is the more formidable power.

Perhaps the Turks have also had enough of “spillover” from Syria’s civil war.

Additional Reference

Israel ‘cuts arms sales to Turkey’ – UPI.com – 4/26/2010.

Israel supplies Turkey with military equipment for first time since Gaza flotilla – Diplomacy & Defense Israel News | Haaretz – 2/18/2013.

# # #

Social Grammar – Syria Style

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Philology, Politics, Religion, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

My name is Abu Amr.  I am thirteen, from Bin Laden Front.  I studied the teachings in the book of Allah to defend the Muslims in Syria.  I pray to Allah that I am granted martyrdom (6:56)

Syria: Al-Qaeda’s New Home – YouTube – 21:56 – Vice News – 1/22/2014

“So many twisted minds . . . This leaves me speechless! :-/” said “SymbolX” in the comments section of the above video posted.

* * *

Syria||Darya||Assad barrel bombs 29-1-2014 – YouTube – 1/29/2014.

* * *

So many twisted minds, indeed!

Having to do with what you saw demonstrated (I can’t authenticate video without wider cooperation from media) in the above video:

Syrian government forces dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held districts of Aleppo Wednesday, killing 13 people as they pressed an assault southeast of the northern city, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported more than 20 barrel bombs had been dropped on the town of Daraya, southwest of the capital Damascus.

Barrel bombs kill 13 in Syria’s Aleppo, says NGO – Al Arabiya News – 1/29/2014.

The video preceding this section’s quotation features one explosion.

Imagine nineteen more battering the same area.

______

In the romance of the west, aristocrat or pioneer, some grandfathers take their 13-year-old boys hunting, it’s true.  Age of Bar Mitzva, of passage into basic adulthood with some emotion and responsibility . . . it’s not bad.  You can still build model airplanes, go scouting, play Little League baseball, collect butterflies, snitch a smoke, and such; however, good or bad, we usually wait another four or five years before putting a boy in uniform, and then putting the boy in uniform in harm’s way.

______

However, what I’ve just described is life beside the presence of western humanism, its institutions, and its laws

Out of school, on the street, in the field, things might be different.

You’re Not Taking Him – Stand by Me (7/8) Movie CLIP (1986) HD – YouTube – posted 10/5/2012.

* * *

Yarmouk Camp – Played for Human Shields and Siege

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

‫ weeping parents, and anger. Yarmouk refugee camp in the funeral of the martyrs of hunger. 11-1-2014 ‬ – YouTube

On YouTube, “TeachESL” noted (two days ago), “the man at 0:53 says: “We do not want Palestine or something. We want them to get us out here. We ask for Israeli citizenship, we do not want the right of return, we have sold Palestine. We do not even know anything about Palestine! We do not want Mahmoud Abbas. There are 1 billion and 300 million Muslims and they can do nothing! If there were even a single Israeli child in the Yarmuk camp, the problem would have been solved a long time ago.”

______

So what may the Jews do, whether of Israel or the Diaspora?

I know: these are the sworn enemies of Israel, determined to overlook the defeat of Arab armies in a war of annihilation (of the Jews, period) in 1948; brainwashed to believe the Land of Israel magically, innately Arab when the ground itself tells of the continuance presence of Jewry on the land for more than 3,000 years and beyond; and trained by anti-Semitic image, lies (like “The Protocols”), by bombastic and narcissistic and manipulative power to hate Jews and erase Judaism, which is more a world to discover than extinguish, and a good and great world at that.  And yet there they are, the residents of Yarmouk Camp, trapped between a tyrant and his equally tyrannical opponents.

Neither Bashar al-Assad nor al-Nusra could give a flying crap about what they — no one else, not Israelis, not Russians, not Americans, God forbid — are doing to the humanity they have overrun and subjugated for the amusement of their own immense and unbridled egos.

Jews have stood against that kind of tyranny since the Exodus from Egypt, and whether in fact or in our heads makes no difference.

Jewish ethical universalism, whether joined by hand-wringing Christians or forward-looking Islamic Humanists, cannot today — and as too many among the powerful may do — look away from Yarmouk Camp.

The twisted rhetoric of The Palestine Chronicle (the fulcrum for that in language behavior splits loyalty away from integrity) notes the following:

There is no doubt that the Yarmoukian Palestinians are in Syria because of a historic injustice imposed upon them by a settler-colonial enemy that does not spare any effort to exacerbate their suffering and prolong their exile. However, this indisputable historic occurrence should not blind us from the fact that independent of what Israel has planned to increase Palestinian suffering, the party responsible for the current crisis (and here I must reiterate my emphasis on the word ‘current’) is the brutal and inhuman Syrian regime and its leader Bashar El-Assad.

How Not to Be in Solidarity with Palestinian Refugees in Yarmouk? | Palestine Chronicle – 1/17/2014.

It’s good to see someone wising up.

It’s late in the day but welcomed, if with a grain of salt, nonetheless.

* * *

In the Yarmouk camp, more than 55 people have died from hunger and the majority of children are suffering from malnutrition, according to Abdullah al-Khatib, a Palestinian activist living there. Most people are consuming soup made from water and spices, Khatib said, and some are reportedly eating grass for survival.

Starving to death in Syria’s Yarmouk camp – Features – Al Jazeera English – 1/29/2014.

Reminder: Russian President Vladimir Putin means to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in business (possibly unless or until he runs out of money or his sponsor in Tehran, that kindly smiling white bearded sower of sorrows, does — and that’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future).

* * *

I have long believed that that I’d engage Gideon Levy’s discourse in its disingenuous Israel-bashing facet, and so I might do so here with suggestion that the IDF — who else? — magically and miraculously transport the Yarmouk Camp to someplace peaceful like Judea and Samaria.

Bar’el was restrained as he referred to Yarmouk as resembling a World War II ghetto, and even this description fell on deaf ears. Only 20,000 people remain in the camp, where 150,000 lived before the civil war. Only the weak and helpless remain – to live in destruction under siege. The rest have suffered their second expulsion . . . . After the terror of Yarmouk, Israel should show a measure of humanity. It should try to save the 20,000 besieged residents – natives of this land, remember – and declare that its gates are open to them to reunite with their families.

Israel, save the Palestinians in Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp – Opinion Israel News | Haaretz – 1/22/2014.

Nonetheless, disagree though we may — and as may the Yarmouk Camp resident quoted — we are all standing by watching a war crime in the making.

* * *

What is remarkable is that the save Yarmouk initiative has infiltrated all fields and has been adopted and picked up by political groups that have not seen eye to eye.

Crisis in Yarmouk camp in Syria unites Palestinians – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 1/27/2014.

I’ll say!

Although the Al-Monitor article confines itself to telling of the in-solidarity feelings inspired between Fatah and Hamas and pro-Palestinian groups, that I’ve played up this story tells that our barriers may not be as strong as we believe.

Crime is crime.

Yarmouk surviving off stray animals: resident | Al Akhbar English – 1/29/2014.

20,000 people in Yarmouk camp face starvation | GulfNews.com – 1/29/2014.

# # #

 

Syria – al-Qaeda – Putin – Obama – American Isolationism – Foreign Constituent Independence

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Religion, Syria

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

The United States has picked up where it left off more than a month ago and started shipping nonlethal aid to Syria in hopes that al Qaeda won’t seize it and keep it from reaching its intended rebel fighting recipients.

U.S. restarts aid to Syria, hoping al Qaeda won’t seize it again – Washington Times – 1/28/2014.

Officials may have strengthened the chain of custody by winnowing down the trustworthy to “Free Syrian Army Supreme Military Council members”.

Last night’s State of the Union Address by President Obama emphasized domestic economic progress and de-emphasized foreign policy, and that to the extent that American involvement in the Islamic Small Wars appears to have been pared back to the 12-year-presence in Afghanistan and the diminishing of Islamist strength in that theater with but a nod to the whack-a-mole games played with drones and special forces and familiar to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

* * *

The number of al-Qaeda linked fighters active in Syria has mushroomed from 2,000 to more than 30,000 in just two years, a senior Israeli intelligence official has warned . . . .

Over 30,000 al-Qaeda linked fighters’ in Syria, Israeli official claims – Telegraph – 1/25/2014.

Syrians, ordinary Syrians, Syrians who bake bread or lay brick, Syrians who were hungry three years ago at the hands of their kleptocrat government and sought a better deal for themselves, have been suffering mightily between the malignancies of their regime and a now strong portion of the regime’s challengers.

Where’s Putin now?

Not a word.

Web search “Syria Putin al-Qaeda” and the top page list comes back with the mud slung in early September: it’s the Americans that have backed al-Qaeda.

We know it’s not true.

Americans have backed the above mentioned “Free Syrian Army” led, nominally, at least, by General Salim Idris.  That army has found itself forked between the brutal dictator — this is one who flew jets against large noncombatant populations — and the equally unconstrained primitives of the al-Qaeda affiliates.

Read the still recent headlines:

FSA chief: Free National Army is a pipe dream « ASHARQ AL-AWSAT – 1/16/2014.

‘We don’t have long,’ say Syrian rebels locked in battle with Al Qaeda, Assad | Fox News – 1/17/2014.

President Obama turned up the populist card last night with brags about progress in the American system within its borders, from energy independence to health care, and while he proffered continued support for nascent democracies in war torn space, he made clear that American troops were staying at home.

* * *

“Dozens of Antonov 124s (Russian transport planes) have been bringing in armored vehicles, surveillance equipment, radars, electronic warfare systems, spare parts for helicopters, and various weapons including guided bombs for planes,” a Middle East security source said.

“Russian advisers and intelligence experts have been running observation UAVs around the clock to help Syrian forces track rebel positions, analyze their capabilities, and carry out precision artillery and air force strikes against them,” said the source, who declined to be identified.

Report: Russia stepping up military aid to Syria’s Assad | JPost | Israel News – 1/17/2014.

Perhaps in Putin’s cold political calculus, Syria will be held in The Bear’s paw at any price to Syria’s humanity.

President Bashar Assad’s military and the Free Syrian Army may wake up to realize that their enmity may be misdirected, for the true axis is not, has never been, Assad vs al-Qaeda but rather The People vs Assad.  Forget about that old rusty post-Soviet chain: Russia – Syria – Iran | Saudi Arabia – NATO – America.

Syria is.

Syria exists for Syrians.

Syrians internally displaced or made refugee by war — about nine million souls (6.5 million IDPs; 2.1 million refugees) —  need peace and home for themselves, and all they have for getting that are two armies, in body, and their differential in leaderships, that should be the last to be at their own throats.

As much hell comes from misguidance and propaganda helped along by a surrounding sea of greed.

Obama’s America with NATO returned to a defensive posture would seem to have zero interest in intervention in Syria apart from keep General Idris’s enterprise in sufficient weaponry for maintaining the three-way stalemate while talk-talk-talk fills time.

Putin’s Russia, which well may view Syria as part of its post-Soviet inheritance, seems immune to humanitarian overtures apart from bending, twisting, and spinning it some around Bashar al-Assad, who in state propaganda and RT has been made to look like a blameless angel.

So far as may be gleaned from the news online, Putin’s in it for the money and to maintain an anti-western post in a client buffer.

Compared to Putin’s glory — and how glorious that glory will be at the $50 billion Winter Olympics in Sochi — the depth and expanse of civilian Syrian suffering, in state and splayed out in the refugee camps of hosting neighbors, would seem by comparison invisible.

Here’s another cycle in headers:

Russia And China Provide Practically No Aid To Syrian Refugees | ThinkProgress – 9/3/2013.

Russia Provides $10M to Syrian Refugees | World | RIA Novosti – 10/1/2013.

Russia to Send Additional Humanitarian Aid for Syrian Refugees in Lebanon — Naharnet – 11/25/2013.

Donors Offer $2.4 Billion to Aid Syrian Civilians, but U.N. Says More Is Needed – NYTimes.com – 1/15/2014.

Get the picture?

Perhaps this will help: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s $50-billion Olympic Games | Toronto Star – 6/25/2014.

Disclaimer: I confess I now write with a “nice pen”, acknowledged as such by an expert.  It’s best feature is its 21 karat gold medium-fine nib, so I know a little bit about fine things too!  But my fine things would seem fit to living in a cabin, which is more or less how I live (but I can dream).

* * *

I have seen the face of suffering and hate online in many faces.  Someone has been lied to or manipulated; someone has a mind confined to state media or a wallet meagerly fattened by the patronage of a despot, a shameful situation where conscience and ethics have not been entirely extinguished.  What may be done to repair that person?  Or, collectively, such people captive to closed information (remember: mouth – ear – mind – heart) systems?

I don’t know.

I do know the world online is larger than the space in which I live and the freedom to speak has its complement in the freedom to read, listen, or watch widely with great curiosity and with some ambition and discipline as regards discerning the nature of things.

Additional Reference

Syria talks face immediate hurdle of Assad’s refusal to step down | World news | The Guardian – 1/19/2014

# # #

Syriamania – Rock and Roll!

20 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Psychology, Syria

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

About a dozen French adolescents have left for Syria to join jihadi groups or are trying to go, a phenomenon that’s accelerating, France’s interior minister said Sunday.

The civil war to oust President Bashir Assad has attracted more French, and Westerners, than other battlegrounds like Afghanistan ever did. Thousands of Europeans are fighting in Syria and nearly 700 French citizens or residents are in some way involved, Manual Valls said. But teenagers drawn to jihadi organizations fighting there is a “particular phenomenon.”

Minister: French Teens Go to Syria for Jihad – ABC News – 1/19/2014.

“He was killed fighting, he was killed in Syria,” he said.

Irish Teen Shamseddin Gaidan Who Joined Syria Rebels Killed – 2/23/2013.

Norwegian police have issued international alerts for two teenage sisters believed to have travelled to Syria to join the civil war.

Norwegian sisters, 16 and 19, ‘travel to Syria to help Muslims’ | Mail Online – 10/21/2013.

Brian was raised Catholic and rarely got into trouble.

The Belgian Teen Who Went to Fight in Syria: The Brian De Mulder Story | TIME.com – 3/22/2013.

A criminal complaint accused Tounisi of making online contact in March with a person he thought was a recruiter for Jabhat al-Nusrah, the militant Islamist Syrian group that the U.S. government calls a foreign terrorist organization operating as a wing of al Qaeda in Iraq.

US teen accused of seeking to join al Qaeda-linked Syrian group – U.S. News – 4/20/2013.

Well, he tried.

It is estimated that at least 100 Canadians — mainly in their 20s and coming from Ontario and Alberta — have left for Syria in the past year, joining a steady march of foreigners drawn to the conflict, security sources say.

Canadians hurrying to Syria in record numbers to join rebels | Toronto Star – 8/23/2013.

By the time of his death in Syria, Andre Poulin from Timmins, Ont., had become a battle-hardened jihadi known as Abu Muslim.

Andre Poulin, jihadi from Timmins, Ont., confirmed dead in Syria – CBC News – Latest Canada, World, Entertainment and Business News – 1/16/2014.

A 22-year-old Canadian-born Muslim convert who left Calgary for Syria in November 2012 has been killed by Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces during rebel infighting, CBC News has confirmed.

Damian Clairmont killed fighting with al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria – World – CBC News – 1/15/2014.

Germany’s domestic security agency has recorded what experts regard as an alarming trend. A growing number of young Germans are traveling to Syria to aid the opposition, potentially getting “radicalized” along the way.

German Muslims leaving to fight jihad in Syria – 9/8/2013.

A former Germany youth international was killed in the Syrian civil war last month, it has emerged.

German media reported that Burak Karan, 26, was killed in action on Oct. 11, and the nation’s intelligence agencies confirmed the news of his death on Monday.

Former Germany youth international Burak Karan killed in Syria – ESPN FC – 11/19/2013.

I thought the conflict in Syria was a civil war.

It turns out it’s a youth movement.

Screw the cars and guitars, man — get a real instrument of destruction:

French Nationale FNC automatic rifle most prevalent among Syria's revolutionary forces. Credit Path: Wikimedia Commons back to CeCILL freeware distribution license.

French Nationale FNC automatic rifle most prevalent among Syria’s revolutionary forces. Credit Path: Wikimedia Commons back to CeCILL freeware distribution license.

Referring Page: Guns of Syria

Not to knock the youth too much, the zeal to get the raging hormones to the war raging would seem inseparable from the adoption of the script set out to snag them and reel them into an abattoir that appears to them authentic, glorious, large, and obligatory.

The latest in Angry Young Men, by and large, has not been left entirely lopsided.

Editor’s note June 19:

Saudi sheikh Muhammad al-‘Arifi denied issuing a fatwa which purportedly sanctioned the rape of Syrian women, saying that “no sane person” would issue such an edict. We regret not including that information when this column originally was published.

Guest Column: The ‘Sex Jihad’ :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism – 6/18-19/2013.

Raymond Ibrahim posts always with integrity to outlets, but the story and associated denials have developed something of a life online, which includes a Wikileaks piece more validating the prostitution than scrubbing it.

The once-sleepy smugglers’ nest on the Turkish border has become a mecca for jihad tourists from around the world.

Foreign Jihadists in Syria Favor Liberal Transit Towns over Front – SPIEGEL ONLINE – 9/27/2013.

The posted header on the above article reads, “Video Games and Cigarettes: Syria’s Disneyland for Jihadists.”

Syria: ah, just another Teen Paradise, one for Muslim “reverts” from Catholicism — or modern Muslim families — and for adolescents and post-adolescent adolescents who are not from Syria.

For Syrian teens, however, the experience of the Syrian Civil War may have another cast altogether.

Related Reference

Syria: teens living in the conflict zone – British Red Cross blog – 11/23/2012.

Addendum

My Friend, the Aspiring Suicide Bomber | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT – 3/12/2013: “Al-Qaeda are good!” he told me, with a smile and a double thumbs up. “I hope that they’ll accept me and that one day I can set off a suicide bomb in a regime area.”

This, I swear, was not premeditated.  I simply wanted to look up the writer of the above quoted piece and found her web site:

A message flashed up on my phone just before 10 o’clock tonight: “Molham died today.”

On the death of another Syrian | Stuff from my notebook – 12/20/2013.

Hannah, if you glance at this blog, I’m sorry to hear of the loss and was not in the least expecting it up top on your blog.

Readers note the date: 12/20/2013, and if you click through you will find the bomb-on-two-legs wannabe didn’t die that way but as a war photographer.

Young photographer killed in Syria conflict – PhotoBlog – 12/20/2013.

Not too long ago and in relation to the music side of my life, I thought to look up old rockers and find out how many of the “they all do drugs” crowd had actually died along the way.  Rather few, it turns out, but that in light of the size the 1960s and 1970s cohort of entertainers in the field.  What occurred to me while revisiting, say, the Rolling Stones saga is that the bands and the myths they created about themselves may have been harder on the fans than on the musicians.  Keith Richards, for example, remains among the living: countless music fans, not exclusively but living the rock-and-roll life in their various ways, don’t.  The degree of direct influence cannot be measured small or large, but the atmosphere, the teen spirit of its day, created its own culture, and that culture was not squeaky clean and all nice-nice.

That’s why we loved it.

Postscript

Joining Syrian ranks of al-Qaeda ‘in vogue’ for young British Muslims – Telegraph – 3/3/2014.

LA Gang Members in Syria: Organized Crime, Terrorism ‘Converge’ – ABC News – 3/4/2014.

“It’s not about ideals – 90% of them never subscribe to the ideals,” former radical Alyas Karmani, now a peace activist, says in the film. “It’s other factors that are a draw. This is the new rock-and-roll; jihad is sexy. The kid who was not very good-looking now looks good holding a gun. He can get a bride now, he’s powerful. The ISIS gun is as much a penis extension as the stockbroker with his Ferrari.”

Balofsky, Ahuva.  “ISIS Marketing Itself as ‘Sexy’ to Youth, Says Former Radical.”  Breaking Israel News, August 6, 2015

As innocent and maternal as that may sound, it may also reveal the extent of her commitment: ISIS propaganda has featured children executing prisoners in the style of a video game, and refers to boys groomed to be fighters as “cubs.” There were signs that Jaelyn understood the horrific violence of the group she longed to join. After a sailor and four Marines were murdered in July in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she celebrated. Praise be to God, she said, “the numbers of supporters are growing.”

Green, Emma.  “How Two Mississippi College Students Fell in Love and Decided to Join a Terrorist Group.”  The Atlantic, May 1, 2017.

# # #