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Tag Archives: northern Syria

A Lazy Meander Around the News Around Autonomous Syrian Kurdistan

14 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Regions, Syria

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Tags

Kurdish community, Kurdistan, northern Syria, Syria

As a result of their American-enforced protections until 2003, and later as a result of the weakened central government in Baghdad after Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Iraqi Kurds were left to govern themselves for 22 years, from 1991 to present. During this period, the Kurds have literally lifted their corner of Iraq from the ashes, establishing not only one of the most prosperous polities in the region, but also by far the best approximation of secular democracy that the Middle East can currently offer.

The Plight of the Syrian Kurds | The Institute of Politics at Harvard University – n.d.

Perhaps no new war news is good news.

At least at the moment, “Syria Kurds fighting” isn’t bring up hours old reports and videos.

All may be tense on that front but, so far as the reality-to-news lag is concerned, it’s quiet, and that’s a good thing: in addition to fending off the AQTypal Out There, the Kurds in their camps and villages have a turn coming in the weather to be followed by winter.

It’s good, I’m sure, to have a few fair days ahead of what’s to come, winter being always certain.

On the theme of winter, the VOA has had a story all over the web this past week, but, deja vu, as regards the Kurdish community’s collective consciousness, the people have the memory of having been there and been through it before, war zone and all: “THE Kurds of northern Iraq are heading into winter with their political future as uncertain as ever – and with food and fuel stocks so low that even a belated international relief effort may not head off hardship” (Jim Muir, “Iraq Kurds Face Winter, Neighbors’ Discontent,” The Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 1992).

This year may be different — different zone, relief planes instead of trucks, bands of marauders instead of Saddam Hussein’s military, etc.

The web may make a difference too.

What was barely out of the laboratory in 1992 has produced its own civilization and intelligentsia. However, while the newfangled global political system may prove responsive to those in distress and more than worthy of aid, it seems not to have really kicked in yet.  In fact, the Internet’s  Emerging Global Order (I-EGO) has at this point only to watch the world, take it in, set up its emotions, think about what it will do when it’s a little more capable of urging its own defense and better attending to the security of those it loves — and there will be those it loves.

Reference

 Iraqi Kurdistan’s chief ready to strike militants in Syria, Iraq – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page – 10/13/2013.

Son of Syrian Kurdish Leader Salih Muslim Killed in Fighting – 10/10/2013

Syria’s Refugees: The Catastrophe by Hugh Eakin and Alisa Roth | The New York Review of Books – 10/10/2013.

Syrian Kurdish Refugees Fear Harsh Winter in Northern Iraq – 10/7/2013.

Syria: Red Cross, Red Crescent workers kidnapped; 2 bombs rock capital – CNN.com 10/14/2013.

Syrians find safety for Eid al-Adha holiday in Iraq – Yahoo News – 10/4/2013.

ISIS Maps Emirate Borders In Syria – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 10/3/2013.

Syrian Refugees at Erbil Camps to be Relocated for Winter – 9/26/2013.

Turkey and the Syrian Kurds: A little-noticed battle | The Economist – 9/25/2013: “A Syrian rebel fighting the Kurds told our correspondent that “Allah be praised, Turkey is giving us some weapons” though he added that the France and Saudi Arabia were “much more generous”.

Syria Crisis: Children Starving, At Risk of Malnutrition – 9/25/2013.

Syria crisis: starving children forced to survive on fruit, leaves and nuts | Global development | The Guardian – 9/23/2013.

As West blinks on Syria, jihadists begin revenge attacks on civilian population | World Tribune – 9/18/2013.

Syrian children suffering malnutrition – 9/15/2013

United Nations News Centre – Iraq: UN agency airlifts supplies for Syrian refugee children, families in Erbil – 9/2/2013.

United Nations News Centre – UN agencies fly in urgent aid for Syrian refugees in north Iraq – 8/27/2013.

www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Backgrounder_SyrianKurds.pdf
“Syrian Kurds and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) – 12/6/2012.

Terror: The Hidden Source by Malise Ruthven | The New York Review of Books 10/24/2013 (60:16).

______

▶ Inside the Syrian crisis: The Needs of Children (September 13, 2013) – YouTube

Help the IRC respond to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. | International Rescue Committee (IRC)

______

These two are not even remotely “on topic” but they’re telling of the type of wars being fought, i.e., two wars of annihilation and enslavement and a smaller one about democracy.

Fire fell ‘like rain’ in Syria – CNN.com – 10/12/2013.

Opinion: Syrian war’s brutality isn’t going away – CNN.com – 10/11/2013.

# # #

ISW – Syria – United in Hate in the North – Crimes Against Humanity As Syria Dies

14 Monday Oct 2013

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

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Tags

Al Qaeda, AQ, civil war, Human Rights Watch, northern Syria, Syria, Turkey

What troubles Western observers is not the groups’ fighting prowess, however, but their shared vision of a jihad that extends beyond Assad’s ouster. While other rebels are fighting to remove the Syrian dictator, former and current U.S. and Middle Eastern officials say, the al-Qaeda groups are transforming the conflict into a symbolic struggle against the West and Israel, using words and images that resonate with like-minded Muslims from the Arab Peninsula to Western Europe.

Rival al-Qaeda-linked groups fortifying in Syria with mix of pragmatism and militancy – The Washington Post – 10/13/2013.

The United States has had limited success cutting off funding to the al Qaeda-linked fighters and foreign jihadists flowing into Syria — in part because of a lack of cooperation on the part of Middle Eastern allies, Intelligence and national security community sources say.

 U.S. allies let funds flow to al Qaeda in Syria – Washington Times – 10/13/2013.

Less well known is the sectarian strategy pursued by Sunni extremists, particularly the ultraconservative Salafis living in the Persian Gulf, who are sending “hundreds of millions” of dollars to ensure the worst factions of the revolt are ascendant — mostly under the guise of humanitarian relief.

Gulf charities and Syrian sectarianism — By William McCants | The Middle East Channel – 9/30/2013.

Over the course of the operation, Human Rights Watch says the fighters killed 190 civilians. Residents and hospital staff in Latakia, the nearest city, spoke of burned bodies, beheaded corpses and graves being dug in backyards. Two hundred people from the area remain hostage.

The war in Syria: Rebel atrocities | The Economist – 10/13/2013.

Two opposition groups that took part in the offensive, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham and Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, are still holding the hostages, the vast majority women and children. The findings strongly suggest that the killings, hostage taking, and other abuses rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said.

“You Can Still See Their Blood” | Human Rights Watch – 10/11/2013.

______

▶ Syria: Executions, Hostage Taking by Rebels – YouTube – 10/11/2013.

______

“We are collecting money to buy all these weapons, so that our brothers will be victorious,” hard-core Sunni Islamist Sheikh Shafi’ Al-Ajami announced on Kuwaiti television last month, listing the black-market prices of weapons, including heat-seeking missiles, anti-aircraft guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Money, guns flowing from Kuwait to Syria’s most radical rebel factions | Fox News – 7/11/2013.

U.S. and Middle Eastern officials describe the money as a small portion of a vast pool of private wealth being funneled to Syria’s warring factions, mostly without strings or oversight and outside the control of governments.

Private money pours into Syrian conflict as rich donors pick sides – Washington Post – 6/15/2013.

______

Excessive license and loss of boundaries and containment have long characterized the Islamic Small Wars.  One may trace that back at least as far as the slaughter of the men of the Banu Quarayza who had surrendered to Muhammad expecting to keep their lives and their community intact.  Instead, so goes the legend, males with even a single pubic hair for signal were beheaded and the wives, daughters, and sons taken as war booty.  That Human Rights Watch should today be screaming about Al Qaeda-class war crimes comes as no surprise.

For the field, the image of the organics of the Islamist front becomes ever more clear as well as daunting as we learn that some middle east governments, as powerful and wealthy as they may be, cannot rein in their own rogues — or, perhaps, they are shielding the same from western powers.  Either way, private bank accounts seem unhindered as regards collecting the kind of “charity” that becomes cash for the arms leveled at hapless and unarmed residents in the path of the coldly deranged and enraged.

______

“We often see buses around with all their curtains drawn. I have no doubt that their passengers are Islamists on the road to Paradise,” says Mehmet with a sad smile. He criticizes the “silence of the Turkish media on Ankara’s dark moves,” as he puts it.

“Here it’s not about rebels fighting [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad, it’s Jabhat al-Nusra – an armed group close to al Qaeda – and Syrian Kurdish fighters engaging in brutal clashes.”

Al Qaeda’s Turkish base? | World | DW.DE | 18.09.2013

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday said “Turkey has never supported any units which have connections with Al Qaeda and never let them use our borders with Syria”, Anadolu Agency reported.

FM: Turkey never supports any units linked with Al Qaeda – Trend.Az – 10/8/2013

Remember: lies are told to hide something or to get something.

It was the first face-to-face between Mr. Erdogan and President Barack Obama in almost a year. Mr. Obama delivered what U.S. officials describe as an unusually blunt message: The U.S. believed Turkey was letting arms and fighters flow into Syria indiscriminately and sometimes to the wrong rebels, including anti-Western jihadists.

Seated at Mr. Erdogan’s side was the man at the center of what caused the U.S.’s unease, Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s powerful spymaster and a driving force behind its efforts to supply the rebels and topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey’s Spymaster Plots Own Course on Syria – WSJ.com – 10/10/2013

Later, however, Muslim accused Turkey of facilitating the jihadists’ cross-border movements by clearing passages through minefields and removing barbed wire. During our September interview, he had strong words for Turkey. He said he wanted to continue the dialogue with Ankara, but could not understand Ankara’s support of extreme religious elements.

Syrian Kurdish Leader Urges Turkey To End Support for Salafists – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 10/9/2013.

______

Whatever Syria was three years ago, it’s either gone today or is missing parts of its once constituted sovereignty.  Death has taken more than 100,000 of its constituents; fighting has displaced more than three million once settled residents; the same has “forced” autonomy on the Kurdish community — ten percent of Syria’s population overall; entire cities lay in ruin; borders, checkpoints, and roads have been overrun but by God only knows what.

The worst thing may be the latent Somali-like sub-state anarchy evident in the transfers of arms, cash, and Al Qaeda-type fighters from one location to another across numerous borders and boundaries.  Rather than running their separate parts of the show in Syria, it appears that governments and their intelligence agencies have been reduced to searching for ways to benefit from or leverage the activities of a largely unremarked class of private persons with the connections and wherewithal to exert their own will through young proxies.

Related: Qatar-funded Syrian rebel brigade backs al Qaeda groups in Syria – Threat Matrix 7/26/2013.

Moscow’s and Washington’s posturing around chemical weapons and peace talks would seem to gloss over the anarchy and the prospect, which one may as well interpret as the reality, that all civil and responsible government has fled northern Syria and what remains are armed bands in various stages of collusion and contest left to mayhem, murder, and making themselves comfortable.

Additional Reference

Al-Qaeda-linked Groups Taking Root in Syria – 10/13/2013.

7 Red Cross Workers Kidnapped By Gunmen In Syria – 10/13/2013; 4 of 7 kidnapped aid workers freed in Syria – Yahoo News – 10/14/2013.

Syrian Arab Village Welcomes Kurdish Fighters – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 10/13/2013.

Danish Salafist leader said to have been killed in Syria – The Long War Journal – 10/4/2013.

Syria: Political Detainees Tortured, Killed | Human Rights Watch – 10/3/2013.

Insight: Saudi Arabia boosts Salafist rivals to al Qaeda in Syria | Reuters – 10/1/2013.

Al Qaeda, Kurdish militia clash on Syrian border with Turkey | Reuters – 9/25/2013.

Rebel-on-Rebel Violence Seizes Syria – WSJ.com – 9/18/2013: “ISIS fighters recently raided a council arms depot filled with lights weapons and ammunition, funded by the Gulf states and funneled to the council with the guidance of the Central Intelligence Agency, council members said.”

Syria: nearly half rebel fighters are jihadists or hardline Islamists, says IHS Jane’s report – Telegraph – 9/15/2013: “Opposition forces battling Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria now number around 100,000 fighters, but after more than two years of fighting they are fragmented into as many as 1,000 bands.”

Syrian rebels claim receipt of major weapons shipment | World news | The Guardian – 8/25/2013.

Attacks of Al-Qaeda affiliated groups against Kurds in Northern Syria or Rojava – an appeal – The Kurdistan Tribune – 8/15/2013.

Kuwait pulls cleric from TV for sectarian comments | The National – 8/14/2013.

Jordan captures arms smugglers from Syria – 8/3/2013.

Kuwait, ‘the back office of logistical support’ for Syria’s rebels | The National – 2/5/2013.

# # #

Programming – Nihilism – Islamists

09 Wednesday Oct 2013

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Al Qaeda, Islam, islamic humanism, Islamists, Kurdish community, northern Syria, political Islam, terrorism

By labeling the acts of radical Islamists as mere “terrorism” we imply that there is an Achilles heel to expose — a political demand or a territorial gain with which they might barter, with which we might naively appease.

The reality is completely different. Their goals are nihilistic and non-negotiable: they want the total elimination of all who are not with them. Nairobi was possibly the most explicit demonstration of such.

Qanta Ahmed – The new jihad — a violent, intrusive and dangerous threat to world order | Fox News – 10/9/2013.

Someone raised expectations, perhaps; someone provided explicit instruction; someone’s words were received amplified, heightened, deified, perhaps; and someone challenged The Wisdom, saying in effect, “Prove it – it is either of the stars or not.”

Along the line of the Christian anti-Jihad, there is no way away from elements of scripture delivered in practical and literal terms.  Their experience of what on this blog I call “shimmer” starts with their examination of the Quran plus impression from history plus, finally, an acquaintance with Hadith.  None of that ends well, and less for Christian pride than its basis in Jewish thought after Hillel.

For the Jews, the noise starts somewhere beyond the arguments and themes inspired by — but seldom stated explicitly in — the Torah.  Even with something as simple as “The Binding of Isaac”, the reader is never told whether the test is of Abraham’s obedience, which is the common interpretation, or one given to children by their parents, or of conscience, which is a little bit more incisive and likely to arrive as epiphany with sufficient fascination and reflection.

The Jews long ago formed a culture apart and have learned a great deal about themselves and others.  Credit the Torah for that.  Or credit the necessity of separation given the humanity that must have gathered in the ancient desert appalled with the world, and, later, with Pharaoh.  Muslims, by comparison, have formed of the seduced or the conquered of the world, and whatever spirit predated Muhammad would seem to persist in expression now conflated with Islam.

Whether what is in Qanta Ahmed to grasp as a modern Muslim woman a progressive and humanist Islam is actually in Islam, I don’t know, for there are many forces in the Ummah — the “Islamists” but a facet, the “sword verses” another, the conflations with child marriages and honor killings producing yet additional self-slander and fuel for critics, and the  history of conquest (start with the wholesale slaughter of the men and rape of daughters and wives of the Banu Qurayza) — that would belie the assertion.

For the Kurds fighting Al Qaeda today in northern Syria, nothing has changed: they know their old enemy.

Additional Reference

Concerns with terrorist atrocities in Christian or western states may overlook the inkblot spread of Al Qaeda-defined conflict in ungoverned or autonomously governed spaces.  That context tells of a format in warfare as familiar to the 7th Century as it is to the morning news sifted by foreign affairs wonks.

The Kurdish community in northern Syria hasn’t to care about the modern humanist assertion, reformation, or survival of Islam: a Muslim army, self-appointed, self-defined, has arrived on their doorstep to convert or annihilate them, and they know it and have taken up defensive positions and initiated diplomatic efforts congruent with that.

Syrian Kurdish Leader Urges Turkey to End Support for Salafists – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 10/9/2013.

Syria: Al-Qaeda wants to control Iraq and Turkey border zones | News | World | Mail & Guardian – 10/5/2013.

Syria: Al-Qaeda Branch Battles Kurds, Threatens Ankara | Al Akhbar English – 10/1/2013.

Al-Qaida claims rare attacks in northern Iraq Republican American – 10/8/2013.

Addendum

Abdul Hakim Quick – a preacher from the Islamic Education and Research Academy, who has called upon God to “clean and purify Al-Aqsa from the filth of the Yahood [Jews]” and to “clean all of the lands from the filth of the Kafirun [non-believers].” He has also stated: “They said ‘what is the Islamic position [on homosexuality]?’ And I told them. Put my name in the paper. The punishment is death. And I’m not going to change this religion.”

UK Charity Commission Permits Hamas Charity :: Gatestone Institute – 10/4/2013.

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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