Turks and Sauds to Install Sunni Terror in Damascus, Syria

At last someone is in agreement with me in what western-backed regime change in Syria has wrought and what will be the end game. Due to the Iraq invasion by the UK-US coalition of Labour leader Tony Blair and Republican president George W. Bush, the Sunni-Shia balance in the region shifted. Saudi king Fahd and crown-prince Abdullah had warned the White House for the consequences. Bush, Cheney and a united U.S. Congress decided otherwise. Egypt’s dictator Mubarak warned for dire effects and called it Pandora’s Box. We also know that NATO partner Turkey was reluctant and did not permit a front to be opened from its territory.

Israel was a strong partner of US right-wing politicians and the Neocon theme of regime change in both Iraq and Syria. As I have written before, there was a political movement to bring Syria closer to the European Union by offering economic ties in exchange for a path to democratic principles and human rights. Even Israel was in secret negotiations with Assad for a peace treaty and a deal for the occupied territory of the Golan Heights as late as 2010.

When the Arab Spring ignited in Tunisia, all diplomatic principles and International Law of state sovereignty were pushed aside. The advisors to President Obama in the White House had found a principle to circumvent the U.N. Security Council to make war by other means: the fake R2P principle of interference by western powers. It had been successfully tried in Serbia and Kosovo. Later under U.S. leadership – thanking Hillary Clinton – NATO would intervene in Libya and would continue beyond R2P and see to the overthrow and death of dictator Gaddafi. The chaos as result we can witness daily here in Europe. Most likely the media offer no coverage of the hundreds of deaths, spread of arms and munitions as far as Boko Haram, the war in Mali and the Maghreb and the movement of jihadists from Algeria into Syria and Iraq.

During the ugly war of occupation in Iraq, the Saudi Kingdom began supplying arms and funds to their Sunni compatriots in Iraq’s Sunni triangle of Anbar province. This Sunni movement against U.S. occupation and Shia dominance in Baghdad government led ultimately to the rise of ISIS. As western powers under Obama had encouraged and supported the revolt to overthow Assad in neighboring Syria, the ISIS fighers and thousands of foreign jihadists from Arab states, Chechnya and the AfPak border region swarmed to northern Syria. Money from the wealthy Gulf states and encouraged by NATO partner Turkey, the long process to destroy the secular state of Syria has begun. It is what it is today, and the end game is becoming clearer by the day.

The U.S. has played an intolerable role of being compliant although the motivation can only come from the chess game of regional and world powers. Israel is giving it’s support by incidental bombing raids over Syria with the argument of destroying the Shia axis from Teheran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut. Israel lives by destruction of it’s neighboring state and the creation of chaos. This is exactly why U.S. Republicans love Israel and its leadership from Peres to Barak to Sharon and today’s populist Netanyahu. Why is Israel calling the shots in Washington DC? The White House wants to destroy Putin’s Russia because of it’s reluctance in the Security Council on the intervention in Libya and Syria. Both Israel and Turkey have a warm relationship with Russia.

Below an essay at Informed Comment by Juan Cole. Professor Cole had warm feelings for MB states Qatar and Egypt under Morsi. SoS Hillary Clinton during her reign at the State Department also had good relations with the MB triangle of Egypt, Turkey and Qatar. During her years it was impossible to reconcile the Salafist states of the Gulf with the Muslim Brotherhood triangle to unite in backing a political opposition to Assad in Syria. This fact led to failure of a diplomatic solution during the Geneva talks. With the death of Saudi King Abdullah and the palace coup under the new King Salman, there appears to be an easing of tensions between the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood. There will never be a diplomatic solution to the Syrian conflict as the scorched earth policy of all sides, no prisoners taken, will lead to continue this existential war. The slaughter will continue as the region will sink deeper and its “new culture” will live and die by the sword.

The Salafist uprising will not stop in Syria of course as the destruction won’t be complete until the removal (death) of Hezbollah and the Shia in Lebanon. The days of the Jordanian Hashemite monarchy are numbered as well. Remember the first Gulf War and the alliance of Jordan and the Palestinians with Saddam Hussein?

There will come a moment these states will have to put boots on the ground in Syria to prevent the rebel forces to unite with the Islamic State. I doubt the Saudi Kingdom will offer it’s sons for a ground war, so most likely armed forces will be delivered by more populated nations: Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan. It’s even possible mercenaries will be sought in Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia.

[A number of inks added in both articles below are mine – Oui]

Syria: What if Turkey and Saudi Arabia install al-Qaeda in Damascus?

Journalists such as the intrepid Liz Sly covering the Syrian Civil War were struck with the victories of the Army of Conquest coalition in northern Syria, which in recent weeks first took Idlib city (they had already taken most of Idlib province) and then Jisr al-Shughur, a key town that is the gateway to the port of Latakia and its largely Alawite Shiite hinterland. What accounted for sudden breakthrough of the extremist coalition of the al-Qaeda affiliate, the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra), of Syrian Freedom Fighters (Ahrar al-Sham), and other smaller groups devoted to holy war?

One explanation: These groups were better funded all of a sudden and receiving coordinated outside help from Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Under the late King Abdallah, Saudi policy in Syria was a mess. He hated the Muslim Brotherhood, from which many Syrian rebels hail, and wanted to create alternatives such as the Jaysh al-Islam (the Army of Islam or JAI). The Syrian Freedom Fighters [?] are part of this coalition.

Turkey under President Tayyip Erdogan has no such compunctions and is convinced, as Desmond Butler of AP reports, that the Support Front cannot be all that influential in a post-Assad Syria. The Saudis, having themselves been targeted by al-Qaeda, saw the Support Front as poison, and were reluctant to help the groups in the north who were willing to ally with the Support Front.

The Turkish calculation is way too unimaginative and insouciant. Those Sunni countries that supported the Sunni Arab insurgency against the new American and Shiite establishment in Iraq after 2003 also appear not to have counted on an extremist group like Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) taking over 42% of Iraqi territory.

The new Saudi king, Salman, is said to be less harsh toward the Muslim Brotherhood and willing to use them both in Yemen and in Syria in his struggle with what he perceives as Iranian hegemony in the region.

…
The first thing Ahrar did on taking Idlib was to execute a couple of Christians.

We have seen this movie before. Syria is a multicultural society, with 14% Alawite Shiite, 5% Christian, other groups like Druze and Twelver Shiite and Ismaili, then 10% mostly Marxist Kurds, and a majority of the Sunnis are strong secularists. A Taliban-like group taking over the country would be just another huge catastrophe like 1996 in Afghanistan.

Syria’s Nightmarish Narrative

More below the fold …

Syria’s Nightmarish Narrative
By Robert Parry | Consortium News |

The Saudi-Israeli alliance, in league with other hard-line Sunni countries, is helping Al-Qaeda affiliates advance toward gaining either victory or at least safe havens in Syria and Yemen, highlighting unresolved contradictions in President Barack Obama’s policies in the Middle East.

Fueled by a surge of support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – and with Israel striking at Syrian government allies – Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda’s hyper-brutal spinoff, the Islamic State, are making major advances in Syria with some analysts now predicting the likely collapse of the relatively secular government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi Arabia and Israel have made clear over the past few years that they regard the overthrow of the Iranian-backed Assad government as a geopolitical priority even if it results in a victory by Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.

…
Obama added that his administration had trouble finding, training and arming enough secular Syrian rebels to make a difference: “There’s not as much capacity as you would hope.”

Indeed, much of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army threw in its lot – and their U.S.-supplied weapons – with Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front or the Islamic State in 2013. After that, Obama’s only realistic choice was to strike a pragmatic political agreement with Assad and cooperate with Iran and Russia in reclaiming territory from Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Getting Rid of Assad

But that option proved politically impossible because the Israel Lobby and American neocons continued to press for Assad’s overthrow. They were aided by Obama’s unwillingness to release U.S. intelligence that undercut some of the major anti-Assad themes dominating the mainstream U.S. media. For instance, Obama could have revealed doubts within the U.S. intelligence community that Assad’s regime was responsible for the infamous sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.

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The battlefield shifts come at a time when the Obama administration has set aside the crisis in Syria to focus on its chief priorities: defeating the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and concluding a nuclear deal with Iran. Yet the pace of events in Syria may force the United States to refocus on the unresolved war, which remains at the heart of the turmoil engulfing the Middle East, analysts say.

“Iran backs Assad, Saudi Arabia backs the rebels, and a shift in the balance of power in Syria could have profound repercussions for the conflicts in Iraq and Yemen. `We’re seeing a game changer right now in Syria,’ said Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist. `I think we are going to see an end to the Assad regime, and we have to think now about what will happen the day after, because the day after is near.’

Since inheriting the throne in January, Saudi King Salman has moved forcefully to challenge the expanding regional influence of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s biggest foe, most publicly by embarking on an air war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. He has also acted to shore up the flagging and deeply divided rebels in Syria, in coordination with Qatar and Turkey.

The result has been an unexpectedly cohesive rebel coalition called the Army of Conquest that is made up of al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, an assortment of mostly Islamist brigades and a small number of more moderate battalions. The coalition, which launched last month, has proved more effective than expected.