A new, worthy, analysis of Syrian contenders, focusing on Iran

Read Syria: The Hidden Power of Iran | by Joost Hiltermann | The New York Review of Books,, an intricate, fact-laden review of various factions in Syria, focusing on Iranian involvement.

There are three missing or under-emphasised Syrian issues: 

(l) The article reduces the Iranian interest in a n gas pipeline from the Pars Natural Gas field through Syria to European markets to a mere parenthetical comment, and the Iranian delivery of gas to Europe, along with Qatar’s competing interest in a gas pipeline from that same field, is central to Russia’s involvement in the war. (see, e.g, Refugee Crisis & Syria War Fueled By Competing Gas Pipelines.

( 2) Saudi Arabia’s effort to use the Civil War disruption as an opportunity to create a first new Wahhabist State is hardly mentioned.  See, e.g, FPI Bulletin: Saudi Arabia and the Syrian Civil War.

(3)  The Syrian Kurds are the only egalitarian, non-sectarian, feminist force in the Middle East and a formidable fighting force, and its role is denigrated in the article.  The UN and all nations should support the Syrian Kurds.  That includes Turkey.See, e.g., A Dream of Secular Utopia in ISIS’ Backyard - The New York Times.

In all other respects the Review gives valuable, useful information on the Civil War.  It is the best of he recent articles on Syria.  Consider these provacative paragraphs:

These local conflicts are cross-cut by the standoff, mainly rhetorical but fought by proxy, and involving nuclear politics, between Israel and Iran. “It’s like a game of Risk,” an academic and political go-between in northern Syria told my colleagues and me last month. To forestall an Israeli attack on its nuclear program or an attempt at regime change in Tehran, Iran has long backed regional proxies that extend its power across the region. Foremost among these is Hezbollah, the Lebanese “Party of God,” which has been an integral part of what Iran calls its “forward defense,” taking the place of missiles that could effectively target Israel, which Tehran still lacks. Through Hezbollah, Iran can use Lebanon as a launching pad within fifty miles of major Israeli cities.

Yet Iran’s strategic posture is only as strong as the supply line that supports it. Until now, this has been an air route connecting Iran to Hezbollah via Iraq and Syria, but the Iranian government wants to consolidate this with a land corridor running from its own borders to the Mediterranean. This is not merely an accusation one hears in Tel Aviv, Ankara, Riyadh, Amman, or Abu Dhabi, but an aim that is acknowledged by Iranian analysts themselves, who describe it as a strategic necessity. It needs these routes to get arms to Hezbollah. That explains the importance of Iran’s alliance with the Assad government in Syria, and also why Iran and Hezbollah were in such a hurry after 2011 to prop up the Syrian regime when it was threatened with imminent collapse. (Iran has also long wanted to diversify its energy export routes, and has mooted plans to construct an east-west pipeline across Iraq to the Syrian coast.)

Highly recommended.  

WHY RUSSIA IS IN SYRIA

WHY RUSSIA IS IN SYRIA . Not the complete story but well worth a read.  d

Published by the Council on Foreign Relations

THE MAGAZINE  

SNAPSHOT April 5, 2017 

Terrorism and Counterterrorism Terrorism in Russia

Why the Problem Is Set to Worsen

By Ilan Berman

On Monday, the subway system of St. Petersburg, Russia’s second city, was the site of a massive bomb blast that killed 14 commuters and wounded more than 50 others. (A second, unexploded device was subsequently found and defused by authorities.) The attack marked the most significant terrorist incident to hit the Russian Federation since December of 2013, when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in the main train station of the southern Russian city of Volgograd ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in nearby Sochi.

But it is also much more. Monday’s bombing is the latest sign of Russia’s worsening terrorism problem, as well as a portent of things to come.

THE COSTS OF SYRIA

Most directly, Monday’s attack in St. Petersburg can be viewed as blowback from Russia’s ongoing intervention in Syria. Since September 2015, the Kremlin has become a major player in Syria’s grinding civil war, establishing a significant—and open-ended—military presence in the country in support of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. 

Russia’s involvement has paid concrete strategic dividends, making it possible for Russia to reinforce its historic naval base at Tartus, establish a new air base in Latakia, and forward deploy an expanded naval force in the eastern Mediterranean, among other gains. But it has also made Moscow the target of Islamist ire, with both the Islamic State (also called ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, pledging to retaliate in Russia.

Monday’s attack may well have been the start of just such an offensive. Russian authorities have identified the main suspect in the bombing as 22-year-old Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen with links to radical Islamists. For its part, ISIS was quick to celebrate the blast (although it stopped short of directly claiming responsibility), suggesting that—at the very least—Jalilov’s actions track closely with its own plans for Russia.  

Monday’s bombing also lays bare a larger problem facing the Kremlin: Russia’s Muslims are radicalizing and mobilizing.

Today, Muslims make up the fastest-growing segment of Russian society. They are still a minority at roughly 16 percent of the population, according to the country’s 2010 census. But thanks to fewer divorces, less alcoholism, and a greater rate of reproduction, Russia’s Muslims are demographically strong. Some projections have suggested that, by the end of this decade, Russia's Muslims could account for a fifth of the country's total population. 

But this does not mean that Muslims are well integrated. Russian President Vladimir Putin has championed an ultranationalist identity that has shut out Russia’s Muslims from contemporary politics and society, leaving them vulnerable to the lure of alternative ideologies—Islamism chief among them. This can be seen in the growing influence of groups such as ISIS on Russian extremist groups like the Caucasus Emirate, the country’s premier jihadi outfit. (In 2015, segments of the group, which had previously been an al Qaeda affiliate, formally pledged allegiance to ISIS and its emir, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.) Putin’s stance has also led to a growing number of Russian jihadists traveling to join the fighting in Iraq and Syria.  

The problem is poised to get far worse.

The true size of the Russian contingent in Syria has been the subject of considerable debate. But during a recent public address, Putin indicated that the country’s military intelligence service, the GRU, believes that as many as 4,000 Russian nationals, alongside a further 5,000 combatants from other former Soviet Republics, are now participating in the ongoing civil war there.

Putin's revelation was significant, since it suggests that the share of foreign fighters in Syria from the former Soviet Union is far larger than commonly understood in the West. All told, an April 2016 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that ISIS had succeeded in attracting more than 31,000 recruits to its cause since its rise in 2014. Russian and Central Asian militants may thus account for nearly a third of all foreign fighters now active in the self-proclaimed caliphate. It’s no wonder that experts such as Yevgenia Albats estimate that Russian has become the third most frequently spoken language among fighters of the Islamic State.

WORSE TO COME 

For a long time, this state of affairs seemed to suit the Kremlin just fine. Far from preventing an outflow of militants to the Middle East, Russian authorities have facilitated their departure as a way of diffusing the country’s domestic terrorism problem. At the same time, Putin’s government has issued a raft of draconian new regulations—including expanding the definition of what constitutes extremism, requiring official permits for religious activities, and tightening oversight of the Internet—designed to maintain control over potential militants remaining in the country (and everyone else as well).

On the surface, this strategy seems to be working. Kremlin officials have publicly touted their government’s counterterrorism successes in an effort to convince the world that Russia is winning its fight against domestic terrorism. In November 2015, for example, Yevgeny Sysoyev, the deputy director of the FSB, Russia’s powerful internal security service, lauded the fact that Russia had succeeded in diminishing terrorist activity “by more than ten times” since 2010. But Monday’s attack provides a sharp counterpoint—and concrete proof of the country’s continued vulnerability to domestic acts of terror.

The problem, moreover, is poised to get far worse. Counterterrorism experts have long been concerned that the Syrian conflict could eventually produce an exodus of former fighters who would return to engage in terrorist activity in their home countries. These fears have become more acute in light of the recent battlefield reversals suffered by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and signs that the group is now shifting its focus to other theaters.

Given the size of the Russian contingent now present within ISIS, Russia is bound to be a principal target of this trend. Monday’s attack in St. Petersburg, in other words, may presage more to come, with all that this portends for the security and liberty of ordinary Russians.

P.s. Spike Jones

P.s., it may be that a few of you won't remember music heard three-quarters of a century ago, so, for you, here's Spike Jones, who should never be forgotten.

Turkey’s Domestically Driven Foreign Policy

Here is a great opportunity for Mr. Trump to cooperate with Russia, help Europe and the Syrian Kurds, and hurt the Islamic State if he hasn't been frightened off by bad, and deservedly bad, publicity.

You always hurt
The one you love
The one you shouldn't hurt at all 
(so to speak)
Spike Jones:You Always Hurt The One You love (my memory has Peter Lorre singing the first verse. Lope that's right.)

Turkey’s Domestically Driven Foreign Policy

MARC PIERINI

Ankara faces a number of foreign policy challenges, from the war in Syria to relations with the West. In each case, Turkey’s options are determined by domestic priorities.

February 27, 2017

As citizens of Turkey head to a crucial vote on April 16 on whether to adopt a new constitution, the country’s leadership is facing multiple challenges on the external front: Syria, Russia, the United States, NATO, and the EU. Typically, each of these challenges is closely linked to Turkey’s tense domestic political situation.

With Operation Euphrates Shield, Turkish armed forces are involved in Syria in a rare expeditionary combat mission. Albeit geographically limited (no troops or armor are more than 19 miles from the Turkish border, meaning all resupply, maintenance, and rescue operations are completed within hours), the mission has already taken a substantial toll on soldiers and equipment.

Euphrates Shield is officially designed to fight troops of the self-styled Islamic State and push them away from the Turkish border. This goal has been partly achieved, including through Turkey’s proclaimed capture of the Syrian town of al-Bab on February 24. But the actual aim of the mission is to prevent Syrian Kurdish forces (the People’s Protection Units, or YPG) from reuniting their frightened district, east of the Euphrates River, with their westernmost district of Afrin, as that would give the Syrian Kurds control of most of the Syrian-Turkish border. Ankara’s narrative is that both branches of the Syrian Kurdish organization—the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the YPG, its military wing—are mere subsidiaries of the Kurdish separatist movement of Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

This is where foreign policy blends with domestic politics. To succeed in its current domestic strategy of crushing both the pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and the insurgent PKK to win the upcoming referendum, given the Kurds’ opposition to the proposed constitution, the leadership in Ankara needs international support. That implies convincing Russia and Western powers to drop their support for the Syrian Kurds.

But the reality on the international scene is very different. Both Washington and Moscow crucially rely on the YPG to advance on Raqqa, the so-called Syrian capital of the Islamic State. The YPG troops are remarkably effective and have received military supplies and operational support from the United States and other Western countries. They are also supported by Moscow.

More importantly, in the current proxy war against the Islamic State, the YPG forces are by far the most battle ready and the most successful in combat. Retaking Raqqa without the YPG, as Turkey is demanding, is next to impossible. Neither Washington nor Moscow is likely to risk mixing Syrian Kurdish forces with Turkish troops, a recipe for inevitable trouble and possible failure on the ground.

Ankara is replicating its request on the political front and wants to exclude the Syrian Kurds from the international talks on Syria that have just restarted in Geneva. This, again, is almost impossible, as Washington has consistently argued in favor of their involvement for the sake of lasting peace in northern Syria. Ankara is probably betting on a policy reversal by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump—although, as with other U.S. foreign policy choices, the White House’s next move is anybody’s guess.

In addition, Turkey will face Moscow’s opposition, because Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly stated in September 2015 Russia’s desire to see the Syrian Kurds as one of the pillars of a political settlement. In other words, Ankara faces two major challenges in Syria: a military and a political one.

Yet, Turkey repeatedly boasts about its military operation on Syrian territory and its participation in direct talks on Syria with both Russia and Iran. Turkey has consistently aimed at restoring close cooperation with Russia since a Turkish fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi aircraft in November 2015 and an off-duty Turkish policeman assassinated the Russian ambassador to Turkey in the heart of Ankara in December 2016. This reconciliation has been achieved in part, allowing Turkey to break the diplomatic isolation that followed the extensive repression after the July 2016 failed coup and entertain a proud nationalist narrative internally.

However, seen from abroad, Turkey’s foreign military operation and its diplomatic successes are rather limited and offset by risks taken along the way. In particular, the question arises of whether Ankara has become a pawn in Moscow’s vast chess game aimed at systematically undermining both NATO and the EU, especially in defense and energy.

The Turkish minister of defense declared on February 22 that discussions on the purchase of Russian S400 missiles for Turkey’s antimissile defense were progressing well, which was revealing of the country’s current foreign policy conundrum. If Ankara were to build its entire missile defense architecture around Russian systems, it would associate itself with Moscow and strike two major blows to NATO’s policies: first, by introducing Russian-made systems and accompanying experts into NATO’s second-largest conventional army; and second, by leaving a gaping hole in NATO’s own missile defense shield, to which Turkey has repeatedly committed itself.

One can easily comprehend Ankara’s tactical appetite for such a move, but its strategic implications would be of unfathomable depth, especially if a yes vote in the upcoming referendum gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan almost unlimited powers until 2029.

In comparison with these strategic stakes, Turkey’s relationship with the EU now looks almost benign, although greatly significant on the economic and rule-of-law fronts. With the state of emergency imposed after the failed coup, Turkey’s rule-of-law architecture has been so degraded that no progress on the country’s EU accession talks can realistically be expected. Similarly, steps toward visa liberalization—a mutually desirable objective—are impeded by Turkey’s firm priority to keep its antiterrorism law as it is.

Again, a yes vote in the referendum is likely to result in an almost permanent state of emergency and minimal rule-of-law standards. That is nothing that would worry Moscow much, but it would bring the EU-Turkey relationship to a transactional rather than a strategic level. A modernized EU-Turkey Customs Union is likely to become the only flagship project between Turkey and the EU.

All politics are local: Turkey’s current foreign policy choices are dictated by domestic political imperatives. Ankara’s foreign military operations and postures, as well as a key defense decision and deliberate backtracking on progress toward EU membership, are only parts of an internal power drive. The likely winner: Putin, more than Erdoğan.

Pierini is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, where his research focuses on developments in the Middle East and Turkey from a European perspective.

Marc Pierini, Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Europe

More from this author...

Turkey’s Gift From God; Turkey’s Impending Estrangement From the West;Capitalizing on Tunisia’s Transition: The Role of Broad-Based Reform

@MARCPIERINI1

Senator Grassly and the Second Amendment

Congress Says, Let the Mentally Ill Buy GunsBy THE EDITORIAL BOARD FEB. 15, 2017 

•   The New York Times

Sen. Charles Grassley, of Iowa, on Capitol Hill earlier this month.Credit Drew Angerer/Getty Images

For all their dysfunction, the Republican Senate and House have managed to act with lightning speed in striking down a sensible Obama administration rule designed to stop people with severe mental problems from buying guns.

My Editorial Contribution

durell douthit

attorney emeritus

2423 francis street

honolulu,hawaii 96815

808/675-8750

And how right you are, O Congress!  The 2nd Amendment  by its very Words and Original Intent perforce applies to homicidal maniacs such as Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa may be.  

None can cite one jot or tittle of the Constitutional excluding homicidal maniacs from the beneficent application of the 2nd Amendment.

What a piece of work is the 2nd Amendment! How noble in reason! In form how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of Words on Paper. 

How blessed are we that Man is endowed with The 2nd Amendment, and with Mad Senator Grassley!  We now have nowhere to go but Up Into The Heavens!

The United States should take a deep breath, and stop killing Muslims. Killing Muslims is especially unproductive, as the US recent history shows

This is in response to this article:  Trump Pushes Dark View of Islam to Center of U.S. Policy-Making - The New York Times

A friend, son of a theologian, read the entire Quran and came to the same conclusion, that it is inherently war-like and expansionist. A reading of the whole Bible would likely lead one to the same conclusion.  Surely the Crusaders thought that. 

Saudi, in their Wahhabist beliefs, share that view and have spent billions on Madrases throughout Southern Asia and Salafi jihadists in Syria to propagate the view that Sharia is inherently at odds with all other beliefs, and all others are apostate or worse and should be converted, by force of arms if necessary.  

Saudi Arabia, with vast oil money and the corruption that brings, has weakened that view and now cooperates with the West. 

The Islamic State’s main objective is to capture Mecca  and establish Wahhabism as it was originally practiced by Saudi Arabia.  The Islamic State correctly regards Saudi Arabia as lapsed and apostate and a proper object for invasion.  Not incidentally, if the Islamic State were to control Mecca, its claim to be the Caliphate would be greatly strengthened.  See The Kingdom and the Caliphate: Duel of the Islamic States - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

The United States is at war with the Islamic State to protect Saudi Arabia, since none of its Islamic neighbors has agreed to lend a hand.  The United States has had a cooperative agreement with Saudi Arabia on oil, from the end of WWII.  Up until the First Gulf War, the  Saudi gave the United States a 20% break on the price of oil, which helped propel the United States into global military superiority.

The Islamic State' war on the West (and the rest of the world) is secondary to the war on Saudi Arabia, in the view of the Islamic State; or was until the United States  began bombing the shit out of ‘em.  The United States has now made another longstanding enemy in the Middle East. 

Each member of the Bushco-Obama-Trumpist cabal has had as a core foreign policy to kill Muslims, no matter how the foreign policy is expressed.   Trumpists are the most open about their eagerness to kill Muslims no matter the Muslims' actual beliefs and so the Trumpists are the most likely to unbalance the precarious and existentially necessary peace that has now lasted since the end of WWII, with local exceptions (Vietnam, e.g.). Necessary because of the Bomb.

(for younguns who may not remember

. . . "that man is endowed with a mushroom-shaped Cloud". . . .)

Iran’s religion, for example, is not expansionist, or wasn’t until recently.  See Nasr, The Shia Revival. Expansionism is not an integral part of Shia beliefs, but a reaction to external threats.  Peace with Iran is possible.  Peace with the obesely-rich Saudi is probably possible because it needs the West to buy its oil, but we must stop killing Yemeni and must pay to rebuild that unhappy land. 

Letting the only two Wahhabist states in the world — Saudi Arabia and the  Islamic State -- settle their own differences is a better course of action than trying to protect Saudi Arabia by  killing more Muslims. Killing Muslims has not worked out well for Bushco or Obama, and will not work out well for the Trumpists either.  

Bad for all the world. Sad but, I think, true.  Hope still springs eternal, but not as spritely as it used to do.

           

Everyone has his own ax to grind

Everyone has his own ax to grind:


From The New York Times article:

Instead of challenging this ideology of shame, the left has buttressed it by blaming white people as a whole for slavery, genocide of the Native Americans and a host of other sins, as though whiteness itself was something about which people ought to be ashamed. 

Well, somebody is to blame for "slavery, genocide of Native Americans, and a host of other sins. . . ."  Somebody profited from each sin.  And the sins continue.  Visit Standing Rock.  Listen to the Native Americans.

Somebody profits to this very day.  If you are of Anglo-Saxon heritage, it is likely that you or your ancestors  profited, and if you yourself did not profit, your relative ease and security may well have resulted from an ancestror's profit.

Classism is bad; ducking responsibility for living off the suffering of others is no way to escape classism.  Read the article with a grain of salt, but read it. Though that is not its intention, it shows one way some Trump folks escape responsibility for their rages.

OPINION | CAMPAIGN STOPS

What Happened on Election Day

How the election and Donald Trump’s victory looks to Opinion writers.

A group of Trump supporters calling themselves the Mesa County Deplorables sharing a potluck meal in Grand Junction, Colo., in October. Credit Nick Cote for The New York Times

Stop Shaming Trump Supporters

 By MICHAEL LERNER

COMMENT

2016-11-09T13:17:29-05:00 1:17 PM ET

It turns out that shaming the supporters of Donald J. Trump is not a good political strategy.

Though job loss and economic stagnation played a role in his victory, so did shame. As the principal investigator on a study of the middle class for the National Institute of Mental Health, I found that working people’s stress is often intensified by shame at their failure to “make it” in what they are taught is a meritocratic American economy.

The right has been very successful at persuading working people that they are vulnerable not because they themselves have failed, but because of the selfishness of some other villain (African-Americans, feminists, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, liberals, progressives; the list keeps growing).

Instead of challenging this ideology of shame, the left has buttressed it by blaming white people as a whole for slavery, genocide of the Native Americans and a host of other sins, as though whiteness itself was something about which people ought to be ashamed. The rage many white working-class people feel in response is rooted in the sense that once again, as has happened to them throughout their lives, they are being misunderstood.

So please understand what is happening here. Many Trump supporters very legitimately feel that it is they who have been facing an unfair reality. The upper 20 percent of income earners, many of them quite liberal and rightly committed to the defense of minorities and immigrants, also believe in the economic meritocracy and their own right to have so much more than those who are less fortunate. So while they may be progressive on issues of discrimination against the obvious victims of racism and sexism, they are blind to their own class privilege and to the hidden injuries of class that are internalized by much of the country as self-blame.

The right’s ability to portray liberals as elitists is further strengthened by the phobia toward religion that prevails in the left. Many religious people are drawn by the teachings of their tradition to humane values and caring about the oppressed. Yet they often find that liberal culture is hostile to religion of any sort, believing it is irrational and filled with hate. People on the left rarely open themselves to the possibility that there could be a spiritual crisis in society that plays a role in the lives of many who feel misunderstood and denigrated by the fancy intellectuals and radical activists.

The left needs to stop ignoring people’s inner pain and fear. The racism, sexism and xenophobia used by Mr. Trump to advance his candidacy does not reveal an inherent malice in the majority of Americans. If the left could abandon all this shaming, it could rebuild its political base by helping Americans see that much of people’s suffering is rooted in the hidden injuries of class and in the spiritual crisis that the global competitive marketplace generates.

Democrats need to become as conscious and articulate about the suffering caused by classism as we are about other forms of suffering. We need to reach out to Trump voters in a spirit of empathy and contrition. Only then can we help working people understand that they do not live in a meritocracy, that their intuition that the system is rigged is correct (but it is not by those whom they had been taught to blame) and that their pain and rage is legitimate.

Michael Lerner, the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in Berkeley, Calif., is the editor of Tikkun magazine and chairman of the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

And no need to shamea anyone.  Change the World instead!  Quickly!  Before I'm pushing up daisies.