Who Gets to Pick the Winner in Syria?

As the civil war continues to murder innocents with the latest estimate approaching one-hundred-thousand murdered civilians and over one and a half million refugees fled to neighboring Turkey and Jordan there is a group of nations attempting to influence who wins. The problem is that many of these outsiders are backing different forces which serve to extend the fighting possibly endlessly producing no winners, just increasing casualties in an endless procession. First we need to define the disparate groups and then find who is backing whom. The supposed home team definition would likely have to go the current President for life Bashir al-Assad and the Alawite tribe from which he comes. There are two sets that are considered rebel forces which sometimes cooperate and at other periods work either independently or actually impede each other. One rebel group consists mostly of members from the Muslim Brotherhood while the other consists of forces aligned with Jabhat al-Nusra which is the al-Qaeda terror group. Then there are two other groups which currently support Syrian President Bashir Assad but actually represent the Iranian interests and are likely to continue to engage in the war even after Assad collapses or is killed. These two groups are Hezballah, the terrorist group whose political wing currently leads the ruling coalition in Lebanon, and the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, a group of fighters which make up a second military force roughly equivalent in size, equipment, training and capabilities to the Iranian Armed Forces used mostly to assist in foreign interventions, terrorist training internationally and domestically as required, and any other clandestine operations which may be assigned by the leadership of Iran. So, generally speaking there exist five groups vying to take control over all of Syria.

 

Oddly enough getting the teams all figured out who are operating within Syria is difficult enough, but trying to untangle the external interests and influences is far more complicated especially when dissecting their various motives. Let us first address the most up front, above board and obvious of the external influences. The most obvious is Turkey who is steadily supplying arms to both rebel forces for the most selfish of reasons, assuring their continued preeminence as the only stable rout for oil and gas pipelines. There is a further reason driving Turkey in providing arms for the rebel groups which is that there is no love lost between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syria President Bashir Assad as both view themselves as a leader in some future Muslim Caliphate, Assad as leader of the Arab nations in an Iranian Caliphate and Erdogan as leader of a reborn Ottoman Caliphate. Add to this that as long as there exists some sustained level of violence which would discourage construction of new oil and gas routes through Syria then Turkey, with its already existent pipelines, would remain the uncontested and sole route of pipelines for oil and gas from the Arabian Peninsula and related reserves.

 

Another supplier of arms to one of the rebel forces is Saudi Arabia who is backing the Muslim Brotherhood aligned rebels. The Saudi interest is the opposite of Turkey as the Saudis would very much like to have an additional player supplying pipelines to the Mediterranean Sea and into Europe as competition would result in lower prices for them in transporting their oil and gas. Furthermore, the Saudis are rivals of the Iranians and thus would love to see Bashir Assad removed from ruling Syria thus breaking the Iranian crescent in which Syria is a vital link connecting Iran and Iraq through to Lebanon and the ports of the Mediterranean Sea. The Saudi Arabians are supported by the rest of the members of the GCC, Gulf Cooperation Council; whose members are of far less military capabilities thus the Saudis make all the decisions. The Saudis are also counting on support by the United States but they may run into some surprises in that relationship which we will cover later.

 

Then there are those exterior forces supporting the Syrian military and Syrian President Bashir Assad and at the same time defending the Iranian interests. These two groups are the IRGC and the Hezballah terror group. Should Bashir Assad fall either by fearing being taken by the rebel groups who would likely give him treatment similar to that used to dispatch Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi, a rather unpleasant death, these two groups would simply continue the fight in support of their true masters, the Iranians. To either of these forces the continuance of Bashir Assad as the President of Syria is simply something that makes their presence in the fight more readily explainable. Remove Assad and their real motivations are revealed and Iran would be uncovered as the true force behind Assad remaining in power. Another nation supporting Bashir Assad, even if in a somewhat limited manner, is Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. Russia has thus far limited their support to continuing to fill all past weapons orders they have agreed to with Syria and are preventing any overt support for the rebels such as interventions or establishment of a no-fly zone by the United States or NATO. The most disturbing participation by the Russians is their intent to follow through with the sale and supply of their S-300 Anti-Aircraft Missile Systems which would make any Israeli strikes to prevent chemical weapons or other game-changing weapons from being transferred to the Hezballah forces in Lebanon for use against Israel in the future more hazardous. There is one potential future situation which would prove most intriguing, if President Assad should be killed or otherwise removed from the situation, would Russia continue their support giving the future weapons shipments to the IRGC and Hezballah or would their interest in the situation in Syria be terminated.

 

And then there is the most troubling foreign influence, and that is the United States and President Obama. The obvious interpretation of the United States interests is that they are aligned with Saudi Arabia and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and against the entirety of other forces. This façade also has another participant, Turkey, who also appears to work with the Saudis while also passing weapons to their intended recipient without question. Some of these weapons are intended for Jabhat al-Nusra as they are supplied from the al-Qaeda forces and influences who were involved in Libya. There have been rumors that the truth behind the catastrophe in Benghazi may have been related to attempts to prevent powerful and game-changing weapons, possibly stinger missiles, from being sent from Libya to undesirable recipients. Even if such a proposition were true, that is one truth that will never see the light of day. As is said, some secrets are secrets for a very good reason and as such must remain nothing more than a rumor, a whisper in the tempest and nothing more.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Obama and the Middle East Dilemma

While everyone stares at the ever shifting, ever blurring Syrian Chemical Weapons red line which is now befuddling the White House, the Syrian civil war continues to wind on and on eventually to determine who will prove supreme, bad or worse. There is no good side to choose in this fight. It now comes down to Assad backed by Iran and Hezballah, the Syrian Free Army which is backed largely by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the al Nusra Front which represents al-Qaeda and even should Bashar Assad be toppled there will still be Hezballah allied with the IRGC guerilla forces attempting to preserve the influence of their Iranian masters. As far as the United States is concerned there is no actual good guy for them to back though President Obama has appeared to have a soft spot for the Muslim Brotherhood in the past.

 

The one democratic country which is very concerned over the eventual results and intermediate activities in Syria is, of course, Israel. While the Israelis are not particularly fond of any of the players, their previous knowledge of Assad may make him the least troublesome of the evils for Israel. Do not misunderstand that Assad would make Israeli leaders overjoyed as they have fought three conflicts against his forces; one in the Six Day War in 1967, once again when both Syria and Egypt launched the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and their final conflict was an air war over the Bekaa Valley in 1982 where the Israelis knocked sixty Syrian fighters from the skies in two days of dog fights losing absolutely no planes themselves. For the memory of these defeats Bashar al-Assad might be sufficiently gun shy that would make his remaining in power preferable to having to teach a new leader the perils of engaging the IDF from scratch.

 

Whatever the eventual result of the civil war in Syria the one thing Israel absolutely cannot allow is for Iran or anybody else to funnel new and more dangerous weapon systems to Hezballah in Lebanon. This is what spurred the recent air raids by the Israelis on Damascus and along the Syrian-Lebanon border over the past week. The Israelis were removing transports carrying new weapon systems which would have posed a serious increase in the threat potential of Hezballah. One can only imagine what such systems might have entailed as Hezballah already possesses at a minimum sixty-thousand rockets of various ranges with which to threaten Israel. Despite such a seemingly overwhelming threat potential, Iran has still decided it is worth the possible losses to attempt to further arm Hezballah in order to turn their threat into a certainty that Tel Aviv would be decimated in return for any actions taken against the Iranian nuclear program. Iran has made it very certain that it matters not who attacks their nuclear program, Israel will receive the brunt of the Iranian response through Hezballah and Hamas and Syria providing Syria is still a part of the Iranian Shiite Crescent across the Middle East.

 

Meanwhile, back in Washington DC President Obama is doing a number of pirouettes on the head of a pin trying to avoid being pinned down to his red line should Syria use chemical weapons threat. Syria has, according to Israeli, French, British and even most United States sources, already deployed Sarin nerve agent against the rebel forces and civilians. There have been reports of multiple usages yet President Obama continues to squirm and wrestle with these facts attempting to twist them into a cloud of doubts in order to back away from the precipice and avoid actually being forced to act. The problem President Obama is facing is that he really miscalculated when making a threat he never expected to have to ever face. Now that reality has not only caught up but has swept past his threat of action crossing over his red line, President Obama must now fudge the facts and blow enough smoke that he can claim that his red line was more flexible and has remained inviolate, but with his red line not only crossed but rather obliterated, President Obama has been left appearing completely toothless in all ways concerning Syrian use of chemical weapons.

 

There is one huge problem beyond the simple fact that President Obama has been rendered impotent concerning events in Syria; all of his threats and posturing over the Iranian nuclear program are now mute and meaningless. This can only serve to make the Iranian nuclear weapons threat even more potent as it is now obvious that President Obama never actually intended to ever take action in order to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons. This leaves all of Europe as well as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other nations within the GCC, and anyone else who Iran may see as an opponent directly in the crosshairs of a potential nuclear Iran. What makes things even more clouded is that now all of the intelligence information which originated with the United States or was heavily influenced by the United States now cannot be considered to be anything other than a ruse to prevent the appearance of a need to act. This is very likely to cause a complete reevaluation of the entire Iranian situation by Israel at the very least. The backing away from his red line by President Obama has resulted in the entire world now realizing that they are on their own when it comes to the Iranian threats. This can only lead to a more dangerous Middle East, like anybody thought such was even possible.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Will Iraq be the Next Syria?

The news coverage given by the mainstream media about the growing violence between the different factions in Iraq has been very slanted in order to shield the Shiite Muslims from responsibility for mass violence while heaping all of the blame upon the Sunni Muslims and especially al-Qaeda terrorists. The only groups being covered fairly are the Kurds who are, as much as they are able, living their lives independent from any governance from Baghdad while exercising as much autonomy as they possibly are able. During the past week there was reported in some of the international media of the Shiite commanders in the military ordering their troops to disperse unarmed groups of Sunni protesters using live fire from the main machinegun of Abrams M1A1 heavy battle tanks. Also not given much coverage at the time was after United States President Obama allowed the Shiite leadership of the Iraqi government to order the segregation of the United States military forces to an isolated base out in the middle of the dessert and restrict any United States military movements or maneuvers under restrictions allowing only those actions approved by the Iraqi Shiite dominated government that charges were drawn up for treason against the Sunni Vice-President of Iraq. Following soon behind this was the purge of most of the Sunni and Kurdish representatives within the government, especially any who held positions of consequence. The United States backed candidate to lead Iraq, President Nuri al-Maliki, has taken complete and unchallengeable control over the reins of power and now rules as the Shiite version of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

 

The most evident difference between al-Maliki and Iraq under Saddam Hussein is that under Saddam the Christians were among those who were protected along with the favored Muslims who were the Sunnis while they are the Shiites under al-Maliki. Surprisingly, in many ways al-Maliki is just as vicious and strident in his hatreds as Saddam ever was. The main consequence of this along with numerous other positions supported by President Obama is that the Sunni Muslims, who are over seventy percent of all followers of Islam, will never again trust the United States to stand behind their promises and protect those whom they promised security when their assistance was necessitated by the tactical situation. The Sunni were the Iraqis who assisted the surge troops brought into the Sunni Triangle in order to take on al-Qaeda in Iraq on their home ground and drove them from Iraq enabling the establishment of the Iraqi’s first honestly and freely elected government. This brought al-Maliki to power with the blessings of the United States under both President George W. Bush and then under President Barack Obama.

 

What was even more troubling was the fact that as time passed it became unavoidably evident that al-Maliki was really a puppet willing to do the bidding and give his loyalty to Iran. One might have expected his showing his allegiance to Iran would have made al-Maliki a nonstarter for any position supported by the United States considering the efforts by the United States and their allies to prevent the Iranian nuclear program from reaching its goals. Despite this, al-Maliki has consistently moved closer and closer to Iran to the point that he has blessed with protection the Iranian transfers of supplies across Iraq in order to bolster the dictator Bashir Assad in his fight against the rebel forces in Syria. This travesty and complete waste of all the efforts which were committed in the removal of Saddam Hussein simply to allow al-Maliki to make Iraq into a subsidiary nation under Iranian control is an insult to the brave Americans who fought and even died to free Iraq from one oppressor only to place them under a new and different oppressor. This also completed the Iranian dream of a Shiite crescent reaching from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea along the path starting in Iran and passing through Iraq and Syria and terminating in Lebanon which is controlled through Hezballah. The two weakest links in this chain are Syria and Iran as both have sizeable non-Shiite populations. What we have witnessed in Syria where Christians are being targeted by all sides while there is a fight between Bashir Assad as the pro-Iranian influence, against two rebel forces one of which is pure Sunni Islamists represented by the al-Nusra Front, and the Muslim Brotherhood represented by the Free Syrian Army. What is often left out is that even should Bashir Assad fall it would not automatically mean the end of the Iranian influence as Iran has also built a semi-rebel force consisting of Basenji Militia, IRGC and Hezballah who would continue to be content to control as much area as they were able with a concentration on connecting Damascus and its international airport with the coastal Alawite and Shiite areas of Syria.

 

Meanwhile, in Iraq the Sunni are likely to revolt and to form around al-Qaeda on one side and possibly with Saudi Arabia Wahhabi influence as another front similar to the Muslim Brotherhood rebel forces in Syria and the latter will attempt to forge an alliance with the Kurdish forces in the north of Iraq. The Kurds would be well served to stay out of such a revolt and instead declare themselves a state using the Palestinian Authority as their precedent for establishing Kurdistan in an area which minimally includes the northern forty percent of Iraq and pull as many of Kurdish ancestry from within eastern Turkey and northern Iran to solidify their new country in the north of a fractured Iraq. What is actually the most ironic, sarcastic and completely insane quality is what likely lies just over the horizon for Iraq, the distinct possibility that Iraq will end up splitting into three states, Shiite Iraq, Sunni Iraq (also could be called Southern Iraq and Northern Iraq), and Kurdistan, just as Joe Biden had suggested it should have been divided up to start with. Who knew that Biden was not just somewhat strange and spoke insanities from time to time, but could actually be prophetic. Wait a minute, let’s not get carried away just because old Joe finally got one right, after all, a stopped clock is correct twice a day.

 

Beyond the Cusp