The Syrian terror trap
The US, Russia and Iran are fracturing the Levant
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The Syrian terror trap
Leaked US diplomatic cables show that the US sought to undermine the Assad regime nearly a decade ago. But that’s not the whole story. In 2011, as peaceful protestors rallied across Syria, Assad was courted by the Obama administration as a potential client and regional partner. Only because the US eventually abandoned him, did he revert fully to the trappings of Russian and Iranian power. Yet in supporting Assad’s state-terrorism in the name of fighting terror, the new Russia-Iran military axis in Syria is falling into a trap of its own making. Rather than constituting a new ‘anti-imperialist’ front, the Russia-Iran alliance could see the conflict escalate into a protracted regional, sectarian war of attrition culminating in the permanent dismemberment of Syria.
Russia’s invasion of Syria has provoked excitement amongst some antiwar activists, who see Putin’s macho muscle-flexing in the Middle East as a welcome geopolitical check on American hegemony.
But just because the United States is — as Boston University historian and military veteran Professor Andrew Bacevich has shown — the world’s pre-eminent imperial superpower, that doesn’t make angels out of its rivals.
Russia Today (RT) and Press TV (Iran’s satellite news channel) would have us believe that Russia and Iran are waging a Good ‘war on terror’ in Syria.
In reality, both Russia and Iran are, like the US, neo-imperial state structures engaging in geopolitical expansionism.
Without an ounce of shame, the Russians and Iranians have eagerly co-opted the language of the US-led ‘war on terror’ to justify their own imperial violence in Syria.
It is not the ‘war on terror’ they oppose, but merely US encroachment on their regional interests.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Syria Goes Dark |
Syria Then and Now
“Arab Spring” situations have an inexorable tendency to go pear-shaped (Tunisia, the first country to experience one is the lone exception, but even there the “old guard” is reportedly making a comeback, so the whole thing was essentially for nothing in the end). In Egypt, the revolution went from bringing an Islamist to power whose economic policies were either useless or were sabotaged by the organization that actually owns Egypt (the army controls 40% of the economy), back to someone who suspiciously looks like the old boss, with the only difference that he’s even worse. Nothing about the situation even remotely resembles democracy at this juncture. Getting jailed and tortured in Egypt and getting sentenced to death in mass show trials is once again par for the course.
Libya has disintegrated into a so-called “failed state” and is wracked by an ongoing civil war between the same factions that faced each other in Egypt: Islamists and the army, whereby in Libya there is also a dash of warlordism in play. The official government doesn’t even control the capital.
Syria however is arguably the worst case. The country, fought over by once again the very same types of factions (the army of a secular tinpot dicator and Islamists) has been rendered a pile of rubble in many places. We were reminded of a picture we have recently come across that illustrated this fact rather starkly. It shows a satellite image of Syria at night, before and after the civil war:
The lights have gone out in Syria’s largest cities. Click to enlarge photo.
The only other places on earth that look comparably desolate in terms of lighting are either natural wastelands, the poorest regions in Africa or North Korea. Note that even before the civil war, light was concentrated in inhabitable areas – a lot of Syria consists of desert. Still, the difference is striking.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
