Music: Anja Lechner & Vassilis Tsabropoulos — ‘Trois Morceaux après des Hymnes Byzantins II’
How the U.S. Congress and the GOP became friends of Assad and enemies of the Syrian people
Two years ago, Bashar al-Assad said this:
President al-Assad: Terrorism will not stop here, it will export itself through illegal immigration into Europe. pic.twitter.com/iZjHFdw6yV
— Syrian Presidency (@Presidency_Sy) June 17, 2013
Some observers — especially those currently promoting fear of Syrian refugees — might think this was a prescient warning, but what Assad’s tweet actually expressed was the consistency with which he has stayed on message in his contrived “war on terrorism” and the fact that the flow of refugees would undermine the future of Syria.
Throughout the war, Assad has insisted that his adversaries are all “terrorists.” He wants the continuation of his rule to be perceived as a way of insuring that the threat of terrorism does not grow. Yet anyone who believes this propaganda is willfully ignoring the reality that far from combating the expansion of ISIS, Assad essentially provided an incubator in which it could grow. ISIS and Assad have a symbiotic relationship.
At the same time, as Syrians fled Assad’s barrel bombs, taking refuge in neighboring countries, the regime was prescient in this sense: once the regime’s own supporters lost faith in Syria’s future, taking advantage of their greater resources they would likely head for Europe with little likelihood of returning. As the New York Times reported in September, “Now those departing include more middle-class or wealthy people, more supporters of the government, and more residents of areas that were initially safe.”
Thus, even before the westward flow had begun, Assad wanted to sow fear in the minds of those who would likely offer refuge to people the regime can ill afford to lose. And what better way of exploiting European xenophobia than by referring to such fleeing Syrians as “illegal immigrants” — evidence, I might suggest, that Assad has his own Western media advisers.
(It shouldn’t need saying but I’ll say it anyway: Refugee status must never be made contingent on political affiliations. Syrians fleeing the war, deserve help — irrespective of their religion, sect, or ethnicity.)
The U.S. Congress and the GOP have now become megaphones of Islamophobic fear, portraying Syrian refugees as potential terrorists rather than what they really are — victims of tyranny and terrorism.
In conjunction with this deranged hysteria which across the U.S. is twisting perceptions of Syria, the argument that Assad is the “lesser evil” goes from strength to strength.
Just as Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the 9/11 attacks, saying they were “very good” because they would unite the U.S. and Israel and “strengthen the bond between our two peoples,” Assad must have taken satisfaction in the slaughter in Paris, knowing that it would buttress his argument that he, his allies and the West face a common enemy.
Likewise, as The Guardian notes, the attacks strengthen Iran’s position in Syria:
Ali Alfoneh, senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, said: “President François Hollande, who cannot count on Washington deploying ground forces in Syria, is now reaching out to Iran and Russia to form an alliance in the fight against Daesh [Isis].
“This in turn legitimises Iran’s military engagement in Syria, which Washington considers as one of the root causes of emergence of Daesh in that country. In that sense, the terrorist attacks in Paris came as manna from heaven for Tehran.”
So many commentators have joined in the chorus that warns against the risk of playing into the hands of ISIS, saying that we must avoid rising to provocation and giving the terrorists what they want, and yet at the same time, with barely any protest and plenty of nods of approval, we now move in the direction of giving Assad exactly what he wants.
France leaps to Assad’s allies after Paris attacks
Alex Rowell writes: “Tremblez, tyrans,” warns La Marseillaise, the French revolutionary song that, in abridged form, has been the national anthem of the Republic since 1795. “[We are] all soldiers combating you.”
One tyrant unlikely to tremble at these words today is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is one of the few people to have had reason to enjoy the aftermath of last Friday’s attacks by ISIS in Paris. What has transpired in the week since on the French political scene – as it has to varying extents across Europe generally – is tantamount to a bloodless coup d’état for supporters and fellow travelers of Damascus and its allies Moscow and Tehran.
The phrase used by one source in Paris is “the defeat of the [Foreign Minister Laurent] Fabius Doctrine,” and indeed the man who once wrote a Washington Post op-ed arguing that “Assad and Daesh [ISIS] are two sides of the same barbaric coin,” and who just weeks ago said Russian strikes in Syria were killing civilians, on Thursday declared Russian intentions against ISIS were “sincere,” and called on France to “gather all our forces” in alliance with them.
This followed the news that the French military, which in August 2013 was just “hours” from air-striking Syrian regime targets until US President Barack Obama telephoned President François Hollande to call them off, is now formally coordinating the dispatch of an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean with Russia, whose President Vladimir Putin has instructed his navy to welcome the French crew “as allies.” Perhaps most tellingly, Hollande is combining a trip to Washington on Tuesday to discuss the fight against ISIS with an equivalent visit to Moscow two days later – suggesting, if only symbolically, an unprecedented new parity of relationships. [Continue reading…]
The Syrian Jihad: The evolution of an insurgency — Charles Lister and Emile Hokayem
The U.S. Holocaust Museum urges lawmakers not to turn their backs on Syrian refugees
Quartz reports: On Monday, Nov. 19, mere hours after legislators voted to pass a bill making it even harder for Syrian refugees to seek refuge in the United States, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum released the following statement:
Acutely aware of the consequences to Jews who were unable to flee Nazism, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum looks with concern upon the current refugee crisis. While recognizing that security concerns must be fully addressed, we should not turn our backs on the thousands of legitimate refugees.
The Museum calls on public figures and citizens to avoid condemning today’s refugees as a group. It is important to remember that many are fleeing because they have been targeted by the Assad regime and ISIS for persecution and in some cases elimination on the basis of their identity.
It’s a statement perhaps reflective of growing sentiments among North America’s Jewish communities; a recollection of policies that kept those fleeing terror and persecution in Nazi-occupied Europe from settling down in the United States. [Continue reading…]
Republican Ben Carson compares Syrian refugees to ‘rabid dogs’
Reuters reports: Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Thursday likened refugees fleeing violence in Syria to “rabid dogs,” and said that allowing them into the United States would put Americans at risk.
“If there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog,” Carson, a front-runner in some opinion polls, said Thursday at a campaign event in Mobile, Alabama.
“By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly,” the retired neurosurgeon said, criticizing President Barack Obama’s plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees within a year. [Continue reading…]
Ted Cruz, the Syrian Muslim Hunter
Dean Obeidallah writes: “We have no earthly way to know who they are,” exclaimed Republican Congressman Michael Burgess while speaking about the Syrian refugees on MSNBC Monday night. “The FBI doesn’t even have a database.”
But there’s one man who can sort it all out. A special dude from Texas, by way of Canada, who has the ability to decide which refugees are good and which are bad. And that person is Ted Cruz: The Muslim Hunter.
You see, Cruz, as opposed to Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, who oppose any Syrian refugees being admitted into the United States, has a more creative way to deal with this human catastrophe. He’s announced plans to introduce federal legislation to ban the Muslim refugees, but accept the Christian ones.
Why the distinction? Well, the Muslim Hunter tends to believe that any Muslim might be evil. In contrast, he declared that “there is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror.” Ooops, looks like Cruz never heard of Christian terrorists like Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph, the killer of “abortion doctor” George Tiller, Robert Doggart (the Christian minister on trial for plotting terrorist attack to kill Muslims in New York State) the KKK, Timothy McVeigh, etc.
With that aside, Cruz’s plan raises a few questions. For example, how do you accurately determine a refugee’s religion? I would imagine many would be willing to claim they are Christian in order to save their families and start a new life in America.
Have no fear because The Muslim Hunter undoubtedly will come up with some tests to sniff out those stealth Muslims. Maybe the refugees will be required to eat a bacon cheeseburger while drinking Jagermeister. Or perhaps each refugee will be shown a photo of Bill Maher—if they reflexively recoil, it’s no USA for them. Possibly Cruz will employ a subtler test like asking them which way is Mecca? If the refugee quickly points in the right direction, he’s got ’em! [Continue reading…]
‘People become outraged, they cry, and they do nothing’ — how compassion mutated into fear
Remember this little boy? A Syrian. Can we be sure he wasn’t a terrorist? https://t.co/HGQDZyWldO pic.twitter.com/At01ywBVqy
— csdickey (@csdickey) November 19, 2015
America’s Muslims face backlash after Paris attacks
The Associated Press reports: Muslims around the US are facing backlash following the deadly attacks in Paris, including vandalism to mosques and Islamic centres, hate- filled phone and online messages and threats of violence.
Advocacy leaders say they have come to expect some anti-Muslim sentiment following such attacks, but they now see a spike that seems notable, stirred by anti-Muslim sentiment in the media.
“The picture is getting increasingly bleak,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. “There’s been an accumulation of anti—Islamic rhetoric in our lives and that I think has triggered these overt acts of violence and vandalism.” [Continue reading…]
Possible Russia-West rapprochement over Syria stokes fears in Europe’s east
RFE/RL reports: France’s surprise embrace of Russia in the aftermath of the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris has raised concerns across the former Soviet bloc that Moscow wants to leverage the fight against Islamic extremists in Syria to secure Western concessions over Ukraine.
Just days after the massacres in the French capital killed 129 people and injured hundreds of others, President Francois Hollande called for the formation of a grand coalition — including Russia — to destroy the Islamic State (IS) group, which claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Putin followed by ordering his navy to cooperate with the French Navy in the eastern Mediterranean, where Russia has a base in the Syrian port of Tartus.
Hollande’s push for cooperation with Russia was a major pivot for France, which has been a loyal partner in the multinational U.S.-led coalition fighting IS militants in Syria and Iraq.
The French government had also objected vehemently when Russia began its Syrian air campaign on September 30, saying Moscow’s ulterior motive was to keep embattled President Bashar al-Assad in power.
Former Ukrainian diplomat Bohdan Yaremenko told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service on November 18 that following the Paris attacks, Putin had “created the opportunity for dialogue with the West that he had lost due to the situation in Ukraine.” [Continue reading…]
Victims of the Paris attacks
Click on this image to see all currently available photos and stories about the victims of the Paris attacks.
The Associated Press reports: They were artists and students, music lovers, parents and newlyweds. The victims of last week’s attacks in Paris had varied backgrounds and interests. Among the 129 killed in the attacks, here are some of their stories: [Continue reading…]
What is it about Molenbeek? The bit of Belgium that was a base for Paris terror attacks
By Martin Conway, University of Oxford
Just as during the German invasions of 1914 and 1940, war, it seems, is coming to France through Belgium. If one follows the logic of the statements of various French political leaders since the bloody attacks in Paris on November 13, Belgium has become the base from which Islamic State has brought the conflicts of the Middle East to the streets of Paris.
There is much about that logic that would not withstand serious analysis. France has grown many of its problems within its own suburbs. And groups committed to armed action, from the Resistance movements of World War II to the Basque nationalist groups of the 1980s and 1990s, have often found it expedient to use neighbouring territories as a base from which to launch their operations.
That said, the French authorities have a case. Molenbeek – an urban commune on the north-western edges of Brussels – is unlikely to feature any time soon on tourist-bus tours of historic Brussels.
Though it lies only a couple of kilometres from the Grand Place and the Manneken Pis, and a mere taxi ride from European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s office, Molenbeek is another world. This inner-city area, now on the front pages of newspapers across Europe, is deprived of funds, social cohesion and effective government.
Is ISIS good at governing?
Mara Revkin writes: While civilians criticize ISIS’s heavy-handed rule, many admit that ISIS is governing more effectively than the Iraqi government did.
As one resident of Mosul said recently: “Everything is better under the Islamic State.” Another said: “I have not in 30 years seen Mosul this clean, its streets and markets this orderly. According to others, “There is no corruption in the society” and, “Services are satisfactory. We almost always have water and…we have [electricity] round the clock.”
If public opinion is in fact turning against ISIS, it is not necessarily because the quality of services has deteriorated. Rather, residents of Mosul are unhappy because the cost of those services — in terms of the taxes and fees that ISIS collects — has steadily increased over time. After initially providing some essential services for free, ISIS later began to impose heavy taxes and fees for water and electricity. Meanwhile, police were cracking down on violations of ISIS rules with corporal punishments and monetary fines.
Adding to that is the heavy collateral damage caused by airstrikes on ISIS-controlled areas, which will only intensify as France and Russia retaliate for the recent attacks on their citizens. If ISIS begins to divert substantial resources away from governance in order to finance high-profile terrorist attacks and respond to the foreign interventions that such operations will likely provoke, civilians living under ISIS rule can expect their taxes and service fees to rise even more.
So although the overall quality of services provided by ISIS — including sanitation, utilities, security, and healthcare — may have remained relatively stable, from the perspective of civilians, life under ISIS rule is becoming more dangerous and costly over time. Civilians who normalized their reference points around ISIS’s relatively light-handed rule during the early days of control, when its first priority was to win the population’s trust and cooperation, now feel that ISIS is failing to live up to the expectations that it initially established. [Continue reading…]
How ISIS promotes images of an idealistic caliphate
Helen Lewis writes: The image is Instagram-worthy: handsome young men throw their arms around each other’s shoulders in an unselfconscious, brotherly gesture. There’s even that distinctive blur at the edges of the photo, drawing the eye more strongly to the men’s smiling faces.
Any echoes of the popular photo app are not accidental, because this is indeed an image designed to go viral. It appeared in Dabiq, a glossy magazine distributed by Isis, the terror group that has claimed responsibility for recent attacks in Paris and on a Russian plane.
For years, journalists have been bemused by the existence of Inspire, a forerunner of Dabiq distributed by al-Qaeda. It’s hard to imagine the nitty-gritty of magazine production being undertaken by terrorists, and there is something darkly comic about the idea of a “jihadi sub-editor” (that said, most subs do have deeply held beliefs, even if they are usually about the correct placement of commas). But there is a thriving tradition of jihadi magazines, including several targeted at women, published as PDF files to allow decentralised distribution across the globe.
The Dabiq picture is captioned “Wala’ and bara’ [loyalty and disavowal] versus American racism”, a reference to an Islamic concept of friendship between Muslims. Professor Shahira Fahmy of the University of Arizona came across it during a year-long secondment to study Isis propaganda for Nato. Looking at Dabiq, she found that images promoting the idea of an “idealistic caliphate” far outnumbered photographs of killings and torture. Overall, she estimates that only 5 per cent of imagery produced and distributed by Isis is violent. [Continue reading…]
Explainer: What is going on in Mali?
By Paul Jackson, University of Birmingham
After a week in which Europe was rocked by terrorism on the streets of Paris, gunmen entered the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali. A hostage situation unfolded and French and Malian security forces battled for control of the building. It is a hotel that is known to be frequented by foreigners and represents an escalation of violence that has been building in Mali during 2015.
Islamist attacks have been concentrated in Mali’s north, but spread during 2015 to the centre of the country – and then to the south and the borders with Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. On March 6, there was a terrorist attack on the restaurant La Terrasse in Bamako, in the south-west of the country. Five people were killed and nine were injured.
On June 10, there was an attack by armed men on Malian security forces in the town of Misseni, near the border with Ivory Coast. And on August 7, armed men attacked the town of Sévare in the Mopti region, north-east of Bamako. The attack lasted several hours, including a siege at a local hotel. Twelve people died, including two foreign nationals.
As Jonathan Pollard walks out of prison, a reminder of why he was there
The release of Jonathan Pollard after serving 30 years in prison for spying on the U.S. isn’t the end of the “free Pollard” campaign. His supporters, who see him as a loyal Zionist, now want him to be able to emigrate to Israel.
For this reason, it’s worth being reminded of the fact that Pollard’s motives for stealing classified documents had little to do with ideology and a lot to do with making money.
In 1998, W. O. Studeman, Sumner Shapiro, J. L. Butts, and T. A. Brooks wrote:
Jonathan Pollard is serving a life sentence for stealing massive amounts of highly classified and extremely sensitive U.S. national security information. In terms of sheer volume of sensitive information betrayed, Jonathan Pollard rivals any of the traitors who have plagued this nation in recent times. Nobody is clamoring for the release of traitors like Aldrich Ames, John Walker or Jerry Whitworth, but Pollard, by manipulating his supporters and conducting a clever public relations campaign both here and in Israel, has managed to generate a small but vocal movement advocating that he be released and allowed to emigrate to Israel, where he expects to be something of a national hero.
We, who are painfully familiar with the case, feel obligated to go on record with the facts regarding Pollard in order to dispel the myths that have arisen from this clever public relations campaign aimed at transforming Pollard from greedy, arrogant betrayer of the American national trust into Pollard, committed Israeli patriot.
Pollard pleaded guilty and therefore never was publicly tried. Thus, the American people never came to know that he offered classified information to three other countries before working for the Israelis and that he offered his services to a fourth country while he was spying for Israel. They also never came to understand that he was being very highly paid for his services — including an impressive nest egg currently in foreign banks — and was negotiating with his Israeli handlers for a raise as he was caught. So much for Jonathan Pollard, ideologue!
Assad and ISIS need each other to survive
Manuel Almeida writes: The notion that ISIS should be number one priority while the genocidal President of Syria is a matter to be dealt with when and if ISIS is defeated, is deeply flawed for a number of reasons beyond the obvious moral one.
The key to defeat the radical group is a government willing and able to do so and with the capacity to bring on board much of the opposition; all the Assad regime is not. Any Syria expert will tell you Assad has avoided as much as possible to confront ISIS, focusing instead the regime’s military effort on the myriad of opposition groups that are not bent on exporting jihad.
Not only that, Assad has struck deals with ISIS to buy oil and gas on the cheap from the radical group, as highlighted in a recent report by the Financial Times based on interviews with various Syrians employed in the energy sector. Thus, the regime gets the supply of energy to meet its electricity needs while providing a key source of income for the group’s terrorist activities. ISIS controls eight power plants in Syria, including three hydroelectric facilities and Syria’s largest gas plant.
In the early stages of the uprisings against his rule, Assad released hundreds of jihadists from Syria’s jails, contributing to his strategy of portraying the war as an existential battle between secular forces of moderation and fanatic religious militants. Yet for that desperate narrative to have any grounding, it would be necessary to ignore the thousands of groups and sub-groups that form the Sunni opposition. Plus, with Iranian forces and all the Shiite militias from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan fighting for the regime, Assad can hardly claim to be non-sectarian.
The Assad regime is also responsible for the great majority of civilian casualties, a great portion of which via its incessant campaign of airstrikes on urban areas. This has been part of the strategy to radicalize the opposition and make the urban areas not controlled by the regime are almost unlivable.
Ironically, Assad and ISIS need each other to survive. As Hussein Ibish, a scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington D.C., recently put it: “The key factor in the rise of ISIS in Syria has clearly been its politically symbiotic relationship with the Assad dictatorship in Damascus. On paper, these two entities despise each other and could hardly be more ideologically and politically hostile. Yet in practice, they share an overwhelming interest in ensuring that the conflict in Syria is as brutal and sectarian as possible.” [Continue reading…]
Assad’s army is now controlled by Iran and Hezbollah
Lara Nelson spoke to Khaled al-Shami who fled to Jordan after serving for four years in the Syrian army: He described what life was like inside Assad’s army.
“One important thing to realise is that there is no Syrian Army anymore, it is just militias, mostly Iranians and Lebanese.”
Division 9 is the largest and most important military force for Assad in southern Syria. It houses the only tank division, and has around 4,000 troops within four brigades.
However, most of the troops within the division are now non-Syrians: “Without the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Lebanese Hezbollah the army could not stand up. Seventy percent of the troops in Division 9 are Iranian troops or Lebanese Hezbollah, the rest are shabiha. Only two to three percent are regular Syrian soldiers,” Khaled said.
Shabiha is the name for the Alawite paramilitary force known for its brutality and sectarian nature. Khaled described the dynamics between these different fighting elements: “The Iranians and Hezbollah are not under the control of the Syrian Army, the exact opposite.”
He described how troops were organised and deployed: “Ten high-ranking Iranian officers control the division, they plan the operations. Only Iranian or Hezbollah forces can access operations rooms, no Syrian soldiers are allowed in.” [Continue reading…]