MENA, MENA, Tekel, Parsin (Middle East, North Africa & other Geopolitical Hotspots) 2018

Introduction of Islamic courts common in areas taken over jointly by FSA and Nusra, since 2012.

The fact that you use 'sharia law' to describe what that article says mostly just makes me think you're a bit islamophobic, honestly.

Simply put, 'sharia' is half of Islam ('sufi' being the other part) and just relates to rules on how to live your life. It's absolutely unsurprising that an oppressed Sunni majority would turn to religious principles to help govern once secular law breaks down. The uproar over it was really, really islamophobic.

As I said:

Except if with 'sharia law' you mean stuff like islamic inspired divorce courts, which, yeah, sure, I guess that could have been happening.

― Frederik B, 12. april 2018 01:39 (fourteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Juan Cole's take-- here's part of it

https://www.juancole.com/2018/04/reverse-syrian-gloating.html

The Trump administration and the May government in the UK seem poised to launch missile strikes on Syria in the near future. It probably won’t matter.

The Syrian regime figures it can take the punishment, which is likely to consist of another set of one-off missile strikes similar to those launched on the Shuayrat Base in spring of 2017 after a chemical weapons attack by the regime in Khan Sheykhoun. Syrian and Iranian troops are said to be quietly deserting major air force bases, temporarily relocating outside them, in anticipation of the strikes.

The Syrian regime has all but won the civil war. It has all the major cities–Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia, Homs, and even Hama. It controls what the French colonialists used to call “useful Syria,” the band of fertile land stretching from Damascus to the north in the west of the country. While it has lost the ten percent of the population that is Kurds in the northeast, the Syrian Kurds are not regime enemies and likely will be forced into an alliance with Damascus over time in the face of attacks by Turkey and by fundamentalist Arab militias backed by Turkey.

ISIL has been largely defeated as a territorial force, though it holds out in some small pockets in the east.

And it reveals Syrian, Russian and Iranian thinking. The war aim has been achieved and the lives of Syrian special operations forces (who are limited in number) were preserved. The little kids with white foam around their mouths, eyes staring lifelessly, were collateral damage.

it's not collateral damage when they are the intended target. the point of chemical weapons is to break the resistance. collateral damage is when you're targeting soldiers and hit civilians. the "little kids with white foam around their mouths, eyes staring lifelessly" is the intent.

i guess i'm not surprised juan cole is confused on this point. he never really seemed to understand the difference between incidental/regrettable civilian loss of life and intentional targeting of civilians (or if he did he never really seemed to think it constituted a real distinction).

The fact that you use 'sharia law' to describe what that article says mostly just makes me think you're a bit islamophobic, honestly.

― Frederik B, Thursday, April 12, 2018 7:39 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sha·ri·a
SHəˈrēə/Submit
noun
Islamic canonical law based on the teachings of the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet (Hadith and Sunna), prescribing both religious and secular duties and sometimes retributive penalties for lawbreaking. It has generally been supplemented by legislation adapted to the conditions of the day, though the manner in which it should be applied in modern states is a subject of dispute between Islamic fundamentalists and modernists.

you fucking imbecile

i used the word sharia to refer to something which is referred to by the people who run it as Hayaa al-Sharia. what an islamophobe i am. fuck me

Lol. You're trying to prove your not an Islamophobe by proving you use an English definition of an Arabic word. Good on you.

And the islamophobic part was you using the term in all it's negative connotations.

you are beneath contempt

And oh yeah, only listening to what extremist Muslims say Islamic terms are is often a sign of islamophobia as well. There is nothing inherently negative in 'sharia'. It's like saying talmudic law or something.

I know what sharia is, you clod. I'd suggest that maybe the version of sharia meted out by a literal Al-Qaeda affiliate may be extreme, but that's just a crazy hunch

there are also some elements that are present in all version of islamic law which are inherently negative tbh.

i think calling ppl islamophobic is kinda shit arguing and i do think that pointing out that religious law is indicative of general trends is not irrelevant when weighing the fundamentalism of a movement against potential secularism (and i'd say the same about a militant jewish movement that established beis din courts) but fred has a[n important] point in that using muslim legal code does not in itself make a group synonymous with Al-Q or ISIS. they could use elements of Sharia Law and not be fundamentalist terrorists (and really expecting a total repudiation of religion is a bit of a reach for any group, even if you'd hope - as i would - that with early Western intervention secular proponents could've spearheaded the resistance). it's relevant but it's not dispositive.

jim you were the guy flirting with the idea that chemical attacks were false flags by the civil defense. you also seemed to take some bullshit realpolitik stance because you don't want your family bombed by islamist terrorists? and you're smearing the entire opposition movement as bloodthirsty dangerous islamists when the regime forces have killed two orders of magnitude more people Syria. I'm comfortable calling you an islamophobe.

but please post more patrick cockburn & give us more of your reasonablist analysis

go fuck yourself

jim you were the guy flirting with the idea that chemical attacks were false flags by the civil defense.

Assad has chemical weapons, he likely used them on civilians the other day, as he has in the past. I would prefer some sort of independent verification, if possible, before escalating western military activities in response to this, especially given that the evidence for these attacks having happened was at first purely videos created by groups that operate under the aegis of Nusra.

you also seemed to take some bullshit realpolitik stance because you don't want your family bombed by islamist terrorists?

umm, not being sure that we should actively aid groups that want to kill us is, i dunno, a really defensible stance imo?

Smearing the entire opposition movement
by referring to the fact that islamist groups have been an integral part of the opposition since at least 2012 and that the FSA - a protean group made up of many rival factions with no effective central command and which has collaborated with Nusra since the latter's inception - has islamist components? These things are just true.

Also: im an islamophobe for, in your eyes, being unfair to the syrian opposition. the other side in this war are also muslims, including large numbers of Shia islamists

is Obama an islamophobe? As it's likely that he didn't directly intervene in the conflict, or do more to arm the opposition, largely based on these same considerations

bamcquern obviously otmimo. But jim's freudian slip was when he wrote this: The islamicization of the opposition is at least several years old by now as far as I can tell. Islam in and of itself is scary.

fuck up, frederik. isn't there an american politics thread for you to lecture the americans on? or give the viewpoint of women and POC? worst fucking wank on here since Gabbneb was banned.

I think accusing other ILXors of Islamophobia, or disabilism, or whatever, is really nagl.

It also really couldn't be further from the mark.

But yes jumping on my use of "Islamicization", rather than "Islamization" - which I've seen pro-opposition writers from Syria use - is a real gotcha. Well done.

ah yes, the dreaded Freudian slip, where one's inmost secret opinions are suddenly revealed by substituting an entirely different word from what one intended. except that's not what jim did. he used a word and fred interpreted it in the most prejudicial way possible and used this interpretation to attribute motives and opinions to jim that it is in no way clear jim holds. good work there.

A Fredian Slip.

It also really couldn't be further from the mark.

Resorting to, I should have said.

you fuck yourself, JIM IN VANCOUVER. you've made yourself clear you're more worried about islamic terrorists than you are about the hundreds of thousands killed by regime forces and the millions displaced by the war. Are you worried about refugees, too? Are you worried that among the quarter of the total Syrian population who are displaced outside its borders that there will be a terrorist who kills your family members?

We know who is killing whom from tabulations by the VDC, the syrian network for human rights, HRW, et al. We also have a pretty good idea who is fighting ISIS, and by percentages of engagements the regime seems to lag significantly behind both the kurds and the opposition forces.

B-b-but terrorists. B-b-but Sharia law.

who cares if there are "islamist" components of fuckall? I'm more worried about war crimes, genocide, murderous sieges than I am about "islamism." Do civilians not matter? Do the disappeared? Do the tortured? Do you only recognize military forces and their compromises, their (completely disproportionate) crimes, their ideological impurity, their jockying for position?

anyway, yes, you are an islamophobe and your weird ass sectarian appeals don't change that. you're making bizarro neocon arguments, but from the left. because you argue non-interventionism, you think you've put forth a rational position that stakes out some panglossian nightmare future for Syria, like, welp, what can you do, a few million refugees, a few hundred thousand killed, what better outcome could we have expected?

suggesting that the civil defense fakes evidence is NAGL

or that they're basically al nusra? or whatever the fuck jim believes?

you're a fucking idiot

i grew up in a refugee household, my dad was a torture victim, and some of his friends were murdered by the dictatorship in his country. i more than empathize with people who are victims of the Assad regime - which is far worse than than the regime my dad fled.

I haven't written one single line which has said that the Assad regime isn't really fucking awful, or that they aren't responsible for the majority of the deaths in Syria. I have only written the most basic fucking obvious things that one should think about when talking about intervention: what is the outcome going to be? What is the end-game? Your emotional screeds aren't going to change that, you sack

Can we stop calling jim in vancouver an islamophobe plz

dubious of the merits of supporting Al Qaeda is apparently islamophobic. word fail

Have we heard what bamcquern recommends in the way of action by western powers in Syria and how he thinks that would improve the problems he finds so emotionally rending? Because just vomiting out your emotions about the horrors of that war has a place, but it really does make a mess at the same time.

As a hypothetical, if Assad were removed from power, and one of the other factions took over, what are the possible outcomes? Like what kind of place could Syria end up being?

This feels like a useful question to think about. I personally don't have a clue. I look at the current situation - Assad in charge - with the same disgust we all do; I look at the alternatives, can't see them clearly, and only get a not very useful sense of foreboding. I wonder if this quite a common reaction. Maybe if someone who knows Syria better could outline some of the possibilities?

There are no clear answers. One of the options is that Assad goes but the structure behind him remains. The new government would probably have enough backing from Iran and Russia to maintain the territory they would inherit but would be unlikely to achieve full control of Syria or any kind of lasting peace.

If one or more of the rebel groups were in a position to claim to be the de facto government, and rule as such, they’d be equally unlikely to take 100% of the territory held by the previous government.

The logical remaining options would probably be some form of federalism or a coalition, similar to that in Lebanon, between a bunch of people who massively dislike each other but can agree to share power. That had essentially been what a lot of the peace talks in Astana and elsewhere were scoping out.

If that came about, it’s hard to see it not being set up as a secular state. Some of the rebel groups have introduced a kind of ‘moderate’ sharia law/ Islamic jurisprudence in the areas they control, either for its own sake or as a bulwark against hardline groups like Al Nusra, but it’s not easy to see that washing with the whole country. The best case scenario is probably Lebanon, the worst case, endless civil war with nobody ever able to win.

There are no clear answers. One of the options is that Assad goes but the structure behind him remains. The new government would probably have enough backing from Iran and Russia to maintain the territory they would inherit but would be unlikely to achieve full control of Syria or any kind of lasting peace.

If one or more of the rebel groups were in a position to claim to be the de facto government, and rule as such, they’d be equally unlikely to take 100% of the territory held by the previous government.

The logical remaining options would probably be some form of federalism or a coalition, similar to that in Lebanon, between a bunch of people who massively dislike each other but can agree to share power. That had essentially been what a lot of the peace talks in Astana and elsewhere were scoping out.

If that came about, it’s hard to see it not being set up as a secular state. Some of the rebel groups have introduced a kind of ‘moderate’ sharia law/ Islamic jurisprudence in the areas they control, either for its own sake or as a bulwark against hardline groups like Al Nusra, but it’s not easy to see that washing with the whole country. The best case scenario is probably Lebanon, the worst case, endless civil war with nobody ever able to win.

― Wag1 Shree Rajneesh (ShariVari), Thursday, April 12, 2018 4:32 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is there a possibility of the dissolution of the Syrian state and the creation of several smaller states like in Yugoslavia?

Smaller states that have never existed at any time in history?

Yeah that's what I'm inquiring about, might be really stupid.

Did the Kurds ever have their own state

I am not an expert by any means but I think that scenario is seen as difficult for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is not a clear national / ethnic demarcation between regions, as there was, at least to some extent, in the Balkans. Different minorities and religious groups basically live on top of each other - and have always done.

Another factor is Damascus has a lot of infrastructure and the west coast has the ports but the oil is mostly through the centre and in the east so there would be a massive bunfight over who gets to control it.

Additionally, the group that most wants to break away - the Kurds - are constrained by the international community’s need to keep Turkey onside. A separate Kurdish state as part of a Balkan-style settlement would be seen as a huge threat in Ankara.

They're never going to get one if Turkey has anything to do with it. (xp)

back in the days of the French mandate there was an Alewite State in the west and a Druze in the south but for the reasons ShariVari gives this is seen as not very practical.

In all respect, calling jim an 'islamophobe' is not enough, it's more complex than that. I mean, what type of bullshit even is this?

Syria is a majority Sunni country, ran by an Alawite dynasty that, due to the small number of Alawites in the country, does not act in a sectarian manner.

In Iraq the majority are Shia and Saddam's regime was primarily Sunni-led and engaged in sectarian oppression of the Shia majority.

The only really sectarian element to the Syrian Civil War is the fact that the rebels are extremely sectarian Sunni islamists

― Louis Jägermeister (jim in vancouver), 10. april 2018 22:16 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is he afraid of Sunni Muslims in particular? Or only afraid of larger groups of muslims, that it's okay if a subset of muslims is small and elitist enough? I suspect it's the latter, that's the stereotype that's almost the essence of Islamophobia, the mindless horde of fanatics, the streets teeming with arabs burning Danish cartoons, being indoctrinated into inhuman killing machines. And that's the stereotype that fits with the rest of what he writes: Constantly conflating as large a part of the rebels with ISIS, Al-Queda, calling everyone Jihadists, Islamists, thinking everyone is contaminated by 'sharia law' and 'islamization'. And of course, then they're all dangerous and wants to kill us all, and in the end it's a pity that Assad is gassing children to death, but what are you going to do, and their parents probably talked to an Imam once, so there really was no hope for them anyway.

It's worse than NAGL, and if it was any other group than Muslims, so many more would speak out. Imagine using those kind of stereotypes, then saying that it's really only ashkenazi Jews that are zionist scum, or that we're just using the Rothchilds as an example of rootless cosmopolitan capitalists, and what, you don't think those people are harmful, whatever.

you're a real piece of shit

Sorry, Fred, you are taking this too far, you really have to stop this.

I'm going to quickly search pretty much at random for some material regarding the syrian opposition and post some quotes here to show that the idea that there is islamist involvement in the opposition is not something I've just made up due to my hatred of Sunnis (apologies for C+P problems, I don't want to waste any more of my time justifying myself to scandinavias biggest dickhead than i need to:

DEFYING A DICTATOR: Meet the Free Syrian Army
Spyer, Jonathan
World Affairs, 1 May 2012, Vol.175(1), pp.45-52

Given what has been seen in other revolutions in the region, the question of sectarianism in the struggle to overthrow Assad is an important one as well. Sunni Arab Syrians constitute around sixty percent of the Syrian population and, reportedly, seventy-five to eighty percent of the FSA. The remaining twenty to twentyfivepercent are Sunni Kurds, whose attitude toward the uprising has been more cautious...

Idlib Province is a deeply conservative Sunni area. There is also a con-siderable presence of Salafi Islamist fighters in the FSA in both Binnish and Sarmin. Although these fighters appeared to be local men, not foreign jihadis, the Salafi presence, and the prominent role a number of these indi-viduals have taken in recent
fighting against Assad’s forces, should not be ignored. In conversation with FSA fighters and activists, the sec-tarian issue, and the differing loyalties of the various Syr-ian communities, surfaced regularly. Inevitably, I heard a somewhat sanitized version of this from FSA command-ers, while rank-and-file fight-ers and civilian activists were more likely to express openly sectarian views. Captain Ayham al-Kurdi echoed others when he observed that the fight represented a struggle primarily between Sunni Arabs and Alawi Arabs. “Ninety percent of Ala-
wis,” he said, are with the regime. “Christians are neutral, the Druze are split, and the Sunnis who benefitted from the regime support it, while the others are opposed.” A civilian activist speaking to me in Binnish was more blunt: “This is civil war between the clans,” he said, then hurriedly reminding me that Sunnis nevertheless rejected the possibility of sectar-ian warfare as a matter of principle.

CRISIS IN SYRIA: WHAT ARE THE U.S. OPTIONS?
Ziadeh, Radwan ; Hadar, Leon ; Katz, Mark ; Heydemann, Steven
Middle East Policy, Fall 2012, Vol.19(3), pp.1-24

(this guy Leon Hadar is a libertarian dipshit so please use that against me)

I think that, in the face of the pressure on the Obama administration to do something in Syria as soon as possible, a certain skepticism, at a minimum, is demanded and appropriate. Under the best‐case scenario, we would probably replace the secular Alawite regime in Damascus, which is allied with Iran and the Hezbollah, with an Islamist Sunni government allied with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The fact that the Saudis and the Turks are indeed allies of the United States, and Iran and Hezbollah are adversaries of the United States, lends this scenario a certain appeal. One could argue that, from a geopolitical perspective, the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the Levant that was tilting in favor of Iran and its allies, thanks to the U.S. intervention in Iraq and the ousting of Saddam Hussein, would now tilt more in the direction of the United States and its allies. This is basically good news.

Under the worst‐case scenario, the coming to power of a more radical Islamist Sunni regime in Damascus, which may or may not be allied with al‐Qaeda or some groups within it, would unleash, I think, a bloodbath against the Alawites and other religious minorities. It would also spill over into Lebanon and Iraq, invite outside intervention by regional and global powers and eventually ignite some sort of Middle East war.

Yarmuk refugee camp and the Syrian uprising: a view from within
Bitari, Nidal
Journal of Palestine studies, Oct 2013, Vol.43(1), pp.61-78

The FSA, by that time joined by the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra, had long set their sights on Yarmuk camp...

FSA brigades and their Jabhat al-Nusraallies entered the camp. A stiff battle took place as the PFLP-GC tried to stop them...During this same period, when people were still fleeing the camp and few had returned, the rebels became more and more abusive toward those who remained. Some brought in friends and relatives
to squat in empty houses; looting and robberies became common. Jabhat al-Nusra set up Islamic courts, and Palestinian activists were arrested and tried.

The Syrian Opposition: Salafi and Nationalist Jihadism and Populist Idealism
Zuhur, Sherifa
Contemporary Review of the Middle East, 2015, Vol.2(1-2), pp.143-163

Many elements of the FSA are Islamists and declare their engagement as jihad. Not all are linked to al-Qaida (Lister 2013). Each group was loyal to its own com-mander and numerous splits have resulted in new groupings. Earlier, the Syria

Islamic Liberation Front contained 19 groups including the Kata’ib al-Farouq Islami (Islamic Farouq Battalions, established in Homs/Hama) and the Kata’ib
al-Faruq (al-Faruq Battalions, established in Homs), Liwa al-Islam (Islam Brigade, established in Damascus), Suqour al-Sham (in Idlib and Aleppo), Liwa al-Tawhid (Tawhid Brigade, mainly in Aleppo), Fath Brigade (also in Aleppo), and the Deir al-Zour Revolutionaries’ Council.9The groups varied ideologically; the Suqour al-Sham under the leadership of Shaykh Ahmad Abu Issa was more hard-line than the Kata’ib al-Faruq. The Farouq Battalion (est. 2011) defended the Baba Amr neighborhood in Homs against the Syrian military until February 2012 and then fought in Qusayr against the Syrian forces and Hezbollah in April/May 2013. After its leader, Abu Razzaq Tlas was discredited in August of 2012 (al-Abdeh 2012), two other leaders (Amjad Bitar and Bilal al-Jurayhi) were expelled who formed the Farouq Islamic Battalion.10 Abu Sakkar (Khalid al-Hammad) shocked many when he bit the inter-nal organ of a dead soldier on video and promised to eat the military’s hearts and livers (Brown Moses Blog 2013b; BBC 2013).

The Multiple Faces of Jabhat al-Nusra/Jabhat Fath al-Sham in Syria's Civil War
Anzalone, Christopher
Insight Turkey, March 2016, Vol.18(2), pp.41-50

The main Syrian political opposition groups, including the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the Syrian Na- tional Council, and the Syrian Mus- lim Brotherhood, together with many rebel groups on the ground vocifer- ously opposed and condemned the U.S. government’s decision to blacklist Jabhat al-Nusra, which cost them dearly politically and in the realm of public relations, particularly in the U.S. where it raised signi cant doubt amongst many government officials and politicians about the Syrian op- position and rebels as a whole. Apart from the o cial condemnations by the Syrian political opposition and other rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA) umbrella, popular protests on the ground inside the country following the U.S. gov- ernment’s designation also showed support for Jabhat al-Nusra, further in aming the political and public relations hits...

On the one hand, Jabhat al-Nusra is a powerful and capable military force against the regime and has been in- volved in handing al-Assad’s forces with a number of its most signi cant defeats and losses since 2012. Howev- er, on the other hand, the group’s af- liation with al-Qaeda and the more puritanical creedal impulses of at least some of its leadership and ideo- logues is concerning to some seg- ments of the Syrian opposition and Jabhat al-Nusra’s attempts to imple- ment its own interpretation of Islam- ic law in areas under its control have led to tensions between it and other Syrian rebels, particularly FSA mili- tias, and some locals...

The presence of Jabhat al-Nusra has also negatively impacted the Syrian opposition and rebels as a whole be- cause it has resulted in the hesitancy of international powers such as the United States from more actively aiding Syrian rebels, even so-called “vetted” groups, out of fear that any weapons given will be captured or otherwise fall into the hands of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. The desertion of fighters from these vetted groups with some of their weapons has done nothing to ward off this concern.