Discussion of syria

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Ah, the passionate discussion of politics by educated men.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2tzx9sd6vc#t=14#t=37&hd=1]Jordanian Commentators Demolish Studio While Arguing over Syria War - YouTube[/ame]

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - it's hell if ya do, an' hell if ya don't...

Analysis: In Syria, no good options for West
Oct 31,`14: With the U.S.-led assault on the Islamic State group, the world community is acting in Syria, but not in the Syrian civil war. When it comes to the issue that has undermined the region - the survival or fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad - there is still no plan.

And that means the West's goal to defeat the militants of IS may also be doomed to fail. Syria's four-year civil war has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions in what began as a movement to replace Assad with a more democratic state. As the government's control weakened, militants rallying around Islamic slogans carved out a vast safe haven for themselves - recruiting, training and building fighting capacity. From Syria this year, they then struck deep into Iraq, with devastating effect, and now also threaten Lebanon. Yet any concerted effort to oust Assad and restore stability to Syria does not appear to be on the horizon.

What emerges instead from the actions and words of Western policymakers is a glum resignation that there is nothing that can be done about Assad for now, and the fight is only with the Islamic State. For many world leaders, allowing Assad to remain in control in Damascus appears to be the least-bad option. That's striking, given the disaster he has overseen. In an ideal world from a Western perspective, an army of "moderate" rebels headquartered in Istanbul would be an attractive choice to march into Syria and defeat both the Islamic State and the Syrian government. There are some rebels who are pro-Western and largely secular. Some even can be heard on Israeli radio stations promising a future of regional peace.

Syrian Kurdish refugee Mohammad Hassan, 84, from Kobani, seen in the background, weeps on a hilltop on the outskirts of Suruc, Turkey, near the Turkey-Syria border. With the Syrian civil war in its fourth ruinous year, there is no end in sight, hundreds of thousands are dead, and millions have been displaced. The U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group, after more than a month, is limited to airstrikes and has not dislodged the radical group from a single major town it controls in Syria or Iraq.

But upon inspection, these rebels are few, badly divided, and barely control the Free Syria Army, which purports to be their force on the ground and has little political support inside Syria. In reality, Free Syria Army fighters are often militant Islamists; in some cases, they have fought alongside al-Qaida's branch in the country, the Nusra Front, or other jihadi groups. On the whole, they are far more motivated to fight against Assad than against the Islamic State militants. So when Assad says that his is a fight against terrorists and radical Islamists, even to his staunchest critics the charge rings partly true.

All that is left is a disagreement over how Syria got there: European and other critics charge that Assad's brutal suppression of an initially peaceful and largely secular protest movement created the space for jihadis to move in. Assad claims they were there all along. The current reality is that Syria has been divided into three or four parts. Assad controls most of a strip of land from Damascus to the Mediterranean coast, where his Alawites and other minorities are dominant. The Islamic State group controls the river corridor to Iraq and much of the northeast; the Kurdish minority controls a corner near the Turkish border; and an array of other rebel groups including the Free Syria Army and various Islamists control parts of the northwest. Here are four possible ways the conflict could go:

A COMPREHENSIVE POLITICAL SOLUTION

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Syria's Alawites pay heavy price as they bury sons
Oct 31,`14: The posters of slain Syrian soldiers, put up by families to commemorate their sons killed in the fight against rebels, are plastered on walls throughout the coastal province of Tartous. The impromptu murals of death illustrate the price supporters of President Bashar Assad are paying to defend his rule.

The khaki-clad men often pose with guns, with Assad's image often imposed above the slain soldier. For government supporters, Assad is synonymous with Syria itself, particularly in Tartous, a scenic Mediterranean port that is majority Alawite, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that is the faith of Assad's family. For Syria's Alawite minority, there is no other way out but to back the president, despite rumblings of dissent. Rebels often indiscriminately target Alawites because they are seen as the firmest pillar of Assad's rule - and because extremists among the rebels consider them heretics.

More soldiers have been killed from Tartous than any other region in Syria in the fighting to quell the armed rebellion seeking to topple Assad, now in its fourth year. "This is the price we must pay for the country," said Ramadan Haidar, whose 23-year-old son Mahmoud was killed fighting in northern Syria. "Because if the country doesn't regain its sovereignty, then I have lost my son and my home."

Residents walk past posters of slain Syrian soldiers and a poster of Syrian President Bashar Assad, left, pasted on a wall on a main street in the city of Tartous, the capital of a coastal province in Syria. More soldiers have been killed from Tartous than any other region in Syria, in the fighting to quell an armed rebellion seeking to topple Assad’s rule, now in its fourth year.

It's unlikely that need for the sons of Tartous will ease, with the government seemingly desperate for soldiers as the conflict grinds on. Some 4,000 soldiers from Tartous have been killed in the war, according to a Syrian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to media.

The death toll forms some 10 percent of the estimated 40,400 soldiers killed, even though Tartous' population is fewer than a million people - less than one-twentieth of Syria's pre-war population of 23 million. Alawites form some 13 percent of Syria's population, concentrated in the coastal provinces and the central city of Homs. They are not the only ones to die in the fighting. Syria's army represents the sectarian makeup of the country: it is largely Sunni Muslim, fighting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels. But Alawite troops are the most trusted by leadership.

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